Portland Gentrification and Other Problems

NE Killingsworth 14th-17th: Developers Tee Up At The Ninth Hole

After reading about this stretch of NE Killingsworth getting rezoned recently -- or, rather, getting a previous mistake in zoning corrected -- in the local papers and business publications, I thought I ought to take a visit, "IRL" as the computer generation would put it, before sitting down to collect my thoughts and some snippets of information through which I might throw some aspersions on what is being portrayed in the Oregonian and elsewhere as another "everybody wins" story of Portland's victory over the menace of urban blight.

The barbecue shack closed last year. The few businesses that remain -- a Jamaican grocery, a convenience store, a barbershop -- struggle to stay afloat.
"It's an area people generally want to avoid," Stevan Arychuk, who lives nearby, told City Council members Thursday at a hearing on the proposed rezoning. "There's active drug-dealing, prostitution, smashed windows. People just try to ignore it."
Planners have acknowledged the need for change and the unfairness of the whole situation. But for years, they said they lacked the manpower to do anything. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1215744907115900.xml&coll=7

My expectations that I might conclude the afternoon with a bag of dope forced into my pocket and a drooling prostitute heaved into my passenger seat were diminished by the views I encountered motoring eastward on NE 15th: It's like watching some kind of documentary about urban parenting, dog-walking, expensive foodstuffs, and the alternative-music-genre-derived uniforms of the young and upwardly mobile. Ground zero for all of which, evidently, is that brutal, grotesque New Seasons-anchored shopping mall at Fremont. Which of course is always surrounded by a couple fucking acres of SUVs.
I pressed on, past strollers and Subarus too numerous to count, through where the scene along 15th resolved itself into another recognizable Portland neighborhood flavor: bungalows that look like they've changed hands recently and/or are sporting "For Sale" signs.

Finally I see Killingworth approaching. The sight of a bunch of alarmingly rowdy black kids harassing passing cars is revealed to be a group of high-schoolers and some parents, trying to raise money with a car-wash bit. A cardboard sign says, I think, RHS. Is that Roosevelt, I wonder? If so, wasn't that the school I saw at the St. Johns Parade a few years ago, represented by the marching band that instead of instruments and uniforms were carrying placards saying things like We Lost Our Funding, No More Marching Band At Roosevelt, or similar? I may have my schools mixed up, but I'm not confused in the least as to the basic idea: go out in the street and earn the money for your high school education, kids, 'cause we can't help ya.
A block or so up these other car-washers are running their business, as described in the Oregonian thusly:

On a recent afternoon, the only stirring of commercial life came from a makeshift carwash/garage sale set up under the awning of an abandoned gas station. The inventory included old baby toys, records and a selection of used and faded office chairs selling for $5 each. The scene is so dreary that even people paid to sell this part of town complain.

Now, the point of this little story isn't to dispute any claim that this stretch of Killingsworth is totally run-down. It certainly is. However, as I often note, the word "abandoned" is tossed around a bit cavalierly by local journalists, especially when they could show a little professional pride and take five seconds to search PortlandMaps to see who owns it and whatnot. In the case of the carwash - not the high school one, this other one - they aren't running it at an "abandoned" property; this is a gas station, no longer in business, that's owned by an outfit called Cornerstone Community Church of God in Christ. Which is all of seven blocks down the road. And who, presumably, were the ones who paid the property taxes of $573.94 that were assessed last year. But of course, saying "abandoned" conveys the fully intended impression that whoever comes along to turn it into a condo it is doing all of us a huge favor, and deserves whatever they are given in the course of doing so.
Vexing as well is using "makeshift" to delegitimize the "C Me Shine" carwashers, Corey X and Charles X, one of whom popped over to hand me a flyer (even though I washed my car only two days ago!) listing a variety of services from $15 for washing the car and cleaning the inside (!) up to the luxury $50 "Butter Wax" treatment. And their hours of operation, and their phone numbers. (For me, I'm kind of sick of running through the car wash machine and wondering what it's doing to my clear-coat. Maybe I'll be by in a couple weeks, fellas, because if you haven't been run off by then, I might consider paying a couple more bucks for a car wash that actually gets my tires clean.)

No. These blocks are pretty beat, no question about that. I notice our friends at Coast Janitorial, no doubt flush with clients after their mention in the New York Times a while back, are here, at 15th, keeping shit clean while tossing $1,200 or so into the city coffers every year if you must know. Let's see if Floyd is going to be here in two years. Most everyone on this highly-owner-occupied strip is probably going to see no alternative to selling what they have, and after doing so they will have the pleasure of finding how very little that amount of money will get them elsewhere in town.

James Berry's building at Northeast 16th and Killingsworth Street has become another battleground in the city's historically black neighborhoods.
The city last month passed a recommendation to rezone a strip of Killingsworth between 14th and 17th avenues to commercial, but the goal of business vitality comes with few other incentives for current landholders.
"This is a depressed area, so putting a zone behind it without any money for rehabilitation, what good does it do?" asks Berry, fearing that the rezoning will simply result in higher property values and taxes to encourage him to sell to developers.
[Small-business liaison for Portland's Bureau of Development Services Suzanne] Vara sees such examples as indicators of a citywide land-use problem hit by national economic trends.
"All of a sudden the people who were thinking of starting something have dried up. Almost all of the calls that I'm getting are about relocating or closing a business, instead of trying to grow," she says.
http://www.portlandobserver.com/story.asp?record=8244&section=Features

I think it's interesting that this strip has already, and for some time, been designated as a Storefront Improvement zone, theoretically making the owners of these properties eligible for grants to spruce up their places. Maybe the loans and grants are easier for some types of people to get than others.

PDC requires that you get three (3) competitive bids for each type of work you are doing. We will add up the lowest bids and commit to paying 50 percent of the total up to $20,000....Matching grants are paid upon completion of pre-approved, applicant-paid work.
http://www.pdc.us/pdf/storefront/guidelines-requirements_1-8-07.pdf

I see - you have to have enough money to pay upfront for the work yourself, as well as the time to collect bids from contractors, not to mention the inclination to risk laying out thousands of bucks for something that you might not get reimbursed for if any of dozens of little details fuck you up after the fact. Sweet. Here's to the little guy >clink<.
No, I don't really think the plan is for anyone who's actually part of this strip to be ultimately seeing the benefit of rezoning any more than the dog-and-pony show of Storefront Improvement was designed to apply to this kind of situation. Out with the old and in with the new is the program. The business papers make that a little more clear:

One would-be developer sees Killingsworth, which is flanked by increasingly popular neighborhoods and destinations, as a place to launch his career.

