economics decide the contest, and wealth wins every time
November 12, 2015 1:23 PM   Subscribe

"The number of people living in poverty in Portland’s suburbs shot up almost 100 percent between 2000 and 2011, according to the Brookings Institute. If the North’s poor black residents are driven to the same poverty in less desirable areas, then the Portland Boheme for middle-class whites has been purchased at a price of cultural disruption and displacement, even violence. And while immigration to cozier, comfortable climes, and gentrification and attendant displacement are not new phenomena, I find that people flocking Portland-ward rarely wish to accept their own culpability or complicity in this story—there is a desire on behalf of most newcomers to think of themselves as socially progressive and so properly enlightened, as if being anti-racist or super-considerate and well-meaning, responsible even, somehow makes this process of ‘urban renewal’ consequence-less and clean. It is not." Michael Copperman, La Boheme Portlandia.
posted by everybody had matching towels (73 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
(via The Billfold)
posted by everybody had matching towels at 1:23 PM on November 12, 2015


The gentrification bike tour moment is priceless.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:33 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


There’s a long, uncomfortable silence. Then a tall, slim boy, who wears the sort of bold square-framed glasses that are the style hallmark of the Portland hipster, raises his hand. He’s one of the slyer and more calculating students I’ve encountered, a young man who will grow up to be smooth, which is to say, mildly subversive in the service of his own interests. He raises his eyebrows. “Sucks to be poor?”

Unbelievable.

Also, I remember making an equally flip comment about a non-political and non-sensitive topic in a literature class when I was a freshman. I offended no one, but it was exceptionally and brashly ignorant in the way that this comment was. And the professor slapped me down pretty goddamn hard, appropriately enough. It's a shame that the writer probably doesn't have the job security to shut this kid down the same way.
posted by Frowner at 1:39 PM on November 12, 2015 [12 favorites]


I drive past a few homeless camps in my delivery route around and about Portland. Maybe to get the true bohemian experience some new move-ins should spend a month or two at one. The one on Greely is pretty resistant to getting shut down by police, and in about 1.5 months it's developed from a few tents in an undeveloped garden to a few tents, a few lean-tos, some plywood/pallet/2x4/tarp hybrids, a porta-potty, recycling and garbage bins, in an actually functional garden.
posted by shenkerism at 1:40 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


I was a born and raised in Portland and left in 2001 and moved to Boston.

Most of my social media is filled with people in Portland complaining about gentrification and housing cost. For me these folks are people I went to college with, IE people who moved TO Portland in the last 15 years. The crisis they are railing against is themselves and their parent's (tiny bit, nothing really, just a little) money that helped them get that humble little slice of heaven off Lombard.

People I grew up with and my family? They're just seeing the same thing that's been going on for 40 years. Portland becoming a large city, and sadly not doing it any better or more liberally/thoughtfully than all the large cities that came before it.
posted by French Fry at 1:45 PM on November 12, 2015 [6 favorites]


The drought has suddenly made climate change real, and California a great deal less desirable: conservative estimates put Portland’s population 725,000 residents greater within two decades, as clouds and rain transforms toward the temperate patterns of NorCal even as Californians fleeing the old breadbasket (the new dustbowl?) flock toward areas of undepleted aquifers and high quality of life.

This future doesn't fit the classic trigger inducing definition of gentrification anymore, it's just a reality that in an ever increasing population, the number of non-poor is greater than the number of poor, and their ability to be mobile means they will invade every space eventually. The northern tier of the US (or the world for that matter) had better wake up to the fact that there will be a climate induced migration, and it will likely be by people with more resources. Even the traditional 'middle class' is going to feel the pressure of this, and soon.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:01 PM on November 12, 2015 [7 favorites]


Portland becoming a large city, and sadly not doing it any better or more liberally/thoughtfully than all the large cities that came before it.

I came to that unsettling realization when I discovered that the population of the city of Portland (not the metro area) is only 40k folks shy of Seattle (and only like 50k shy of Boston!). It is very much on the verge of being a big city. And yeah, its got all the same problems as every other city. It's not growing gracefully.

For like ten years it had cheap housing and jobs. Now it kinda sorta has jobs. I honestly don't understand why people keep moving here. I really don't understand it; there's nowhere to live. The places that are vastly outpace how much money you can earn here (unless you're fucking loaded of course). My co-workers can't find places to even triple up with other couples just to live somewhere.

As thankful as I am that we're in a house with a mortgage, I get really nervous about the direction the city is going. It doesn't feel as livable as it once did. I mean, we're pretty solidly middle class (for Portland), and its getting fucking hard to get shit done here.

After short bouts of living on the east coast, and visiting other cities, I find myself asking….well, where the fuck else are we going to live? I love Portland. I was born here, and it is my home. But in ten years? How on earth are we going to keep up with this?
posted by furnace.heart at 2:06 PM on November 12, 2015 [9 favorites]


I find that people flocking Portland-ward rarely wish to accept their own culpability or complicity in this story

I'm inclined to agree with them. I have contributed to displacement of others because I was displaced. I did everything I could to stay put, I made sacrifices and took risks that terrified me, but it was to no avail. In the end to survive I needed to find somewhere where there was work for me. Trying to pin culpability on the little people for the effects of titanic global economic forces has become a trendy scape-goating for deep anger (understandably stemming from loss and upheaval), but I think it's way too close to seeking a face for the two-minute hate. You can always find some caricature trust-fund poster-boy who only moved to follow a trend instead of from necessity, and pretend that people like that are causing the problem, but they're a distraction, it's a fantasy. There are colossal forces that are reshaping economies and societies (and cities along with that). Individuals have limited ability to fight the huge tides reshaping the nation, including those fortunate enough to be on markedly less desperate rungs of the income inequality. I think trying to pin culpability on people swept up feels good but I don't think it offers a genuine way to advance the situation for anyone afflicted.
posted by anonymisc at 2:08 PM on November 12, 2015 [69 favorites]


Ehh, I didn't feel great about this piece. Implying that fault lies with incoming residents - instead of systemic problems like North American land use policy, or an insufficient safety net - does not seem very productive.

