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GIVING IS IN
VOGUE During Portland Center Stage's recent production of A Christmas Carol, the members of Actors' Equity Association collected over $32,000 for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS in the play's four-week run. I know I speak for all of the Equity company when I say that we were overwhelmed by the generosity of our audiences towards this cause. Since we know many of our patrons are regular readers of Willamette Week, it seemed only fitting that we thank them in your pages, with special mention of the fact that, at least in Portland, the care and well-being of people with AIDS is not a forgotten cause. Terry Sneed BLAME THE UGB According to a Metro Housing Needs Analysis, dated May 1997, the UGB has a substantial effect on raw land prices: "Holding neighborhood characteristics, zoning, and development fees constant, price per acre for single-family residential areas declines steadily from about $150,000 per acre [in downtown Portland] to $120,000 per acre at the edge of the UGB. Beyond the UGB, price per acre falls dramatically to $18,000 per acre, which is a combination of the value of land for rural uses and a speculative premium value based on the presumption that it will eventually be used for some urban purpose." Granted, there is no guarantee that starting with relatively cheap land will automatically lead to cheap housing, but if a nonprofit community development organization wanted to purchase land for low-income housing, don't you think they'd prefer land priced at $18,000 per acre rather than $120,000? Ironically, presiding over the regional zoning process allows Metro to act as the perfect monopolist. By allowing the UGB to expand in only the smallest of increments, Metro is able to keep the price of raw land high, transferring lots of wealth from many families to those few lucky enough to be moved inside the UGB. Alleged price-gouger Bill Gates can only dream of such market control! Oregon's land-use policies have not repealed the law of supply and demand. If zoning advocates really care about the poor, they should end their elitist campaign against suburban development and allow farmland owners to make their own decisions about land use. Until then, we should be prepared for a worsening of Oregon's affordable housing problem. John A. Charles Bob Young replies: I did not assert, as Mr. Charles claims, that Portland's reputation for unaffordable housing is the result of a flawed Housing Opportunity Index. Rather, I asserted that Eugene's ranking as the second-least affordable market in the country and Portland's ranking as the fourth-least affordable market are suspect--particularly when cities with much more expensive housing, such as Seattle and San Jose, are rated as far more affordable than Eugene and Portland. As for Mr. Charles' claims about land prices and the UGB, yes, it's true that raw land prices are cheaper outside the UGB. In part, that's because land itself is useless to builders. What they really need is land with urban services, such as sewers, which are created at public expense. Such land is always in limited supply. Another thing that governs land cost is the amount of units you can build on it; higher-density land is more expensive because it is more useful. The price of land in parts of Utah and California where there are no UGBs is sometimes just as expensive or even dearer than it is within Portland's UGB. BIGOTRY WINS
AGAIN Yes, everyone and their brother is well aware that Mr. Vinton had produced those wonderful commercials for the California Raisin Board all those years ago (which by the way also led to an animated series on CBS that lasted about four years) and that was cute and got its message across. But when this same person turns out animation that makes even the most bigoted work of the "Termite Terrace" boys--Tex Avery, for example, as in his pre- and mid-WWII work, comes to mind--look like an inoffensive elementary-school reader, then the standards have indeed been lowered. No one would stand for cartoons where Asians were portrayed as having excessive buck teeth or spoke with hideous accents or if the portrayals of Middle European merchants would make Shylock look like a saint. However, it seems OK to show the worst possible stereotypes about those who are African-American (crackheads, those whose speech patterns are more suited to a Mike Tyson boxing match, extremely exaggerated extremities on both the males and females) and get away with it. Yes, we know Eddie Murphy is behind this, but Will Vinton did put his name on this as an executive producer. And he could have said no. But instead, he has gotten his money, and the power structure at Fox has gotten another shot at berating another ethnic group. I used to have a very high opinion of Will Vinton, but now in my own view he is nothing more than an educated version of David Duke, and those who are educated or talented or in a very powerful medium that can influence minds more so than the average parent should know better. Randi L. Dennis ALL QUIET ON
THE YAHOO! FRONT It's unfortunate his company's stock has taken a "dirt nap" but the fault lies with him and his executive team, not with a handful of online investors who discuss his company's stock on Yahoo!. Mike Bratter
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