Eugene/Springfield - The Bad News (Portland: house, school, college)

[uhuher]

I moved here from Olympia and Oregon's economy is so in the toilet, it's not even funny. Allergies are so bad in the summer that I literally scratch my eyes until the inside lining of my upper eyelid tears and hangs down. I have just about overdosed on Benadryl ever summer that comes, and spring, too. The people are unfriendly, and the crime is insane. I would venture a trip into Seattle's International Neighborhood over walking Eugene streets at night.
The money to try and save to get out of this state is so beyond non-existent because there are NO JOBS it's causing me to consider suicide. The level of health care here is a joke, as are most of the Docs. I have panic disorder and a history of depression and the PCP's here look like a deer in headlights when asked to prescribe any kind of Benzodiazapines. Klonopin, Xanax, Ativan, and the like. I have been on one of those meds or the other alternately since I was about 21. I am 29 now, and still have to fight to get my point across that while they worry about their license being pulled for prescribing a "controlled" med. to a patient who has years of records as back-up to scared doctors, it's still a struggle. So I guess if I ever did commit suicide and was refused the mental health meds I've been on for years just because the Dr's afraid of the big insurance companies yaking their license or because they like to do things "in a green way" "Here have a cup of chamomile tea, it will calm your nerves as well as any psychiatric drug" haha! This state is full of people who either have a lot of money, or who are struggling on all sides of life. Medical insurace, compitent mental health providers, corrupt polotics who like to "tax" the gas in order to fix the roads when infact the roads are so messed up that if it has a downpour the underpasses flood and nearly drown the drivers. Potholes in the roads, and school standards are pretty bad as well. When it's all said and done, I'd rather be in Portland or back in WA. I have had nothing but struggles since moving to OR, and the meth abuse problem here does lead to a lot of crime. The homeless people have nothing provided to them, or not enough to sustain them, so they look to the public for a hand out. And I feel like saying... "No I don't have any spare change, but do you?" Money is tight and jobs are hard to find. Good luck with your move back to WA, and forward thinkers. I miss it, and I would go home if I had the money. So, that's my take on OR. Hope it helps one way or another....
Madeline

Originally Posted by woodriverblue

Okay, you asked....I moved to Eugene from Seattle 14 years ago. That would be 13 years 364 days too darn long. I'm relocating back to Washington this summer - can hardly wait! Many people who come to Eugene from otherwhere discover to their dismay that Eugene is pretty bad - details to follow - only the economy here is so dire that once here it is tough to make/save enough money to get back OUT again. I've had it described as a vortex, and that's not far off. First - weather - summers are glorious if you can stand heat indexes in August and September that rival Atlanta's (e.g., you will need prescription strength antiperspirants and a good drycleaners). There is A LOT of street crime, homelessness - Lane County has not figured out how to deal with the homeless problem and these people, mostly mental misfits of one type or other, are in horrible straits from the municipalities' failure to help them and the local churches can do only so much. Many "affordable" neighborhoods - well, first you'd have to question the term "affodable" and then look at what they are built on - in Bethel-Danebo for example there is groundwater contamination and soil contamination from previous decades of industrial development. The very air here is BAD - check the statistics on LRAPA (air pollution agency). Cars are not "smogged" here which means NOX, CO2, carbon monoxide, and particulates. Mills within city limits are somewhat controlled but factually most mills are outside city limits, and the particulate matter and ozone contamination rival Los Angeles. Temperature inversions here are frequent both summer and winter and if you have any inclination toward lung problems you will be guaranteed visits to the local hospital when the fifth...or eighth....or tenth day of freezing fog in december has trapped the filthy air right at breath level. The police here profile for race and the Eugene Police Department and Lane County Sheriff Department are well known for corruption and ignoring the more abusive types of police behavior (for example, please google the Juan Lara case--'ats what I'm talkin' about). It is very, very difficult to get a job here and when you do, you will not be paid anything close to (a) what you were making where you came from or (b) what you are worth. For example, I was making MORE THAN DOUBLE in Seattle in 1992 (15 years ago) than I am today in Eugene. True - we are just beginning to have traffic problems as far as congestion and there are some infamous albeit short corridors where you sit...and sit....and sit....and oh by the way the highest percentage of accidents are caused by substance-abusing drivers (Oregon being the meth capital of the US and Lane and Douglas Counties being the highest in Oregon). Plus here there is a strong, unshakeable belief in the right to (a) engage fully in road rage, (b) tailgate in the slow lane just for fun, (c) travel at speeds exceeding 85 if you're a triple hauler truck or oil tanker, (d) never, ever use turn signals, (e) run merging cars off the freeway at entrances just for giggles and grins. I could go on but no doubt you get my point. Now - do you have dogs? Do you have a horse or two? Well - prepare to shell out enormous dollars to have your pet treated by a vet. Oregon State University vet school has one of the highest tuition/fee structures in the country and Oregon thinks very pooly of higher education and has a decades long disinvestment in same, so vets coming out of OSU are over a hundred grand in debt for student loans so they charge pet owners accordingly. If you have a horse, be advised that according to their stated policy, the two main clinics in this area REFUSE to treat laminitis or founder and will ONLY euthanize the horse - if you have a laminitic horse or - perish the thought - a foundered one, you'd better be prepared to import your vet from somewhere else. Keep in mind - even the first people here, the native Americans, called this the Valley of Death. The chamber of commerce tries to spin that and admits to only "valley of sickness." Well - either way - if you were physically healthy before you won't be once you live here - the area has more than quintuple the number of asthma and allergy cases of almost any area of the country. And the local grass seed farmers (Lane, Linn and Benton counties are the world's larges producer of grass seed) still engage in the barbaric practice of field burning in August and September, guaranteed to fill the local emergency rooms; a newscast in 1999 detailed how during one 24-hour period at Sacred Heart the emergency room overflowed into the parking lot and they ran out of oxygen there were so many desperate patients! Well, I know that some forum posters will react with anger at me for spilling the ugly beans about Eugene and say "good riddance" moving back to Washington. But there are some very, very serious problems here that cut across all areas - financial, employment, taxes, political, health, neighborhoods and services. Please think very, very carefully before moving here, I can pretty well guarantee you will regret it. If you do move here be SURE to keep enough money in the bank to fund a move away - or you truly will be in "the vortex."

