I'm feeling a bit stifled in my city and want to move. My priorities are $1500-2000/mo rent and a path to an affordable house (see: picture), a unionised city workforce, good greenspace with an extensive parks system, good biking infrastructure, a good public university, and a good political scene. That leaves Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, and maybe an East Coast city I haven't researched yet. Of those, Portland is at the top of my list because I'm getting an ocean for Great Lakes prices.
What's bad about the city that makes people move away? Is there a better option in Oregon, especially one that would let me commute into Portland without whatever problems it has?
I love Oregon in general and Portland in particular.
There are better housing options than the one you shared. I have an artist friend who was recently able to get a new 2/1 townhome for like $250k.
The green space is truly top tier. There are so many trees. It's lovely.
The politics are not as good as you'd hope, maybe, but better than a lot of places in the US. We just drastically diluted the business lobby's stranglehold on city council, so that should be improving.
The lack of sun does fuck people up, for sure. Sun sets at like 4 in the middle of winter. I just deal with it by having winter hobbies like skiing (good skiing within an hour and a half of downtown) and whitewater kayaking (good whitewater the same distance away).
On the flip side, during the summer there's only sun. If you haven't lived on the West Coast you might not be used to it, but it simply does not rain at all in the summer. Could be good or bad depending on your perspective. We do have some water security, but it can fluctuate a lot. With the severe lack of snow this winter we'll almost certainly be in a drought and have a pretty bad fire season.
The public transit is still pretty good for a city its size, but has been dying a death of a thousand cuts due to austerity. I find a bike is the best way to get around town, but you'll have to be prepared to ride on shared streets: there aren't as many separated bike paths like MPLS.
I think people mostly move because the rent is really high compared to wages. A lot of artists moved to Olympia, Washington, but I can't really speak about it. Astoria is great if you can handle it being cold and cloudy most of the year. Salem is like tiny Portland with worse amenities. Eugene is home to the University of Oregon, which is huge, and basically dominates the priorities of the city. Ashland is a tiny but cute town known for its Shakespeare festival. East of the Cascades you get into turbo-racism country and I would definitely avoid living there. Bend has okay politics but is incredibly unaffordable except for retirees and the bike infra is bad.
I mean we always hope for more but Portland and Seattle both are stuffed with socialists (a minority but growing due to young people "aging in" and the obvious collapse of liberalism). I'm probably bubbled but I'm observing the socialists moving toward Marxism, and the liberals moving left toward Democratic socialism pretty quickly. Of course, there's a good chance that when AOC wins the presidency in 28 the brakes are slammed on that process, just like with Biden...
Any time Portland gets anyone left of center in there's a huge backlash and swing back to the right. Our AG used to be a Republican until 2016, for example. The mayor has been doing his best to stop using homeless money on rental assistance and public housing. And of course the local news outlets just put out constant hit pieces.
I've been pretty jealous of Seattle with Sawant and their new mayor.
True but for Portland the new charter is going to be huge, I just think it will take a couple of election cycles to "burn in". The DSAers finally got a foothold and they will only get better with governing experience. Im sure one of them will be mayor material before too long