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To conclude the year 2022, WW compared Portland to similarly sized cities on several measurements, both serious (homicides, stolen cars and homelessness) and not (tallest building, best-known Wheeler). What we found was a city that had more empty offices than its peers but fewer available homes (“How We Rate,” Dec. 21). Our findings informed this week’s cover story, which sets an agenda for Portland to pursue in 2023. They also drew some frustration from our readers—both at the state of the city and WW’s methodology.
Mid County, via wweek.com: “I applaud WW for doing these annual ‘apples to apples’ statistical comparisons. While I have issue with some conclusions, it is interesting seeing where we are with near peer cities.
“The real eye opener this year is ranking on the high end of a number of negative comparison points. We knew things were bad, but seeing how worse, wow! Some were obvious (e.g., office space vacancy, low numbers of police), others rather sobering (e.g., highest number of school shootings, third overall in murders only behind Oakland and Memphis).
“The conclusion that the lack of rentals equated to the size of a visible homeless population does not pass muster. For example, using the logic behind the conclusion, Seattle’s 5% vacancy rate should mean they should not have a homeless crisis that is worse than if not equal to the one here.”
BigMtnFudgecake, via Reddit: “Most surprising thing about this is how much Denver surpasses us in both number of homeless people and number of car thefts. I was just there and saw a relatively low number of unsheltered people compared to here and Seattle. Also very few tents. Could’ve been the time of year, but I wonder about this. Do they have a lot more shelter space than we do? Definitely seems like there’s a lot more developable land there.”
Noctifer Duma, via Facebook: “Use some common-sense metrics. Size of the buildings? Number of councilors? What the hell was the point of spending 10% of the page with pictures of metro lines? Who cares what the metro lines look like? I’m surprised you didn’t throw in a ‘number of Starbucks’ as a success metric in there…
“I’ve seen less useless click-bait in those things making the rounds where they tell you 90% of the joke and then hide the punchline at the bottom of a page with a bunch of other less-funny jokes.”
NoPo Resident, via wweek.com: “Had a visit from a friend who grew up in Portland but is now in L.A. She wanted to know how I felt now that the city was back to 1980s in vibe and appearance. I said I was sad but the Portlandia version wasn’t working well either. We agreed that at least in the ‘80s we had Satyricon and our outlier vibe was true. Without that, Portland is just a gray city with lots of tents, trash and empty buildings.”
idleBytes, via Reddit: “Ooof, this article is pretty bad.
“Demographics. Yes, we know Portland is very white. Everyone knows this, we’ve known this for decades. Oregon is very white. The state was founded as a white haven and was pretty damn racist all the way through the ‘90s. Still is pretty damn racist. How is this news?
“Taxes. Good lord, at least call it the marginal income tax rate. People in Seattle pay zero taxes, I gotta get there! Unless you’re in the top 20% of earners in Seattle you pay the same or more of your income in taxes (sales, excise, property and income). They might as well have just called out how low our taxes are because we have 0% sales tax. Also, who cares if people making 400K (top 1%) actually have to pay taxes. Should we be like Washington and only make them pay 3% while the bottom 20% are paying 18% of their income in taxes?
“Why is tallest building in there? Like it changes yearly? Best-known Wheeler, wtf? This is some click-bait nonsense the likes of which you’d see from Sinclair. The most interesting thing I found was Denver has the same beer taxes as Portland. Despite that, beer in Denver is significantly more expensive.”
Brandon J Vogelpohl, via Facebook: “Don’t compare to other cities. We need to compare our city by how we were a year ago or even five years ago.”
Corrections
Our most recent cover story (“How We Rate,” WW, Dec. 21, 2022) incorrectly counted the number of Portland Thorns championships since 2013. It’s three, not two. We also incorrectly described Seattle as having a higher rate of homelessness than Portland. It’s slightly lower. WW regrets the errors.
Letters to the editor must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: PO Box 10770, Portland OR, 97296 Email: mzusman@wweek.com
