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Category: Local Interest

Local resources for Portland renters

Local resources for Portland renters

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Did you know if your landlord raises your rent more than 10% in a year or issues a no-cause eviction that you’re entitled to $2,900 for a studio single room occupancy unit, $3,300 for a one-bedroom unit, $4,200 for a two-bedroom unit, and $4,500 for a three-bedroom or larger dwelling unit?

If they enter your unit without 24 hours notice, you are entitled to an entire month’s rent?

Here’s some collected resources and info that I’ve collected over time:

Portland one of the least affordable cities in the US

Portland one of the least affordable cities in the US

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A recent audit report delivered a scathing report of mismanagement and high taxes.

Specific items they unearthed: Lawmakers and voters have enacted at least 20 major taxes that hit Portlanders since 2009. Local taxes on city businesses rose 82% from 2019 to 2023. People leaving Portland have higher incomes than new arrivals. About 40% of transportation assets are in bad shape.

Metro’s supportive housing services tax and Multnomah County’s Preschool for All tax, both assessed on high earners, lifted Portland into second place behind New York in terms of the top marginal tax rate. Portland’s is 13.9%, compared with 14.8% for New York. And: Portland’s homelessness rate is four times the U.S. average.

But fear not, the taxes are slated to go higher as both the Preschool for All income tax and Homeless services tax are slated to increase every few years. By 2027, Portlanders making over $125,000/year will pay a higher tax rate than New York millionaires.

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Brit Floyd

Brit Floyd

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If you get a chance to see Brit Floyd, I can 100% recommend it to any Pink Floyd fan. It’s not a cover band – Pink Floyd officially licensed and let them play their songs under the condition they are exactly as they played them. And boy do they deliver.

Stuff you wish you knew beforehand: Home buying in Portland

Stuff you wish you knew beforehand: Home buying in Portland

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Interesting reddit thread from a potential buyer ‘What do you wish you knew about owning a house in Portland‘

  • Make sure you know when the roof needs to be replaced and adjust accordingly
    • Everywhere I know of is 2-layers for roofing layers. Chances are very, very high that if you want a house in Portland that’s not newer and near the outskirts, you’re going to need a full tear-off
    • If you’re buying a home with a new roof, MAKE SURE YOU ASK WHICH BRAND OF SHINGLES AND WHO INSTALLED IT. If they can’t get you that information, assume it was installed by a homeowner or their friends with the cheapest material possible.
    • Asphalt shingles are NOT sold with year statement warranties anymore. All asphalt shingles are sold with “limited lifetime” warranties now, but what that means is entirely dependent on manufacturer.
    • Shingle manufacturers that operate or sell in the PNW are required to have algae resistance in their shingles. It’s not some special premium thing that adds costs
    • Do not use/buy a house with IKO, GAF Timberline Natural Shadow, or Pabco anything shingles. These are all very low quality “new construction” shingles that, while technically having the same kind of warranty as higher end brands, are going to require 6 month maintenance and cleaning intervals and probably fail anyway. And good luck getting them covered
    • Certainteed sucks right now. 10 years ago they were good.
    • Malarkey is the best choice, Owen’s Corning is decent
    • Most shingle manufacturers have different levels or grades of quality. Owen’s Corning is Duration, GAF is Timberline HD, Malarkey is Vista, Pabco is Premier, Certainteed has Landmark Pro
  • A lot of old and mostly un-remodeled houses don’t have insulation. (I can 100% attest to this. There is literally no insulation in my walls)
  • Almost every house has some sort of major-ish issue that each owner will successively play hot potato with until finally it can’t be ignored any longer. Prepare yourself financially and have a plan B and C. 
  • When you get your inspections done before you close, I recommend hiring different types of inspectors (eg – electrician, plumber, etc) rather than an all-in-one that checks everything. They often miss things. 
    • Don’t skip radon + sewer scope.
    • Have the utilities marked like you were going to dig. In some neighborhoods, two houses sometimes share the outgoing waste line
    • Inspect for buried old heating oil and septic tanks. It was very common for these to be present and were often left with fuel in them when the building converted to electric. Hazardous waste cleanup is very expensive.
  • Make sure to understand the species, health status, and maintenance needs of the trees everywhere on your prospective property including the parking strip.
    • You’ll have to spend thousands dealing with problem trees with the city which requires you file permits and evaluations for ANY tree maintenance you do. They’re draconian and often just say you can’t do anything. Then it falls on your, or a neighbors, house. Too bad. This has happened a LOT.
    • You’ll be responsible for any sidewalk damage roots do – at your own cost.
    • Depending on the age of the house, expect to find asbestos, lead paint, or old wiring.
    • Do NOT be one of those fools who waive the home inspection to win a bidding war. Just walk away.
  • Do not fall in love with a house, there’s a million of them out there. Make the decision with business acumen, not emotions. Don’t let a realtor talk you into it.
  • Check the gutters and downspouts, and like someone else said, do it in the winter so you can see where the water runs. It was an easy fix, but our basement flooded once just because the downspouts were installed in a crappy way and broke during a storm
  • You can be sued if your sidewalks are uneven and someone trips
  • If you can, visit the house at different times of the day. Observe the neighbors – do they have a bunch of cars that never move? Do they leave their dog outside all day to bark? Talk to the neighbor to see if they’re reasonable or madmen.
  • Are there any extremely invasive plants pushing up against the fence line (bamboo, blackberry, wisteria)?
  • Specifically with Portland I wouldn’t buy a house with any sort of empty lot big or small next to it. Just invites tents and homeless camps.
  • If you buy one of the older homes that makes Portland so lovely, it will be your new hobby. If you like spending a lot of your money and most days off on home/yard maintenance/improvement then you’re golden.
  • Heat pumps are pretty good for our area but depending on how old it is, it can struggle in the winter cold snaps.
  • Make sure none of the properties surrounding you have quietly been sold to a builder with plans to build an apartment building overlooking your backyard. You can do this by checking the zoning of the area. If it’s zoned “multi-family” there’s no stopping this from happening.
  • A lot of the past permits and compliance issues can be looked up online at PortlandMaps for free without making any appointments.
  • Some areas only get garbage picked up every two weeks. This was a surprise as we still had a baby in diapers when we moved.
  • If you intend to send your kids to public school, look carefully at the middle and high school assignments not only the elementary. PPS is in a funding crisis that is going to continue for years if not decades (I vote decades). Honestly if I were buying today with young children I’d consider private school costs vs cost to buy into a “good” public school, and would not buy into PPS. 
  • I wish I knew basic maintenance would be triple the cost of everywhere else I lived.
  • Parking.
    • Buy a house with parking on site. In fact you should prioritize parking over an adu. I would pave a parking spot into my yard for guests and myself LONG before an adu. Street parking is a war. If you think you’re ok cause you have a lot of street parking? You’re wrong and you’ll loose it in 1-5 years no matter what. Infill and multi family housing remodels takes your street parking very fast. And if you don’t have a car and don’t think you need one. You’re gonna be wrong. It takes one broken ankle. One new baby. One trip to IKEA or a remodel project to realize you need a car.
  • Observe traffic flow of street your drive way is on. It’s been was worse than we thought.
  • Shade trees on the west side of the house for a cooler home during the summer. No trees on the east side of your house if in east county so they don’t fall on you.
  • Every single person, I am not exaggerating, that I have known that was attempting the building of an ADU, has had to sue the city because they have made it almost impossible to build without paying thousands of dollars in fines and useless hoops to jump through. Permitting an ADU in Portland is insane.
Oregon schools proves again even doubling taxes/funding doesn’t solve problems – they got much worse

