The Affordable Housing Thread

[58rhodes]

Originally Posted by MarkDaMan

The other week I was walking across Hawthorne on a nice sunny afternoon and had never seen more bicycles in my life on the bridge. At least that was my perception. The reality is Portland has much higher bike counts later in the summer. Comparing traffic back to 2000, damned near 1999, let's take a look...



That's really not a lot more car traffic, it just isn't. The second part of your post...



Again, that's just not correct. The sportswear industry inside Portland and Washington County has never been stronger. Freightliner is investing and growing it's Portland footprint. OHSU is becoming a world class institution. Hi tech in Washington County is booming, Intel is just completing it's most expensive, advanced operations building ever. Portland's new tech developers have single handedly added thousands of jobs, crimped any excess office space in the CBD and pay upper middle class wages. These are just a few examples of some of the strongest economic growth Portland has ever seen.

And circling back a few posts...



It's a good thing our developers and architects complete projects throughout the country and the world. For dozens of reasons. And it goes both ways, AAT is a San Diego based company currently building the largest Portland housing development. Had it not been for Key Development of California, Skylab's burnside tower would probably have been half height, if at all. The Pearl's 26 story new apartment building, by Unico, is a Seattle developer. Again, just a few of the many examples of outside money building Portland's skyline.

We can always improve, but Portland is booming in any sense of the word right now. As mentioned by maccoinnich, we're finally getting enough completed new housing development that the prices are stabilizing which should help the affordable housing issue in the long run. Including efforts by the city and state to build more affordable housing.

these are all great opportunities for incoming workers, these are not the people or jobs Im talking about. Im also aware that our developers build elsewhere. But ask anybody across the country about the job market reputation in Portland . I doubt if 2% of the total job market works in the apparel business.