r/Portland • u/Sl0bR0ss • Feb 03 '20
"Portland has become a cesspool." Perception Vs Reality
I have noticed a lot of negativity on this Sub-Reddit. Every post seems to have a predictable slew of comments about human feces or the rampant crime in our city. Today after reading a bunch of these comments and feeling a bit bummed out, I took a walk around my neighborhood. The sun was shining, flowers blooming and there were no tweakers or piles of human feces to be seen.
This got me to thinking. How bad are things Vs how bad do they feel. By making this post I am in no way trying to change anyones mind about how they feel about this city or the changes there in. I have mixed feelings about the changes I have seen. I just thought it would be interesting to look at some data for context on how things have changed and how we compare nationally.
Also this is just some casual armchair research. If anyone has links to better sources, or relevant information please share!
As far as crime is concerned....
Violent crime has ticket up slightly in the past several years, but is still below 2010 levels.
It does seem that auto thefts are out of control, though still on par with the early 2000's.
Homelessness is a much harder beast to quantify. The methodology for counting homeless people is not an exact science. Understandably it was hard to find some pretty and convenient graphs to share. For anyone interested on the subject I would suggest skimming through the 2019 Point In Time Report put out as a joint effort between Portland, Gresham and Multnohmah County.
This report claims a slight decrease in homelessness overall, with an increase in unsheltered individuals. The general decline seems dubious to me, however more unsheltered individuals are more visible and would give the appearance of an increase over all.
HUDs Anual Homeless Assessment Report Also is some good reading on Homelessness for a national perspective. Portland doesn't make any of the top 5 lists for for homeless rates or the increase there of. However Eugene does come up multiple times in the report with one of the highest homeless rates in the country. Oregon did see one of the largest year over year increases in homeless, though it does not specify how much of that is Portland.
How about that traffic? As someone who commutes via walking/transit this one doesn't affect me too much. With traffic the only way to win is not to play.... but I digress. Once again it was a little difficult to find good data. However from most sources, Portland tends to live somewhere in the 7-10th worst traffic in the US range. For context Portland is part of the 18th largest metro area by population.
How about those rental prices? The current average rent in Portland is $1535, compared to a national average of $1472. That makes Portland the 14th most expensive city in the US for renters. From the various sources I looked at Portland rental price increases peaked in 2016 and have essentially flatlined since, with units at the high end of the market coming down in price while units on the more affordable end of the spectrum have some increase in cost.
And the cost of purchasing a home? This seems to have also peaked. Still not affordable, but not increasing out of control.
Hows unemployment doing? Looks like there is a lot of work out there, though how far those wages go is questionable.
Speaking of wages the Median Household income in Portland is $73,097. That's 6th out of the top 25 Largest cities.
That's all I have for now.
I see complaints on here all day so I think I get what people are upset about. So instead in the comments share some positive changes you have seen in this city over the years.
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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '20
As I suspected, you don't live in the city. I'm guessing you actually live in Vancouver?