Sure, incoming residents should be more informed about those issues, but ignorance about housing markets is by no means unique to them.
posted by ripley_ at 2:08 PM on November 12, 2015 [21 favorites]


When I lived in Portland (2001-2007) the vast majority of people I met were transplants from somewhere else. I can name the native Portlanders I knew and even then it struck me as weird. In addition, the tendency of transplants after a period of years to think of themselves and speak as native Portlanders, especially when judging new arrivals seemed really hypocritical.

On preview: what French Fry said.
posted by echocollate at 2:13 PM on November 12, 2015


Portland, then, is not much different than other places...a place becomes desirable for whatever reason and those with sufficient money move to it and displace those that were there. We have cities that now require lots of money to live in: NYC, Boston, San Francisco, etc. and we have places not doing well that are affordable. Alas, nice liberals are saddened by this but can do little to change what is inevitable.

Ask then if this is a phenomenon that takes place in America only or is it also happening in cities such as London, Berlin, Venice, Paris, etc.?
posted by Postroad at 2:22 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


The whole room breaks into an ugly laughter that still echoes in my ears. Born into plenty, these Portland snake people will never want for material wealth.

I just installed a Chrome extension that replaces "milennials" with "snake people", and it is already paying off
posted by thelonius at 2:30 PM on November 12, 2015 [35 favorites]


Ask then if this is a phenomenon that takes place in America only or is it also happening in cities such as London, Berlin, Venice, Paris, etc.?

I'd be curious to know if this is happening in Canada at all. Vancouver?
posted by Apocryphon at 2:38 PM on November 12, 2015


Ask then if this is a phenomenon that takes place in America only or is it also happening in cities such as London, Berlin, Venice, Paris, etc.?

Well, of your list, Berlin is doing something about it. Berlin becomes first German city to make rent cap a reality
posted by Space Coyote at 2:42 PM on November 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


While I fully support the sentiment in this post I also find it tedious. Bad white people suffering from affluenza vs the stoic poor. Any of the more extravegant attempts at empathy on the part of the self identifying liberals are grist for derision. Douche bags and the terminally unself-aware have been with us forever. The latest growth spurt in Portland unfortunately for me comes at a time when the biggest fecund-age cohort to come along since the baby boom has been steeped in a marinade of free market fundamentalism and horror of government. Thus the tools to help address societies ills and crimes are limited to what the market can provide and what the individual can achieve. It is just as much an article of faith today that rent control, inclusionary zoning, god forbid public housing are pointless counterproductive exercises as was the belief that the war on poverty could solve America's poor problem was in an earlier era.

Photogenic Portland, the land of retired white youth, is just so much bunkum. The problems the city has is population indigestion and the leftovers from the housing crisis and that massive transfer of wealth and instance of disenfranchisement. Portland and Oregon were able to bask in the shadows of disinterest and codify quite a few ambitions that would be considered progressive, land use for instance, however that was without the input of the more feral of the investment class. Well times have changed and the bright eye of every amateur landlord/property developer/investment club, and the wallets of private equity and life insurance from San Francisco to Seattle to Japan are salivating and you had better believe that their political input will be just as leveraged and effective as that of the Futuristocrats Airbnb and Uber has been in poor lil stumptown.

So while we wring our hands about overrought self concious bike riders and maligned poor, the Freight Train of Capitalism will have its way.
posted by Pembquist at 2:50 PM on November 12, 2015 [17 favorites]


I'd be curious to know if this is happening in Canada at all. Vancouver?

It depends, sort of. The price of single-family homes has gone through the roof in Vancouver. Multifamily housing has also gone up, but much less - which is not surprising because we've built a lot more multifamily.

I am quite concerned about the future though; we've nearly run out of central locations to build more housing without angering existing homeowners, who are politically influential enough to keep about 2/3 of Vancouver's land zoned for detached homes only.
posted by ripley_ at 2:54 PM on November 12, 2015


“Sucks to be poor?”

Pretty sure this is what's engraved on the Statue of Liberty.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 3:09 PM on November 12, 2015 [6 favorites]


Is this happening to Montreal at all?
posted by Apocryphon at 3:09 PM on November 12, 2015


I have lived in Seattle for nearly 50 years and what it has become since I moved here, oh... there are no words. I have retired friends with houses who moved here when I did and friends on welfare, who have lived here for twenty years. The former are doing well enough. And times have gotten so hard for the latter. As they have for me. For me and my friends inbetween well off and poor, retirement is a joke. I will work until I die. Gentrification here has gone on for years but now has gone to warp 9. The neighborhoods I used to love are going, going gone. And who are the new gentry of gentry ? The people I meet at meetups are, by and large. I assume this is the same all over. Enjoy it while you can, kids. It will be even tougher for you when you get to my age. Insh'allah, I hope I am wrong.
posted by y2karl at 3:14 PM on November 12, 2015 [8 favorites]


leftovers from the housing crisis and that massive transfer of wealth

White hipsters are people you see on the street; bankers and developers to whom you pay a large portion of your income as tribute both on the front end (declining real wages) and back end (housing costs, student loans) are an abstraction. When you read articles about growing wealth disparity since the 70s, this is how it looks within your own field of vision.
posted by MillMan at 3:17 PM on November 12, 2015 [9 favorites]


Perhaps worth a reminder: it's illegal to build apartments on the majority of residential land in Portland.

