THIS TIME, the smartly dressed Bishop Steven Holt wasn’t presiding onstage, clutching a mic the way you might imagine him leading a sermon.
Instead, he was sitting down—though still impeccably dressed. There was a microphone, resting a few inches from his face, though it was hardly a personal instrument of rhetoric. This time Holt was sitting across from the stage—shoulder to shoulder with the city’s housing director—waiting to address the expectant faces of Portland’s city commissioners.
So much of Holt’s visit to council chambers was different from the speeches he’d been giving—at a series of community forums starting last fall—on how the city ought to spend $20 million over the next five years to fight gentrification in Portland’s traditional African American neighborhoods.
But the history lesson he was about to recite was the same. Holt traced the black community’s long road from Vanport and redlining, to disinvestment and destruction, followed by renewal that’s largely left out, and pushed out, longtime and beleaguered residents.
“In 1990, you see what I call the ‘dark chocolate’ extending,” he said while explaining color-coded maps showing the spread of African Americans across North and Northeast Portland and their eventual decline. “And then we see 2000… there’s a switch, not as much. In 2010, there’s almost an absence of the dark chocolate, where African Americans were concentrated.”
His well-worn warning was also the same.
“There have been promises that have been made that weren’t kept,” he reminded the council.
Holt could’ve been speaking directly to just Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Dan Saltzman. Both have spent years in politics, presiding over past plans to help Albina and Boise-Eliot. And both were instrumental in plotting this new $20 million plan, which Hales hoped to spread like salve, after outcry over an aborted plan to put a Trader Joe’s at NE MLK and Alberta. The grocer had bailed on Portland after African American neighbors clamored for more housing and a bigger voice in shaping city policy.
“What we’re trying to do,” said Holt, a respected pastor who’s agreed to lead a first-of-its-kind community panel tasked with watching over the $20 million, “is to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
But this time, even a kept promise might not be enough.
The city’s $20 million plan is laudably substantial. But officials already acknowledge it’s really just a start. Spent as smartly as possible, that money will help only a few hundred families in a relatively concentrated part of North and Northeast Portland. The money will be split between building new apartments, helping longtime neighbors fix up fading homes, and giving a lifeline to would-be homeowners looking to move in.
At the plan’s heart is an acknowledgment of the city’s sins and an implied “right of return” for some of the African American families who were scattered north and east over the past 15 years by rising home prices and a desertion of black-owned businesses and institutions. The city, however, must tread lightly when extending preferential treatment to people who might wish to come back. Because of fair housing laws, it’s not allowed to consider race—extending preferences, instead, based only on someone’s housing history. Whether they’re white or black.
And that’s assuming anyone wants to move back to a changed place where the new residents might not be so happy to see them. Where the bars and stores they knew are gone. Where a cup of drip coffee costs $3, poured by a white kid in skinny pants.
Bishop Holt and the city seem to be betting they might. Not everyone is so sure.
“That’s a pipe dream,” says JoAnn Hardesty, president of the local chapter of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “It would be like putting people in a desert without any water.”
An Origin Story
IT’S MAYBE WORTH mentioning that this particular conversation—this tentative airing of hopes and dreams over what’s been a sore subject for decades—almost didn’t happen.
On March 10, 2014, still hoping to revive the city’s failed deal with Trader Joe’s, Hales tried to play peacemaker by inviting advocates who’d complained the loudest about the city’s process and priorities to city hall.
Then he dropped a bomb.
At his and Saltzman’s urging, the Portland Development Commission (PDC) would spend $20 million more than budgeted or required on affordable housing in the urban renewal area whose boundaries encompassed the Trader Joe’s site and much of the city’s traditional black community.
Hales’ surprise move got the city’s leading Trader Joe’s skeptic—the Portland African American Leadership Forum (PAALF)—to stand at the mayor’s side and cheer the “start to a path of victory.”
It was an important gesture. PAALF, along with the NAACP, had been strident critics of what some felt was top-down decision making at the hands of the mayor and PDC. Not everyone in the city’s African American firmament agreed, but the critics’ voices carried.
They invoked the city’s dark days of slum-clearing and questioned the steeply discounted sale price that had been negotiated with the Southern California developer, Majestic Realty, in business with Trader Joe’s. They hated that the city was finally investing in NE MLK now, seemingly only after it was turning white, and demanded affordable housing on the site—either atop or instead of the grocery store.