Oregon schools proves again even doubling taxes/funding doesn’t solve problems – they got much worse

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“Something has to change in Oregon schools,” Marguerite Roza, the director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University told the Joint Ways and Means Subcommittee on Education last month. “More money did not produce any kind of bumper increase in student outcomes. ”

Despite passing record taxes and that nearly doubled school funding to some of the highest per-student funding (from $9,543 per student to $17,161 per student), Oregon has had 10 years of continually declining student outcomes across all metrics.

The cherry on top came from the National Report Card. It was a damning report for Oregon. Oregon student achievement has declined for 10 straight years until it is now nearly dead last. It’s a sad continuation of one of the most dysfunctional school systems in the country despite over 20 years of completely Democratically controlled policies.

How bad are these scores in real terms?

Oregon fourth graders who were tested in early 2024 ranked second worst in the country in math and tied with 10 other states for third worst in reading. Eighth graders tested in the same time period, who are now halfway through their first year in high school, performed far below the national average in math but close to the middle of the pack in reading.

A full third of Oregon’s then-fourth graders who took the federal test scored “below basic” on the math section, meaning that they could not complete foundational tasks like identifying whole numbers on a number line or locate the lines of symmetry in shapes like triangles and rhombuses.

Forty-eight percent scored “below basic” in reading, meaning that they could not yet determine the sequence of events described in a passage, nor could they fully determine the meaning of a familiar word using context clues. The national average was 41%.

It drew silence from countless Oregon school and government leaders that have been doubling down on supposedly progressive policies – policies that we now have over 10 years of data show are failing dramatically.

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Dysentery cases rising in Portland

Dysentery cases rising in Portland

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A sad side effect of a very permissive city-wide camping policy means that public sanitation has reached dangerous levels. To the level that we’re having outbreaks of communicable diseases related to feces.

Bans on urban camping and home codes have been a thing since Hooverville days. Public sanitation can become life and death health concern for urban residents. Sadly, it appears Portland has reached that tipping point, despite spending $75,000 a month on 130 public toilets (that were all destroyed or stolen)

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Living computer museum is no more

Living computer museum is no more

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The estate of Paul Allen has decided to close the Living Computer Museum and Labs mid 2024. All the equipment was sold off at during several high profile Christies auctions.

It’s a terrible loss to computing history in my opinion.

Update: check out the links below if you want to look at some of the amazing items that were sold.

Links:

Top cities Gen Z is moving

Top cities Gen Z is moving

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Gen Z is making very different choices than millennials. This is something especially true for cities like Portland, OR that went from one of the fastest growing cities in the US to the 6th fastest SHRINKING cities with the highest commercial vacancy rate in the country.

A financial services company used data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to determine which U.S. cities saw the most Gen Zers move in throughout 2022:

1. Ann Arbor, Michigan

2. Provo, Utah

3. Boulder, Colorado

4. College Station, Texas

5. Athens, Georgia

6. Tallahassee, Florida

7. Berkeley, California

8. Gainesville, Florida

9. Columbia, South Carolina

10. Syracuse, New York