Comment by jrapdx3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrapdx3 | Hacker News Reader

As a long-time Portland resident I've seen how the city has grown. It's said Portland is a "hot destination", inspiring a continuing influx of new residents. In any case, we knew increased density was inevitable given state-wide stringent constraints on sprawl via urban growth boundaries. A building boom has been going on for some years now with little sign of abating.

Despite the construction happening all around, housing prices have been rising, quite a hot topic here now. There's a political problem insofar as many are convinced that elected officials didn't force developers to create the number of lower cost housing units as promised when the building projects were proposed to the city.

Furthermore many citizens believe that overall the governing bodies have also not looked after the interests of the community, for one thing, allowing real estate developers to do what they want regardless of effects on neighborhoods. There is also dissatisfaction with deterioration of infrastructure, massive increase in traffic congestion, demolition of historic structures, loss of small businesses and overall reduced quality of life.

Whether this replicates San Francisco or Seattle or not, when growth-related problems are greater than necessary there's something wrong with the process. FWIW it is an election year, I suspect the views of the electorate will be clearly rendered and overdue changes made.

Edit: grammar

"Despite the construction happening all around"

How much construction is there, really? Politicians in SF talk about a "big construction boom", but 2014 was the first year since the 1960s that SF construction even kept up with the US's baseline population growth (~1% per year). So it's "booming", but only in the sense of returning to normal after a decades-long depression.

"allowing real estate developers to do what they want regardless of effects on neighborhoods"

This might not bear any relationship to reality. Many people believe this in San Francisco, even though SF is the #1 most development-hostile major city in the world.

It's different here since much of the construction is happening in areas that have been vacant. We have the Pearl district, Slabtown and others in which many new structures are going in. Even in downtown Portland, there are plans to build on street level parking lots, adding to the structure inventory. There is a real expansion going on in this region.

Population of Portland proper has actually grown substantially, >= 7% in the last 10 years or so. The entire metro area may have increased even more, I'm not sure about that. Portland State University maintains a demographic study center with the data but I didn't check there for this comment.

The necessity for constructing more housing units isn't questioned, but there's a lot of discussion about projects that the city planners allowed to exceed the originally planned height restrictions without the issue being open for community input. The lack of procedural transparency in these cases has evoked the ire of concerned citizens.

As far as neighborhoods go, close-in areas have experienced marked "gentrification", displacing lower income populations to the "high number" districts of east Portland where housing is less expensive. So indeed development has had substantial effects on some neighborhoods, whether that's "good" or "bad" can be debated, but it is a reality.

"without the issue being open for community input"

Are you sure this is an accurate description? Many neighborhood groups will ignore opportunities for input, sometimes for years, so they can later block the project and retroactively claim they "weren't given a voice".

For example, when San Francisco put bus-only lanes on Mission Street a few months ago, neighborhood activists said:

"“SFMTA’s red carpet bombing of the Mission was a surprise attack and is wholly unwelcome,” Raeleen Valle-Brenes, an activist from the Cultural Action Network told the board."

Mike Schiraldi describes what really happened:

"Actually, the MTA took out multiple ads in 8 different local papers, notified 31 neighborhood and merchant groups, 8 schools, neighborhood senior centers, posted on Twitter and Facebook, rode the 14-Mission Bus to distribute 1500 postcards, handed out 1700 flyers, and mailed out more than 25,000 more postcards.

They also had these community meetings:

Public Open House #1 (2/18/15)

Mission Merchants Association (2/18/15)

Mission Bernal Merchants (3/9/15 & 3/27/15)

Calle 24 (3/10/15)

Mission High School Principal (3/12/15)

14 Mission Rider Open House @ 24th BART Plaza (3/25/15)

MEDA (4/16/15)

Public Open House #2 (4/21/15)

Public Open House #3 (5/30/15)

Public Hearing (10/16/15)

SFMTA Board of Directors meeting, with public comment (12/1/15)

Prior to all that, the Chronicle wrote about it in 2014: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Muni-overhaul-spe...

And before that, they wrote about it in 2012: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-transit-agency-s-p...

And that last article says they'd been trying to get this done since 2008."

(source: https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/4i5n66/critic...)

> "without the issue being open for community input"

> Are you sure this is an accurate description? Many neighborhood groups will ignore opportunities for input, sometimes for years, so they can later block the project and retroactively claim they "weren't given a voice".

I'm sure that's happened here though ATM I don't remember particular instances. What I had in mind are decisions being made by the city council or bureaucracies with little or no notice to the community. Portland has many active neighborhood associations that try to speak up on relevant issues, but their voices are often unheeded.

As an example, my neighborhood association recently succeeded in getting some attention from the city concerning traffic/safety issues. Without going into the gory details, the salient point is that the neighborhood had been trying for >15 years to work with the city to find a solution before something was done.

So that kind of history is more or less the inverse of the situation you described. IMO the lesson in both cases is that problems within a community aren't going to be solved unless all participants are willing to listen to, and work with each other.

This PSU site may be of interest to anyone who's made it this far into the thread: http://neighborhoodpulsepdx.org/. It has some charts and maps that explore some of the data relating to population growth in the Portland area.

Edit: This is probably a better direct link: http://neighborhoodpulsepdx.org/portland21/growing-portland/...

The theory I keep hearing from thought leaders is: "More people equals economic growth. Economic growth solves all the problems. Bring more people. More people equals good."

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