How To Give Your Home A Feng Shui Makeover — In One Day

After years as a feng shui consultant, I’ve seen firsthand how interior design can transform people’s lives in positive and uplifting ways. The month of January is actually considered the best time to prepare for a feng shui makeover since it falls right before the Chinese New Year and during a time when many of us are dedicated to self-improvement of some kind.

If designing a healthier, happier home is on your list of resolutions this year, this one-day feng-shui-approved makeover can help you get started:

1. Start by giving your front door a touch-up.

The front door is the first thing people will see when they visit your home, and it’s where energy enters. It’s worth it to make sure it’s looking its best! Pay attention to how the door opens: Does it crack? Does the lock seem solid? Does it open wildly and easily? Is the paint chipping? Brush it off, and make a note to repair anything that seems broken or flimsy.

 2. Make your entryway more inviting.

Your home’s entryway should be attractive and uncluttered. I often work with clients who have entryway closets stuffed with gift bags, summer hats, and beach towels. Are those items truly necessary for leaving the home to work on a rainy day? Probably not, so you can edit those down and organize the rest into attractive boxes.

Ask yourself: What do I see when I get into my house? Is it calm? Is it welcoming? Does this seem like a prosperous house? If there are shoes, coats, and bags strewn throughout the space, find the proper storage for them.

3. Restock your kitchen.

Ideally, the kitchen should always be stocked with healthy food, which signifies abundance. Pay special attention to the stove, refrigerator, and pantry. Is your pantry optimized for easy access to your most-used spices, grains, and sauces? Optimizing your storage and layout will help you resist the temptation to reach for snacks too. Another important feng shui tip: if your sink (water element) is next to the stove or oven (fire element), you could consider placing an herb, plant, or wooden cutting board in between the two so that the elements of water and fire do not clash.

4. Tidy up your living room.

In the living room, proper storage is key yet again. In feng shui, we try to make our living rooms as cozy and relaxing as possible, which often means tucking away certain devices and electronics. A nicely edited and uncluttered bookshelf is way more restorative than, say, one filled with plugs and remotes. Give those things a home so they’re not on display, give away the books you have read and loved to people who could be inspired by them, and make sure your sofa is not placed under a beam—this could have what’s known as a harsh “cutting energy.”

5. Pinpoint the center of your home—and spruce it up with some calming accessories.

According to the bagua map (an essential feng shui tool that you can learn more about here), the central point of your home should be devoid of tall shelves or furniture. Its main ruling element is earth, so introduce yellow, creams, and gold tones if you can. Consider an off-white rug for this area, which will act as a distribution center for all the good energy to flow into the rest of the rooms. Candles, plants in earthy pots, a Himalayan salt lamp, soft-textured armchairs, and art that promotes health and peace are also great additions. (But no depictions of water, please!)

6. Be critical about what you choose to display in your bedroom.

For optimal sleep and rejuvenation, I suggest removing everything, except for maybe a linen or two, from underneath your bed. This way chi, or life energy, can flow freely around you as you sleep. (There are so many ways to attract positive chi that I made an entire course about it.) After you tidy that up, think about whether everything on display in your bedroom inspires rest and romance. I recommend removing large paintings, electronics, big objects, and mirrors (yes, mirrors!) that could prevent you from being fully rested.

7. Place a small mirror on your bathroom door.

Bathrooms are technically a place where chi might go “down the drain.” Be sure to close the doors of the bathrooms at all times and close the lids of your toilets. I advise my clients to put a small mirror on the outside of the bathroom door so that the chi stays inside the home and doesn’t disappear down the drain. For en-suite bathrooms, consider adding a door or curtain so that the bedroom is separated from the bathroom.

8. If you have a dining room, use it!

Most of us do not have much time to sit for a formal meal at the dining table, but really make an effort to use it this year. Breaking bread is one of the easiest ways to bond and incur positive chi in a home. When not used, you could place a big bowl of fresh fruits on the dinner table to invite positivity. Round, fresh fruits like pears and oranges are believed to attract wealth. You can even put a mirror next to the dinner table in order to magnify this luck!