And now, months later, Hales had pulled his critics over to his side. Not that it mattered. Trader Joe’s never came back, leaving the city to court the even more upscale Natural Grocers instead.
Hales’ multimillion promise, meanwhile, was still on the table. It was more than anyone had hoped or expected.
“None of this $20 million would’ve needed to happen if the mayor had just put housing on that site,” noted one source close to the discussions. “I appreciate it on the flipside. It’s nice. But the lessons of racism and the lack of good governance are expensive. The mayor freaked out because there was a schism within the black community over this property. It was more convenient for him to avoid the fight by spending money.”
Patrick Quinton, executive director of the PDC, remembers things a little bit differently.
He said officials at the urban renewal agency had already been talking about moving money around the city’s Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area for a few months, when the Trader Joe’s controversy came to a head. Rising property values were bumping up tax revenue forecasts, giving planners more money to play with. And demand for business loans and commercial projects had stayed soft.
“We could try to squeeze water from a rock,” says Quinton. “But this area seems to be screaming out for more affordable housing investments.”
Those discussions stayed loose until Hales was ready to play ball ahead of the March meeting. PDC set to work sharpening its numbers and had a formal presentation in time for the huddle with advocates.
“This can be more than just talk,” Quinton remembered thinking. “We can show real numbers.”
All told, Quinton says about half of the $20 million came from tapping new revenues, with $6 million carved out of contingency funds. Just $4 million wound up properly reallocated from other projects, like commercial programs and streetscape work. (That money’s on top of the 30 percent of revenues PDC already sets aside for affordable housing. That sum’s expected to top $16 million over the next five years.)
But would we have that money right now, and not next year or the year after, if Hales hadn’t been immediately hunting for a solution to the Trader Joe’s fracas?
“I don’t know what would have led to us formally bringing it forward if the situation hadn’t arisen,” Quinton says. “It’s legitimate to say it came as a result of the Trader Joe’s thing. But it wasn’t like we were at the 11th hour scrambling around to do something. We were already thinking about the big picture.”
It’s Not the Same Place
THE SKY CRANES and fancy bike lanes and SE Division-style apartment canyons taking shape on N Williams and N Vancouver serve as the latest examples of how things have changed in the past 15 or 20 years. (Honorable mention: the new Purringtons Cat Lounge on NE MLK.)
But the numbers tell an even more dramatic story.
The Mercury last fall printed devastating census maps put out by the Portland Housing Bureau at a series of public forums on what do with the $20 million [“Worth a Thousand Homes,” News, Oct 1, 2014]. Decade by decade, starting in 1970, they showed the zenith—and then the disintegration—of vibrant inner-city neighborhoods that had been built and consolidated by disaster (the flood of Vanport) and racism (redlining and dishonest bank lending).
In 1990, African Americans made up 31 percent of the people living in a swath of Portland roughly bound by Columbia Villa and Swan Island, NE 33rd, Interstate 84, and Columbia Boulevard. That number, in 2010, had fallen to 15 percent.
More striking, there isn’t a single majority-black census tract left in that entire zone. Some 11,500 African Americans moved away, even as the area’s overall population grew. Black businesses and even some churches—Holt’s International Fellowship Family, among them—followed. Even the black-owned Skanner newspaper at one point mused about moving its offices east.
As Holt lays out in his well-traveled history primer, the blows began falling as early as the 1950s, when Interstate 5 and Veterans Memorial Coliseum smashed through the Rose Quarter and parts of Albina. The hits kept coming in the 1960s, courtesy of the PDC’s prescriptions for renewal and Legacy Emanuel hospital’s infamously impotent land grab on N Williams, destroying a distinctive commercial district.
But ironically, it was the city’s own attempts at atonement that sped up the scattering.
City council passed the Albina Community Plan in 1993, with plans to build and rehab thousands of homes, helping “current and future residents.” Seven years later, the city created the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area and set the stage for the arrival of a new MAX line. Investment followed—especially after more white people, pushed out by rising costs in other neighborhoods, found their way north.
“It breaks my heart every time I go over to inner Northeast Portland now,” says Hardesty, the local NAACP leader and a former state lawmaker. “It’s hard to go through there, knowing the lack of investments 20 years ago when it was predominantly an African American community and the only services we could get were police services.”
When Governing magazine last month declared Portland the fastest-gentrifying city in the country, its own interactive census maps contributed another piece of the picture.
