Portland is “going to look like San Francisco in 10 years,” predicts real estate broker Douglas MacLeod. That’s because people like him are buying homes, demolishing them, and replacing them with two, three, or four skinny houses–houses as narrow as 15 feet in width but (unlike row houses) with around ten feet of space between them.
This continuing process has enough Portlanders upset that the city council recently voted to require developers to notify nearby homeowners at least 35 days before they begin demolition of a home, not that the homeowners will be able to do much about it. It has also led the Oregonian to commission these interactive graphics showing where homes have been replaced and how fast they are being demolished.
Of course, few are willing to discuss the real answer, which is to abolish or at least greatly enlarge Portland’s urban-growth boundary. The 2010 census found that Oregon is 98.8 percent rural, and more than 80 percent of its residents are confined to the remaining 1.2 percent that is urbanized.
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Whenever anyone suggests expanding the boundary, people get hysterical about the loss of prime farmland. This is absurd, as proven by a 2001 study commissioned by none other than 1000 Friends of Oregon. As documented (but carefully couched in dire terms) in this publication, the study found that 5.9 percent of the Willamette Valley, home of Oregon’s best farmland, had been developed by 1990. If all land-use rules were eliminated, the study calculated, this would increase to 7.6 percent by 2050–hardly a great cause for alarm. (You can read more about this study in my old web updates.)
After a recent visit to San Francisco where I saw thousands of row houses crammed together on the hillsides, the Antiplanner doesn’t believe that Portland is going to turn into San Francisco by 2025. But Portland prices are rising rapidly–more than 30 percent in the last three years according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which will only increase the rate of demolitions. While prices haven’t reached San Francisco levels yet, the idea that people aspire to turn Portland into San Francisco, and that many residents agree with the goal, shows how poorly people understand basic economics.
Update: Someone pointed out that what the developer said was that if Portland didn’t allow skinny houses, Portland would look like San Francisco in 10 years, meaning Portland would be as expensive as San Francisco. That’s an interesting twist, but the truth is that San Francisco has tens of thousands of skinny houses and row houses and it is still expensive. It is expensive for the same reason Portland is expensive: urban-growth boundaries that contain 99 percent of the residents of the nine-county area in about 16 percent of the land area of those counties (in the case of Portland, it’s 94 percent of people inside 14 percent of the three-county area, not counting Washington’s Clark County). Making housing denser has not prevented either Portland or San Francisco housing from being expensive and volatile.
The infill in Portland has been helped by the elected democrat politicians ( can’t recall the last elected republican) and their planners, that have rezoned the city for the demolition of houses, for row houses and stack and pack high density apartments.
“While prices haven’t reached San Francisco levels yet, the idea that people aspire to turn Portland into San Francisco, and that many residents agree with the goal, shows how poorly people understand basic economics.”
With all due respect, it’s the Antiplanner who is showing a lack of understanding of basic economics. Portland’s increased housing prices and speculation leading to infill is fueled by the Fed’s fixing the price of money. Cheap money is fueling demand for land and homes. It’s creating another bubble in many markets.
“This continuing process has enough Portlanders upset that the city council recently voted to require developers to notify nearby homeowners at least 35 days before they begin demolition of a home, not that the homeowners will be able to do much about it.”
Again the Antiplanner displays a fundamental lack of understanding of basic libertarian philosophy which is based on private property rights. The Antiplanner intimates that homeowners should be able to use force to stop people from building housing they—and the Antiplanner—don’t like.
“Of course, few are willing to discuss the real answer, which is to abolish or at least greatly enlarge Portland’s urban-growth boundary.”
Except many people prefer to live close in rather than in Troutdale or Gresham or Forest Grove or Hillsboro or Sherwood. The person willing to buy a narrow house near Lucky Lab on Hawthorne is likely not going to want to live in BFE on the edges of civilization.
I’m not a fan of UGB’s but let’s remember that San Fran’s UGB was not developed by planners but by tectonic plates.
Many natives of Portland believe the promises of the UGB have NEVER been met. Almost all of the inter urban farms have disappeared. The small family truck farms that we used to enjoy, giving us a good value, and year round access to fresh vegetables, are gone. The Pacific International Livestock Exposition is gone, and Multnomah County no longer sponsors a fair, because their is little to celebrate as-far-as Agriculture is concerned. We have more poverty, and a smaller percentage of Family wage jobs. In East Portland, in the Powellhurst-Gilbert Neighborhood the infill has displaced more than 6K jobs, when the promise was to add 6K jobs, leading to a deficit of 12K jobs. Families with children have left for the suburbs outside of the UGB, leading Portland to be the most “Gentrified” City in the nation, we are also in the top 10 for traffic congestion, and our incomes have not kept up with surrounding states, compared with our cost of living. Unless you are upper middle class and above the area is not necessarily a very nice place to live. We have limited opportunity and businesses located in the UGB have limited access to markets.
Portland’s policies are ultimately anti-middle class. As are San Francisco’s.