View the full article here at MindBodyGreen

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Portland Ranked the TOP city for nature lovers

More than 80% of America’s population is clustered in its cities. This, of course, is no surprise. After all, cities are where the jobs are, where public transportation makes it a snap to get around, where you can get a whole roasted pig head delivered with a single tap on your iPhone, where beautiful people congregate in herds. It’s where the entire world seems to be waiting on your doorstep. So, what’s not to love?

Well, the traffic. The pollution. The indignant subway workers. The lack of open spaces. The paucity of gardening. And mostly the inability to commune with nature on a regular and sustained basis.

But here’s the deal:You can have your city and your nature, too. The back-to-nature urban trend sweeping the U.S. is nothing new—it dates to the early days of the 20th century when a rabble-rouser named Bolton Hall caused a hullaballoo when he appropriated a 30-acre lot deep in the Bronx borough of New York for “vacant lot gardening.”

Fast forward a century or so, and the idea of urban nature has become a renewed obsession for city planners and new residents alike. More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that the perfect antidote for the stresses of city life might just be nature’s lush green spaces. Wherever and however you can find them.

Our environment-loving data team is here to help! Because when it comes to being green, not all cities are created equal. To come up with a list of the most “nature-tastic” big cities, we used the following criteria:

  1. Parkland as a percentage of city area
  2. Air quality index
  3. Number of plots in community gardens per capita
  4. Percentage of homes that have a garden or greenhouse
  5. Number of farmers markets per capita
  6. Number of farm-to-table restaurants per capita

1. Portland, OR

Bikers take a break in Portland's urban oasis
Bikers take a break in Portland’s urban oasis.

RyanJLane/iStock

Percentage of parkland: 17.8%

Yup, the city known for its meticulously brewed coffee, bearded hipsters, and artisanal pickle shops also gets top marks for being in tune with nature. Just 10 minutes west of downtown, Forest Park is the largest urban forest in the country—its 5,157 tree-studded acres include more than 80 miles of soft-surface trails. Don’t like trees? (Um, what’s wrong with you?) Hop over to the snow-capped Cascades, the Columbia River Gorge, or the sparkling Pacific coast. Portland might have more diverse terrain to offer the adventurer than any other city in the country. Ski in the winter, surf in the summer, and hike, camp, and explore all year long.

The original article can be found HERE  on realtor.com

 

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Deconstructing Portland’s Old homes

demoPortland’s City Council has given the go-ahead on a measure requiring contractors who demolish homes built before 1916 to fully deconstruct them.

The idea is that the materials become available for reuse, as opposed to simply thrown in the landfill.

The Council approved the measure unanimously. Portland is the nation’s first to pass such a rule.

More than 300 single-family homes are demolished each year, according to Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

“By keeping valuable materials out of the landfill, we ensure the least amount of impact on the environment and neighbors,” said Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, in a release. “Deconstruction reduces our carbon footprint, prevents harmful air pollution caused by demolition and creates good, family wage jobs.”

Contractors who demolish houses deconstruct them less than 10 percent of the time in Portland. About one-third of single-family demolitions would be subject to the requirement, which takes effect Oct. 31.

The city’s efforts would divert an estimated 8 million pounds from landfills.

Earth Advantage and the Building Material Reuse Association will offer training and certification in deconstruction beginning July 18.

The original article can be found HERE on Portland Business Journal’s website

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Shipping Containers are coming to PDX

adu 1What once may have hauled everything from new sneakers to smartphones across the seas and across the country could now be part of the answer to Portland’s housing state of emergency.

At least that’s how Montana-based Montainer Inc. is in part positioning its entry into the Portland market next week. The company, which is headquartered in Missoula, revamps old shipping containers into Accessory Dwelling Units. Decked out with utilities, appliances, a range of finishes and design accents, the units are manufactured in Montana and then delivered and installed to homeowner sites across the U.S.

Montainer plans to officially launch in the Portland market with a demo installation event in Pioneer Square that runs from June 28 through July 2. The company sees its offerings as part of the solution to the Rose City’s increasingly tight and expensive housing market. According to “independent research” cited by the company, Portland has more than 100,000 backyards that are zoned to accept ADUs.adu 2

“We see each of these backyards as a vacant lot, with the potential to add much needed housing for the city,” said Montainer co-founder and CEO, Patrick Collins, in a release. “We are empowering individual homeowners with a streamlined way to add an ADU to their backyard, and in essence, become micro developers who can collectively make a real dent in rising housing costs.”

