What a fool believes

The governor of Oregon and the mayor of Portland embarrassed themselves in public yesterday, holding a meeting to wonder out loud, why won't anybody build more cheesy apartments in Portland? Because that's the root cause of the city's problems, they say: There are not enough apartment bunkers.

Even if you agree with them about that, the fact that they can't understand what the holdup is speaks volumes about their cluelessness. They think that if they speed up the arrogant young bureaucrats handing out the building permits, and get rid of all the zoning so that the cr-apartments can be slapped up anywhere, trashing any nice neighborhood in town, the real estate investors should come running.

“It is about efficient permitting, efficient time to construction,” Kotek said. “Clarity and consistency is good for developers because time is money....

“We want to know specifically what we can do better to make Portland a place where people want to invest,” she said. “My message today is: the city of Portland is open for business. We are going to grow.”

I had to spit out my Pellegrino laughing at that last bit. If you had to pick a city in America that is not open for business, it's Portland.

Put aside the arrogant bureaucracy for a minute and think of what it means to try to make an honest dollar in Portland. Let's start with the taxes: one of the highest state income taxes anywhere, high property taxes for low services, a city business tax, a county business tax, a transit district tax on payroll, a county pre-school tax, a regional tax vaguely connected to the homeless, and a population that will vote for just about any tax increase pitched by the dozen or more taxing authorities who are going broke paying their retired bureaucrats' pensions. Oh, and don't forget your arts tax!

So yeah, the taxes. What else? Let's think next about the utility bills. The charges for water and sewer, which apartment tenants use lots of, are obscenely high and about to get worse.

And lastly, take a look at who's running things, at every level of state and local government. Half of the elected politicians are literal socialists who assume that landlords are greedy and heartless. They'll be in your face at every stage of your relationship with tenants: who you can rent to, how much of those nasty taxes and utility charges you can pass on to them, and what you have to go through to move them along if they don't pay their rent and otherwise live up to their rental agreements. 

It's a big world, and there are plenty of places you can try to make a buck by building and operating housing. Why anyone would do it in Portland is a mystery for our times. "Specifically what we can do better," Governor, is your entire attitude.

Fat chance. Instead, Kohoutek is about to convene another one of her task farces forces to study the matter. The last one was supposed to revitalize downtown. You see how well that worked.

Kotek and Wilson are joined on the committee by three Portland City Council members, the directors of several city and state agencies that relate to housing development, developer advocacy groups and a number of construction and development companies.

Meetings! A web site! Problem solved.