Wendell Cox wrote a relevant piece for NewGeography recently:
Piketty’s Wealth Driven Inequality: Virtually All in Housing?
bennett wrote:
I’m not a fan of UGB’s but let’s remember that San Fran’s UGB was not developed by planners but by tectonic plates.
Yes, but a lot of the developable land around the Bay Area is being “conserved” for no reason related to conservation or environmental protection, but for other (and less-valid) reasons.
That is why people working in the area commute to as far away as Gilroy (about 80 miles one-way to downtown San Francisco) and Manteca (about 70 miles one-way to Palo Alto).
Multnomah County no longer sponsors a fair, because their is little to celebrate as-far-as Agriculture is concerned
May 23–25, 2015
Multnomah County Fair
http://oregonfairs.org/content.php?page=Information_about_Fairs_in_Oregon#Multnomah
https://www.google.com/maps/place/7100+SE+Oaks+Park+Way,+Portland,+OR+97202/@45.4723289,-122.6608807,14z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x54950ae7ca8efe75:0xe680316d36cd083
Looks like a nice bicycle trail separated from car traffic, sorry, I mean “taxpayer-subsidized bicycle boondoggle which few will use except for smug yuppies”, will get you there from downtown Portland.
Come on gilfoil. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story.
There is a lot to celebrate “as far as agriculture is concerned” in Multnomah county. The number of farms in MultCo increased as did farm acreage from 2007 to 2012. Government payments to farms in MultCo also declined by 32% during the same period. There’s even more to celebrate as the vast majority of farms are small (between 1 and 50 acres).
But Tombdragon just loves to MSU even though there is this thing called Google.
Of course, what Frank’s link about increasing agricultural acreage conveniently fails to mention is the increase in smugness, brew pubs, skinny houses, skinny jeans, lattes, and other blights upon the formerly idyllic city of Portland.
You forgot free range chickens with dossiers.
https://youtu.be/V8SjkDq2ZwI
At 4,375 people per square mile according to the 2010 census, Portland OR is only a little more dense than the city of Houston (3,515), Omaha (3,218), and Denver (3,698). San Francisco is more than 17,000 in comparison. The 4,375 is just for the city itself and not including the suburbs. Given the fact that Portland is about as dense as Houston and Denver, you could also argue that the urban growth boundary has done little to achieve any smart growth goals.
SF is the very definition of unsustainable because very few children can live there. But somehow the greenies rate it as highly sustainable? I guess they don’t believe in evolution or even reproduction.
Multnomah County no longer support the fair.
http://eastpdxnews.com/general-news-features/multnomah-county-fair-thrives-at-oaks-park-2/
So Frank – here’s the deal – You missed what I said – I said Multnomah County no longer sponsors a fair! In you zeal to bully and cajole you screwed up – which is the point to embarrass YOU and your high and mighty point-of-view! This isn’t your forum, and your participation keeps ideas from being shared. You were so intent on discrediting me who has different experiences and point-of-view you screwed up!
Hey, Tombidiot. I don’t know if you’re capable of reading who wrote what. It was gilfoil who posted the link about the MultCo Fair. You seem to be part of the 20% of the population who reads at or below a fifth-grade level, but MultCo Library can help with LEARN (Let Every Adult Read Now), an adult literacy program. It’s never too late to seek help.
CPZ wrote:
Yes, but a lot of the developable land around the Bay Area is being “conserved” for no reason related to conservation or environmental protection, but for other (and less-valid) reasons.
For example, WHERE? If you can, please specify locations within 30 miles of downtown San Francisco.
For example, an area of gently rolling hills south of Dublin on 680 that’s some sort of reserve. Except no one is using it for anything
Name of reserve? Private non-profit land trust or govt land? Just because people aren’t using it, don’t mean it’s not being used or isn’t worth preserving.
Anyway, Dublin Hills is more than 30 miles from DT SF.
Some of it looks private and some public. Anyway, it’s well within 30min of the Silicon valley core. Not everything revolves around downtown like msetty thinks. The point is that there is build able land , especially in the Dublin area And south by Gilroy.
Yes, buildable land. Build on all of the open space until there is no open space left. Sounds like a lovely place to live. If only Laurelhurst Park and Forest Park were converted to SFH, that would certainly dramatically reduce Portland’s housing prices. Oh. And Golden Gate Park could also be converted to SFH. And Alcatraz, too!
“That’s an interesting twist, but the truth is that San Francisco house tens of thousands of skinny houses and row houses and it is still expensive.”
I find it incredbily ironic that you detract people for lacking an understanding of economics, and yet you make an argument centered around this point.
Prices are a product of supply and demand. San Francisco has “tens of thousands of skinny houses and row houses,” but it is not adding any, while jobs grow by thousands year over year. It doesn’t matter if San Francisco had a million homes in it – as long as there are fewer homes than jobs, prices will rise. The solution to unaffordability is more density, not less. San Francisco has a natural urban growth boundary – the Bay and the Pacific Ocean. There is nowhere in San Francisco to build out so we have to build up. Whether Portland values its open space more than its low density development is something you guys have to decide, but the argument that a large supply of new housing would have no impact on prices flies in the face of economics.