The company offers a range of different configurations and has a design team that works with individuals to customize their units. Prices vary, but sample configurations on the Montainer website range from a 160-square-foot unit that would cost between $60,000 and $105,000 to build and install to a 1,000-square-foot configuration that could top $325,000 to build and install.

The original article can be found HERE on the Portland Business Journal’s website.

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Millennials love Portland!

2015-06-24-035557-750xx4457-2507-0-472When it comes to their perfect city, a majority of millennials want a thriving job market, affordable rent and home prices, lots of parks and hiking trails, non-chain restaurants and, of all things, quality pizza.

So say the folks at apartment rental company Abodo, which recently released t he results of a survey that shows which U.S. cities are most ideal to millennials. Coming in at No. 4 on the list: Portland.

Adobo surveyed 2,000 millennials in its survey and found that much of what those born between 1982 and 1998 find attractive in cities can be found right here in Portland. In addition to a hot job scene and (relatively) affordable rent, other most-desired features in a city included movie theaters, top-notch public schools, walkability, ethnic food and sustainability. The survey identified 20 attractive qualities in all, and while Portland has about 90 percent of the qualities most attractive to millennials, it does lack a few. Among those: highly-rated public schools and walkability.

The original article can be found HERE on the Portland Business Journal website.

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Portland forecloses on the first of many “zombie houses”

The abandoned house at 8515-8517 N. Portsmouth Ave. has sparked complain00003549420637ts from neighbors for 24 years. Its owner has violated multiple city codes over the past five years and racked up more than $66,000 in liens. But its days as a nuisance are coming to an end.

Last week, the Portland City Council unanimously voted to start foreclosing on five abandoned homes and approved new codes to make it easier to force sales of homes with mounting unpaid liens. The five that made the cut were considered “the worst of the worst” of the city’s more than 400 abandoned homes, says Sarah Landis, the chief deputy city auditor.

Along with the Portsmouth house, the city plans to foreclose on homes at 4112-4118 S.E. 91st Ave., 15803 S.E. Powell Blvd., 7101 N.E. Prescott St. and 9120 N. Tioga St.

All five are part of the Bureau of Development Services’ Extremely Distressed Properties Enforcement Program. Together, these five properties carry a total of 37 liens worth $378,291, Landis says. Much of that owed money is the result of unpaid nuisance violations.

The code changes should help the city get a handle on a longstanding problem that has distressed neighbors and confounded city officials for years. Many owners are neglecting their homes, attracting squatters and other illegal activities, at a time when Portland faces a severe housing shortage. By using its powers of foreclosure, the city can sell the homes, earning funds to pay off unpaid liens and get the homes back into productive use.

“The foreclosure process will not be a quick fix nor will it be appropriate for every blighted property with delinquent liens,” Landis says.

However, it’s a start. The city has been reluctant to use the foreclosure process since the last foreclosure was bungled in 1965.

“It’s an outrage that houses are unoccupied and falling apart in a city where the housing prices went up faster than anywhere in the country last year — 11 percent — and where people are desperate to find housing,” says Portland Mayor Charlie Hales.

Until now, city code allowed the property to be sold for no more than the total of liens and collection costs. That means a property potentially would sell for a tiny fraction of its value, Landis says. The new code allows the city to sell the home for its true market value.

A second code change will allow the city treasurer to recoup city costs of conducting the sale.

In order for a property to have these new laws applied, it will have to be vacant, abandoned and have a long list of violations and unresponsive owners, Hales says.

The City Auditor’s Office will select the homes for foreclosure. The list is then approved by the City Council and given to the city treasurer to start conducting a foreclosure sale.

Even after the foreclosure process has begun, property owners will have a grace period in which they can pay off their liens and reclaim their properties.

“We want the property owners to get the message and fix them before we foreclose,” Hales says.

The entire article can be found HERE on the Portland Tribune’s website.

 

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The city of Portland wants YOUR input on housing issues

28th-and-belmont-demophoto-christopher-wilson-750xx1406-791-0-205Portlanders down over demolition in the city’s neighborhoods will be able to share their laments and ideas with the city during a series of open houses throughout the summer.