Be wary of anyone telling you that it's A) a leader in dense, sustainable city-building or B) somewhere where real estate developers and capital have free reign.
posted by ripley_ at 3:21 PM on November 12, 2015


There you go! The problem is government won't get out of the way!

This is exactly what I meant by steeped in a marinade.

edit(just to be clear, as you might not have read my windbaggery, I am being sarcastic in the first line.)
posted by Pembquist at 3:24 PM on November 12, 2015


The problem is government won't get out of the way!

You could be a little more charitable in your interpretation.

Mentioning some problematic regulations does not imply a dislike of all regulations, nor does it imply that they are the only concern.
posted by ripley_ at 3:33 PM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


What are middle and upper class people to do ... live in Beaverton? Oh yeah.

What cities protect their poor better? I've heard Philadelphia and Pittsburgh both do a good job, but then other people tell me it's just as bad.

Photogenic Portland, the land of retired white youth, is just so much bunkum. The problems the city has is population indigestion and the leftovers from the housing crisis and that massive transfer of wealth and instance of disenfranchisement.

I've only been a few times, but I found the public transit to be pretty bad (as it is everywhere I suppose.) And the times I've driven, traffic has been horrible. Probably b/c there's no public transit. Yay America.

Gentrification here has gone on for years but now has gone to warp 9.

What's going on (as I see it) is that Baby Boomers are dying and transferring their massive amount of wealth to their next generation. It's always happened, but now it will become super noticeable (i.e. gentrification) b/c the Baby Boomer generation is so large (and have reaped huge benefits from Wall St. friendly politics (think 401ks)). Anyway, I see no hope for America. That's why it's my name.
posted by mrgrimm at 3:38 PM on November 12, 2015


What's going on (as I see it) is that Baby Boomers are dying and transferring their massive amount of wealth to their next generation.

Lengthening lifespans and amazing medical advances mean Boomers are just being drained of wealth in their elder years. Anecdote: My wife's grandfather was a multimillionaire and lived the last 10 years of his life in a pretty nice retirement community. In the end, his 10 children ended up arguing over an inheritance of $70,000.

He apparently had the Turbo Account at Chase. Just a wind tunnel of cash flying out the back of the vault!
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:53 PM on November 12, 2015 [8 favorites]


I could be more charitable? The title doesn't say X percentage of residential land is zoned for apartment construction rather it uses language which seems a bit inflammatory and simpleminded. My point isn't that regulations can't have an adverse effect on meeting some need. It is that the whole way we have become used to talking about it, the background, assumes that a market first regulation to satisfy the interests of "business" is moderate and centerist, reasonable if you will. I believe that this is a bias and a bit of a dodge to social responsibility if such a thing exists.
posted by Pembquist at 3:54 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]



The gentrification bike tour moment is priceless.
It's an odd feeling to read about a ride that I went on. FWIW, the people on it were not as clueless or unaware of the irony of a gentrification ride as you might think, and the ride wasn't *celebrating* gentrification. Certainly everyone on ride was aware of the history of the neighborhood. Is it worth noting that at the time of the ride, Portland was about to complete a project where they removed a lane of traffic on N. Williams and replaced it with a bike lane? The development of this project took several years, occasionally pitted bike activists against neighborhood activists, and it might be an understatement to say that gentrification and the cities history of racism in the neighborhood came up during development. The bike lane project seemed go hand in hand with what has been a massive redevelopment of N. Williams...

I guess my point is that a bike ride to discuss gentrification in that place at that time isn't as incongruous as it might appear. But hey, twee white liberal portlanders on bikes, hahaha.
posted by surlyben at 4:01 PM on November 12, 2015 [15 favorites]


Haven't been to Portland, so I don't have firsthand experience with the scene. Yes, gentrification is also a thing in the major cities of Canada too.

I guess Portland might be an extreme, but all North American cities with some positive combination of good jobs and agreeable climate (weather and social) face the same growth issues. It doesn't really make much sense to hate on people who seek out opportunity and and a lifestyle that they want. That's the point of freedom, after all.

Awareness and empathy are virtues for sure, but being 'advantaged' (aka white and above-average earner) isn't a crime. Self-loathing won't improve things. The question should be: how are/will these 'hipsters' influence policy in Portland? Are they just feathering their own nests, or are they pushing for things that will ultimately make Portland more liveable for all? (like transit, more zoning for mixed-use and multi-family buildings)

Derail - how about some applied gentrification? Would some fresh-minted billionaire please buy up a few blocks of Detroit, turn an abandoned factory or two into funky loft office-space, and put their next tech venture there?
posted by Artful Codger at 4:29 PM on November 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


Mrgrimm, Pittsburgh doesn't really do anything. What we have is a quirk of population movement which saw the city empty out in the 70s and 80s leaving a mass of underutilized housing stock. While the region is again booming, we're still nowhere near the population density of the early 20th century. The only reason to build new housing here (and plenty is being built) is that the existing is janky. What it means is that Pittsburgh is a good place to be middle class or even working class. It is not a good place to be poor because nowhere is in America.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:37 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


Any post about changes in American cities is required to have comments that
1. casually refer to hipsters
2. sneer at gentrification

Why not ask, instead: Why are some places being gentrified and people willing to pay lots of money for rentals?
Why is that NOT happening to other places?
If a thing is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it, what makes some places worth so much?
posted by Postroad at 4:38 PM on November 12, 2015 [8 favorites]


I guess my point is that a bike ride to discuss gentrification in that place at that time isn't as incongruous as it might appear. But hey, twee white liberal portlanders on bikes, hahaha.