In the census tract bound by NE Fremont, NE Skidmore, NE MLK, and N Mississippi, median home values have jumped 107 percent since 2000, up to $325,000. That tract’s also seen a 30-percentage-point gain in residents claiming college degrees over the same span. It’s roughly the same story several blocks away, in the census tract bound by NE MLK, NE 15th, NE Prescott, and NE Killingsworth, and also around Legacy Emanuel.
“There’s no way people can afford to live here,” says Reverend Lynne Smouse Lopez, pastor at Ainsworth United Church of Christ at NE 29th and Ainsworth. “They’re forced to look at Vancouver or Gresham or elsewhere.”
Lopez still hears occasional stories of women driving in from Lake Oswego because “they don’t have access to African American hairdressers who know how to style African American hair.”
But when she talks to other pastors, she knows even that’s changing. Gentrification’s about more than just housing. It’s about every other piece of what makes up a neighborhood. PDC officials say they still see some chance to turn around NE MLK. But there’s nothing in the city’s $20 million strategy that directly takes on business retention.
“It’s made it hard for African American businesses to stay because their people are moving farther away,” says Lopez. “Everything is getting uprooted.”
Nuts, Bolts, and Tripwires
THE CURRENT VERSION of what’s now known as the “North/Northeast Portland Housing Strategy” began to coalesce last summer and fall under the auspices of the housing bureau, overseen by Saltzman’s office.
Housing officials, charged with spending PDC’s $20 million, were determined not to repeat the mistakes of Portland’s past. Or at least they’d try.
They met with ministers, nonprofit leaders, community groups—anyone who’d have them—in search of ideas and advice. More importantly, they plotted four major public forums—in Albina, but also in East Portland and Gresham—and invited citizens to dine on catered food while perusing poster-size maps and sharing their hopes and fears. Officials say they wound up hearing from 450 people, either at events or in emails or written comment cards.
“We got really positive responses,” says Traci Manning, director of the housing bureau. “It resonated.”
The spending plan presented to city council for approval on January 28 embraced many of the public’s ideas. It also struck a delicate balance. Some advocates pushed quietly for more land-banking. Some demanded more development. Others insisted the city do more for homeownership—building on work by prominent black-run nonprofit Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives, Inc., whose leader, Maxine Fitzpatrick, attended the housing bureau’s forums.
But at the bottom of it all was a concept Manning says Saltzman championed early on in the discussions: the notion that city officials should do more than just keep African Americans from leaving—officials should also make it easier for people who left to come back. That early emphasis helped ensure it was planted firmly in the minds of the public and advocates.
As such, just a chunk of the $20 million—$4 million—was marked for one of the most cost-effective but least dramatic options on the city’s menu: loans for home repairs. Officials estimate those infusions could help as many as 240 families stuck in ancestral homes they can’t afford to fix, sparing them the indignity of selling to home-flippers and moving away.
The rest of the money, instead, will be spent on efforts that offer a chance at a homecoming.
More than a third of the cash—$8 million—will be spent developing as many as 140 rental units priced for people earning no more than 60 percent of the region’s median income. (The city’s already eyeballing land it owns near NE Cook and NE MLK.) An additional $5 million will be spent on down payment assistance and the gathering of a small stockpile of affordable houses (more than 30) for purchase. And $3 million more will help snap up and stash land, more expensive with each passing year, that might one day make sense to build upon.
(One nit? The $20 million, because it’s from the PDC, can only be spent within the boundaries of the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area. The housing bureau’s seeking millions more from the city’s general fund to expand the program to other parts of North and Northeast Portland.)
Less specific, though, is how a “right of return” preference might work. The city’s plan, in fact, makes clear that any mechanism remains a work in progress.
“I do think they do owe it to the people who’ve been displaced to have the first right,” says the source who earlier criticized Hales’ reaction to the Trader Joe’s fallout. “I’m curious how they’re going to go about doing that.”
Manning says she’s been back and forth with the city’s attorneys on suggested policy language, mindful of what’s worked in other cities, but also what’s gone poorly. She hopes to have something in place, “by hook or by crook,” by June 30.
One thing that’s certain: Fair housing laws, which strive to provide equal protection across “protected classes” like race, age, and gender, mean the city can’t explicitly target African Americans. Even though that’s precisely the point of the housing strategy.
While the exact parameters have yet to be firmed up, the city’s workaround will rely on geography. And history.
