Simple math
Several readers have pointed out to me that the population within the Portland city limits declined by about 18,200 over the latest two-year period on record. The average household in Portland has about 2.2 people in it. And so that must mean that about 8,273 of housing units were vacated.
So, tell me about the housing shortage again?
Methinks Portland's problems are more about a mental health and addiction treatment bed shortage, and the lack of tough love for lawbreakers, than anything else.
Unfortunately, the weasels can’t make money on tough love or mental health.
ReplyDeleteAnd their operations hurt the core of this culture. And to make matters worse. The media will produce opinions that label you mean, or worse, if you advocate tough love.
Household size is down to something closer to 1.9 now.
ReplyDeleteHousing is not fungible! The evacuees, res ipsa, have the means to escape. The vacated homes are far beyond the financial grasp of the “unhoused”. Repeal ORS 90.245(1)(a), which decrees that every tenant has an absolute “right” to “habitable” rental housing, that can never have any “vermin”( that takes every rural rental in the state off the market), nor ever leak. Give those, the ‘73 legislature deemed too poor or dumb to even have the capacity to know what’s best in their unique individual circumstances, the basic American right to decide if they are being “exploited” by a “slumlord “.
ReplyDeleteWhy should someone who’d much rather shelter their kids under a roof with a leak in one corner of the garage and the random mouse or wasp, be absolutely forbidden from the right to choose this over a tent or a public concentration camp?
Leave ORTLA intact for the time being. A bridge too far. But if prospective tenants and landlords, after appropriate (I, and a couple of other legal aid lawyers drafted the “Notice to Defendant” ‘plain English language that has been required on every Summons since’73. It can be done!) notice, mutually elect to opt out ORTLA ‘s “protections”, why should Oregon make this unlawful?
We’ve rode this Marxist presumption from the “no homelessness “, pre-ORTLA Oregon, all the way down to our current dystopia. Is this modest proposal really (so far yes…Floyd told me Oregon “isn’t ready”) that incendiary?
And why is it that even more oversupply never drives the price of housing down?
ReplyDeleteBecause the City has to extract it's vig... It costs more and more and more to OWN a house in the CoP...whether it's rented or not.
DeleteYou apparently weren’t in Oregon in the early 80s, when the timber industry crashed, and from Eugene to Eagle Point, and every other wood products dependent community, the inexorable law of supply and demand took hold.
DeleteIt has never been about making existing housing affordable for people. It is about the construction companies making bank building new affordable housing on the government's dime.
ReplyDeleteSadly, if an investigation followed the public and private people behind the permits and the money. It would become obvious why it’s a scam.
Delete