The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability’s Residential Infill Project and a stakeholder advisory committee are currently exploring different ways to tweak the city’s zoning rules to help set the stage for future growth and development in the metro region. Areas under consideration and looked at in draft proposals include everything from demolition, which has become a contentious issue in the city’s neighborhoods, to accessory dwelling units, types of housing and the size of new homes.

Looking to capture community feedback on the issues, BPS is staging a series of open houses this summer, along with an online questionnaire that people can use to offer feedback between now and Aug. 15. The bureau maintains an ongoing online open house, as well.

The project kicked off last week with an open house at the Multnomah Art Center, which drew about 100 people. Five more open houses are scheduled for later this month and in July, with the next one set for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 28, at Tabor Space, 5441 S.E. Belmont St.

According to BPS, staff will use the input it gathers over the summer to “refine proposals for City Council to consider in the fall.” After the council offers its direction, BPS staff will draft changes to the city’s Zoning Code rules, which could be adopted by the fall of 2017.

More information on the process can be found on the city’s Residential Infill Project page.

The original article can be found HERE on the Portland Business Journal’s website

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Portland’s Historic Homes

Is your house a candidate for the National Register? It may qualify if it’s an important part of American architecture, archaeology or engineering, and is at least 50 years old, although there are exceptions.

“The National Register recognizes buildings, sites and other properties significant to our past for their design, their importance in our history, and/or their association with historical figures,” says Diana J Painter, an architectural historian with the State Historic Preservation Office, which administers the federal Register program in Oregon.

There are 2,038 individually listed Oregon buildings in the National Register, and 267 of those are single family homes in Portland, says Painter.

oregon-listings-on-the-national-register-of-historic-places-5a128f92a06513fe

Otto & Verdell Rutherford House in Portland, was listed Aug. 5, 2015. The 1905 modest bungalow served as a family home and support center for civil rights causes for more than half a century, is believed to be the first historic property in Oregon listed primarily for its association with the Civil Rights Movement. Photo provided by the National Register of Historic Places

Once a house is approved, homeowners can hang up a plaque announcing that their house is on the National Register list. But there are also financial perks and local regulations for having a house listed.

Restrictions vary by local county or city governments. Check with your local planning department to determine the level of regulation in your community.

Benefits include tax credits, grants and certain building code leniency.

A federal tax credit program can save owners 20 percent of qualifying costs of rehabilitating income-producing building. Under the Special Assessment program, owners can have the assessed value of the home adjusted. And they can apply for Preserving Oregon grants, which are limited.

The property may also be eligible for waivers of certain code requirements in the interest of preserving its integrity.

Here are the properties that have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places so far in 2016:

The 1929 W. Leland James House in Southwest Portland’s Terwilliger neighborhood was designed by Portland architect Harold Doty in the English Arts & Crafts style for businessman W. Leland James, who founded Consolidated Freightways, a nationwide trucking firm that eventually became Con-Way, and Freightliner, a manufacturer of semi-trucks.

The house, with its steep roof, massive brick chimneys and small-pane casement windows, was later occupied by William Gruber, an organ maker, avid photographer and developer of the View-Master.

According to the National Register registration form, the home’s well-preserved, 2,276 square feet of living space includes servant quarters on the ground floor, four bedrooms on the second level, and a basement level that contains a garage, ballroom with a fireplace and canning/kitchen/darkroom area.

The front door leads to a barrel-vaulted vestibule covered in hexagonal terra-cotta tile and an elliptical stair hall with a curved wood staircase and wrought-iron railing. The wood-paneled living room has arch-top French doors and a diamond-pane bay window.

The house was listed in the National Register on May 23.

The 1915 Fairview City Jail museum in Fairview was also listed on May 23. The rectangular, concrete building was constructed seven years after the new city adopted a series of anti-crime and anti-vice measures. The jail was an annex to the 1912 City Hall, which also functioned as a general store, library, post office, dance floor and theater.

After the City Hall was demolished in 1979, the jail stood by itself in city park. The last, original correctional facility remaining in Multnomah County is now amuseum managed by the East County Historical Organization.

