I’ve lived in or near Eugene for more than 40 years. It’s been transformed by urban Californians and, increasingly, people from New York and New Jersey. Less than 50% of Oregon’s population has lived in Oregon more than ten years. In Bend, it’s less than 40%, and many of those moving here are attracted to the “new” Oregon which is politically well left of Berkeley, California. The government priorities reflect those demographic changes, so businesses have been discouraged from local investment; police have been defunded and disempowered, meth, heroin, and fentanyl have been decriminalized; homelessness is tolerated and supported with robust government “services”, and taxation in various forms is steadily increasing. Fortune 500 companies have fled Oregon like rats fleeing a burning ship, because Oregon bites the evil hands that feed it — so they move to other states that welcome the employment. Then there’s the crappy forest management policies, many of which were caused by the federal government in the early 90s. Oregon has more standing timber today than there was in the 1800s, but most of the public lands have been under extremely restrictive logging bans for a quarter century. When thinning is prohibited, and naturally occurring fires are aggressively suppressed, the fuel load in the forests builds quickly. After twenty years of that sort of mismanagement (following political whim, rather than the advice of foresters and biologists) a tremendous fuel-load accumulates, ensuring that any forest fire that starts will burn much faster and hotter than they used to burn, dramatically increasing damage and air-polluting smoke, sterilizing the soil in a way that inhibits recovery.
Aside from its violent crime problem, which was among the ten worst in the USA, Oregon was paradise until the early 1990s. The violence was sharply curtailed starting with the passage of voter initiated Ballot Measure 11 in 1994. Within ten years Oregon had improved to among the ten LOWEST violent crime rates in the USA. Unfortunately, Oregon’s politicians have been working to unwind every effective dimension of the public safety system, so shootings and other violent crime have been soaring. Portland is particularly awful, with over 100 shooting per month in a city which used to be wonderfully safe.
In summary, if you can tolerate the California-like costs, traffic, politics, and crime, Oregon is a decent place to live, as long as you don’t mind the forest fire risks, horrific pollen counts in the Willamette Valley, and two months per year of LA-like pollution from forest fires around Oregon and elsewhere.
Alejandro |
Eugene, OR |
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