Quote:
Originally Posted by 2oh1
In the last three years, I've seen the apartment next door to mine go from $995/mo to $1605. I can't even count the number of people I know who have been priced out of their neighborhoods. It's not just new apartments - I only mentioned new apartments because the streetcar has prioritized new neighborhoods over existing ones. And when I talk about housing, I'm not talking about me. I have a place and all is well... but holy cow, I worry. I worry for my friends. I worry for the people who work at the stores I shop in and the pubs I go to. I think we all should worry - or at least care. How do we keep Portland a place where the people who work here - the people who don't have swanky condos and high paying tech gigs - how do we keep Portland a place they can afford? Or are we just gonna shrug and be cool with the idea of it being a city for the rich and to heck with the rest.
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I understand and totally agree with your concern. As someone else noted above, the problem is not unique to Portland. LA housing is absurdly expensive. The median price for the WHOLE county is now over $500,000. New SFHs 35 miles from the West Side start around $700k. You can't find a decent home in Studio City (where I live) for less than a million. Most are 1 1/2 to 3 times that. Home ownership is becoming a haves and haves-not fact of life in this country and I don't think anything can be done about it. Land in our large city centers is becoming so expensive that "affordable" housing is being relegated to the exurbs.