Thank you for coming forward. I don't know why, (well I do,) a gentrification tour by bike is so snickerable, would cars have been better? Most people In Portland have next to no knowledge of its history, recent or distant and I applaud anyone that takes a real interest. It seems to me that to be overly concerned with the cultural trappings of the consumers most easily identifiable as driving the market for gentrification is to capitulate and surrender the politics of the city to that market. I would argue that whatever transient feeling of superiority one might get from laughing at such irony's, (doggy daycare vs childcare for instance,) is a poor benefit for the sidetracking and neutering of outrage that it is a faint flicker of.

I don't know what you think of that bike lane/process but in my simplified world view it had nary to do with safety and sustainability but everything to do with increasing the property value/attractiveness of the commercial spaces and apartments built above on that stretch of Williams. By that light bicycles were used as cudgels of angelic proportions to undermine the saintly victim status of black "stakeholders", (unrepresented on the original stake holders committee,) who remember the land grabs of the freeway, Emmanual Hospital, the Convention Center and have a more jaundiced eye for the machinations of Portland property development than do most recently arriving Optimists.
posted by Pembquist at 4:38 PM on November 12, 2015


The problem is government won't get out of the way!

Those regulations came from somewhere, and generally speaking that somewhere is propertied interests with a shortsighted eye out for their own gain.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 5:00 PM on November 12, 2015


Generally speaking where local land use stuff is concerned, I should say.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 5:01 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


Portland is a very, very different place than even 5 years ago. This new place is not nearly as friendly to the outcasts and downtrodden, as I see every day by the increasing number of visible homeless near where I live and on my rides through downtown.

I wonder when the straw that will break the camel's back will touch that precarious dromedary, or what that proverbial straw will actually be.

I had no idea about the zoning laws being a vehicle for racism. Thank you to the official who posted that link.
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 5:09 PM on November 12, 2015


I'm so fucking tired of this anti-hipster and tech worker backlash and the stupid gentrification conversation.

I moved to Seattle half a decade ago, as a tech worker making good money at Amazon and other tech companies. I'm now bankrupt, without a job, and will be forced out of the city core soon.

I'm not going to blame the tech workers, hipsters or companies. I've been volunteering with homeless and low income orgs for the last few years. You know where I've had my most problems? Navigating the local government's social services and that hellish scene.

The left is tearing itself apart fighting among factions that should support each other. Frankly, I'm starting to realize my voice just does more damage.

All of the companies I worked for were full of passionate progressives, and this bullshit gentrification war is killing progressive power. Good riddance if it's that easy.
posted by formless at 5:12 PM on November 12, 2015 [8 favorites]


there’s no limit to the earnestness and cluelessness of white liberals.

This from the same writer who started an autobiographical short story with "One year in my late twenties I lived for a time with a twenty-one year old drug-dealing stripper named Alexa." Forest for the trees.

Put another way, this article works great when viewed as a piece of haphazard, bragadoccio-inspired short fiction. It's a notebook of zingers that kinda fit the current zeitgeist, but still make a lot of eyes roll in the audience.

Words and phrases like gentrification, kombucha and kale, fixed gear commuter bike, and so on are dog whistles in this kind of writing. Lazy calls to evoke a very specific laudatory response.

I wish the Rumpus would invite someone from the "urban renewal" sector to respond to this article, because it's so clearly not been researched with any effort. Michael Stoll, whose work at Brookings I think he's referencing, would probably have plenty to say about how stories like this misrepresent the cherry-picked data. There are sentiments expressed, but no reference to analysis or policy. Just gauzy punches at change, hinting at the bad side without mention of the good side. This is a modern yarn about the good old days, or maybe the good bad old days, with the terminology changed.

And it does a bad job of it. He mentions a figure from Brookings on the increase in suburban poor, but doesn't say a word about Brooking's bigger clarion calls on the same subject: suburban poverty is skyrocketing, but urban poverty is still worse; suburban poverty isn't primarily driven by renter displacement, which is a contributor, it's mostly driven by a decade of horrible economics and made worse by shitty suburban transit and shitty suburban housing policies; suburban poor are more likely to be latino or white, with urban poor more likely to be black; and so on. And what gives with the hate on mixed income housing?? That's been really helpful--and welcomed by all participants!--in contexts as divergent as the city of Austin and the national government of Chile.

Man, I'm as concerned by social and housing issues, too, but this is not a good way to address it.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:23 PM on November 12, 2015 [26 favorites]


Derail - how about some applied gentrification? Would some fresh-minted billionaire please buy up a few blocks of Detroit, turn an abandoned factory or two into funky loft office-space, and put their next tech venture there?

Kind of. See: Dan Gilbert.
posted by mrgrimm at 5:43 PM on November 12, 2015


Would some fresh-minted billionaire please buy up a few blocks of Detroit, turn an abandoned factory or two into funky loft office-space, and put their next tech venture there?

If a billionaire could boot-strap a city like that, it would've already happened.

People like living in cool places with cool people. The definition of cool changes constantly. You can't buy it, bottle it, predict it, etc., although there are some commonalities.

But funky loft spaces are trailing indicators, not leading indicators.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 6:30 PM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


Sort of related to this, which I just saw on the /r/Portland subreddit (where this topic shows up EVERY SINGLE DAY): Alex Payne - So You're Moving To Portland.

I am not entirely pleased with the incompleteness of the examples sited, but meh, it's kind of a puff piece, but there was one passage towards the end that I really like:

If you’re moving to Portland, or thinking about moving to Portland, you have a choice. You can be a consumer of the city – a lifestyle shopper – or you can get involved. You can enjoy the affordable restaurants and kid-friendly coffee shops and live in comfortable alienation from the problems of the city, or you help ensure that people outside your family also get to enjoy a high quality of life. You can engage in a politics of selfishness and greed – the politics that made San Francisco a cautionary tale – or you can engage in a politics of solidarity and community.