Andrew Clarke, a long-time resident of neighboring Concordia and president of Hugh Development, wants to develop a mixed-use project at Northeast 16th and Killingsworth. Clarke said he asked the city to restore the commercial zoning on Killingsworth so he can build a retail-and-condo project in place of a low-slung grocery at 1616 N.E. Killingsworth. He plans to buy the property, first developed in 1964 and now operating as a grocery.
Clarke intends to raze the market and replace it with a four-story building  with space for four retail businesses at street level and about 30 one-and two-bedroom condominiums. Clarke said plans are preliminary and he didn't identify financial partners. But he has enlisted an architect, Skylab Architecture, a contractor, York and Curtis, and even a public relations firm, Edelman, to help out. http://portland.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2008/07/21/story7.html

Sick. Truly nauseating. I must have more:

Clark had been awaiting the council’s decision before moving ahead on the design phase of the project, though he’s already tapped Skylab Architecture as the building’s designer.
“We’d like to see this become more of a destination,” said Clarke, a Northeast Portland native. He pointed to the Alberta District nearby as a model of how to quickly redevelop a neighborhood....
Vernon neighborhood resident Amy Hendrix was shocked a year ago to find that her backyard had hosted a police-perpetrator scrum...The naked storefronts and empty lots that serve as the face of the neighborhood, if dressed up as new developments or businesses, would help the area, she said. “You’ve got this area where property owners can’t do anything,” Hendrix said. “Their hands are really tied.” Clarke hopes his project fosters a “shared sense of space” and attracts empty-nesters and young professionals alike. He plans to start construction on his project in early 2009 and aims to finish in 2010. http://www.djcoregon.com/articleDetail.htm/2008/07/14/...City-Councils-vote-will-sp

There will certainly be more to come of what Clarke -- who actually, let's remember, has never done anything like this before in his life -- must anticipate will put him on the map with a gravy train of condo sales and commercial leases. How about the church mentioned in the Oregonian again. Did that line "so dreary that even people paid to sell this part of town complain" make your Spider-sense tingle the way it did mine?

"It's awful," said George Thompson, a real estate broker who is marketing a strip-mall-style church at the corner of Northeast 17th and Killingsworth. "It's probably as bad a three-block stretch as anywhere in the city."

Let's have a look at what George's trying to sell. New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist, it was. The "Real Market" value listed on PortlandMaps is pretty low, $129,000. Before you think that sounds laughably low, keep in mind that there is supposedly nowhere in the city that's worse off than this "three-block stretch." Though nevertheless, George has it sitting on the block for three-quarters of a million. (Terms: "Cash")
Now, George Thompson hardly seems like the sharp little slicker one might expect getting in on a situation like this - his websites are all parked, and he's not really a real-estate guy, he's an old time business broker-- but it's also true that in the event Missionary Baptist lives and wants another church somewhere, they will have no fun touring all the places they can afford on the $150/sq.ft. or so they probably will clear from this deal. Enjoy methtown, Reverend. Don't mind the European Kindred and their pitbulls.

This stretch of Killingsworth is therefore, while inarguably "let go," still by no means quite exactly what it is portrayed as in the commercial media: a public hazard resolvable only by developers' "help." The nearby community is not being presented with some new-found freedom to revitalize this part of itself in any way; rather, the people there are being set up to be taken advantage of by outside interests, who will do absolutely nothing for those who have remained throughout the past fifteen years of deliberate disinvestment. We are not discussing a crisis situation, although the language of urban renewal is typically crisis-management in tone because development relies on an environment of haste rather than deliberation. The Oregonian article again:

Fifteen years ago, Portland leaders looked for a solution: First, they rezoned large swaths of land along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard for industrial and business use...The planners didn't predict the dramatic change in Northeast Portland's fortunes over the ensuing decade. Urban renewal along MLK has been slow to take root. But in other neighborhoods, new people have poured in seeking inexpensive houses within an easy walk of vibrant, pedestrian-friendly business hubs.

This stretch of Killingsworth hasn't benefited. Faulty zoning is largely to blame. Under that 1993 change, business owners here were allowed to stay under a grandfather clause but couldn't expand or redesign their shops. All they could do is build apartments or condos. Instead, many did nothing. Lights went out. Paint faded and peeled.

The idea that the planners haven't predicted changes in other NE neighborhoods as a consequence of their work is absolutely absurd. It was and is the planners' profession to be specifically well aware that the existing prices of real estate - rentals, homes, commercial -- in those areas were clearly lower than potentially. The attractiveness of these neighborhoods was assessed - proximity to downtown, walkable, transit-served, sturdy pre-war architecture - and the potential was soberly calculated, from which arose policies to help that potential be reached, by the only method we seem to have at our disposal: making it easier for developers to turn a profit, which in every case turns out to be upscale housing and so-called market-rate commercial development with prices well above the level of the existing neighborhood. Skeptical? Another Oregonian story, in what they call their "blog," has perhaps a clearer illustration:

Ed Dines' restaurant at the corner of 15th and Killingsworth, Lou-Z-Ana, was among the rezoned businesses. ...Dines didn't complain when the city rezoned his property. Few in the neighborhood did.
"They say they notified us all, but I don't remember seeing anything," says James Berry, who runs One Stop Music in a building he owns at Northeast 16th and Killingsworth. "I don't think anybody in the neighborhood knew what they were doing or what it would mean."Like property owners, planners failed to see what was coming. Instead of continuing to decline, Northeast has become ground zero for gentrification. Affluent families, mostly affluent white families, have rejuvenated the real estate market and changed the nature of many neighborhoods.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianextra/2008/07/cornered_on_killingsworth.html

I wouldn't contest the assertion that planners often can't predict the specific consequences of their decisions, but overall, a look at this city's evolution during this same fifteen year period can hardly be seen to illustrate any large failure to set out a general agenda (of increasing value) and to meet it with widespread general success. Let's not fall for the "government is too incompetent to do anything nefarious" thing. There is nothing nefarious about a process taking place in plain sight, and it's not that tricky in any case to go where the money tells you to. Even the most incompetent public servant can do that.

If the tendency to confuse ourselves about what is gentrifying Portland and why continues to prevail as it has, it may be that attention paid to NE Killingsworth between 14th and 17th will reward us with a small living laboratory of the exact process. I for one am going to keep my eye on this place, especially if it means getting my car washed by hand for ten bucks. But seriously, it's doubtful that any business existing there today, such as Coast Janitorial, will benefit, long-term, from this zoning change any more than they benefited from the so-called "faulty" zoning that was handed down fifteen years ago. That was just Step One, and as of last month we see Step Two. Are we so gullible that Step Three is going to be any huge surprise?

Works Cited:
Oregonian article:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1215744907115900.xml&coll=7
Oregonian "blog" post:
http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianextra/2008/07/cornered_on_killingsworth.html
Daily Journal of Commerce article:
http://www.djcoregon.com/...developers-hopeful-that-City-Councils-vote-will-sp
Portland Business Journal article is subscription; it's posted in full here:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=3683672&postcount=756
Portland Observer article:
http://www.portlandobserver.com/story.asp?record=8244&section=Features
PDC Storefront Improvement Program document:
http://www.pdc.us/pdf/storefront/guidelines-requirements_1-8-07.pdf

Seattle Heroine Dies; Portland Yet To Step Up [w/update, & Bugs Bunny Reference]

Seattle sometimes inspires. OK, Ballard. From the Post-Intelligencer:

 

"I don't want to move. I don't need the money. Money doesn't mean anything," she told the Seattle P-I in October.
She continued living in the little old house in the 1400 block of Northwest 46th Street even after concrete walls rose around her, coming within a few feet of her kitchen window. Cranes towered over her roof. Macefield turned up the television or her favorite opera music a little louder and stayed put.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/367335_obitmacefield18.html

Wait, we've got something similar down here. Almost anyway:

Although we don't have a genius like Edith standing her ground in it, we do have people who think when you move a landmark it's still a landmark. At least when it's on really valuable land and there's no choice. (Warning: Lukewarm optimism ahead!)

