In this week’s Hall Monitor, I wrote about the first of four scheduled community forums meant to help city officials spend an extra $20 million on affordable housing in the Interstate Urban Renewal Area—a snaking swath of land (born in 2000) that’s done, by some measures, more harm than good to Portland’s traditional African American communities.
The packed session, put on by the Portland Housing Bureau was held in the community room over at Highland Christian Center on NE 76th and Glisan, an anchor for the city’s displaced African American diaspora. And it made for a fascinating evening spent listening and learning about gentrification and what feels like, in some ways, the futility involved in even attempting to reverse it.
It also was a vehicle for some sobering reading material. A folder handed out to everyone who signed in held five maps showing changes in the city’s African American community, per Census data, from 1970 to 2010. You can see a community once concentrated close to the Rose Quarter and lower Albina and inner Northeast steadily pushed up north, peaking in 1990—and then, especially in the decade since the urban renewal area was drawn out, pushed out altogether. (To cheaper places like East Portland, a major theme in this week’s cover story.)
Census tracts that were 31 percent African American in 1990, in a city that was 8 percent African American, are now just 15 percent African American, in a city that’s now just 6 percent African American.
They’re worth a look, so I scanned them in. Start with 1970 before the jump, and then click through to see all the changes since.
It’s all part of the plan in the city famed for its planning. Great job Zehnder.
note the absolute count of african-americans goes up in each of those decades.
True, tedder. But more slowly than the city’s overall population growth. And the real number of African Americans in the areas selected for review has fallen by close to half since 1990, at a time when those neighborhoods, overall, added thousands of new residents.
Was there any mention of whether first wave African immigrants were counted in the total number of African-Americans?
There was not… but that’s an excellent question.
Now show us similar maps but by income instead of race.
I get that people with lower incomes are moving further out. I get that the majority of those people are African American, for all sorts of complicated reasons, often but not always historical. But I don’t see a causative relation, “African Americans are being moved out” – correlation doesn’t imply causation. Making this a race issue is unfair, misses the point, and makes it harder to find actual ways of dealing with it.
I am white and live in N Portland and am also about to be priced out. It’s an income thing, not a race thing.
So when did St. Johns come into existence? I guess sometime after 2010?
Denis and others, it was my fail, I was discussing overall numbers of black/AAs in Portland, not in the classic “nopo” area. In absolute and relative numbers there’s been a substantial decline.
It’s an income thing AND a race thing. You can look into a little bit of history (and you don’t even have to look very hard) to find out about racist practices that made it even harder for blacks in N and NE to own or keep their homes and avoid displacement.
@Stu
Actually, making this a race thing is not unfair at all.
I’d encourage everyone to learn as much as they can about the history of Inner North/Northeast -particularly the Eliot neighborhood. The history of it, and how black communities moved out, is undeniably tied to race, and it’s important not to forget that.
I, along with all of you crackers, am very concerned about this. I imagine that like me, you will all be packing up and heading back to Omaha?
Didn’t think so. Offer a realistic solution or shut the fuck up.
yeah, the city is f*cking changing and nothing is going to stop it. ever.
The “nothing should change ever” thinking is what really drives up prices. Look at how horribly unaffordable Boston is. Also, why do white people = gentrification? Most of the people I know who moved to these areas moved because they could afford to live there! In other words POOR white people!
I’d feel much more comfortable with this conversation if it was looking merely at income statistics, as I hate to think we are actually arguing that we need to keep all our minorities confined to certain areas of expectation.
Neighborhoods are always in transition, and many of these areas mostly black were also areas of European immigrants at one time before Blacks lived there…
Kind of hard to give a shit really. I personally never really cared much for North Portland and I still don’t. I don’t have many reasons to go over there and none of the businesses out that way are must see destinations for me. Mississippi is way too over-priced and something weird always happens to me when I go places on Alberta. My Southeast neighborhood is pretty much exactly the same as it was ten years ago. It seems to be the same mix of poor to middle class white people, Asians, Mexicans, and the occasional black family.
“Was there any mention of whether first wave African immigrants were counted in the total number of African-Americans?”
My understanding is that, yes, the Census would include African immigrants in their count of “Black or African American”, although it is entirely reasonable to suspect that this demographic group may have been undercounted. Also worth noting is that the 2000 and 2010 maps do not count the multiracial Black population. The Census tabulates this population as “Black or African American in combination with some other race” whereas these maps are for the “Black or African American alone” population only. This was a change the Census made in 2000 and I believe partially explains the drop in the overall African-American population citywide, although the general pattern of increasing count and % white people in N/NE is definitely still there.