[Fred Starkey]

Eugene, Oregon is a Drug Town. It's meth capital. We had a meth lab across the street for 2 years before the police finally shut it down and arrrested the people after we reported in detail by fax everyday for 6 months: the cars, license plates, description of the people, and what they took into the house: it was like a 7_11. When they were arrested the police said if they could close one down per day, they wouldn't be able to shut them all down in Lane County, because there are over 1,000 meth labs in Lane County.

The Communist Schools promote drug use and sexual deviancy. This brings more violence and more crime. Advice: move out of Eugene and get into the Urban Growth Boundary or in the country. Get out of the City: it's a hell hole.

[sarahkate_m]

Now everything makes sense! The Communists are running the schools!

[Mr Eugenified]

Wait! I am confused. Aren't the communists in Eugene running the meth labs, and the socialists running the schools? Or is it the other way around?

If any of this hyper-negative nonsense was true, I would not be living here. So trust me, take it all with a one pound back of salt.

[sarahkate_m]

hmmm... i thought drugs were against the socialist/communist ideals... if you take religion away, you can't substitute drugs. you won't get your revolution that way.

well then who's teaching the deviancy in the schools? or... is THAT the revolution? no, we already had THAT in the 60's (as i was just barely born then, i've only heard about it)

I thought the urban growth boundary was the same as Beltline which... I've come to view as an myth... what is he talking about? Junction City? That's one of the best kept secrets around!

[sarahkate_m]

if we help the campaigns of people we'd like to see in office, maybe we'd see smarter people in charge... i like to believe voters do have a choice... a democratic choice...

[haggardhouseelf]

I'd like to thank Mr. Starkey for his efforts in attempting to scare people away from our sweet town in an attempt to keep the population from growing too large too fast.

Do you guys know anything about that sign that used to be on the highway when you crossed the state line? I've only heard about it - never actually saw it. As you crossed the border into Oregon, the story goes that the sign read something like, "Thank you visiting Oregon - now leave!"

Maybe we should all say horrible things about the places we love so that no one else will want to relocate there and then insist upon changing it into the places they were supposedly trying to escape from...

[sarahkate_m]

that sounds like fun but the mods always seem to catch me

[qxcvr]

I dont like all the skinny little college girls in their sports bras and spandex shorts that are everywhere there.

Dang... Im moving there for sure.... :>) cheers!

[sarahkate_m]

you'll need to bring beer for pong games... very IN around off campus housing.