Ten Least Affordable Cities In The US (Portland: insurance, big house)

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by Squidlo

Private transportation. Well, unless you will send them a cab on the public dime.


Not everyone can pack up and move right next door to a job. I have worked odd shifts all over Portland. Only one job allowed me to walk to work. The rest I drove or biked. Its the reality for a large portion of Portland.

And what if private transportation isn't an option for that person? Should we make it so that our elderly and handicap are forced to only commute by private transportation? And what about those that cannot afford the cost of private insurance?

[Metlakatla]

No, we should force them to take buses and bikes.

[CanuckInPortland]

Originally Posted by Squidlo

Yeah, its great if you are a carpet bagger swooping in from elsewhere snapping up "deals" and displacing the locals.

So if someone moves to Portland they're a "carpet bagger" but if someone moves to Houston they're not?

[Squidlo]

Originally Posted by CanuckInPortland

So if someone moves to Portland they're a "carpet bagger" but if someone moves to Houston they're not?

Never said I wasnt. You can find me calling myself one in other posts. I left Portland because the COL was outstripping my wages YOY. I worked in San Antonio for 5 years before moving to Houston and finally bought a home. If that makes me a carpetbagger, I cant lie. I don't however discount the effects of my actions in the community I reside in.

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by Squidlo

Never said I wasnt. You can find me calling myself one in other posts. I left Portland because the COL was outstripping my wages YOY. I worked in San Antonio for 5 years before moving to Houston and finally bought a home. If that makes me a carpetbagger, I cant lie. I don't however discount the effects of my actions in the community I reside in.

True, it isn't hard to find places cheaper to live than Portland, especially in middle America.

[CanuckInPortland]

Originally Posted by Squidlo

Never said I wasnt. You can find me calling myself one in other posts. I left Portland because the COL was outstripping my wages YOY. I worked in San Antonio for 5 years before moving to Houston and finally bought a home. If that makes me a carpetbagger, I cant lie. I don't however discount the effects of my actions in the community I reside in.

Well, fair enough, at least you're honest. Though if one wants to talk about "carpet baggers", I'd say it's the wealthy all-cash investors who aren't even intending to live in the houses they're buying--instead just looking to flip a house or tear down a modest old house and build a giant new one to sell(or maybe rake in the bucks from a hot rental market). I've seen increasingly more of these all-cash buyers in the neighborhoods I've lived in Portland over the last few years.

As far as people moving to another city for a lower Cost of Living, well everyone does that. It's only natural to go where you can get more for your money in comparison to where you used to live--though anyone who moves anywhere for any reason instantly drives up demand in a market. And it's only natural for people who've been living there to resent anyone who moves in and changes things--it happens everywhere as well. I was born in Vancouver BC and people blame wealthy foreign buyers for the high prices and ruining our utopia.

Though from my experience people will always cast their ill will against the transplants rather than the developers(often locals) who are really raking in the bucks from a suddenly hot housing market.

[Mini-apple-less]

Originally Posted by Squidlo

Private transportation. Well, unless you will send them a cab on the public dime.


Not everyone can pack up and move right next door to a job. I have worked odd shifts all over Portland. Only one job allowed me to walk to work. The rest I drove or biked. Its the reality for a large portion of Portland.

Another thing people don't realize is that huge tracts of Portland are not walkable at all, particularly the far east and the north side.

[bler144]

Originally Posted by valsteele

Another thing people don't realize is that huge tracts of Portland are not walkable at all, particularly the far east and the north side.

Depends on what you mean by walkable. NoPo I think is increasingly walkable, and if the issue is distance to services moreso it's certainly bikeable. Public transport is at least decent for getting around within NoPo or in/out of downtown.

East...well, pockets of "walkability" are much more sparse out this way, and there are a lot of roads I'm not sure I'd risk biking on, personally.

[CanuckInPortland]

Originally Posted by bler144

Depends on what you mean by walkable. NoPo I think is increasingly walkable, and if the issue is distance to services moreso it's certainly bikeable. Public transport is at least decent for getting around within NoPo or in/out of downtown.

East...well, pockets of "walkability" are much more sparse out this way, and there are a lot of roads I'm not sure I'd risk biking on, personally.

For the most part if you look at a map of age of home construction in Portland and compare it to the Walkscore map it's basically directly proportional in terms of older neighborhoods being the most walkable. You can see the streetcar suburbs and older neighborhoods or towns that got annexed being these pockets of more wakable areas.

labratrevenge - Justin Palmer

https://www.walkscore.com/apartments/search/OR/Portland

My own NE Portland neighborhood is mostly 1920s-era homes and close to some shopping and restaurants and services, but it's sort of the option of walking or taking the bus or driving that's nice--if I go north towards Cully though there's less sidewalks and less stuff to walk to. I wouldn't use just one method of transportation and I'm glad I have a a car. Honestly, though most people I know have a car, Portland is a place one can get around just via public transit but it's not a place like some other cities I've lived(Montreal and Boston) where it's more common for everyone to just take transit everywhere for most trips. Frankly though I don't find driving around the city itself to be very bad--nor is parking really that bad here(or expensive). It's when I have to drive to the suburbs at rush hour though that I realize how bad traffic is for other people here.

[bler144]

You quoted me, but I'm not sure if you're agreeing/disagreeing or just riffing on what I said.

Cully I agree is pretty transitional, but it's definitely northeast and not in the area generally categorized as "North Portland."

I think one of the reasons North Portland has been able to gentrify so quickly is that they already had a lot of the infrastructure that would make it more appealing to a wealthier clientele moving in - sidewalks in the majority of neighborhoods, bus routes along major roads that connect residential and services, decent parks, at least reasonable routes to downtown via car or bus (plus the MAX).

And to top it off, it's not a very big area geographically, esp. if you cut out the industrial sections and the wetlands which are less densely populated, overlooking the outliers like Bridgeton which is clearly not walkable, but also probably not what most comes to mind for most people in thinking about NoPo either.