“Absolutely you can do it,” says Manning. “But you can very easily do it wrong. The devil’s in the details.”
In that kind of system, applicants for the programs funded with the $20 million would be given some unspecified priority if they can prove they were forced from the affected part of Portland at a time when redlining or destructive urban renewal was the norm. That person wouldn’t necessarily be black—but very likely would be, based on demographics.
Other cities have tried variations on that theme. Not all of them have worked so well. San Francisco gave housing certificates to people evicted when the city’s old Fillmore District was cleared in the 1960s. However, the promised new housing and storefronts languished for decades, meaning most certificates were never used.
Manning’s not worried about that kind of failure, given that the money’s already been approved. But she is sensitive to concerns that officials here might still make it so onerous for someone to apply for a preference that they just don’t bother.
“Can we help people access utility records? The library has old phone books,” she says. “People are getting creative about what we can do. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be hard.”
Manning also wants to make sure the city’s money reaches the people who need it most. Which gets to why she was sitting next to Bishop Holt in front of the city council back in January. To make this work, housing officials have come to rely on what’s maybe the strongest glue still binding Portland’s black diaspora: religion.
“The majority of people are still driving into churches within the inner city,” says Reverend Doctor LeRoy Haynes of the Albina Ministerial Alliance. “It’s the one major component of reaching people. It’s the only place in the African American community where you have 100 percent of the population in one place at one time on Sundays.”
Holt, who didn’t return a message seeking comment, was said to have embraced his growing role as a co-pilot after housing officials met with him last summer.
“He just kept coming around,” Manning says. “He kept saying ‘yes.'”
Beyond helping with the ground-level salesmanship, Holt’s the head of a city oversight committee—a feature not included in other anti-gentrification plans—with the power to address the city council and also to take reports from any agency or developer grabbing some of the $20 million.
This potentially awkward partnership between church and state, as it were, makes perfect sense to some observers. They can’t imagine either side going it alone. Others fret privately that the city’s given itself a scapegoat, in case this plan turns out like its predecessors.
Manning admits the city needs help. She’s grateful for it. Humbled, even. But she also was clear: “We’re the ones who are accountable.”
“To some degree or another, it’s been a lot of talk,” she says, just weeks after she and Holt addressed the city council. “Now we’ve got to perform.”
It would be nice if this somehow worked and all the sudden the return of the black middle class sprang up from the dirt like Tupac’s ghost and made all of the liberals feel as uncomfortable do when they have to listen to Tupac’s music.
But I am skeptical that anyone is going to bite and can’t help but wonder if this will only lead to inflammatory reverse discrimination allegations by low income white people who feel unjustly discriminated against when they are not afforded their entitled living space too.
Did you move to Portland in the last seven years, possibly from the mid-west? You, and the rest of the white twenty-something hipsters who flooded North and Northeast Portland because it was cheap may just be the reason why rents have skyrocketed. Perhaps you guy’s could invite the gang bangers from Gresham over for some cold-pressed coffee if you’re concerned about gentrification?
a) Perhaps it is time that the PDC just gave up. The law of unintended consequences seems to have hit them hard. It might be better if the (gasp) free market dictated who the winners and losers are, instead of some half-competent, quasi-governmental agency.
b) Why is diversity only important in one direction?
Great reporting! Thank you for covering this so well. One thing: Natural Grocers is actually WAY cheaper than New Seasons and Whole Foods, and sometimes cheaper than Trader Joes, and, in my humble opinion, Natural Grocers offers a better shopping experience (spacious aisles, limited less overwhelming selections, and very friendly salt of the earth staff instead of snotty hipsters, well, at least at their Gresham location).
Lots of people are being displaced. Why only focus on one particular color?
Lemme take a wild guess here: I would bet this Holt guy must be black – for you can sure as shit believe if he were white he’d get thrown out of Portland for calling black majority neighborhoods “dark chocolate”.
But hey, if you are black you are allowed to use such terms, or even the nasty word ‘nigger’, right?
I thought the headline of this was a joke Denis. Yeah, sure, throwing some more money at this perceived problem would make everything alright. If nothing else, soothe any lingering white guilt, eh?
If one is to frame the argument about keeping any neighborhood ethnically pure, then surely since these were white German immigrant hoods to begin with, I would suggest tax breaks for those who can prove their grandparents made their bones there long ago.