The 1918 Arleta Branch Library (Wikman Building) in Portland was listed on March 15. The brick Colonial Revival-style building was designed by Portland architect Folger Johnson and is one of 31 Carnegie libraries built in Oregon, and one of seven built in the Portland area during the 1910s and early 1920s. The architectural style was influenced by Carnegie Corporation guidelines for library design.

Pilot Butte Canal Historic District (Cooley Road–Yeoman Road Segment) in Bend was listed on Feb. 8. The segment has a rough appearance that reflects the use of native materials, and the speed and difficulty in digging the canal, according to the National Register nomination form.

The canal, which spurred development of Bend, Redmond and other central Oregon towns, was the idea of real-estate investor Alexander McClurg Drake who wanted to irrigate lands surrounding the Deschutes River. During the canal’s construction from 1903 to 1905, workers used horse-drawn Fresno Scrapers and steam-powered drills. The basalt floor and sides of the Cooley Road–Yeoman Road Segment still show the tooling marks.

See a complete list of properties recently listed in the National Register of Historic Places at Oregon Parks & Recreation Department: Oregon Heritage: National Register web page.

The original article can be found HERE on Oregonlive.com

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Gentrification hits Portland’s elementary schools the hardest

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160607_TEST_Portland-Op-Amaya

PORTLAND, Oregon—Across Portland’s Albina district, chic cafes advertise pour-over coffee and delicacies such as blueberry basil donuts. On Mississippi Street, hollowed-out school buses and roadside stands sell vegan barbecue and bacon jam empanadas. The street signs read “Historic Mississippi,” a nod to the area’s century-old roots, but it’s increasingly difficult to find spots that don’t evoke the decidedly ahistoric hipster vibe that now makes Portland famous.

One notable exception is the neighborhood’s pre-K–8 school, Boise-Eliot/Humboldt—known as Boise for short. Sandwiched between a block of newly renovated bungalows and160607_TEST_Portland-Op-Orray a strip mall with a yoga studio and a combo bar and laundromat, the two-story red brick building hasn’t changed much in decades. Unlike the neighborhood’s new residents, a majority of its students are black and low-income. Many of their families have been priced out of the Albina area and relocated to outskirts of Portland, a move known as going “out to the numbers” because of those areas’ numbered streets. So the students take public transportation to attend Boise, a revered institution in Portland’s black community. Most newly arrived white families, meanwhile, transfer their children out of Boise into schools that they consider better—and which are definitely whiter.

When neighborhoods gentrify, schools often don’t follow—at least not nearly as quickly.
It’s a phenomenon playing out across America as middle-class white families move into urban neighborhoods that real estate agents might have once called “undesirable.” Think Harlem in Manhattan, Oak Cliff in Dallas, the Bywater in New Orleans, the South Loop in Chicago, or the Mission District in San Francisco. They may be hip destinations with attractive amenities, but most of their public schools don’t get the same love from new arrivals. The problem is particularly acute in Portland, which is already the whitest big city in America and growing whiter.

160607_TEST_Portland-Op-Davoisier… Despite the changes in the area, the student body remains a hair under 60 percent black and only 15 percent white. That’s almost opposite of the surrounding neighborhood, which according to the 2010 census is 63 percent white and less than 20 percent black (down from more than 50 percent black in the 1980s, and almost entirely black in the 1960s). School staff say the neighborhood has grown even whiter in the past six years, with the school demographics changing at a much slower rate.

Portland Public Schools previously allowed parents to enter their children into a lottery and select schools of their choice. Now, the district relies on a petition system that allows students to transfer with district approval—a requirement it said would prevent families from fleeing (mostly minority) schools with low enrollment. But the petition policy is lax. Parents affected by the system say they view it as an extra step, but not one that prevents them from getting their children into the schools they want.160607_TEST_Portland-Op-Aaliyah

This system allows many black students who’ve moved away to petition to attend Boise, but Bacon says even more simply fake their addresses—listing the home of an aunt or a grandmother who still lives near the school. “This school has always served Portland’s black community. They have relationships here—trust,” says Bacon. “The school has delivered for their relatives, and they want that for their kids.”

The entire article including larger photos and additional student statements can be found HERE on Slate.com
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Is Portland becoming the next San Francisco?