After 127 years at its original location, the vacant Morris Marks house needs to move if it's going to survive much longer."It's a case of a building outliving its context," says Clem Ogilby, a preservationist looking for a new site. Though demolition threat is not immediate, high-density zoning and bigger buildings around it signal that the house has no future on its original plot.

http://historicpreservationclub.blogspot.com/2007/03/morris-marks-in-oregonian.html

I'm no architecture nerd but I'd say what Ogilby calls an outlived context is in fact a breathtakingly dramatic context, and one that could in the future speak with eloquence to a Portland smart enough to quit trying to be a scale model of some imaginary mid-town Manhattan. Really, you can't buy that kind of context, and in my ideal world we'd leave it be - a sadistic reminder, like the Old Church has become, that an antique Portland in fact existed before it was replaced again and again by a series of mixed-use condo towers. And I think, ideally at least, anyplace like the Morris Marks house should have some attention paid to it by a preservationist who doesn't have a company that moves old buildings giving him his ideas. But as I say, I don't know a thing about architecture - I just know what I hate.

Update: I was going to "embed" the video of the relevant Bugs Bunny anti-gentrification cartoon, "Homeless Hare" (remember, the one where he fights eviction and they end up building a skyscraper around his rabbit hole) But video - too much hassle. Instead, welcome to the blogroll at right a very interesting and pretty exhaustive essay from the Center for Pan-African Development, in which they put forth the proposition that as a function of the housing bubble crisis, "Gentrification is Dead." Well, whatever it takes, I say.

Urban Renewal in the PDC's Own Words (Illustrated)

The text below is taken from "A History of Urban Renewal In Portland Oregon" by Craig Wollner, John Provo, and Julie Schablisky. Emphases and links are mine as are all headings/remarks in italics. Link to the original document, which is required reading, is at the end of this post.

(Pictured: Union Ave. back when it had a streetcar)

First, the story of the problem:

Slowly, the inner core of the city became less dynamic and then stagnated with shopping trips dropping off dramatically by the end of the decade of the fifties. It would be an exaggeration to describe the center of the city as being abandoned as happened in many other urban centers over the same period, but it is accurate to say that it became far less attractive to many, indeed, somewhat unattractive with its run-down stores and restaurants, crime, and elderly and poor residents.

Portland (was) one of the few large cities to escape the intense racial turmoil that characterized the urban renewal efforts of many other places. It would also have the effect of gradually turning the city’s program from one with a mildly socio-political mission, as it was in its origins (with a few exceptions, the largest being, again, Emanuel), as was the case in most other large cities, to one based on the preservation of neighborhood integrity and latterly the economic development needs of the entire city. [Got that? First it was for society, then neighborhoods...in the end it's about the needs of city businessmen]

1958: What they decided to do about it:

“the men of Portland business and civic organizations will see their reward in the future elimination and prevention of blight and the promotion of industrial development.” Using urban renewal as their tool, the PDC’s mission was to elevate and stabilize property values and in turn increase property tax returns. ["we're wealthy and we want more, and we want the city to insure that we get it"]

Early 1960s, South of downtown:

The first project that PDC undertook was in a 109.3-acre area on the southern fringe of the downtown that became known as the South Auditorium Renewal Project.

At least 349 parcels were secured, 1,573 residents, including 336 families and 289 businesses were relocated, and 445 buildings were demolished.

Many of the South Auditorium residents banded together, calling themselves the Property Owners Committee, and testified against the proposed plans...However, ultimately, city leaders determined the area was seriously blighted, and urban renewal was the only known cure.

Despite the removal of a unique urban ethnic enclave and historic cast iron buildings, the South Auditorium project was hailed as a success. [by the PDC; by anyone else's reckoning today it was clearly a desperate, pointless catastrophe]

1960s, PSU area:

The PDC planned to relocate 117 families, 835 single people, and 52 businesses.

The only concern voiced by the residents was over the demolition of apartment buildings. Some were concerned that the elderly and students would be competing for housing in the area.

The Portland State Urban Renewal Project turned out to be an early object lesson for Portland in the ambiguous impact urban renewal projects could have on the nature and character of the city. [Ambiguous, as in, there's really no definite lesson to be learned]

 Early 1970s, Albina area:

The Albina Neighborhood Improvement Project was Portland’s first attempt at rehabilitating rather than clearing a neighborhood. Active Albina residents met with PDC representatives on a regular basis to determine the neighborhoods blighted areas and how to solve those problems. Oliver Norville, a lawyer who worked extensively on bonding for Portland’s urban renewal projects over a period of about forty years, remembered, “they were the first real active neighborhood group and committee.”

Funded by grants and loans, over 90 percent of the homes were “rehabilitated” by 1972. Although 117 structurally unsound homes were demolished, 56 affordable units, leased by the HAP, were built in the neighborhood. Forty-two buildings, that included 83 single and multi-family housing units constructed in the urban renewal area, were made possible by HUD and FHA programs.

Despite the efforts of the Model Cities program of the seventies and diligent neighborhood participation, Albina was still considered a problem area in the mid-1970s. [because white money had yet to be made]

Early-Mid 1970s, Lair Hill area:

Lair Hill was, during the 1950s, a neighborhood composed of 100 historic homes from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and approximately 36 commercial businesses. The city of Portland believed the Lair Hill neighborhood should be cleared and re-built...The plan would have included the leveling of all of the buildings including the displacement of 20 businesses, 45 families, and 95 individuals.

(but the "diligent neighborhood participation" on Lair Hill says, "nothing doing") 

However residents and other community activists, including a young lawyer named Neil Goldschmidt, spoke out against the project and it did not go forward. In fact, in 1977, the City Council designated the Lair Hill neighborhood one of the first historic conservation districts in Portland. They found that the architecture and the community were historically significant to the people of Oregon. [half of whom never heard of the place]

Meanwhile, in a less-empowered part of town:

The Emanuel Hospital urban renewal project, begun in 1970, included 55 acres bounded by the junction of the Fremont Bridge and Interstate 5, North Russell Street and Williams and Vancouver avenues...deep concern arose about the degree of citizen involvement. As a result Albina citizens, along with a member of the American Friends Service Committee, created the Emanuel Displaced Persons Association (EDPA) in 1970. Multiple meetings with PDC followed in subsequent years to discuss the dissatisfaction of many of the displaced citizens. [and, unlike Lair Hill, do absolutely nothing about it]

PDC claimed, “On the average, the families in the Emanuel Project are moving into homes twice the value of their previous home.” [probably a lie]

In April 1973, after 200 people and 20 businesses were relocated, Emanuel Hospital stopped work on the project...following federal budget cuts. Former residents expressed anger and frustration over their community being forever altered for a plan that never reached fruition. [incorrect: the Plan to slowly trade them for new residents has indeed reached fruition.]

The "Model Cities" era, North and East Side:

Model Cities targeted a four-and-one-half square mile area of Portland’s eastside neighborhoods whose approximately 40,000 residents were almost 50 percent African-American. The program got off to a rocky start with protests over City Council’s selection of a white executive director to head the program. Community sensitivities were further aroused by the ongoing controversy over the nearby Emanuel Hospital project. For many in the neighborhood this tainted any program associated with urban renewal or the PDC, which would serve as fiscal agent for Model Cities and staff for the program’s redevelopment and housing activities.

Which means the money goes where?

 Irvington’s Community Association was organized in 1965, well in advance of Model Cities. Described in PDC literature as “…one of Portland’s finest and most stable older residential areas…” ...With no need for or interest in massive restructuring of the neighborhood, they looked for support for improving and maintaining their existing neighborhood structure. This involved significant use of housing rehabilitation loans, as well as the addition of supportive infrastructure like bus shelters and drinking fountains...They also sought increased street lighting throughout the neighborhood, as well as a traffic diverter at N.E. Tillamook and 16th Avenue. Further projects involved upgrading their park by building a baseball diamond, running paths, the installation of lighting, playground equipment, and additional ball facilities.