This is something I definitely agree with, and in my every day dealings with people I meet, especially people who are transplants (like I am) and who feel that they don't have any idea of how they can do anything to "help" the gentrification issue, that part about lifestyle shopper versus someone who engages with the existing community is the key point. You can come and live in your little bubble, next to everyone else who comes here to live in their own little bubble of consumer excess (yes, the quaint boutique shops and expensive wine bars are consumer excess). Or you can look at what is going on around you, like a responsible citizen, and become part of the community. It really does make a difference.
posted by daq at 6:32 PM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'd be curious to know if this is happening in Canada at all. Vancouver?

Average house price in Vancouver has been over $1 million for a while, Toronto just recently joined this "elite" category.

My niece and her husband just paid over $400,000 for a house in Whitehorse.

Most of Canada seems more stable than the US, but cities are crazy.

Thousands of the condos in those huge towers that surround Toronto are empty. They've been bought by people who have never even seen them, as investments.

For many people, housing isn't about having a home anymore, it's about money.

And Modigliani just sold for $170,000,000.

Have you seen reality, please? I'm looking for it.
posted by crazylegs at 6:40 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


This is the new reality. Most people seem pretty OK with it, so I guess it's time to just go with the flow, even if that flow is a steamroller driving over your body. Me, I'm going to do my best to outrun it. Success not guaranteed.
posted by gehenna_lion at 7:18 PM on November 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


I wouldn't say I'm ok with it exactly, but I do think it's basically inevitable. You can't stop people from moving to more desirable locations if they can afford to move to more desirable locations absent unrealistic and draconian measures. You can delay the inevitable. You can mitigate its effects. But if somewhere like San Francisco or Portland are good places to live people are going to move there, it will get more expensive, and it will start gentrifying.

So we should mitigate the effects by expanding the social safety net, building more high density housing, shifting the culture away from the idea that the "American Dream" is a single family home with a yard, and stopping the problematic subsidies for buying instead of renting (like the mortgage income tax deduction.)

Focusing on the people moving to a better place is ass backwards. They aren't the problem. The culture which doesn't care about the people being slowly displaced is the problem.
posted by Justinian at 7:51 PM on November 12, 2015 [7 favorites]


How are those measures going to help when untold amounts of wealth are held in the hands of a small number of people and their employees? A lot of people don't have work that pays well, and that's just going to get worse. Where would the money come from for the solutions your suggesting? We don't have a diverse tax base like we used to; it'd have to come from the wealthy and their employees (more likely than not, the employees). So your solution, if made to work, could have the after-effect of making places like San Francisco more affordable anyway.

Look at it this way. The culture that doesn't care is the same culture behind why places like San Francisco and Portland have become so astronomically expensive. There isn't a chance in hell your suggested solutions would ever happen in this cultural climate.

The movement that you're saying is inevitable is what's causing these problems in the first place. To mitigate it would require raising taxes on tech workers, and tech companies, and modifying how globalization is working, etc. It's a huge undertaking. Or we could convince those proles that they should be happy with less than they had before, while a small number of people are so wealthy they can live in their urban utopias.

Now this is why nothing has gotten done about this problem. Nobody cares! [[hands you a mirror]]
posted by gehenna_lion at 8:16 PM on November 12, 2015


There isn't a chance in hell your suggested solutions would ever happen in this cultural climate.

I disagree; I think expanding the social safety net is quite possible though difficult. And building more high density housing is a no-brainer which I expect to really start happening over the next decade or two in most areas.

But in any case if none of what I suggest happens then nothing is going to happen because trying to convince people not to move to nice places is ridiculous and in some ways counterproductive.
posted by Justinian at 8:22 PM on November 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


Expanding the social safety net would require raising taxes to a pretty significant degree. And for the safety net to work, wealth would have to be realigned to lower the bar so that safety net would be effective.

The reason places like San Francisco are so expensive isn't just because they're "nice places to live", it's because a small number of people make so much more money than the average person that it skews prices. A safety net isn't going to fix that. Nor is a safety net going to fix competing with foreign workers who earn cents on the dollar. Even as the tech revolution moves forward, it takes intelligence, skill, time, money, and stability to even become employable in that field. And on and on...

So I don't see how what you're suggesting here is going to work. The problem is much larger than "safety net" and "nice places to live". It involves politics, law, economics, policy, labor, and culture, all intersecting. It'd be nice if it were as simple as you're suggesting.

Also, why should only one class of citizen get to enjoy a vibrant city life? How does that add to our society in any way, except the personal luxury of an elite class? Elite get the best, the rest get Soviet-style block apartments. This is the new America.
posted by gehenna_lion at 8:31 PM on November 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


I read this article and it definitely triggered my "two minute hate" button. Then I read the comments and realized why I read Metafilter.

This article is simply wrong in so many ways, but others have pointed that out more eloquently than I could have. I've been here 15 years and I've watched Portland change drastically. One of the things I love about this city is that its at least trying. We may not succeed at not becoming every other big american city, but the people here don't want Portland to go down that road.

Show me a city that has successfully navigated the growth challenges that Portland faces over the next 10 years without displacing the poor and disenfranchised? We're building the plane while its flying because there's just no other way to do it.

And that's the thing that most outrages me about this type of article. Either roll up your sleeves and help or STFU. Portland is still a small town in the way you engage with the city apparatus, and there are plenty of groups to get engaged with that are fighting to ensure its not game, set, match.
posted by herda05 at 8:41 PM on November 12, 2015 [8 favorites]


This article sucks.

