GENTRIFY PORTLAND RENT

When gentrify Portland rent goes too high, who packs up and leaves? Image via DG Studios

What else goes up with gentrify Portland rent? Your blood pressure.

Once upon a time the chase for the lowest rent led to some pretty sketchy dwellings.

It was a contest to find the worst place for the lowest rent.

A young single man seeking low rent in college is one thing. A single man seeking the adventure of low rent is another.

From a trash room converted to a loft in Eugene, a former barn for horse drawn fire engines converted to a one bedroom apartment in Center City Philadelphia, to an infested apartment in Portland, low rent was the name of the game.

But getting forced from one dump to worse under the guise of gentrify Portland rent is taking things to a whole ‘nother level.

And it happens all the time.

Portland was a different city in 1980. My first apartment turned into gentrify Portland rent, but not right away.

It was a studio apartment, what they call a one bedroom without the bedroom, on NW Lovejoy between 20th and 21st.

How sketchy was that neighborhood back then?

I signed the rental papers in a biker bar where the pimp/manager liked to hustle customers for the apartments he rented by the half hour.

The under-the-radar whorehouse business worked until his wife found him someplace he didn’t belong. It all blew up when he accidentally parked his car through his living room wall.

In my first few months I saw two neighbors slug it out in a drunken brawl on the sidewalk.

The smaller man knew how to stick and move, knew how to box, and kept saying, “We don’t have to do this,” after each jab.

I was the new guy and didn’t know who to cheer for.

Soon after, another neighbor smoked a joint, dropped the cherry on his couch. He threw a glass of water on it and left it to catch fire. A half hour later I low crawled down the smoke choked hallway to safety.

He explained the story after he got evicted.

The corner grocery store, Paola’s/now Starbucks, was robbed at gunpoint. The robber showed he meant business by shooting a row of canned beans.

I got into it with one of the street locals, but that’s another story.

My NW Portland neighborhood had it all, drugs, crime, violence, and low rent.

Gentrify Portland rent changed all that.

The apartment building went on the market and a new owner stepped up. Along with new renters.

An addict couple in recovery lived below me. Their claim to fame was being the inspiration for Gus Van Sant’s Drug Store Cowboy.

When they left a nurse moved in. First she was a nursing student. Other new neighbors were sales managers, artists, city workers, accountable people with good manners.

One day the rent jumped. The next month I jumped down the block to the corner of 20th and NW Lovejoy and a one bedroom for $150. Low rent with bugs is still low rent. Eventually the bugs died off.

One day the rent jumped to $260. The next month I jumped across the river to SE 11th and Lincoln where $260 bought three bedrooms in a two story apartment house with four units.

More NW Portland businesses moved to SE and started the hipster renaissance you see today.

Now it’s cutting edge restaurants, breweries, and vintage everything on display in neighborhoods enjoying the spot light after decades in the shadow of Portland’s West Hills.

Good money and good sense bought NW property in the early 80’s. Good money and good timing would have bought property in SE in the mid-80’s.

People who put down roots, who raised kids in the neighborhoods, whose kids went to the local schools, stayed put with a sense of permanence. But we all know the transient nature of permanence?

Those are some of the folks gentrify Portland rent squeezes with increased property values. When fixed incomes don’t climb with increasing property taxes, the longtime residents are the first casualty.

Neighborhoods suffer when they lose the spoken word history passed between new and old residents.

Eventually Portland will be packed full of people talking about where they come from, not where they are.

Are we there yet? Are you?