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You never know when you’re living in a golden age, but you can sure see the next dark age coming. Case in point: Average apartment rent in Portland is $1,510, according to apartments.com, and it hasn’t changed by a single percentage point in the past year. Enjoy that smooth trend line while it lasts: The number of multifamily units built in Portland this year is the fewest since 2011 (“What Goes Up,” WW, Nov. 19). That disaster will take some time to hit your wallet, but today’s luxury apartments are tomorrow’s slightly dingy but reasonably priced units. In other words: The hike is near. Here’s what our readers had to say:
Rctid_taco, via Reddit: “It’s weird to me how many Portlanders don’t understand this. Twenty years ago, when housing in Portland was affordable, it’s not like we were all living in brand-new publicly financed Affordable Housing. The housing that was affordable was the half-century or older apartments that had often been built as the luxury apartments of their day.”
oGsMustacio, in reply: “Exactly. You don’t invest in building apartment buildings to not maximize your rents. The ‘luxury’ label is also really just a label. If you go look at some of these ‘luxury’ apartment buildings, like the ones in Slabtown, they’re really not that special. The layouts suck, there isn’t much square footage, you get four windows, the space isn’t really designed for the furniture you want (couch, TV, table) to fit in any reasonable way. They might have nice fixtures and amenities in the building that you’ll barely ever use, but the real ‘luxury’ is the location. It’s a desirable neighborhood. That’s why it’s expensive. The amenities and fixtures are a rounding error in the construction of these buildings.”
Mayor_Of_Sassyland, in reply: “Yep, they’re ‘luxury’ in the same sense that Stouffer’s frozen dinners are ‘gourmet.’ Just because it says so on the label as a marketing term doesn’t make it so.”
Alyse, via wweek.com: “These ongoing stories make me crazy. Y’all constantly writing about apartment development and utterly ignoring that the lack of housing supply is the real problem. This city has handed the keys over to rental property construction developers while tearing down numerous existing homes, including hundred-year-old houses whose quality cannot be replicated in today’s rapid pace, cheap materials construction market. How is it that you think more rentals, affordable or not, which keep people paying a landlord and never building real estate equity, are the solution?
“Since Charlie Hales and Sam Adams decided the future of Portland was tearing down and building up and over, instead of preserving existing single-family homes, we have ensured generations of people who work and live here will never be able to call the place they reside their own.”
Willyz house, via wweek.com: “I can only venture my opinion as a multifamily developer and operator.
“I agree that 600- to 800-square-foot studio/one-bedroom product that needed $2.50 a square foot to pencil was way overbuilt. And at the time the bulk of those unit types were being permitted, say, 2015 to 2020, there was indeed an endless stream of tech bros coming in, along with career baristas, massage school matriculators and premature retirees. Those economics were unsustainable, but it’s important to note that developers overbuilding is actually part of what produces housing equilibrium. Overbuilding (too much supply) is the pendulum swinging too far one direction, which means that optimistic developers take less profit to get in on the gold rush and tenants have more choices.
“Today, permitting time, shortage of available land, inclusionary zoning, permitting cost, construction cost, extreme tenant advantage, crime, insurance costs, utility costs, skyrocketing taxes, increasing labor cost, high interest rates, and increasing vacancy are severe disincentives to new project development.
“That’s a pretty big list of obstacles, and most of those problems are pretty intractable. From my perspective, unless rents go up and vacancies go down, this building slump will steepen, and it’s going to be a long time before housing equilibrium is reached.
“This lack of apartment starts is a supply problem, pure and simple. As long as these knuckleheads continue to exacerbate the items on my list of obstacles, the supply will not recover and rents will stay high. Until we overbuild (that’s right—overbuild) the right product (family-sized units on the periphery of the center city with limited amenities), rents will stay high.”
KINDERGARTEN ENTRY IS THE REAL STORY
So much attention to a minor, possibly imaginary, squabble between two women [“Kindergarten Cop,” WW, Nov. 11] and so little concern about the stupidity, injustice, and cruelty of forcing children to spend TWELVE YEARS in an inappropriate grade placement because they were born a few days after an arbitrary date and the district can’t be bothered to assess them.
Early entry is a well-researched, evidence-informed best practice.
Margaret DeLacy
Southeast Portland
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:
P.O. Box 10770
Portland, OR 97296
Email: amesh@wweek.com