City Council Neil Goldschmidt ran for Mayor in 1972 as a candidate of the neighborhoods. Although Goldschmidt ran as a “neighborhood guy,” talk of abolishing PDC over its handling of urban renewal, as was recommended in a City Club Report co-authored by one of Goldschmidt’s chief aides, came to an end once he was in office.

The 80s and 90s, Close-In Neighborhoods:

The most logical and attractive options typically involved making the city once again a magnet for the affluent middle class and for desirable businesses, largely by making it possible for the target residents to live in safe, attractive, and affordable environments and to work nearby in accessible districts with the amenities necessary for full productivity and profit. This is an entrepreneurial model in which cities, as one planning scholar Edward Blakely, has described it, “compete for talented and skilled workers as the resource to attract or nurture the new economy.”

Following this approach in Portland, as elsewhere, has largely meant transforming the traditional urban renewal agenda into one of redevelopment by leveraging private investment, along with funds available from federal or other sources applicable to the ultimate goals of the city to sustain itself in the “new economy.”

Another dimension of the entrepreneurial ethic that PDC embraced in the 90s is the absence of a comprehensive social agenda for its urban renewal programming. One reason for this is the lack of a prominent figure with a missionary zeal for urban renewal as a primary tool for eradication of blight as the vector of poverty, social dislocation, or neighborhood disintegration. In the conservative political environment of the 90s, there was little political advantage to be gained from such approaches. [since our liberal progressive green-ness exists in an overall conservative environment, we're just going through the green motions]

In the Central Eastside:

Perhaps the first plan that symbolized this shift in focus was the Central Eastside project adopted in 1986. The plan encompasses a 681-acre warehousing, distribution, and manufacturing area near the Willamette River, employing some 21,000 persons drawn from four adjacent neighborhoods. The narrative describing the plan indicated the transition. It called for “maintaining a good business environment for existing businesses.” [by driving them out in favor of restaurants, condos and fly-by-night software startups]

In the Pearl, which word isn't mentioned in this report, and the overall River District Urban Renewal Area:

Adopted in 1998, the plan features the construction of the Central City Streetcar on N.W. 10th and 11th avenues, and N.W. Lovejoy and Northrup streets circulating through the district’s core (completed in the summer of 2001). It will eventually have three new parks and 5,000 new housing units in a mix reflecting the income demographics of the city generally [which is why it looks so much like Cully]

And at last, the enormous Interstate URA:

 Many residents were opposed to the light rail line and protested its construction at the various community meetings. In addition, some in the community were suspicious of the project because of the history of urban renewal in the area and feared gentrification and displacement would result.

Text excerpted above is from Portland Development Commission's report:
http://www.pdc.us/pdf/about/urban_renewal_history.pdf

Race Is Not A Card Because This Is Not A Game

An article about the PDC's work on MLK in the Oregonian the other day bugged me, though not just because it details yet another failure of foresight. There's something else in here that needs to be discussed. But first, the meat of the matter:

Portland's drive to remedy years of neglect along Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard hit another bump Wednesday.
The Portland Development Commission, the city's urban renewal agency, had to further delay a developer's loan repayment to halt a possible foreclosure on a key MLK project.
The Heritage Building's developers couldn't find enough tenants to satisfy their first lender, so the PDC acted to clear the way for a new bank loan. Nearby, another PDC-subsidized building, King's Crossing, also has been slow to attract tenants.
The fact that retail and office tenants haven't jumped into the new buildings raises questions about whether the PDC and developers have missed the market. 
http://www.oregonlive.com/business...320150.xml&coll=7&thispage=1

Pictured above is the Heritage Building, before. Anyway, this isn't exactly surprising - the idea that we can simply spruce up a low rent area by sticking in a bunch of higher-rent (oops, I mean "market rate") buildings always seems a bit light on the adult-style forecasting and heavy on the childish "build it and they will come" sort of faith-based economics that has been driving our nation since we decided movie stars and presidents were ultimately the same thing (meaning 1980, for anyone taking notes). "Missed the market" indeed. What BS - as if MLK's failure to thirst for higher-priced storefronts and offices all along can be thought of as merely a sudden eruption of anomalous frugality. Darn it, we thought prices didn't matter! Who knew?

Now, the idea that bigtime, PDC-anointed developers - unlike the rest of us schmucks - mustn't ever be foreclosed on, even if they default on their mortgage payments, is pretty unfair. The possibility of paying the price for an unwise speculation is, after all, what makes it speculation in the first place -- but clearly only for some. The ability to game the political system to make the public responsible for the risks of private investment is after all the province of "the elite." In fact a pretty good definition of "elite" -- which we're short on lately -- would be exactly this: people who are powerful enough to make the public bear responsibility for the risks they take in pursuit of profit, or more power, or both.

The Oregonian's article ends with Michelle Reeves of Windemere explaining, as though to a child, that it's common "for pioneering developers with speculative buildings to struggle until the private market sees the potential and is willing to pay higher rents," which evidently means that the public, via the agency of the PDC, is obliged to make those struggles go away by re-sweetening the sweetheartery as many times as needed. Pictured right is the Heritage Building, after. It's important to look good, even if people can't afford to move in.

This is business as usual, and larger predations of this variety are frequently roared about on certain local blogs and comment boards; though usually in the tone of "look what they're doing with our taxes which are too high." Too seldom is our focus on the point that in the context of its far-too-numerous public/private "leveraging" deals, the PDC again and again makes certain that  its private partners are assured, I guess out of gratitude for multiplying public monies, of a risk-free "speculation."

No, I reserve my outrage today -- maybe it's this heat -- for an Oregonian paragraph which rankles above and beyond the facts of the above matter, in which the history of the area is summed up, no doubt copied, in the manner of about a thousand news articles about Pearl district developments, from some commercial third source. It is the sort of shorthand that says, here's all you need to think about this:

Between Broadway and Rosa Parks Way, MLK has struggled for decades with crime, plywood-covered windows and grassy lots. The problems have been most acute between Fremont and Alberta streets, where the boulevard has never recovered from damage done during 1960s-era race riots.

"Race riots?" That's interesting, Oregonian. I thought the usual villain in the North Portland saga was the 80s crack epidemic. Wondering where I might find some detail on these "race riots," I looked through the entirety of the Internet (or at least as much of it as seemed necessary), to find some history of race rioting in North Portland. If I'm going to be told that our choice is between gentrification and crack houses, well, I've got some things to say about that. Obviously there were, and still are here or there, crack houses up there. But race riots? That's kind of a new one. I'd never known that Portland -- like Watts, Detroit and elsewhere -- actually erupted into major flames during the mania of the 1960s. I immediately logged on to the Oregon Historical Society's website and began searching. Unsurprisingly, my research yielded next to nothing, unless what this refers to is the Albina Riot of 1967:

What began as a political rally to stir the African American community to “revolution” in Irving Park on Sunday, August 30, 1967 turned into two-nights of disturbances.  Two to three hundred people threw bottles and rocks at automobiles and through store windows, while a few hurled firebombs through store windows causing $20,000 in damage at one grocery store and damaging dozens of others.

So, a grocery store was damaged in 1967 for 20 grand. That was a lot of money in those days. That grocery store might have gone out of business because of it. If not, a chronic shortage of decent jobs for their customers might have done it ten years later, too. The governor at the time, Tom McCall, a thinking politician the likes of which we'll probably never see again, put it into a context that's hard to argue with, unless you can't believe that a Republican could talk this way, which I admit is hard to imagine today:

McCall placed some of the blame for the incident on Portland’s lack of inclination to finance educational programs that would get to the root of the sociological dilemma that caused poverty.  The incident left some businesses boarded up, but communication between Albina residents and the City of Portland was somewhat improved afterward.

