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We spent the past week staying in DT Portland with my wife and two adult children. I absolutely LOVED the vibe we experienced a couple of years back. I remember staring at some waterfront condos when I returned wondering if I should buy. I watched the news and realized there was some protesting. But the media has a way of making problems look much worse than it really is (all political sides want to attract eyes to their media outlet).
We visited the Columbia River Gorge for a few days (STUNNING STUNNING STUNNING) too. We also checked out some wineries. Very nice! The natural beauty is amazing, AND without the bugs.
I will say, I was shocked to see the downtown degradation. It turned from a vibrant city to one that was still boarded up in many spots. My perception was that the homeless problem has gotten (much?) worse. And pretty much every building and sign was tagged by gangs. And not only buildings and signs, but sidewalks too! We are talking about thousands of items defaced. I walked over human feces (unless dogs use toilet paper) twice. I caught a strong stench of urine more than a dozen times as well. In about every business, there was a "help wanted" sign. My perception was businesses seem to be on life support. And I was there over a peak weekend and it was still dead.
Anyways, I feel for you guys. Selfishly, I'm glad I didn't pull the trigger on a condo a couple of years back. A friend said that real estate in DT Portland is rapidly rising. Who's buying?
Thanks to all who have posted their observations. I feel that all news programs are now so heavily biased, if a story really interests me I have to look up multiple news sources in an attempt to decipher the truth.
I have been following a few cities on this forum for actual 'boots on the ground' information. Had wondered about actual conditions in Portland, so again, thanks for posting.
We spent the past week staying in DT Portland with my wife and two adult children. I absolutely LOVED the vibe we experienced a couple of years back. I remember staring at some waterfront condos when I returned wondering if I should buy. I watched the news and realized there was some protesting. But the media has a way of making problems look much worse than it really is (all political sides want to attract eyes to their media outlet).
We visited the Columbia River Gorge for a few days (STUNNING STUNNING STUNNING) too. We also checked out some wineries. Very nice! The natural beauty is amazing, AND without the bugs.
I will say, I was shocked to see the downtown degradation. It turned from a vibrant city to one that was still boarded up in many spots. My perception was that the homeless problem has gotten (much?) worse. And pretty much every building and sign was tagged by gangs. And not only buildings and signs, but sidewalks too! We are talking about thousands of items defaced. I walked over human feces (unless dogs use toilet paper) twice. I caught a strong stench of urine more than a dozen times as well. In about every business, there was a "help wanted" sign. My perception was businesses seem to be on life support. And I was there over a peak weekend and it was still dead.
Anyways, I feel for you guys. Selfishly, I'm glad I didn't pull the trigger on a condo a couple of years back. A friend said that real estate in DT Portland is rapidly rising. Who's buying?
I can't speak for anyone else but I cannot understand the how and why, that Real Estate prices in Portland are so ridiculously high and how can they find buyers. The city has declined so much, that it amazes me anyone would buy there. You never know when your neighborhood is going to become a homeless camp, and the city will just allow it to happen. So just who the hell is buying?
I have always felt that the Portland city Gov't is waiting for the Federal Gov't, to intervene and clean Portland up at the Federal Taxpayer level. Otherwise I can't see any other reason such a beautiful city was allowed to turn into such a complete mess and simply not deal with it. So yes I really do wonder just who in their right mind, would buy considering the terrible conditions in Portland.
There are a lot of buyers from China and Taiwan quietly buying multiple properties in the greater Portland area. They're motivated by demographic decline in Asia and increasing tensions between Taiwan and China.
There are a lot of buyers from China and Taiwan quietly buying multiple properties in the greater Portland area. They're motivated by demographic decline in Asia and increasing tensions between Taiwan and China.
I suppose if I lived in Taiwan, the writing is on the wall that (a patient) China is going to make an eventual move to annex the country. The only question is when.
As I mentioned, Portland has it going on with biking! During our 20-mile bike ride, I started to read some of the graffiti. Anecdotally speaking, the spray-painted message was far less sophisticated than say, San Fransico's graffiti. We walked by Voodoo Doughnut to see a woman laying on the concrete and tripping out on drugs. Our ER Doc son asked if she was alright and she violently rolled around sending a message not to disturb her. I must have smelled urine over 10 times inside of a few blocks. With my wife and daughter present and having two, 6-3" males walking with them, I didn't feel remotely safe. We passed a dozen tents in a couple of blocks. With chronic mental illness, you hope you are walking by people who won't trip out and imagine you want to harm them.
I wanted to get out of DT but couldn't because we prepaid for our hotel through Priceline. If businesses are counting on tourists and people from the suburbs to visit, I wonder how many businesses are going to survive? The hotel was $130 a night and it was NICE! It should have cost us $250+ on a normally busy holiday weekend. IMO, DT is going to much worse before it gets better. I feel for the businesses that must feel helpless.
We had an early flight so we stayed by the airport on our last day. Though not nearly as much as DT Portland, even around the Cascade Station, I saw several tagged graffiti written on signs. WTF are people thinking? I have to assume camera sales and security systems must be going gangbusters (no pun intended).
I hope the people in charge get their act together. As an outsider looking in, whoever is at the helm is doing a disastrous job. While I appreciate the compassion that Portland has, other cities are taking advantage of your "generosity".