But that’s just it. Housing hasn’t been made much denser. The population density of the whole nine-county Bay Area is less than that of the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area. Almost all of the skinny row houses the Antiplanner points to in SF were built many decades before anyone had ever heard the term “urban grown boundary.”
Sure, people have a fit if you try and expand an urban growth boundary, but they also freak out if you try and build an apartment building in their charming little town. Is objecting to a skinny house going in next door any different from objecting to a housing development popping up on a ridgeline where cattle once grazed?
Even if we removed all urban growth boundaries tomorrow I doubt it would make much of a difference. As others have pointed out, much of the remaining 84 percent of the region’s land is on really steep hillsides, in watersheds that drain into vital reservoirs, or simply way the hell out in the middle of nowhere where very few people would want to live, anyway. But I’d be willing to try it as long as the Antiplanner is also willing to roll back policies that prevent density.
But I’d be willing to try it as long as the Antiplanner is also willing to roll back policies that prevent density.
Yes, it’s interesting how the Antiplanner won’t lift a finger to advocate against a single anti-density zoning restriction, but will fly across the country to prevent a street car from being built. Oh sure, in principal, he’s against government-imposed anti-density zoning regulations. Yes, these should all be abolished – and immediately replaced by covenants that enforce exactly the same arrangement in neighborhood after sprawling neighborhood in perpetuam, now and forever, amen.
The worst possible outcome is for Portland to persist with its boundary AND ALSO to prohibit densification inside of Portland. This is what has happened in the Bay Area. The result is very little added floorspace each year, and thus a rising price of floorspace. So, absent the lifting of the UGB, teardowns are absolutely the solution to Portland’s problems.
The biggest problem is that we have to stop assuming that we know what other people want and value. We need to create a system that allows them to make these choices.
“We need to create a system that allows them to make these choices.”
No need to create a system. We just need to let markets function without interference and micromanagement.
We just need to let markets function without interference and micromanagement.
That can’t be very attractive for planners.
That can’t be very attractive for antiplanner NIMBYs either.
As twitter user LetsGoLA points out, the Antiplanner completely missed the developer’s point about Portland turning into San Francisco:
https://twitter.com/VamonosLA/status/586554132523278336
Indeed, gilfoil. Here’s the original with the conditional phrase in bold:
At best, the AP misread/misunderstood this final passage. At worst, he willfully distorted.
The Antiplanner’s and Portland residents’ NIMBYism is absolutely disgusting:
What a boo-hoo baby. When buying a house in a city, one must understand that the neighborhood will change over time. It’s inevitable. Don’t like that reality? Buy a house on acreage in the country far far away from the city and isolate yourself from the “class issue” you so hate. Instead, they freak out when others want to develop their private property in a way they don’t like and attempt to use force to control them.
I agree with ahwr’s sentiment above. NIMBYs are just as bad if not worse than planners when it comes to using government to interfere with and micromanage the housing market and others’ private property. Perhaps NIMBYism is the reason planners exist in the first place.
Perhaps NIMBYism is the reason planners exist in the first place.
If you mean that planners are a necessary force (a necessary evil if you will) to oppose the stranglehold that NIMBYism has on our built environment, I agree completely. If so, shouldn’t libertarians make a common cause with planners on this, since they agree on this issue?
More on the harm that NIMBYism causes:
http://www.vox.com/2014/4/25/5650816/nimbys-are-killing-the-national-economy
“If you mean that planners are a necessary force (a necessary evil if you will) to oppose the stranglehold that NIMBYism has on our built environment”
Not what I mean at all. Without the threat of government force, NIMBYism wouldn’t exist. Government and planners seen to exist to reinforce NIMBYism. Too bad the AP is a Beltway libertarian and advocates for NIMBYism rather than advocating private property rights.
The last sentence from the gilfoil-linked Vox / Yglesias article:
I’d add:
[…areas most politically dominated by left-wing people] who are rich, bought into their very special neighborhoods, and don’t want any ugly and/or unfashionable poor people moving in so they vote for politicians who create zoning codes to keep out the unwashed proletariat.
Metrosucky spewed:
For example, an area of gently rolling hills south of Dublin on 680 that’s some sort of reserve. Except no one is using it for anything.
Gently rolling hills?? Where? You mean the hills with deep canyons with up to 50-degree slopes in some areas, subject to wildfires and landslides (the latter at least when it rains a lot, which hasn’t been recently.
Metrosucky, you’ve proven yourself not only to be an obnoxious troll, but now a flaming ignoramus.
A case can be made for developing the rolling hills fairly far east of EAST of Dublin and north of Livermore, in and around the Vasco Road corridor. But that area is a long way (30+ miles) from the Bay Area’s major employment centers in San Francisco, Oakland/Berkeley as well as Silicon Valley. Where the needed water would come from is also a big issue, short of buying out water rights and shutting down a significant amount of agricultural acreage.