Hm. I thought the narrative we're all supposed to think about (for three seconds) before deciding that gentrification is "awesome," was that forty years of race riots and crack houses (gentrifier shorthand for black stupidity and laziness) ruined North Portland so much that only Starbucks and 500K bungalow prices can heal it. Wow, "race riots?" Doesn't that sound awful - too horrible to allow us to contemplate the degree to which deliberate and systematic disinvestment to let values degrade in historically black neighborhoods might just be whitey's plan here the same way every other black person in Baltimore, LA, DC, Chicago, etc. will tell you it is there?

Except the race riot thing is kind of mythological, though reported as fact in our daily paper. While there was unrest, protest and anger (pictured, a 1973 protest in Albina) the truth, by contrast, is that the black community in Portland was neither large enough nor violent enough to destroy their neighborhoods more capably than the institutionalized municipal neglect of a highly segregated town with a racist streak as wide as I-5 (literally) could do given forty years or so. 

So hey, Oregon Historical Society, anything to add on the subject of race riots that involve a grocery store, a couple guys throwing bottles, and $20,000? Since this is the kind of thing we blame for a neighborhood being turned into a desert that only the springs of urban renewal-goaded developers can ever make arable?

On the first day of Portland’s Albina riot, Detroit, Michigan also experienced devastating race riots that claimed 41 lives and caused damage estimated at more than $500 million.
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historical_records/....0A7

My feeling is that we'll continue, nauseatingly, to be compelled to discuss North Portland as though it is something it's not, and wasn't. "Those people didn't keep it up anyway" seems to me is what the prevalent view boils down to; though always left unsaid, this is what's being talked around, translated into PC terminology, and coded within the pioneerist language of urban renewal and community development. This is how people are thinking, and that's the filthy truth whether you like it or not.

How Much More Richard Florida Can Portland Take? [w/extra credit]

 "Creative Class" guru Richard Florida was in town recently, didja know?

Greenlight Greater Portland, a privately funded economic development group, issued a "prosperity index" Wednesday that compared the metro area with nine other Western cities and touted its robust economic prospects over the next five years.

The group released the study at a luncheon at the Portland Art Museum featuring Richard Florida, the urban studies theorist who became a darling of liberal economic and urban development circles with the 2002 release of his book "The Rise of the Creative Class."

That and two subsequent books explored the connections among economic development and a variety of demographic factors, including diversity, tolerance and high concentrations of artists, gays and techies. Florida's theories and methodology are dismissed by many critics as well-packaged bunkum.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.....xml&coll=7

Me among them. The guy's horseshit (about how to make a city more attractive to yuppies by renaming them "Creatives," in a nutshell) has been captivating Portland's bigshots for years. Here's how this fraud described his nation-shaping powers in '04:

Talented, educated immigrants and smart, ambitious young Americans congregated, during the 1980s and 1990s, in and around a dozen U.S. city-regions. These areas became hothouses of innovation, the modern-day equivalents of Renaissance city-states, where scientists, artists, designers, engineers, financiers, marketers, and sundry entrepreneurs fed off each other's knowledge, energy, and capital to make new products, new services, and whole new industries
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com...florida.html

Florida's stupid, phony theorizing polluted Portland's planning complex largely via Joe Cortright's consulting company, Impresa, who have been the media's go-to quote source when they want something pithy to justify the enormous influx of moneymaking young creative types (formerly known as "Yuppies") that will save our city and our condo developers. In conjunction with Smart City Consulting, Cortright produced a report called, rather pathetically, "The Young And The Restless: How Portland Competes For Talent," which I believe is more or less a deliberate blueprint for making the city less and less affordable to older, less ambitious, low-wage or working class people by molding it into a place that Yuppies want to move to, e.g., making sure that lots of "lofts," "live/work" condos and other hasty infill development provide fakey "urban" places where the fucks can take out a big mortgage to live in close proximity to caramel lattes; run up their credit cards indulging their stupid lifestyles like good little consumers; work 60+ hour weeks to keep on top of it all; and eventually, of course, crowd out as many of the original uncool neighbors as possible.

In recent years, cities have become increasingly aware of the economic importance of talented workers, the people called the “creative class” by professor and author Richard Florida. These talented workers—writers, designers, engineers, architects, researchers, and others—play a key role in creating the new ideas that drive business success and regional economic progress. The greatest opportunity to attract and retain these workers is when they are young and mobile, and indeed, our research shows a strong correlation between places with a significant fraction of the young and the restless and various indices of the creative workforce.
http://www.colettaandcompany.com/public/pdf/Portland.pdf

This report was undertaken, unsurprisingly, at the behest of the PDC and a few other local government and business groups. Obviously they're not alone. I wonder who this Richard Florida-fellating Greenlight Greater Portland outfit has calling its shots?

Greenlight Greater Portland is a consortium of private-sector leaders dedicated to growing a sustainable and vibrant economic future for the seven-county Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area. The group has come together to tell the world that the region is open for business.

Greenlight Greater Portland Board of Directors:

    * Mark Ganz, The Regence Group    * Malia Wasson, US Bank    * Eric Parsons, The Standard    * Pat Reiten, Pacific Power    * Peggy Fowler, Portland General Electric    * Steve Stadum, Oregon Health & Science University    * Jim Mark, Melvin Mark Companies    * Wally Van Valkenburg, Stoel Rives LLP    * Alan Johnson, Wells Fargo    * Donald Krahmer, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt    * Wes Lawrence, Key Bank    * Bob Jesenik, Aequitas Capital Management    * Randy Miller, The Moore Company    * Scott Campbell, The Columbian    * Dennis Rawlinson, Miller Nash LLP    * Bill Stoller, CEO Express Personnel Services    * Roger Hinshaw, President Bank of America    * Lindsay Desrochers, Portland State University
http://www.greenlightgreaterportland.com/

Check. Who among this group wouldn't get a hardon at the prospect of a hundred thousand Yuppies or so showing up over the next few years to buy up all the houses and condos and to force the poor and the working class out to Fairview, Hood River, Woodburn or Battleground? I can't see a one.
Cortright's report, based simply on shoehorning '90-'00 Census data into Richard Florida's little box, ends with some chillingly familiar-sounding recommendations. If you've been paying attention over the last ten years or so, it's easy to see that these recommendations ("Promote Your City" and "Promote A Young Adult Lifestyle" among them) are being followed intently. Here are some more excerpts from the finale of the "Young And The Restless:"

Develop ways in which the values of 25 to 34 year-olds are seen as obviously present. A city must not only welcome newcomers and new ideas. It must also find ways to make it apparent that it welcomes newcomers and new ideas. The same is true of all values expressed by 25 to 34 year-olds. Values get expressed in a variety of ways: what stories does the local media feature? What gets discussed at the chamber and other non-profits? Who participates in these organizations? What do public officials say and do?

Make it clear that young people can be and are leaders in your city. Showcase their achievements in the media. If things are undone and development is lagging, young adults are likely to think no one is working on it. Worse, many believe that the way things are today is intentional. Someone must want it that way for it to be so. It is important to communicate plans for improving a city to young adults so that they can imagine progress.

If cities are to attract 25 to 34 year-olds, they must show themselves to be places where young people can find friends, enjoy themselves and succeed.