But are we really saying that only certain races should be in any neighborhood solely on the basis of their color?
Yeah, this whole thing strikes me as pretty ridiculous. Neighborhoods are NEVER static, trying to stop demographic trajectories is like stopping a runaway train. These neighborhoods were Norwegian and German before black (and poor). Where’s the hand-wringing for them?
We’ll hear a lot of platitudes and see a lot of crocodile tears from city leaders about this issue. Truth of the matter is, few are really sad to see the neighborhood change for the better (and an increased tax base and development), even if that means poorer people, of any color, move past 82nd.
And how about you (no matter what color you are)? Would you rather visit Albina now or 15 years ago? How about with your family or out of town guests? How about at night?
Thought so.
“If we, as a society, really value socioeconomic integration (and the racial integration that likely goes with it), we must create economic and legal incentives for mixed-income neighborhoods: competitive subsidies that encourage landlords to make properties available to low-income tenants, both residential and commercial, even in neighborhoods where more moneyed would-be residents are available; and public housing that is physically integrated with private housing, not set apart in vast tracts or imposing towers.” http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/ok-gentrifi…
@the Clown’s comment: the Black (or any color) middle class won’t be eligible for subsidized housing. Do we know why the Black middle class is choosing not to live in the area now? Why live in Lake O where there is no one “who can style African-American hair.”
One issue I have with the article and the PDC’s effort is the geographic area they are discussing – The Villa to NE 33rd Ave, includes Overlook and Irvington?!? With the exception of a small section of Albina (Russell south), that huge area was predominantly white working class since the early 1910s. Why is that our history lesson of N/NE Portland starts in the 50s?
Why is the City and PAALF is interested in creating a ghetto? I thought we value diversity. N/NE Portland is now probably more racial/ethnic, and income diverse than it has ever been. It also has a higher percentage of subsidized housing units than anywhere in the metropolitan area.
Why is there no similar outcry to make Division, Sunnyside/Buckman more accessible to low-income and people of color?
That seems like a fair price! How much money would it take to reverse police profiling? This is a rich nation, do we have enough to undo slavery?
20 mil. Nice round number. White liberal guilt dollars there. How many street fixes would that be? Never mind the community as a whole, tears-based budgeting!
For real though; thanks for taking this on Denis. No other news outlet is addressing the issue of gentrification head on like the Merc. Sad to see you go and hope you can bring the on the ground news and analysis to the Oregonian that you’ve brought here
@buckaroo – you’re a dumbass. A concentration of black people doesn’t make a ‘ghetto’. What makes a neighborhood with a concentration of black folks turn into a ‘ghetto’ is government neglect to streets, maintenance, parks, schools, and a failure by banks (ahem, white owned) to provide access to reasonably priced loans for businesses and homeownership. And yes Albina was a primarily working class white neighborhood before Vanport flooded and all of the black folks who migrated here from the South to work in the shipyards were forced to live side by side with working class whites in Albina. But those whites left and black folks were not allowed out of lines drawn by the City and real estate market.
Some honest questions about this:
1)If someone takes the home repair funds would there be provisions to stop them(or someone who might inherit the property) from just selling the house? Because in those neighborhoods with that housing market a little money put in fixing up an old home can go a long way–and who knows how someone on a limited income might feel once they see the price they can get–even if they do love the old neighborhood. I mean a lot of middle-class black and white homeowners in those neighborhoods sold out a while ago when prices started going up because they could suddenly get a nice profit for selling their home.
2)Since they can’t specifically target this at African-Americans, could someone who isn’t black who left a neighborhood because of “destructive urban renewal” as they put it, use these funds to buy a home in one of these gentrified areas or receive funds through the proposal ? How about an old person who might not be black whose home or property was destroyed during freeway construction years ago in North Portland?
3) “PDC officials say they still see some chance to turn around NE MLK”? The PDC has been supporting gentrification of MLK on one hand then putting money into low-income housing further up on the other–but what do they imagine “turning around” MLK is going to look like? There’s already newer businesses on the south end of the street that fit the gentrification mold. None of this is going away. And a lot of black businesses on MLK have had trouble surviving financially for years–the ones that survive are mostly the hair salons and barbers. But do they really think that possibly bringing back a few hundred black families is going to change much when overall the whole population is still going to be more spread over the entire metro?
@the Clown Ghetto = a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure. The term was originally used in Venice to describe the part of the city to which Jews were restricted and segregated.
