High Rant District
Active Member
Portland is in rapid decline. It was the darling of the NY Times and similar outlets 5 years ago, celebrated as a place for hipsters to move to, but that good press has completely dried up.So my fiancé and I are thinking of making a move from LA to Portland once our lease is up next year and we’re trying to figure out what the good areas/suburbs to find good rentals are. Anybody have any recommendations. Also Pros & Cons of living in Portland? I’m attracted to the eco-conscious aspect of the city, the nature, the people and culture really draw me in as well. I moved to LA from Brooklyn a little over a year ago and it just feels irresponsible to live in LA, this place is just a massive drain on natural resources and living here feels more and more like a fashion as opposed to being an awesome place to live. How’s the live music scene there, do most artists make stops in Portland on tour? Sorry, lots of questions and I’m sure I’ll have more but we can start there
So many breweries closed last month that it was dubbed Black October, and more closures are coming. The population keeps increasing without a commensurate increase in infrastructure. You know those experiments about how rats act when it gets overcrowded? Yep. Traffic is crushingly bad and constantly worsening. We don't have enough police officers because no one wants to be a cop here. As the number of police per capita keeps decreasing, the cops get stretched even thinner during Protest Season (aka The Drier Months) because neighboring police agencies who used to help police the protests have all said "fuck this", so that means massive OT for city cops and even fewer patrols.
Homelessness is now overwhelming. A friend who moved from Portland to Montana came back for his for visit in a few years and though I had told him how bad homelessness had gotten, he was staggered by the volume he saw as he drove into the city proper. I live in inner SE and it is overwhelming. City officials keep increasing the amount of money spent on the homeless, which has had the perverse effect of drawing more homeless to Portland. You can see the out-of-state plates on the cars people are sleeping in as they wait to take advantage of our shelter space. Another factor is that possession of hard drugs (like heroin, meth, etc) for personal use has effectively been decriminalized, so junkies from across the country know they can come here and not be hassled for being hopeless addicts. Also, on a party-line vote in 2017, our state legislature wanted to avoid having to build a new women's prison so they voted to reduce most non-violent crimes (the crimes women commit tend to be non-violent) from felonies to misdemeanors, which means DAs don't bother prosecuting and police have neither the time nor desire to arrest people for something the'll be released for in an hour. It used to be that people accused of property crimes (ID theft, car theft, etc) would face a felony charge but DAs would use the possibility of a felony charge (serious prison time) to get people to accept drug addiction treatment in exchange for a misdemeanor. Now they don't have that tool to help junkies - who are exploding in population because we welcome junkies here. We are one of the top cities in the nation for car theft. And bike theft is an actual sport here. And if you leave something on your porch that isn't nailed down, it's gonna be gone.
To be fair, there are some expensive primarily white neighborhoods where homelessness is forbidden and crime is lower. Be prepared to pay, though.
Portland is the only city of its size to have a commission form of government rather than a strong mayor system, so city politics is an absolute clown show. There are five city commissioners (one of them is mayor and gets to assign the bureaus to whichever commissioner they want) who vote on almost everything, so most stupid stuff gets passed. Commissioners to vote to support what other commissioners want so they'll get the favor back when they want their own stupid stuff approved.
Eco-Friendly? The river the bisects the city is so polluted it's a SuperFund site (it's improving). Trash is everywhere. Businesses have pooled money downtown to have human feces cleaned up daily. You don't walk barefoot in public grass in this city for fear of stepping on used needles (heroin is a major, major issue here and the city gives junkies free needles). So much meth is made here that the state made it illegal to buy Sudafed over-the-counter here (it gets used to make meth). You have to drive to Washington state to buy it without a prescription.
Our combined sewer/water bills are the most expensive in the nation, because the Water Bureau here has historically been used as a slush fund by city officials.
St. Johns is a dangerous area. Teens recently murdered a man there so they could take his car, which didn't surprise me at all. I used to drive a bus route up there (my seniority was low and veterans didn't want to drive that route) and my trainer - who used to drive the route - had someone shoot at the bus once. Not a safe neighborhood IMO.That said, you might want to consider St. Johns (N. Portland).
The suburbs are bland and boring, but safer. The western suburb of Beaverton is home to (and run by) Nike, which is a company embroiled in controversy for abuse of women. Be careful driving there, as traffic citations are a revenue generator - you'll get a Driving While in Beaverton ticket for any minor infraction. Same goes for the southern suburb of Milwaukie. If you got to the eastern suburb of Gresham, it gets more crimey and dangerous. If you cross the Columbia river into our northern suburb of Vantucky (Vancouver, WA), it's really boring but you can still see an occasional mullet in the wild. If you live and work in Washington state, there's no income tax. Oregon has some of the highest state income tax in the country, but no sales tax. If you're a spender, Oregon is where you should live and work. If you're a saver, live and work in Washington.
Most massive bands don't play in Portland; they play in San Fran, then skip Portland to play in Seattle. Otherwise, lots of music venues exist in Portland and the music scene is pretty great, unless you're a musician. Then you can barely afford to live here. But seriously, if you like seeing live music, that's a major positive to Portland. I buy a lot of vinyl put out by Portland bands.
Tl;dr: Portland is rapidly becoming a shithole. Like any place, however, it is what you make of it and it depends what you can put up with. I moved here in 2002 when it was fantastic IMO, and it ain't that anymore, not even remotely. I'm entrenched here though due to family, and despite this somewhat epic post I don't dwell on the negative aspects. I look out for my neighborhood and neighbors, and that's all I can do. I make the best of it and focus on the positives. Just giving you a realistic idea of what to expect. Like anyone else here, I'm happy to chime in about any neighborhoods you may be looking at.
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