According to Greenlight Greater Portland's latest report, which naturally, as does everything these days, accept as gospel Richard Florida's "attract the gays and artists and the young money will follow" idea, it's all going as planned:

Greater Portland is on the cutting edge, with a growing community of companies that are leaders in green thinking.

the gay and lesbian population is nearly 60% greater than the national average. The artist population of 27,000 is 34% greater.

By 2013, greater Portland’s population is projected to reach 2.4 million.

Now, the region’s trajectory of 8% population growth over the next five years makes it clear that greater Portland’s secret is out, surely helped by its regular showing on “best of” lists of all types — best place to live, to launch a business, to bicycle, to have a baby, to retire.

What people find here is vitality and livability: great neighborhoods, schools and efficient means of getting around; a creative work environment; a backyard of mountains, rivers and forests.

This isn’t lost on business leaders, well aware that where there’s urban vitality there’s talent. The region’s skilled workforce is drawing companies to Portland-Vancouver, where they’re adding new expertise and innovation to a diverse economic base. Greater Portland is leading the way in green industry — solar and wind energy, environmental services, green building. Creative thinking has given rise to a vibrant design cluster. Software is hot, too.
http://www.greenlightgreaterportland.com/pdfs/ProsperityIndex.pdf

Wait, what was that about artists again? Well, I guess the painters and sculptors (until they wise up and become software developers), along with livability and affordability, are in fact disposable means to a prosperous end for the fatcats among us.

Seriously though, I think it's long past time to get off this asinine, narrow-minded focus on "who to attract" to our city, how to convince them it's cheaper than San Francisco, and all that other Creative Class garbage, and pay some attention to preserving what exists here and keeping it from getting crowded and expensive. Oops! Too late!!

Extra Credit: Check out the editor of Dwell (ugh), Urbanist par excellence Karrie Jacobs, calmly laying it down about Professor Florida. (Thank god a famous designey urbanism type like her could say it. Seems most of the slams on Florida come from mouthbreathing righties who think being against gentrification is the same as hating "socialism", i.e. a government that collects taxes and does things with them besides kill foreigners). Anyway, so Jacobs runs into a friend at some Urbanism conference...

We had a series of tortured conversations about how design is being deployed in increasingly predictable ways. Eventually Thackara got around to pinning the problem on Florida. “It’s all kind of tied up to the notion of a creative class,” he remarked. “For good or ill, design sits bang in the middle of that category. It’s quite remarkable how many city planners and developers I’ve met over the last couple of years who walk around either carrying or quoting this book as if it were a bible of how to make their city hip and modern and successful.”
***
These days every time I walk down, say, Rivington Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, or Fifth Avenue, in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, I notice how the distinctions between the hip places are beginning to blur. One cool business district looks pretty much like the next, just the way one suburban mall looks pretty much like the next. And once you start thinking about creativity in terms of class, hipness as a monoculture seems like the inevitable outcome.

As for the zeitgeist, I don’t think there’s a developer alive who doesn’t think that the way to give a slow-moving property some cachet is to install a gallery or a few artists’ studios. http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1151

Well, I've been vaguely against "design" for a while now, and now I'm still against it, and even more vaguely.

Raising The Rent For Your Own Good [updated]

Hey, remember the law they passed out in Gresham, changing rental unit safety/habitability regulation from a complaint system to one of mandatory inspections? Personally, I think a bit of investigation -- or at least sitting behind a desk looking at statistics -- should have gone on related to whether or not this sort of thing might just result in owners of cheap apartments simply passing the costs of upgrading (mold cleanup, wiring, or what have you) on to the tenants in the form of rent increases. Regarding that Gresham law, it really looked like that issue was an afterthought at best to the people who brought it about. But then, there is always a certain level of acceptable collateral damage: we don't mind pricing out the poor - they're probably criminals and speed freaks, right? Anyway, it appears that a similar movement is in the cards for Portland itself:

As tentatively proposed by the 19-member Quality Rental Housing work group, the citywide rental inspection program would be designed to improve the quality of rental housing in Portland with an emphasis on health issues, from requiring higher standards of pest control to helping tenants obtain heat assistance to reducing mold growth.

“Our committee recognizes that a lot of the problems with apartments are due to lifestyle issues,” said Phil Owen, president of the Rental Housing Association of Greater Portland and a member of the work group. “So if we can educate the tenants on the problems and educate the landlords on what the best remediation techniques are, then we’ve nipped it in the bud.”

Sorry to bold half the guy's statement but it's pure bullshit. Let's go over that math, shall we: Tenant=problems/Landlord=remediation. Super. Why is it that nobody with any influence in the housing system ever seems to understand that there can be - or at least should be - a species of tenant that stays in their place long-term, and who therefore is likely to be much more vested in keeping it habitable? And why is it none of the bigshots want to understand that if their precious housing is constantly "improving," it only means that we are moving in the opposite direction, making renters more transient and less interested in keeping a place up? Can anyone with any juice ever see that rising costs are the problem from which all these other problems arise, and that renters are never stakeholders in their own homes only because of rents rising many times faster than their salaries? I'm beginning to think not.

For me, the primary red flag is the use of the phrase "lifestyle issues."  I think I'd like to have a look at that sentence again, actually:

"Problems with apartments are due to lifestyle."

Yep, still bullshit. Honestly, I can't imagine a more ignorant concept of "problems" with apartments. Yet this fits the pattern of our city's obsession with renewal of all sorts, which maintains a near-total lack of awareness that the price of housing actually matters a great deal, and that there are actually people out here to whom no extra expense, even a few dollars a month, is possible to bear when it comes to trying to get by. The poorer among us live exceedingly calibrated financial lives.
Well, let's see what species of ownership sewer this fucking rat has crawled out of:

The Rental Housing Association of Greater Portland OR (RHAGP), founded in 1927 in Portland, Oregon, is a nonprofit organization of residential rental owners and managers in the Portland metropolitan area. These members have joined together for the purpose of improving the success of the rental housing industry

OK, I get it. Put someone who's interested in improving things for the landlords in charge of the program  that's looking to improve things for the tenants. The poor tenants, with their black mold and exposed wiring...and who because of their "lifestyle" (i.e., being renters) are easily blamed for any problem, and even more easily charged for fixing it if it has to be fixed!

Let's keep in mind how the landlord brain functions, after all. Number one, they believe in magic. Rental property, to the landlord, is a free ride - it's like a car that you don't have to put any gas in, but it still takes you where you want to go. Rentals, to the Landlord, are magical machines: you put nothing in one end, and out the other comes money. And number two, if the machine ever stops being magical, (like f'rinstance needs a roof, or the once-a-decade gutter cleaning), the little landlord brain starts whirling and boiling around until it can find a way to get the magic back. Presto! A higher price gets the magic of zero-input back into the system. The tenant can't pay it? Abracadabra! Poof! Here's a new tenant who will!

Back to the DJC article, though: one landlord in Gresham seems, perhaps accidentally, to be making a bit of sense, though he's making it plain that the way to go is to assume the tenants can rightfully shoulder the blame for "problems with apartments" [bracketed comments mine]

Jim Herman, a Gresham landlord who spoke at the roundtable, said the Gresham program does more to punish respectable landlords than help downtrodden tenants. [I wonder how it found them]

He said he didn’t want the Portland program to do the same. [like he cares]

“I actually believe there’s a market for substandard housing,” Herman said, adding that mildew and pest problems are caused by tenants 90 percent of the time. [citation?]