You can check this for yourself. Here is a link to the data for “Race Alone or in Combination: 2010” for City of Portland.
http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tables…
And here is the data for 2000, City of Portland.
http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tables…
interesting fact
i would NEVER use the n word
seems like most people commenting talking shit are people that ACTUALLY use the N Word. So I would make a simple comment that there ARE real people in THIS place that would not APPRECIATE YOU?
I am BLACK and STILL DONT want to buy ANYTHING from white devil Portland exports. Check the FACTS!? Any mayor will rape your child. It is a question of simple morality and courage? Welcome to the palindrome or should I say DOME because the N WORD IS done. You betcha! Same to those commentors here that would TRY to disagree and use PROFANITY??
I’m having a seriously hard time believing ANY area of Portland was ever more than 50% black. Brownsville, NY is 75%.
urban decay: good
gentrification: bad
if you want a nice hood you need to invest in it…so stop being cheapskates or outsiders will do it for you and give you da boot
Maybe it’s not what you think. People are going to school getting better jobs moving to other area’s why do they have to stay in the same place. maybe they are sick of the crime and drugs and low brows that don’t want anything in life. White , brown , black, what ever color or race. We are all sick of nasty sick people. Everyone tries to help, some just don’t want to rise up and live. I’m sick of cry babies get out and do something, we’re tired of paying your way.
cities aren’t static entities, they dont remain the same, ever. whats happening to portland isnt unique, its happening in every single metro around the country. as baby boomers who grew up in the suburbs die off, their children (and some boomers) are returning to central cities. in fact, the whole suburban boom of the 1950 and 60’s is a tiny blip on the urban living radar. people have been livng in central cities for thousands of years…..were talking two decades of reverse migration to the suburbs by mostly white americans. enter current day america, and the children of these original suburban migrants are returning to central cities, everywhere.
After they closed all the old, art deco movie theaters that use to be on Southwest Broadway and built the bus mall, Portland’s character was truly assassinated, but prior to that, when the City built the Civic Auditorium, now called the Keller, urban renewal condemned the property and evicted the home owners of that predominately then “Negro” neighborhood
“that’s done, by some measures, more harm than good” — What a typical Theriault intro to a dry statistical presentation. Imply some sweeping moral outrage is happening with a vague comment, then fail to quantify or describe the real issue. Continue with graphs, implying a point has been made.
As long as Faux news and the Mercury agree that inflaming opinions on pet topics make “important news” or good journalism, we’re all fucked. And no, I don’tfeel more passionate about social issues in portland than before i read this. I feel bored by the outrage machine lever.
Such is the nature of things, as an slavic immigrant who has come out of poverty it’s funny to see all the rich kids feel guilty, poor people dont have that racial guilt and see that its a issue with class. How long are people going to coddle communities and start seeing people as equal, i would feel enraged if my people were looked at like charity.
I understand the sensitivity of this situation, but I feel maps like this lack thorough analysis. Are people of color being priced out of this neighborhood? Undoubtedly, but also plenty of long-time African-American homeowners have sold their homes for quite a penny than what they paid for. They weren’t necessarily ‘forced out’, they potentially chose to move for economic gain because of gentrification. This isn’t captured in these maps, and isn’t discussed much.
One thing I don’t like is the data starts at 1970. NE to my knowledge was predominantly white before the 1950s. The neighborhood has had a long-time African-American population since then, but people are erroneous to say that ‘historically’ it’s always been a black neighborhood.
After that the 1950s, the neighborhood really changed to be a more African-American neighborhood. Was that bad or good? Neither, it is what it is. Imagine someone in 1970 making a map similar to this and that showed the influx of African-American populations to the neighborhood from it being a mostly white neighborhood before? I think doing so might be a tad racist, depending on the point of creating the map.
All in all, the neighborhood lost black population, but also has gained A LOT of white people that make the coloration of the map look more intense through the years as it’s based on % of overall populations. A new expensive condo on an empty lot that brings in 70% white people will skew things big time.
I honestly don’t care who I live by regardless of race. Gentrification in NE is a point of understanding and nothing more. Are ‘advocates’ saying people should live only along racial lines? Should I never move to NE? Should I never shop or eat on Alberta?
Someone tell me what I should do.
Alsooo, what about other races and ethnicities? How does the neighborhood look now?