There are a lot of buyers from China and Taiwan quietly buying multiple properties in the greater Portland area. They're motivated by demographic decline in Asia and increasing tensions between Taiwan and China.
Probably so. I think that happened in Vancouver BC. Buyers from China buying up all the properties there.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I don't watch Fox news, but pre-covid we would drive down to Portland for the day or overnight several times every year. The last time we went, in early 2019, there were very few homeless visible. Just this past weekend we went and spent the day there. We were very surprised to find that both the amount of visible homeless and the graffiti had gotten so bad. We stayed mostly on the east side where it was not as bad, but the homeless near downtown and along the freeways have definitely gotten at least as bad as Seattle, the graffiti worse. It's especially odd when considering the proliferationof "hipsters" in many neighborhoods, also increased greatly since 2019.
Spent the last few weeks in PDX after not having been there since 2019.
It is both better and worse than what Fox News says.
Better - in the sense that it is not some kind of hellhole. It still felt like a functional city, but much more visibly stressed out than before. I was actually worried about safety based on what I'd heard on the news, and it was not as bad as I expected. The homeless were not aggressive to me. They all just seemed tripped out, not with us.
Worse in a few senses - There is graffiti EVERYWHERE. The homeless problem is about triple as bad as I ever witnessed it before, reminding me more of San Francisco's level of per capita homeless. Businesses are very shut down.
What Fox News has not covered - the correlation with covid. What I observed is that even at this late date, people in Portland took covid restrictions EXTREMELY seriously. Obsessively so. There were people that would would run away from me on the sidewalk for not wearing a mask (I'm vaccinated and outside, the CDC says I don't need it now?). Many businesses appear to have just gone into hibernation. Other businesses were willfully more restricted than the regulations required, since I'm from a county that had the same restrictions as Multnomah and only for the initial hard lockdown were we this empty.
Then I visited some richer districts, and houses in these tony neighborhoods were going all out with their rose gardens and about their lives as if nothing was wrong. No tagging, maybe a onesie-twosie homeless person here or there? And only passing through. Then go into the suburbs... businesses more open, less restricted. Almost as if nothing ever went wrong.
It was clear to my WHY what has happened, happened. The citizens in response to covid abandoned whole swaths of the city's public spaces. Abandoned. It was obvious at one intersection - on one side of the street was an abandoned building that used to hold businesses. Fully tagged up with graffitti, all over it. With evidence of many homeless squatting. Lately it looked liked they gated and fenced it and the owners were working on cleaning it up, a long project. Across the street was a dentist office open for business with commerce occurring, people in and out. Not tagged, as if nothing had happened. I suspect as a medical provider they were not closed for long. I wanted to walk into the dentist office and ask, "do none of you CARE what has happened across the street??" The public spaces of Portland got adverse possessed in every space that was abandoned.
It's the same way that as a kid in my area, we'd go break the windows and screw with abandoned houses. Eventually some vagrant stays there now and then because he can. It's the place people go for their drug deals, illicit sex, or to just screw around, draw, spray paint on it, etc.. Because no one's there and because you can. That happened all over your city.
The wealthy and affluent people retreated to their enclaves, worked from home. The regular people had both their jobs and schools cancelled, and took to the streets. They had nothing better to do anyway and they were also outraged, probably in an outrage spiral that can happen from electronic stimulation and isolation. Businesses just shut down rather than adapt to the restrictions, so they are operating on skeleton crews. Marginal people became homeless. Activists descended on the city from around the country seeing it as the front line in their war. Also homeless from other areas are descending on it because they are less abused and restricted in Portland, can camp where they want more or less in relative peace, and have freer access to drugs.
I figure Portland will come back to normal but probably take 1-2 years. Clearly covid has to subside to a lower level than it is for Portland to relax, based on what I saw. Seriously, one of the most covid obsessed restrictive places I've been since I started travelling after vaccination in February. I suspected covid was the base fuel behind much of the unrest last year, and that was 100% confirmed for me based on the behavior I witnessed. It's not just downtown, but it's mostly the inner city and lower end areas. There are pockets of mess and then pockets of normal, clearly correlated to how much that pocket was shut down. The silver lining is that when I was there, things seemed to be waking up and the pockets of normal were starting to reclaim the pockets of mess. But the clean up of the mess and all that grafitti removal will take a good couple years.
I'm kind of surprised people are surprised that negative effects happened when we cancelled the economy. And Portland cancelled more seriously than many.
Last edited by redguard57; 06-04-2021 at 02:09 PM..
The downtown core has gotten pretty bad with all the street tents, boarded up businesses, every vertical surface having graffiti and trash. But as Portland is essentially a huge sprawling suburb there are still lots of places that are nice to visit.
A couple years ago we would barhop downtown after a show and have no issue walking the city streets at 2am. We would not be doing that with the city in its current state.
The downtown core has gotten pretty bad with all the street tents, boarded up businesses, every vertical surface having graffiti and trash. But as Portland is essentially a huge sprawling suburb there are still lots of places that are nice to visit.
A couple years ago we would barhop downtown after a show and have no issue walking the city streets at 2am. We would not be doing that with the city in its current state.
There would barely be anything open to hop into.
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I watched the news and realized there was some protesting. But the media has a way of making problems look much worse than it really is (all political sides want to attract eyes to their media outlet). 
The natural beauty is amazing, AND without the bugs.