Herman said the Gresham program places a higher financial burden on landlords across the board, including those with no history of housing violations, meaning costs will inevitably trickle down and cause higher rents. [BINGO]

It would be best, he said, if the city could figure out a more equitable way of focusing on landlords with underperforming or violation-prone properties. [throw out the low-priced along with the dangerous. I see]

On Thursday, Portland’s work group will announce its final recommendations. Toward the end of the month the group will begin meeting with landlords to review the recommendations.  [what, no more input from the CAT?]

The group’s members plan to present their final recommendations to the City Council in either September or October.

What would actually be best, Jim, would be if this whole program started out with the fundamental premise that in no way are these safety improvements - or whatever they are - ultimately going to come at the expense of tenants who don't want them or can't afford to pay for them. (Me, I've always been the type to take my chances. If my drywall needed patching or wires were exposed, I'd rather take care of it than give the LL another reason to charge me more rent. Come to think of it, I don't even want my landlord to think about me, ever, for any reason. But that's just how I do.)

Although the Quality Rental Housing Workgroup seems to have conducted interviews with a variety of subjects, including a whole two "tenants," as well as a couple people from tenants' rights juggerNOT the Community Alliance of Tenants, a look at this sampling would have even the mildest cynic presume that the ideas with the traction will come, not from these "tenants," but almost certainly from the other organizations brought into the fact-finding process, e.g., RHAGP; American Property Management; the Oregon Rental Housing Association; the North/Northeast Business Association....none of which I could imagine give a fuck about whether or not people get a decent price on an apartment, and all of which are strictly on the landlord and business side of this or any other issue. I say if the City of Portland wants to punish slumlords, they should punish slumlords, but for once use some fucking common sense  - don't just give these parasites some extra expense we all know damn well is going to immediately get put on tenants who obviously don't have any extra money.

Main article discussed is found at:
http://www.djcoregon.com/articleDetail.htm/2008/06/18

Update: in response to some of the comments, there is in fact a landlord reviewing website that could be made use of called NeuLandlord. Here is the Portland area section:

http://www.neulandlord.com/index.php?option=com.....153&dir=1&Itemid=228

Blog Still FU But This I Can't Resist: Living The Dream On 23rd

Though the situation alluded to in the post directly below is unchanged as yet - typing is nearly impossible; quoting other texts even more so - an article plea for sympathy in today's paper is just too perfect to leave unlinked on Portland Gentrification.

The point could be better made, that in a late-stage gentrified neighborhood the only survivors of an economic downturn such as we are currently experiencing will certainly be the well-organized national chains, if the selected poster-children for this concept a) weren't from New York; b) didn't have kids named "Piper" and "Skyler;" c) didn't own a shop selling overpriced, useless trinkets; and d) didn't live in a $500,000 Irvington house...I mean, it kind of takes the edge off what would otherwise be a good example of gentrification's inherent un-sustainability:

Downturn tough for Portland mom-and-pops
Slumping sales are forcing a Northwest 23rd Avenue merchant to close her doors
Thursday, June 12, 2008
ERIN HOOVER BARNETT
The Oregonian Staff

Stacey Korn arrives just before 10 a.m. to unlock her shop on Northwest 23rd Avenue. She hoists orange molded plastic benches from the back and places them outside under the windows. Then she sets up her sidewalk sign:
"Shop 'Hello' -- nifty gifts for the whole family," it says. "Patronizing us is like flirting with a wealthy widow. You can't overdo it."
Korn needs her sense of humor now more than ever. As the economy slumps, sales at her Hello Portland store at 525 N.W. 23rd Ave. are half what they were soon after opening in late 2005. Her family of four went from living almost entirely off the shop's income to barely getting by and deciding to close in September.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/1213239329128610.xml&coll=7

2 Flavors of "Out Of Touch"

As the architecture analyzin' comments over at Portland Architecture, so the rabid not-on-my-dime creeps at the Portland Tribune -- looks like wherever you're coming from, you really basically don't give a shit about people who might not be like you!

As a Portland architect who has largely given up my car for a bike and a bus, I have to say that I am unimpressed with a need and design for the new bridge...Another side effect of tolling this bridge would be to encourage people to live and work on the same side of the river. A toll will encourage people to either move closer to their jobs, or seek work closer to home. http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2008/06/wrestling-with-columbia-crossing.html

I am sacraficing a lot in order to work hard and create opportunities for myself. Aren't the homeless services my tax dollars will go to designed so that I don't have to step around bumbs all over town? There are shelters, kitchens, and couciling to get these people off the streets.
http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=121255208244423200#comment_section_container

It's all about choices. People in Vancouver could and would live closer to work if it were more uncomfortable to cross the river to get there. I think that the more we can influence people to make the right choices, the better. Also, how long does it currently take to drive from a home in Vancouver to a job in Portland, 30 minutes? I can't possibly believe that there isn't decent affordable housing within 30 minutes drive of Portland on this side of the river. http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2008/06/wrestling-with-columbia-crossing.html

the homeless do absolutly nothing for this city. they beg on the streets, pay no taxes, soak up social services, don't spend any money (cause they dont have any), and do nothing to give back or repay the city for their generosity. portland dosent want you people here any more so either get a job or move on. http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=121255208244423200#comment_section_container

It's better for the region's economy and the planet's environment for commuters to reduce car traffic (as is already starting to happen with high gas prices) and use buses and light rail and maybe actually bike or walk a block or three to the bus stop. If they're too lazy or cheap to do so, fine, but don't make those of us who've paid higher costs to live close to where we work pay for their laziness, cheapness and shortsightedness. http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2008/06/wrestling-with-columbia-crossing.html

what i want to know is why all the "liberals" on here are so convinced that we owe these people any alternatives at all. they are the ones that got themselves or chose this lifestyle on their own and they can use their own wits and gile to get themselves out of their situation. i do believe in helping people that actually need it but remember god helps those that help themselves. but as far as the habitual homeless person that drains resources and contributes nothing they deserve nothing more than the boot out of town. i for one am tired of being harassed and hassled by these idiots and am tired of paying the bill for their worthlessness. http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=121255208244423200#comment_section_container

Works cited:
http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2008/06/wrestling-with-columbia-crossing.html
http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=121255208244423200#comment_section_container

NW Portland Phonies: The Poor People Make Us Laugh

This is too rich: Witless Nob Hill "upscale pub" North 45 is sponsoring a zany, hilarious tour of "dive bars." See real live alcoholics! Gasp in amazement at the poor folks, throwing their money away on video crack! Thrill to the long forgotten scent of cigarettes!!
Now, who're the ones with this incredibly childish idea?

Another spirited, warm and inviting door has opened amongst the profusion of artsy boutiques, shops and cafes in one of Portland’s favorite neighborhoods...North 45 is the hot spot to meet your neighbor or people watch with your friends while sipping one of the seasoned bartender’s specialties like the Chocolate Martini or White Cosmo. It is also the place for a candle lighted dinner for two over one of the eight differently prepared mussels and pommes frites dishes paired with a glass of wine from Argentina or possibly Australia.
http://www.north45pub.com/about/

Until we got to that "or possibly," I was starting to think I smelled an English degree...what's that it says in the margin? "awkward"? Hmm. So anyway, where's the party?