In the article, white people smoke and joke, clink bottles and high-five, buy cheap residential property, remaking thoroughfares into urban commercial drags of bars and restaurants and cafes, have an affinity for microbrews and kale and kombucha, 90s nostalgia for punk and plaid, and the cultural embrace of twee-nerdery and arbitrary oddity. They don't know the reason North Portland is historically black is that a city ordinance existed that prevented blacks from living closer in. They listen to a middle-aged white woman speaking emphatically as she gestured at the market and street. They know what you're thinking. Carol is white. There is no limit to their earnestness and cluelessness. They purchase the Portland Boheme at a price of cultural disruption and displacement, even violence. They only work sometimes, 80% of them attended private school, and in classes which are heavily female, 2/3 are in sororities. They celebrate hip-hop, the music of black poverty, as they move into a neighborhood that was once black and poor and will be no more.


Black people play video-poker, with their faces lit by the glow of the screens. They remain indifferent, feeding dollars into the machine and choosing lines of roulette, holding cards and checking them against the dealer, intent on winning games which are impossibly rigged. They run circles in a yard. They fight off the construction of a Trader Joes.

Hispanic residents of Portland .

Asian american residents of Portland .

Low income overachievers are often of minority background. They are flush with potential. They’re also practical in their orientation toward education.

People being displaced is no good, but this article is so busy describing specific white people's behavior that it doesn't even bother making an argument for it's own existence. Oh, you've recognized that it's mostly white people who have access to the wealth and education that allows people to succeed in this country. Great. So what, author?

What America will we inhabit, when a substantial part of the country has elevated the Trump platform of unabashed xenophobia, while in our most ‘progressive’ urban communities all is pastiche and paean, colonization and co-option of, by the new corner eco-organic co-op?

America, we'll still be inhabiting America.

Will the new world be any better than the old one—and what will become of the newly dispossessed, displaced to make space for the pilgrims fleeing parched California and overpriced Brooklyn and all the other currently less desirable destinations in between?

Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see. This article certainly didn't elucidate anything for me.
posted by durandal at 11:11 PM on November 12, 2015 [5 favorites]


I've only been a few times, but I found the public transit to be pretty bad (as it is everywhere I suppose.)

If you think Portland public transit is pretty bad visit almost any other large metro in the US and have your eyes opened wide. At least Portland appears to actually care about investing in public transit to the extent that it is able.
posted by blucevalo at 4:02 AM on November 13, 2015 [6 favorites]


visit almost any other large metro in the US and have your eyes opened wide

A couple things. First, Portland really does have bad/mediocre transit. It's not even in the top 15 in the US for ridership or length. So, that guy is right and your advice would disprove your own point. Portland does well on bikes, but it does not compete on transit.

Next, I think most of us would agree that US cities as a standard for transit quality is weak sauce. But this makes Portland's worse showing even more of a problem in terms of using access to solve some of its inequality issues.

I agree that hating on twee isn't the answer, but I think it's entirely appropriate to point out with metrics where cities succeed or fail their populations and transit isn't a 'win' for Portland. And I would say there is something substantive to the dissonance more common on the west coast of 'feeling progressive' compared with taking progressive action. Tho obviously in this case, the progressive action was just having population density to support transit construction in the early 20th century.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 4:44 AM on November 13, 2015


It's so weird to read people complaining about Portland transit. Is the MAX ever empty? Is it hard to figure out the schedule? Have you even tried?
posted by oceanjesse at 5:37 AM on November 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


Yeah, so the MAX doesn't place in the top 15 heavy rail system because it is a light rail system. It makes Top 5 for light rail systems. In absolute ridership. When it is smaller than any of the other cities on the list.
posted by Zalzidrax at 6:16 AM on November 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


Focusing on the people moving to a better place is ass backwards. They aren't the problem. The culture which doesn't care about the people being slowly displaced is the problem.

Actual, earnest question: what can a well-intentioned white yuppie do to help stop families from being driven out of their neighborhoods by gentrification? The proposals I've seen can be broken down into two categories. Macro-policy changes, like fixing the social safety net, would have to be federal, and even if the stars align and we elect Bernie, something like a GMI would be dead on arrival in Congress. Micro-level policy changes, like protesting a Trader Joe's or stopping development of new housing, is either cutting off your nose to spite your face, or closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. I bought a house in 2009, at the bottom of the housing market. My neighborhood is now exploding, and I'd be hard-pressed to afford the same house at its current price. Neighbors who have been there for 50 years are seeing rent spikes that will soon drive them to the suburbs, where public transit and walkability are distant dreams. I am only a tiny part of the problem, but I am a part nonetheless, and honestly want to help. But the folks organizing the neighborhood are tilting at windmills--you can't stop development of dense housing in an area that's zoned for it, even if it's going to drive up prices in nearby communities. And I'm not actually convinced that it will drive up prices; cities are becoming such popular places that a shortage of housing stock is just as much a contributor to rising prices as is yuppification. You can't force developers to build housing that the existing neighborhood can afford, and rent control is a distant memory.

Hope me, MetaFilter. It's easy to write scathing articles about clueless white liberals. It's much harder to find actual solutions to problems.
posted by Mayor West at 6:41 AM on November 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


Well,for the record, I was feeling blue when I wrote yesterday. Seattle has been in one long sea change since the late 70s that's turned into an exponential tsunami of late, that kind that rolls boulders into inland Australia. I don't begrudge anyone moving here, though, and the people I meet at meet ups are so smart and nice. And the future. I was just feeling especially a cork on the tsunami then, just to clarify.
posted by y2karl at 8:04 AM on November 13, 2015


It does seem as though the articles we always get about this on Metafilter are of the "hypocritical liberal gentrifiers heal thyself!" variety and not the "here are effective micro-level policies which would help the situation" sort. My theory is, as implied above, that this is because there are very few effective and reasonable micro-level policies which would help but I'd be happy to be shown to be wrong.

