A few weeks back, an acquaintance on Facebook posted that she was, yet again, being woken up by the early morning sound of construction on Munjoy Hill. The comment didn’t surprise me; Munjoy Hill has gone through a huge transformation over the last twenty years. The gentrification is well under way, working to displace the very people that have made Munjoy Hill into the “East End” it is today in favor of the well-off people that, after raising their kids in the suburbs, have decided to reclaim their youth and “move back to the city.”
It’s a story that has happened in every East Coast city to the south of us, and is starting to reach the point of no return here. Places like SoHo in New York, or Kenmore Square in Boston — places that used to be the center of specific cultures that transformed cities from the wastelands they had become due to suburban sprawl into the places, after having screwed them over in the 1950s, wealthy people wished to return to. I quickly responded that the sound of construction she was hearing would soon be followed by the sound of a moving truck hauling her butt to Riverton. She responded in agreement, saying “I give it a year.”
Back in the day, the Hill was the place where the older twenty-something guys who liked to party, with Miller High Life and a bowl, holed up in sketchy apartments that attracted the high school girls we would all pine after but couldn’t get and because high school dudes didn’t have access to the aforementioned bait. Parties, crime and good times were the way of the day. Over time, young people, drawn to the hill for the low rents, started to move into the area, replace the high life with a bottle of red, paint their front doors some off-the-wall color to stand out, plant a sunflower and voila — the culturally diverse and desirable Hill was born. Now, like all affordable housing in the city for working people, we find ourselves in danger of losing it.
In addition to the rents being artificially inflated by the city subsidizing housing for people who don’t work, the upgrades to buildings by the people who have rediscovered the city have started to push rents from the seven hundred dollar range to upwards of twelve-to-thirteen hundred dollars. The only help available for a middle class worker? An extra shift or a second job.
The city doesn’t care. The political class focuses on the one hundred percent subsidized poor and how they are the ones that need the assistance. The building upgrades are netting more property tax revenue, and “you middle class people can just tough it out.” Adding insult to injury, they even come out with a two percent tax increase this year, which doesn’t hurt the wealthy and isn’t paid by the poor.
It seems to me this city would just as soon trade us in for the “new people” coming to town, and all this supposed “business” the mayoral candidates speak of. It seems that those of us who remain in the ashes of the great gentrification are being told: “You’ll be taxed until you too need subsidization and oh — we have the perfect apartment for you just off the beaten path and out of sight.”
At that point, the perfect utopia city planners have really been after will be realized. Of course, Portland won’t be the vibrant, diverse city it is today, but it certainly will look pretty. How do we stop it? Seek out the candidates that stress the terms “homeowner” and “taxpayer.” Reward the people seeking city office that don’t just talk about jobs that pay 10 bucks an hour answering phones, but jobs that put Portland to work making actual products that people need to live.
Most importantly, stay away from the candidates bringing in large amounts of “campaign money.”
It’s not coming from us.
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