There goes the neighborhood
I see that the Portland City Council has given the "planning" weasels the green light to destroy the best of the livable neighborhoods in town. It's all in the name of "inclusivity." Chainsaw Carmen is all in.
In Portland, the solution to the plight of the downtrodden is always to trod everyone else down. The loud, consistent message from the City Council over the past 20 years is that if you have a life and are successful, you don't want to live within the city limits any more. The suburbs beckon, or some other metro area entirely.
They're deranged and have a soul sickne$$.
ReplyDeleteIn that article they go on about “historic designations to Portland’s LGBTQ community.” Excuse me........I remember well back 40 years ago or even into the 70’s, so-called Harvey Milk Street was full of cheap hotels with old men leering out the windows at anything that walked by. What is “historic” about that? That area was gross and nothing to celebrate believe me. I felt like I needed a shower after walking through there. Sorry if that sounds rude, but sometimes the truth hurts.
ReplyDelete"In Portland, the solution to the plight of the downtrodden is always to trod everyone else down. The loud, consistent message from the City Council over the past 20 years is that if you have a life and are successful, you don't want to live within the city limits any more. The suburbs beckon, or some other metro area entirely."
ReplyDeleteIs it that, or just that there's no real easy way to create community/deal with housing or put pressure on it in any way/place that doesn't make it squeeze out somewhere else.
Even the nicer places like Reed Canyon & Eastmoreland...the SW slope, lack of food desert, & that the train *by* chance kinda serves the neighborhood ok-ish & the street trees (mono-crop & prone to disease tho?) 6' full width sidewalks w/more front yard set-back for houses/houses up a few steps in a nice way often times, but not too steep & steep hill to Johnson Creek, golf course & Reed College border it pretty effectively.
The houses kinda suck tho; no full width 8' deep front porches on all but ~4 of them (tho they're heavy & ~1911+/not as well proportioned as the 1901-1906-1907 houses that aren't as dark inside/optimize light per square inch of glass especially well with the shallower/carefully proportioned bay windows w/fewer roof vulnerabilities & central chimney instead of exterior wall chimney) to share or have graduated liminal space to sit on, keep watch & chat, but feel sheltered & up from the street, no alleys with shop garages/ADUs for some autonomy & use-value for contractors, no round-abouts to slow people down instead of stop signs, inter-urbans, people putting poison on their lawns & leaf blowing all their top soil off.
Look, I'm all for people that use-value live in the community to manage their own affairs & keep administrative bloat down.
BUT, a lot of neighborhood associations can be very inward looking, some neighborhoods are very exclusive & are luxury or second homes that aren't necessarily use-value, either?
& well, small town, 'community' & neighborhood boards can be a downright tyranny, too!
Doesn't mean I wanna call the cops to my own party & invite the city bobbleheads to carve it up for the developer weasels, either, but conventional picture postcard gardening & what 'history' we're preserving is worth asking about here?
It is NUTS, there are literally unimproved roads & empty lots in the city limits or ways to carve it to save lot space across the narrow back dimension of the lot with a ~15' alley instead of a 10-12' driveway going to a garage on the back of the lot that means each neighbor could lose 7.5x50/no driveway & inset garage/slider gate & thru-flowing alley vs. ~80x15 dead-end driveway w/1 more parking space out front for 2 mid-size cars on a minimum legal 36' wide lot w/5' setbacks.
That said, houses shoulder-shoulder isn't always a terrible thing? Can't plant much in the set back zone, can be more secure, but I think the non-combustable sound-proof bulkhead, & lightwell & private lines of sight is a challenge.
Can be less frontage to defend & more secure? Secure easements are rare in SF & they rarely did them for E-Z maintainance or good privacy there.
I'm with ya on the 'too many planners' & 'developer weasels' thesis here, buuuut I don't exactly wanna cheer lead for um...IDK...car uber alles &/or IDK, also exclusive 'history', reactionary & difficult to maintain & sky high property tax status quo, either?
The O had a good article on gentrifying zoning violation harassment. Wanna be solution oriented & curtail graft/scams & appealing to a higher authority...
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/11/analysis-finds-property-owners-in-portlands-most-diverse-gentrifying-areas-hardest-hit-by-code-violation-fines.html
I guess to sum it up; am I cheerleading for this? nah.
ReplyDeleteDo I think the city face-cards can do much? nah.
Accordingly, I can't get *too* sore about whatever they decide; the wind's only blowing 1 way & they're not exactly class-oppositional to big outside capitol & scam leveraged real-estate tax breaks.
It's worth calling out as a non-solution/scam, & maybe reacting to it gets hate clicks & some blog traffic in the monetized spectacle that is all that's left of the arts & media anymore, I'm glad you're watching it (if thru maybe ever-worser secondary sorces sometimes these days, tho you cite & know a lot about primary sources & aren't an idiot like many bloggers at all), but targeting or getting hysterical & focusing all that much at the individual city face cards that come & go isn't productive, if that's what's going on here in the blog?
As to Luke, Woodstock / east county used to feel like Alaska-lite / last frontier late 70s-early 90s really.
ReplyDeleteBut Hobos/tramps in the Pearl or on the skids or Tenemants? Better than being homeless.
But if what you're saying is what some ladies in Oakland or more 'hood parts of Portland said, I'm with ya; would a non-food desert/some options that way & a *little* gentrification & policing so you feel safe be the "worst" thing? Mixed...
Giant cardboard crapterpartments & storage facilities, no thanks, but to *some* degree I see what you're saying?
I rode a skateboard & am a dude/not a suit so I no care really about older hobos & traps surviving on social security fetching up on the skids as Utah Phillips would sing about so much in the day.
Gender roles etc were what they were?
People drank & beat or screamed at their GFs in east county from their pickup trucks, too?
Or famously on the 'Night of the living rednecks' track of 'give me convenience or give me death' Dead Kennedy's album Portland / 'tolerant Oregon' story lol.
& the 70s is a lost decade in there somehow;no? the pivotal decade as was phrased? Think Volcker shock 2.0 likely to discipline labor/debtors, but if they did that now with everything/so many companies as fraudulent & propped up on cheap credit house of dominoes/cards as it is now, it would wipe out a lot of their buddies/donors too?
Easy decision in 1979 tho...
Destroying history is how you rewrite it- 1984 in progress
ReplyDelete^But what/who's history & how far back?
ReplyDeleteLike...uh...it wasn't so long ago people besides white (or european origin, broadly?) people or other living things lived where the 'historic' neighborhoods are?
That said, IDK that guilt or being so depressed that 'history is a nightmare from which humanity is trying to awake' (IDK about that 'trying' part tho LOL) that the 'winners' often get to write & is always contested or memory holed (or just lost to attrition & gaps/unreliability/bad luck?) is real.
If what you're saying is that the corporations, developers & their political cards in the bureaucracy all missing faces are doin most of the writing/framing of the narrative & paying lip service to some 'woke' language or 'unfortunate' brutal truths about history once in a while @ everyone else's expense, uh...duh?