Mocking people moving somewhere to try and have a better life is a lot easier than proposing solutions.
posted by Justinian at 8:08 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


Seattle has been in one long sea change

thise are pearls that were your neighborhoods
posted by thelonius at 8:25 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't think anyone can do anything about this; not the gentrifiers nor the gentrified. Unless they decide to work together to try and change the actual, systemic reasons through collective action (which would involve considerable personal sacrifice, complex, well-thought out strategies and execution, etc).

Would gentrifiers bite the hand that feeds them, though, in order to actually, really, do probably the only thing that could hope to help people on the other end?
posted by gehenna_lion at 8:57 AM on November 13, 2015


...pearls that were your neighborhoods.

More like Jurassic barnacles, architecturally speaking.
posted by y2karl at 8:57 AM on November 13, 2015


what can a well-intentioned white yuppie do to help stop families from being driven out of their neighborhoods by gentrification?

1) When you move into an area, become part of the community. All of it. Meet your neighbours.
2) don't be the NIMBY when it comes to reasonably sited higher-density and mixed-use projects, halfway houses, schools being proposed for your area
3) renovate sensibly in a way that's in-scale and positive for the neighbourhood. Don't build an ultra-modern adult pleasure-palace in a block of older family rowhouses.
4) elect city councillors who have the best regard for the community. Support politicians with the most people-friendly urban policies
5) patronize the local businesses. Use the parks.
6) support the local charities. Volunteer.

Growth and change are inevitable, but they don't have to be bad.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:16 AM on November 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


moving somewhere to try and have a better life

This is not in and of itself a value-free statement. More often than not this "better life" is at the expense of someone else.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 9:47 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Everyone wants a "better" life. Saying, "I just want a better life" doesn't absolve you of anything.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 9:49 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


""I just want a better life" doesn't absolve you of anything."Sure it does, it may partially absolve you from inertia, regression, indifference, not carrying about the welfare of your family, being a burden on the present community, sloth, despair myopia etc And the list goes on--looking for a better life does not make you a saint or a sinner. And I am not at all sure you can say with any reliable consistency that moving to have a better life is "more often than not at the expense of someone else".
posted by rmhsinc at 10:00 AM on November 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


Sure it does, it may partially absolve you from inertia, regression, indifference, not carrying about the welfare of your family, being a burden on the present community, sloth, despair myopia etc

You talk like software developers, engineers, and MBAs are sharecroppers during the Great Depression. Bottom line is that people are looking for more luxurious lives, and they come at the expense of other people who don't have the same means to move to have more fun.

It's more complicated than just blaming the gentrifiers; they belong to a system that created the beast, but that beast is the one that puts money in their bank account.
posted by gehenna_lion at 10:05 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is not in and of itself a value-free statement. More often than not this "better life" is at the expense of someone else.

I disagree with this statement, but anyways, how is that in any way actionable? Why am I bad for buying a house from someone willing to sell it to me?
posted by Artful Codger at 10:14 AM on November 13, 2015


"Bottom line is that people are looking for more luxurious lives, and they come at the expense of other people who don't have the same means to move to have more fun." That sure does not account for the flight of people from rural poverty to urban centers, high unemployment communities/States/Countries to low unemployment, job transfers, emplyment opportunities in their field, immigrants coming for a better life, people seeking an education in urban settings, a change in climate. It surely does not account for the recent growth in the American Southwest, The North after World War II, the influx of immigrants in Europe.
posted by rmhsinc at 10:17 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


That sure does not account for the flight of people from rural poverty to urban centers, high unemployment communities/States/Countries to low unemployment, job transfers, emplyment opportunities in their field, immigrants coming for a better life, people seeking an education in urban settings, a change in climate. It surely does not account for the recent growth in the American Southwest, The North after World War II, the influx of immigrants in Europe.

You're comparing upper middle class and upper class people from privileged backgrounds moving to trendy cities, to sharecroppers (i.e., constructive slaves) escaping crippling poverty to find factory jobs up north? Talk about narcissism.

But really, there's nothing we can do except look at all the homeless people, starving kids, and shrug and say "whelp, that's just the way it is" while enjoying our new luxurious pads in the latest trendy city. There's nothing to feel guilty about that, just like there's nothing to feel guilty about putting your feet up on the back of a homeless person you hired as a footrest.

But god forbid you give up the moral righteousness of liberalism, too. It's about having it all!
posted by gehenna_lion at 10:36 AM on November 13, 2015


More often than not this "better life" is at the expense of someone else.

Bottom line is that people are looking for more luxurious lives, and they come at the expense of other people who don't have the same means to move to have more fun.

What frustrates me about the gentrification arguments is that there's an assumption that the people who are moving into an area (collectively) have somewhere else they could go that's not fraught with its own issues. As if professionals in the 20s-30s ought to just move (or, better yet, stay) where they 'belong' and everything would go back to normal.

It's not clear to me where that is, though. Should would-be-gentrifiers move to the exurbs? Should they join their parents in contributing to white flight, not to mention the massive environmental issues that suburbia -- with its stand-alone houses and overly large buildings -- creates? Maybe they should buy houses in the (increasingly depopulated) inner-ring suburbs? Only that, too, induces gentrification. To add to all of this, we've had thread after thread about how isolating our current physical culture is -- how suburbia's infrastructure is one that encourages nuclear families to not reach outside themselves.