When a house goes up for sale, it’s fair game for whoever want’s to pay the price. The Elephant in the room that nobody seems to see, is that property tax is what drives retirees out of their life long homes.
Stu, I’d say it’s both an income AND a race thing because African Americans are more likely to suffer from income inequality as a result of racist union policies and a higher unemployment rate. For instance, census stats reveal that a black man with a completely clean criminal record is 5% less likely to be employed than a white man with a felony record.
I lived in NE Portland before and after its gentrification. Post gentrication, I heard more than one black resident mourn the loss of their community – their former black AND white neighbors. Because I think Gentrification disrupts communities – and therefore social bonds – I have issues with any trend which contributes to isolation / alienation. IMO, I’m not at all certain that pricing working people of any race out of the city into its more remote suburbs is in the interests of the common good. I have an issue with Portland’s City Council giving big development, corporations, and investors tax breaks for gentrification projects that do not benefit a greater percentage of Portland citizens.
i will have to move, yet again, after the city and PDC are done throwing money at the interstate area to build overpriced condos with business spaces that stay empty or businesses that are doomed to fail due to shitty parking. I miss the crips and bloods
Aren’t these “historically” African American communities just leftover artifacts of the segregated past? They kept blacks cordoned off in their own part of the city and away from the white side of town. The civil rights movement allowed blacks to leave these virtual prisons and extend out into areas that were once only accessible to whites. However, now we’re seeing this “gentrification” backlash from whites trying to enter and redevelop their old territory. Doesn’t this seem hypocritical to anyone else? My only regrets would be to those that are trying to make positive contributions to the community yet somehow get “forced” out. Any case point examples of this? Site and source.
Aren’t these “historically” African American communities just leftover artifacts of the segregated past? They kept blacks cordoned off in their own part of the city and away from the white side of town. The civil rights movement allowed blacks to leave these virtual prisons and extend out into areas that were once only accessible to whites. However, now we’re seeing this “gentrification” backlash from whites trying to enter and redevelop their old territory. Doesn’t this seem hypocritical to anyone else? My only regrets would be to those that are trying to make positive contributions to the community yet somehow get “forced” out. Any case point examples of this? Site and source.
@ Soul Reaper
It sounds like a bunch of alarmist hand ringing to me. What I was trying to say earlier while also expressing the fact that I don’t feel compelled to tears by the plight of someone that chooses to move a few miles to improve their own financial situation is that there are plenty of downtrodden neighborhoods here in east Portland that haven’t changed much at all in the last 15 years that nobody cares about and nobody has been trying to fix or improve. Cities and populations grow and people build new shit. There are plenty of neighborhoods that would be happy to have some developers invest in improving them. I literally heard someone put forth the argument the other day that people were being forced out of their homes with the sneaky lure of massive amounts of profit. People could just as easily look at 75 or 80 k as a resource and a chance to improve their situation as they can choose to see it as a sharp stick trying to dislodge them from their dwelling.
I will probably get 1000 down votes for this too but why does it seem as if crime problems have shifted geographic location with this supposedly forced migration to Gresham? I’m not going to try to point the finger at any culprits as I am sure it is a rather complex problem but 8-10 years ago the area of east Portland on the east side of 205 was sketchy and a bit forgotten with all the unpaved roads and lack of infrastructure but it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it is now. I lived in the Gateway neighborhood for a bit in 2003 and it was relatively quiet and safe too. It also seems to me based on my own personal recollection that as North Portland has improved it’s crime rate has dropped significantly. For some reason a lot of gang violence sure does seem to closely follow certain supposed paths of migration.
I would also argue that in a way “Felony Flats” has suffered a mild form of silent gentrification. Property prices have improved ever so slightly in the inner Felony flats region and it is just enough to slowly force some of the sketchy tweaky people to move just a little bit further east to the other side of 205 in the region south of Powell. This neighborhood feels much quieter than it was ten years ago. People are probably getting “forced” out of their homes here and they don’t even get a large chunk of cash to soothe the wound.
Part of the problems North Portland experiences are merely based on geographical location. It sits along I5 and is right next to downtown. Improvements happen spottily at first in isolated areas such as Alberta and Mississippi but eventually in 20 or 30 years I would imagine that the whole ring of neighborhoods in the lower east side and north Portland that are next to downtown will look significantly different. It only makes sense that as a City grows and expands areas closest to the central core and shopping and entertainment districts will be changed and expanded.