Always conveniently missing
It's fallen off their main page already, but a few days back the O reminded us that residential rents in Portland are going up, up, up. The PortlandCorrect™ implications of this fact of life appear to be as follows: (1) We need more cr-apartment bunkers on every corner, the crappier the better, because that will surely lower rents; and (2) We need to punish those greedy, greedy landlords.
What they never seem to mention in these stories is that property taxes and water-and-sewer bills in Portland continue to escalate steeply, with no break in sight. Last year our property taxes increased 9 percent. Water and sewer goes up around 4 or 5 percent a year. And so part of the extra money that Mr. Landlord is gouging the kids for goes straight to Deadly Deborah and Jo Ann With the Bullhorn to spend on their Precious Things.
But the powers that be will blame the high cost of housing on the people who can afford to own property. Some of whom worked their butts off to be able to afford that rental house. The political class will keep vilifying them, as if that will somehow bring about prosperity for troubled Portland. That and more government-subsidized human warehouse monstrosities where neighborhoods of human scale used to stand.
I would never want the headaches of being a landlord, anywhere. But especially not in Portlandia. It's hassle enough just owning your own house.
Time for another resolution to cap tax increases. And, can we please stop voting for every freaking tax/fee/bond/whatever ballot measure?
ReplyDeleteI promise.
DeleteRemember old post about USSR waste industrial radiant heated inhuman apartment bunkers that were by all accounts fairly sturdy (tho not enough was budgeted for maintenance & they were inflexible for remodel/repair if I remember the gist of your post right?), but like many things USSR, they didn't exactly uh...plan them with (w)Hue-maans in mind?
ReplyDeleteTho, say what you will about the USSR. being uh...mostly bad/sucked (which it was/did), only ~8% of your income went to housing, few if any homeless, progress on rural poverty/transition from feudalism compressed into only ~70 years (with all the deaths/misery that goes with that, but also the progress)...
Truly amazing what they did with what they had!
What have we done with all the wealth winning the lottery for resources & industrial capacity after the war?
Here, we got all the cardboard paper mache bunkers built out of crap materials @ retail luxury rates absorbing 30-50% of people's income, no waste heat or industrial jobs or opportunity near by!
Parking's a mess, homeless everywhere, dark uninviting canyons, oh my!
No real easy way to solve this one.
A bit hectoring/commie preachy, but:
https://files.libcom.org/files/the-housing-monster.pdf
Even the best of / gold standard of public housing (the UK super durable brick 2-3 story w/corner duplexes Council Estates in the best of the industrial midlands/heart land (mostly built just before WWI) have their limitations.
Privitization has made them largely unaffordable for the next generation, along with no more coal/mining industry or other domestic industry adjacent to them.
But they have tall trees, concurrently w/early cars, (there is parking), feel private, not too tall/not taller than the canopy trees, sidewalks, near a hospital, can be lived in multi-generationally/allow people to age in place somewhat (not the most ADA friendly always), divisible to a degree, not real easy to pick up/deconstruct & move/rebuild somewhere else (wet building materials/not exactly a snap together 'kit').
Even so, they don't get the porch spaces or back porch/labor saving outdoor kitchen quite right or solar or wind energy use or roof top green house quite right (that stuff was still kinda 'women's work' & rarely planned around). Easement/alleys are also somewhat rare. Nor are they movable or real easy to remodel always.
Anyway, what am I saying?
I agree that being a small land lord is a PITA & Portland isn't helping.
Do ya move into a fire trap (you should see fire insurance rates in the draught stricken parts of the state w/o the concrete jungle/fire hydrants!) / somewhere rural on our decaying infrastructure? eee
Do ya move farther from hospitals/medical care as you age? eee
How do you tax/incentivize to prevent absentee slumlording & limit speculation?
Do you build corner duplexes & durable, low rise public housing w/sufficient parking, & canopy reserve/green space to help with privacy, prevent heat islanding & feel human-scale-sized that are also energy efficient?
Do ya cut up all those smelted obsolete aluminum alloy manned aircraft smelted with those 'roll on columbia' kilowatts & Riddle, OR Nickel smelter for stainless/precision cast inconel alloys & build durable, water tight, light weight 1 parking space cab-over campers for trucks w/forklift points & rollers on the back like a dumpster & ISO shipping container mount points that are easy to move/no building permits or extra taxes to stem the bleeding a bit?
Got no clue how you revive local industry... mixed feelings about the glass plant by I205/columbia blvd. & its pollution & used to live near it.
Locally, it pollutes, sure. But, globally, shipping the glass farther away pollutes more & takes away jobs? So much like this...