How is this an example of pushing low income folks out? It seems like Portland is embracing having a shithole full of dependents being caged in a small area with public transit being the optimal option.
Meh. The gentrification in North Portland started taking place about 10-15 years ago in St. Johns. It was what really started the huge movement of blacks moving out to Gresham (well that and the revitalization of the Columbia Villa). Yet, you can walk into the Peninsular Fred Meyer at any given time and feel as if its about 50/50 white and black in there. Gentrify all you want it will never be this oasis of white people like some want people to believe.
There is a lot of land in NE that is basically full of project housing or dying businesses. The area west of I-5 and Interstate is becoming Whiteville, just like Hollywood/Alberta. The swampland north Rosa Parks, and east of Interstate, is a wasteland, though. You'd be fine driving there during the day, but take a drive to Exit 306, go east, and then then go south from there and tell me that it's what Portland should look like.
I'm all for growth, I'm just tired of the PDC. They come in, declare large areas urban renewal zones and divert large amounts of property taxes away from schools, roads, and other city services. They buy up land with tax payer money, sit on it for years and then let it go for less than what they paid for it to a hand selected developer. I'm tired of 30-40 unit apartments being built with no parking. Forcing the tenants to park on side streets and further congest neighborhoods. I'm tired of maxs, trolleys & street cars. Tri-met now has a $1 billion budget deficit. We didn't need the OMSI streetcars, we didn't need the Milwaukie max line. We don't need streetcars to LO. Enough. Stop. Buses work great. Flexible. Cheaper to use per mile. Tri-met was the greatest bus system in the nation. Now it's reducing bus lines and times to fund rail that people don't want.
Meh. I'd say 60% white, 20% beaner, 10% black and the rest weird Asian and Micronesian cultures. My grandma has lived in the same house for like 60 years, right across the street from Roosevelt and this huge Samoan family have been her neighbors for years. They whoop anybody's ass who fucks with Grams, yaknowhatamean?
Its still a seedy Mexican class working neighborhood though. Sure, some hipsters go there to eat at good restaurants, to drink in dive bars and hang out and eat whatever they do. The soul of the neighborhood still remains intact. I don't know on what planet people enjoy depressed communities, crime, and despondancy. While we're at it, why not make sure never to improve the schools in that area so more white people don't move there. Trader joes is a pretty good store, its cheap, foods are pre-made and relatively healthy. That community lost a lot b/c of the slap in the face of a pretty popular business not choosing to set up business. And then blacks complain about not having nice groceries and banks and services in the ghetto. Woe is me!
There's cities with a lot worse of race problem than our little place (we don't really have one for that matter). My cousins grew up in a suburban St. Louis town called Chesterfield and the black folks would get bussed in from inner-city St. Louis (because they had to close down a lot of the inner city schools) to go to high school and they were basically treated like shit. Almost like modern day segregation type shit the way my cousins described it.
I work in the city, and work with city government. Maybe I should move to the 'Couve and wear brown shorts in the dead of winter so I can understand things better.
We keep all of our black folk in NE Portland, like it used to be before Brown v. Board of Education. We're progressive in that way.
Being born and raised in a part of the city you moved away from would help? White flight. You're an example of it.
Good for you. Nice to hear it. What are you doing to keep the neighborhood shitty, since you're a white guy who moved back to a part of town that Portland wants to keep poor?
