Regarding the big article in The Oregonian/OregonLive about the “success” in a neighborhood on Northeast Milton Street: (“‘Perfect storm’ of violence, vice overwhelmed NE Portland block. Then the city tried something new,” Jan. 1) For years, the area had been getting worse and more run down. There was rampant drug use, prostitution, car theft, killing and a homeless encampment there. The neighborhood was totally out of control. The city came in with a coordinated effort and cleaned it up. They arrested most of the drug dealers and prostitutes. They towed away the partially stripped stolen cars. And they swept the homeless encampment several times. The last sweep is sticking; there has been no encampment for the last two months. The neighborhood is revitalized. I am impressed with the accomplishment, and certainly the residents and business owners there deserve to live in a decent neighborhood.

That said, I noticed nothing about help being provided to the homeless. They apparently were simply repeated “swept” and presumably ended up in other neighborhoods instead. Until Portland seriously tackles helping the homeless, they will continue to use the ineffective and inhumane “sweeps” to attempt to demonstrate they are “solving the homeless problem,” but they aren’t. They are simply forcing the homeless to relocate to somewhere else in town, until that “somewhere else” has its turn being “swept.” “Sweeping” gives a false impression of progress and needs to be replaced with programs that actually help solve the homeless problem.

Ronald Parks, McMinnville

To read more letters to the editor, go to oregonlive.com/opinion.