Most of the people who are moving into Seattle or the Bay Area or just about any other city are newcomers -- people who have been hired by multinational corporations, not people who just happen to decide they want to move downtown. (As a professional with a Ph.D., I'd like to move back to my home city. I can't. I'm overqualified for most positions, and I've passed up several potential jobs in order to find a position that's 'only' seven hours from home.) Staying home isn't feasible. I've seen the statement that people who move into an area should choose to 'engage with a community', but that's really asking people moving into an area to do something that most Americans don't have time to do anymore. 60 hour workweeks don't leave much time for volunteering, but they definitely make living near late-night Thai takeout far more appealing.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 10:40 AM on November 13, 2015 [7 favorites]


"You're comparing upper middle class and upper class people from privileged backgrounds moving to trendy cities, to sharecroppers (i.e., constructive slaves) escaping crippling poverty to find factory jobs up north?" -- Good job picking and choosing part of a statement--If you think all of those things (all of them) have not in their own way contributed to the rising cost of living in major/desirable cities you are wrong. I believe the person I was responding to had made a global statement about the cost to others of "looking for a better life".
posted by rmhsinc at 10:47 AM on November 13, 2015


I don't think gentrifiers should be vilified, they belong to the same system just like everyone else, and there are fewer options of how to survive in the US these days. I don't blame people for wanting to make more money and live in nice cities; I've been there before, and I'm working hard to do that again. Even if the game is tipped in favor of people from upper-income backgrounds, and is tipped against everyone else to an increasingly disturbing degree.

But I think self-awareness of what the system is, and what part people play in it, would help. Knowing that is the first step towards improving the health of society. Instead, we get people who deny their role, and by denying that role they obscure themselves from really seeing the whole picture. Of course they wouldn't do a damn thing to help anyway, so I guess it's a moot point.

So, shrug, say fuck it. Feel lucky if you were born to the right family and worked hard to make it. Feel terrified if you're going to be one of the future homeless or middle aged people who commit suicide. I'm just glad I'm not like that warehouse worker who died for Amazon.
posted by gehenna_lion at 10:49 AM on November 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


You talk like software developers, engineers, and MBAs are sharecroppers during the Great Depression. Bottom line is that people are looking for more luxurious lives, and they come at the expense of other people who don't have the same means to move to have more fun.

This sounds like the worldview of caricature "them" and "us" that I do not think reflects what is happening and creates unhelpful divides and tension. I did not move to have a more luxurious life, I moved because I had no choice. I indeed got a good life as a result (for now...), but I would have (and did) give everything I had and more to stay put, and it wasn't enough. Bigger forces than me are at play. If you did start trying to think of these people as sharecroppers during the great depression, you might end up closer to the mark (and at least have a more generous outlook.)

Would gentrifiers bite the hand that feeds them, though, in order to actually, really, do probably the only thing that could hope to help people on the other end?

Gentrifiers are people on the other end, and people on the other end are gentrifiers. It's about displacement. Displacement begets displacement, and it the further down the ladder you find yourself the harder and/or fewer your options become. Displacement is driven by much vaster economic forces reshaping the world than some tech company expanding into the area.
posted by anonymisc at 11:01 AM on November 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


Bigger forces than me are at play. If you did start trying to think of these people as sharecroppers during the great depression, you might end up closer to the mark (and at least have a more generous outlook.)

I totally agree with you here. My own thinking sometimes gets clouded by fear of getting left on the other side if I don't work my butt off to update my skills. And that fear is fueled by stories of middle class poverty, suicides, despair, falling through our non-existent safety into permanent oblivion, etc. The United States is becoming a pretty despairing place.
posted by gehenna_lion at 11:10 AM on November 13, 2015


And that fear is fueled by stories of middle class poverty, suicides, despair, falling through our non-existent safety into permanent oblivion, etc. The United States is becoming a pretty despairing place.

I feel you. And this country is (politically) so often like a giant ship with a gridlocked rudder and icebergs ahead. But I look how quickly gay rights gained momentum and started getting results after so many many years, and now I look at how quickly prison reform is gaining momentum (at all levels, from drug convictions to prisoner phone call charges). Both of these groups were shunned populations that had few that would stand up for them vs many who didn't care what happened to them or thought "the worse for them the better", but at some point, enough was enough and people took notice and the pendulum changed direction, and it changed direction surprisingly quickly.

By contrast, this fundamental lack of security in American society is something that affects nearly everyone and infiltrates nearly every aspect of life. I guess that's been a part of the problem - lacking security means living in fear, which for a long time has meant too many people voting for Got Mine Fuck You out of fear of The Other, making things worse. But I think I see signs that the pendulum is changing direction, and with something as big as this, once there is momentum, even those who profit from the status quo will see the writing on the wall and start hooking their wagons to the train rather than trying to derail it. Things are bad, but I'm cautiously hopeful that it's bottoming out.
posted by anonymisc at 11:34 AM on November 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


So I live in Atlanta and I hate it. A lot. The religion, the politics,the lack of public transportation, the way it's so hard to walk anywhere. My parents moved to BC and my sister moved to Portland at my urging. I would really like to join her, and now I feel guilty about that after reading this. My husband and I are not rich. Moving and finding jobs and housing will be extremely difficult. I feel like there are no good answers; if I complain about where I live the answer is "then move". But here people are saying "why would anyone want to move here?" Well because Portland transit is miles ahead of what we have here. Because my family is there. Because there are more like-minded people there. I am just whining now but I really don't get what I'm supposed to do to improve my life at this point. I mean if we move we're somehow part of the problem and possibly even stupid, but if we stay here where we hate it, we're miserable and still stupid. What is the right answer?
posted by masquesoporfavor at 6:00 PM on November 13, 2015


I would really like to join [my sister] [in Portland], and now I feel guilty about that after reading this.

Seriously, don't. You can't change your race or your family. And, for the moment, it's still a free country. Move wherever you can afford to.

For bonus points, be aware of the effects of gentrification, and try to improve whatever community you choose to join.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:12 AM on November 14, 2015 [5 favorites]


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