Houston Transplant, 2022 Portland Review
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10/10/2022
I moved from Houston to Portland about a year ago. I remember reading the reviews on here and it making me second guess moving before I did, so I wanted to come back and follow up.
First thing to know, the city is gorgeous. Almost everywhere you look there is dense, well maintained greenery. Even in the middle of the winter, you can smell roses and other flowers throughout the city. The traffic is outstanding for a city this size (so long as you avoid the various bridges during rush hour times, those can get really annoying).
The people are really calm and overall pretty friendly and welcoming. I had a hard time making friends over here at first, but that was mostly a result of my social situation and the attitude of "live and let live." It hasn't been nearly like what others have described as the Seattle/Portland Freeze. If you're having trouble finding a social group to connect with, you can fix that pretty easily so long as you take it upon yourself to go to social events, talk to people, and set plans.
There was a large homeless problem that was pretty obvious, but since COVID hit and every landlord in America all at once decided to become opportunistic profiteers, most cities out of the Pacific costal area are barely any better. If you drive around Miami, Austin, New York City, ect you won't be surprised or overwhelmed by "how much worse it is." Every major city is struggling with these issues nowadays, and fear-mongering is mostly a byproduct of the right-wing smear campaign against "costal elities" as well as good, old-fashioned classism. I'd recommend looking up crime stats for the area and comparing them to any other city, you'll see what I'm talking about (if you really want a laugh, compare them to red state big cities).
It's expensive, both in terms of gas and real estate, but if you've done research by using cost of living comparisons, you're already prepared for it. If it's affordable, you should absolutely live here. It's beautiful, peaceful, and friendly.
Josh | Portland, OR