Founder of Banking Startup Simple Warns His Silicon Valley Pals: Don't Ruin Portland

"It’s not hard to spot affluent people who are scouting out Portland as a possible new home – lifestyle shopping."

Alex Payne is the founder of Simple, an online banking service headquartered in downtown Portland. He's also a transplant who arrived here from San Francisco.

And today, he sent out a warning to his fellow tech entrepreneurs: If you move to Portland, you'd better come with housing solutions. Otherwise, Payne warns, you're going to price people out.

The rising cost of housing in Portland has been well documented by WW, as has the backlash against California transplants and new apartment buildings. The tension over whether this city can remain both desirable and affordable is Portland's defining issue—it probably can be blamed for forcing Mayor Charlie Hales to ditch his reelection bid.

But it's worth reading Payne's essay to see how the city looks from the other side of the exchange. He warns his fellow Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that they run the risk of treating Portland like an adorable consumer good—their own private Wes Anderson movie, essentially.

"In the minds of Portlanders, SF is less a place than a cautionary tale come to life: a shambling horror of greed, NIMBYism, and inept planning. When I meet people who have recently moved to the Bay Area, I half-jokingly tell them that I'll see them up in Portland in a year or two. Based on real estate data, that may well be true.

"It's not hard to spot affluent people who are scouting out Portland as a possible new home – lifestyle shopping. They're in the coffee shops loudly taking WebEx meetings between house tours. They're waiting in long lines for artisanal donuts and ice cream, their children squirming with boredom. They talk about the restaurants – so good, and so affordable! Everything about Portland is, for them, cute. Real estate agents are not showing them the neighborhoods where homeless camps have claimed the sidewalks."

Payne's essay—which astutely identifies the center of anti-transplant resentment as "those who arrived in the early 1990s"—serves as a kind of B-side to this essay by Carye Bye about being priced out of Portland. Read 'em both.

Willamette Week

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.