You are a self-centered dumb ass.
Did you just cite Wikipedia to me? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto
Next time go ahead and scroll down to the ‘African-American ghettos’ section if you’re going to try and get all academic about your trolling. Not that I advocate using Wikipedia as a research source since it can be edited by ANYONE; but if you’re going to, try reading the whole damn thing, dumbass.
20 mill is how about how much mullah my mistress wants me to put into our mansion money pit. A bath tub for 5? I beg to differ. 3 max. Nude roman marble statues at the entrance and corners of the heated pool? A zipline from the east tower to the west tower? New dance floor and lighting in the bomb shelter? I mean the list goes on. Going to have to dig deep into our siberian tiger skin upholstered sofas for that kind of change. When I get to work those interns had better not be slacking off. I’ll have to crack the whip on them. Ironically these our the kids displacing all them po folks in the N and NE. God bless trickle up economics.
@ the clown – the citation for ghetto shows the ORIGIN of the term, rooted in Italian. It is verbatim the New Collegiate Dictionary definition and Websters. My original point was about achieving and maintaining diversity in N/NE Portland rather than trying to reinforce as the “home” of any one demographic.
My grandparents moved to inner NE in the 30s, my parents moved to the ‘burbs in the 60s, I moved back to NE in the early 70s. So I don’t need you “educating” me about the history of this community.
And BTW, my comments are trolling because…..they don’t agree with yours?
@buckaroo – Sorry to have to get all IAN KARMEL rage-ahol on you here but you’re really getting on my damn nerves.
First off, we don’t know who YOU are. That’s the point, anybody that is anonymously posting comments is TROLLING (yes this includes myself).
Second, fuck your grandparents, your parents, you and your Webster’s dictionary. Were your grandparents forced to live in inner NE? No. Were your parents allowed to live in the ‘burbs? Yes. They were allowed to breakdown and setup shop wherever they wanted which is NOT the case for the black folks that were FORCED to live in N/NE.
Third, I don’t consider condominiums, New Seasons, or hipsters adding to the diversity of a goddamn thing. Last I checked North Williams looked homogeneous as FUCK! Seems like you DO need someone to tell you the history of your town because you clearly don’t know SHIT.
Here’s a link to an article by a PSU professor that might teach you about how all this happened…. Mercury recommended this reading 3 years ago as mandatory for all new and oldcomer Portlanders. Check it out.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8vrhzdjE2…
Peace.
Cool it on the name calling, guys! Don’t make me turn this comment thread around. Thank you!
My bad
Southeast Portland used to be a tin shack shanty town, in a mud hole, too. How about we bring that back?
I might have missed this in the comments above, but the rising tide of gentrification also helped black home sellers. The victim narrative here tends to leave out those people. Why? Because complexity cannot be reduced to a bumper sticker. There are winners and losers in every socioeconomic transformation. Hippies are losing out to yuppies, workers to professionals, and the old to the young. Portland is changing almost everywhere, and mostly to the better. Why better? Because reinvestment in its housing stock is crucial. Houses don’t fix and upgrade themselves. You need people with economic assets to do that. Does this mean black culture is being disrespected? No. It means change doesn’t care about color or cultural codes. The people who most resist change tend to be conservatives, but as this story points out, not always.
The Swedish and Jewish parts of Portland are long since gone [the city actually had them at one time]. The last vestiges of the SE Italian community was driven out by the hipster influx as was the working class population. Now Black Portland is dying…dying.
Old Portland is almost dead, killed by hipsters just like the Ptld Beavers were. At least they’ve brought some cool restaurants and a culture, of sorts. Hopefully some of the old school inhabitants made some money off of them.
Again…. The second part of my FIRST comment.
Unwillingness to look at equality with a systemic, historical framework will continue to contribute to the degradation and mistreatment of the poor and underserved members of Portland.
We are not championing PROGRESS with policies which evict and destroy on a mass scale to make way for the new liberal bourgeois class. This culture of complacency that has been established in Portland is thoroughly disgusting, ignorant and ironically poorly informed, particularly considering the focus on responsible consumerism the new liberal class wears on it’s sleeve.
There might still be a few old Italian family farms in Parkrose.
Saint Michael the Arc Angel Catholic Church down by PSU, might still have a nice little Italian garden.
Enjoy your bowl of fucking cherries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8AE-25r3TE