From Josh at North 45:    We’re opening up the invitation to the public for our Prom Crawl 2008. The concept: Dress up in prom gear and visit dive bars. The motto: “Hitting Every Dirty Hole in Town”. All participants are to meet at North 45 at 6pm in their finest high school prom attire. At 7pm we’ll load onto our yellow school bus (sponsored by Anheuser Busch) and be off like a prom dress for a wild night out. $40 gets you on the bus. All proceeds benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. http://pdxpipeline.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/may-30-dive-bar-prom-night-north-45/

Well at least it's a benefit. They'll clear two hundred bucks easily after paying for gas. Which will cost a bundle since these days the nearest actual "dive bar" is in Estacada...

NYT Still All Up In Portland's Shit

The New York Times' latest article on Portland seems, strangely, not to have started with a city-funded PR release. Finally, someone important recognizes the shallowness of our stupid upperclass progressivism. The article is a good enough read, but even more interesting are the artistic photos in their slideshow of gentrification, "NoPo" style.

Floyd Booker, 85, who has owned a janitorial service in northeast Portland for more than 50 years, stood up at an April meeting of the Restorative Listening Project and told of being unable to get an improvement grant even as he said white-owned businesses nearby did.








Larissa Rawlins, second from left, has lived in the Alberta Street area for over 3 years. Heidi Conway, right, moved there one year ago.

Photos: Brian Lee for The New York Times









Too right, NYT! Here's a good sample of the article's text:
Now, in the name of economic development, Portland has been improving streets, sidewalks and transportation and offered grants and loans in minority neighborhoods. While the improvements are welcome, many blacks said in interviews that they do not seem designed for them, but more to raise housing prices and lure in newcomers. Blacks who have lived in the Northeast most of their lives say they no longer recognize their old neighborhood, much less feel comfortable there.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/us/29portland.html

[Note to those reading: Certain extremely buggy changes to this blog service have made it currently impractical to compose posts of any length and complexity. I hope this changes. At least the pictures are bigger. Please stay tuned. Anyone with a "TypePad" blog and suggestions please write...]

Gosh, Why Do We Have So Many Homeless?

Now that the local elections are over and both the City Council candidates I liked got nowhere near, we can once again begin scouring the Portland papers and blogs for gentrification and housing related items on which to comment and rage. Today, for example, I'll skip the obvious story about the latest condo behemoth to get converted to luxury rentals, and alert the reader's attention to today's Oregonian Letters To The Editor section, in which we find the following observation from an ex-Tigardian now residing in Pittsburgh PA:

Portland actually looks a lot like Pittsburgh, what with its rivers and lots of greenery. But the homelessness problem is way more prevalent if not more overwhelming than Portlanders wish to acknowledge, and that is being said with the knowledge that there's homelessness in every city. I couldn't help but think to myself just last weekend in Pittsburgh, as I was walking home Saturday night and couldn't catch a cab for the life of me, that I didn't see any homeless man or woman on my more than half-hour trek. But yet in Portland, homelessness was so inescapable on a Tuesday afternoon that I would have felt uncomfortable walking alone.EVAN JAMES Pittsburgh
http://www.oregonlive.com/letters/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/121

Not so many homeless in Pittsburgh, huh? I wonder what else they have. Incredibly cheap houses, maybe?

$18000 North Braddock: Spacious 4 Bedrooms on Grandview Ave (NORTH BRADDOCK)Reply to: Dennis@NataleRealEstate.com Date: 2008-05-21, 2:02PM EDT Huge 4-bedroom brick home on Grandview Avenue in North Braddock. 7 rooms and over 1400 square feet of living space. Woodland Hills School District. http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/rfs/689599653.html

Or

$28000 3 bedroom house (Pittsburgh (East Hills)) (map) Reply to: joannehometown@yahoo.com Date: 2008-05-21, 4:44PM EDT 3 bedroom,2 story house has 2 bathrooms,living room,dining room,kitchen,full basement,newer windows, There is a detached garage in back and also on street parking,quiet neighborhood,city schools http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/rfs/689813059.html

Yes, but these are obvious fixer-uppers, in totally undesirable areas. If you're willing to live in a dump, surely Portland has a price to fit any pocketbook?

$164900 STOP RENTING! Buy this CUTE little bungalow (fix or live in as is) (SE Portland) Reply to: hous-690144661@craigslist.org Date: 2008-05-21, 6:06PM PDT SE Bungalow - Great 1st Time or Rental$164,900 Location: 7633 SE Henderson St Portland, OR 97206 Map and Directions Single Family Home 2 Bedrooms 1 Bathroom 1 Unit Interior: 786 sqft Lot: 5,000 sqft http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/rfs/690144661.html

Or how about this shithole?

$125000 FORECLOSED,PRICE SLASHED, CASH FOR TRASH (n peninsular ave, portland oregon) Reply to: noelle.howe@century21.com Date: 2008-05-21, 5:29PM PDT This two bedroom, 722 square foot house built in 1954 is fixer, had some work started, and has potential, this is a foreclosure, give us a call for more information, Noelle Howe at century 21 peninsula, 503-806-4954 or Judy Andrews at 503-730-617 http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/rfs/690093901.html

But no, Portland's problems are, according to the next dickhead talking out of his ass Letter To The Editor writer, all because we're too nice to the lazy people.

In our city charter, tell me where it says that we must provide shelter for people who will not work and do not want to conform? We have all kinds of shelters that will help a person get cleaned up and get a job if all the rules are followed. The [numbers of] homeless are growing because we are enabling them with free food, restrooms and so on. The homeless make enough money panhandling to buy cigarettes and wine. I can understand why people will not go downtown to do their shopping. GERALD FISHER Southeast Portland http://www.oregonlive.com/letters/oregonian

Gerald, you pathetic selfish fucking disgrace of a citizen, let me spell it out. We have a homelessness problem in Portland. The prices of housing here have been going up up up. Everyone who profits from that gets to have their say in government and policy and the general debate. Anyone who gets screwed by it is stuck on the sidelines and silenced, moves away, or hits the street. And the winners continue to lecture the losers, and the city continues to put the developers and landowners in the drivers seat. And the problem is perceived as being one of shopping inconvenience.

Put The Bugs In A Jar And Shake It (updated)

Remember "urban grit"?

Urban grit is what drew Reves to his eighth-floor corner unit in the Civic.
“The reason I bought here was because it was downtown but it wasn’t in the Pearl,” says the 33-year-old Reves, who works for Nautilus in Vancouver, Wash. “I like to be around a more diverse location, even if there are drug dealers or prostitutes.”
http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=118945870998628300

Yeah, yeah, take it easy, Lou Reed. I can remember when there was a little bit of it everywhere. Maybe even as recently as when Jim-Jim was beaten to death for being too gritty in the Pearl, f'rinstance. For my money, though, if you want grit, Flavel, Duke -- these are the streets to hang your hat.

Street-drug turf war heats up,
with Flavel Street murder
Officials say this stabbing wasn't drug related; but sources tell us violence may escalate, as drug dealers – not gang members – fight to protect their distribution areas …
Just before 10 p.m. on May 8, two men get into a scuffle on SE Flavel Street, a block east of SE 82nd Avenue of Roses.
Angry words are exchanged – and, in full view passengers riding in a passing TriMet bus, one man attacks the other with a knife. A teenage girl tries to intervene and gets slashed, while trying to stop the knife-wielding suspect from stabbing the wounded man to death.
http://www.eastpdxnews.com/index.php?mod=article_detail&id_art=860

Man, apartments over there are probably cheap! They're probably giving them away. But maybe I better check Craigslist before I head on over to the Rebuilding Center for some 2nd hand burglar bars. (Nobody seems to need those things in "No Po" any more!)

$679 / 2br - 2 Bedroom Apartment in Park-Like Community
- Truly Great Residents to have as Neighbors