Portland - not what it use to be
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3/7/2010
As someone who was born and raised in Portland, and lived there for over 50 years, the city has (in my opinion) gone downhill. I lived through the recessions of the 80's, 90's, early 2000. Finally the recession of 2009 got me and my wife and we moved out, we moved away, far, far away to where the nonsense of Portland and Oregon can no longer touch us.
Portland instituted an 'urban growth boundary' which, like most government ideas has plus sides and a ton of minus sides. The idea was to curb sprawl and encourage responsible city growth; sounds like a good idea. The problem is that it immediately made build able land scarce; and when something is scarce, the price goes up ... in the case of Portland WAY UP. I presently live in Houston (told you I moved way away) a 1500 sq ft home down here can run $100K, that same home in Portland runs anywhere from $200K to $300K depending on the location. The overall affect is that you better be making a six figure income (or close to it) to be able to afford a home. Oh, and yes, Oregon does not have a sales tax so they make it up in property tax. You know that $250K home that we talked about earlier? Be prepared to pay $4K or more for yearly property taxes.
The job market presently sucks in Oregon and especially in Portland. I still have friends hanging on by the skin of their teeth, meanwhile I'm in Houston, making $3.00 an hour more than what I was making in Portland, with steady hours, better benefits at less cost to me and no state income tax. Oh yeah, did anyone mention that since they have no sales tax they make up for it by having a state income tax - a relatively high state income tax.
The mass transit system that some writers have talked about. The businesses pay through the nose for that; I know I ran a small part time business for a while. Basically, if you are in business and making ANY money at all, it makes no difference how close or how far the nearest train station or bus stop is from your business, you will pay a tax for the transit system. The light rail trains are dirty, they are populated with wanna-be thugs; it's just miserable. Oh, and Portland HATES cars. They make it very difficult to get around the city, even into the city with a car. The roads are crowded (due to the DOT refusal to make freeways with more than 3 lanes), traffic is slow and the acclaimed mass transit (light rail crossings and the painfully slow streetcars) slows down traffic even more.
Climate - yes, much of the climate avoids the huge extremes. You will get up to a couple months (usually not totally contiguous) of freezing weather, with or without snow. In the summer, July and especially August will be 90's and 100's, but by September it's getting better. However, starting in October you will endure day after day of gray skies, you will put up with months of never seeing blue skies. And it seemingly rains forever during the fall and winter, wake up to a drizzle, go to bed with a drizzle and it's a cold drizzle.
Texas has some down sides, but it's not the nanny state that Oregon has become. Portland is tolerant, if and only if you agree with their liberal politics and it's off the scale liberal.
Oregon was my home, it use to be nice place. Now, I do love Texas and all it has to offer. In many ways the people here remind me of how Oregon use to be - however that is now the key phrase, use-to-be.
Michael | Houston, TX