Sold homes are seen in the southwest area of Portland, Oregon March 20, 2014. Would-be buyers risk being crowded out by the run-up in home prices and mortgage rates over the past year. Home values nationwide were up 12 percent in January from the same month last year, according to data firm CoreLogic, while mortgage rates have jumped about a full percentage point. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola (UNITED STATES - Tags: REAL ESTATE BUSINESS) - RTR3HYA0

PORTLAND—This city that prides itself on being different has been experiencing a problem all too common of late. It used to be unique, people say, a utopia where people could get tattoos and ride their bikes everywhere and just be weird. Portland was so affordable, as the slogan went, that young people went there to retire.

Then the city got “discovered,” people started flocking here, the tech companies came, and Portland became more expensive. Oregon has been the top destination for people to move to for three years in a row, according to United Van Lines.

Companies including Google, eBay, Airbnb, and Amazon have opened outposts here; Simple, an online-banking and consumer-finance company, moved operations here in 2011 after having offices in New York and San Francisco and has grown to more than 300 people. Portland has a great pool of creative employees, Krista Berlincourt, the head of communications, told me, and its relatively easy, low-cost lifestyle makes for happy employees.“We can give people a salary where you have a great life for your kids,” she said. When I visited Simple’s offices in Portland’s Pearl District, they were emptying out: Simple has outgrown its space and, like many people in Portland, is in the process of moving to a different neighborhood.

Now, housing prices are skyrocketing in this city of 600,000, as more people move in and new high-rises and apartment complexes go up. Apartment rents are rising at an annualized rate of 14 percent, one of the largest increases in the country. More than half of the city’s tenants spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. News stories abound of whole buildings raising their rent by 20 percent or by $500, or more. Evictions have skyrocketed as landlords make room for new residents with bigger salaries.

It’s all the newcomers, some say. They’re driving prices up and they’re pushing long-time residents out. They’re why Portland was determined by Governingmagazine to be the place in the country with the most gentrification over the last decade.

A mural in East Portland highlights the neighborhood’s diversity. (Alana Semuels / The Atlantic)

But that narrative isn’t quite right. Portland prices are skyrocketing, yes. And newcomers are generally the type of people who want to live in the center of the city, near transit and bike lanes, which drives up prices for those areas. But it’s not tech or newcomers that are solely to blame. Portland hasn’t been able to slow its rental crisis because in a city that prides itself on progressivism, many of the traditional tools used to create more affordability are off the table.

“I think that there’s a general sense that Portland is progressive enough to be assumed to be doing the right thing, and that’s not the case,” Cameron Herrington, the anti-displacement coordinator at Living Cully, a coalition of neighborhood groups in Northeast Portland, told me.

Until March, the state banned inclusionary zoning, which mandates that new buildings include a certain number of affordable units. There’s no rent control in Oregon, and efforts to pass just-cause eviction laws have, thus far, been futile. The city has embarked on big urban-renewal projects in the past few decades without putting measures in place to ensure that tenants in those neighborhoods won’t be displaced. In September, the Community Alliance of Tenants, a nonprofit advocacy group, declared a renter state of emergency, asking for a year-long moratorium on no-cause lease terminations, and demanding that tenants receive a year’s notice for rent hikes over 5 percent.

The city has tried to respond. In October, the Portland City Council declared ahousing emergency, focused more on helping the city’s growing homeless population by waiving some city laws to allow the creation of temporary homeless shelters. Later that month, the city council unanimously approved a law that requires landlords to give 90 days notice for no-cause evictions and for rent increases of more than 5 percent. Mayor Charlie Hayes has set aside $20 millionfor affordable housing in North and Northeast Portland. People who have lived in Northeast Portland, which was for decades majority African American, or who have family roots in the area, will get first preference.

But there has been pushback on these efforts, too. Many Portlanders say theydon’t want more density in their neighborhoods, that they oppose big housing complexes and in-law units in neighbors’ backyards. (There is a similar attitude evident in some San Francisco residents’ responses to that city’s housing crisis.)  Some neighborhoods are actually trying to downzone to decrease density.

“There are limits to white urban liberalism,” Justin Buri, the executive director of the Community Alliance of Tenants, tells me. “When it comes to housing and schools, all of that goes out the window.”

… Many longtime residents, particularly minorities, are being pushed to east Portland, a neighborhood referred to as “The Numbers” for its high-numbered streets. It can be a 30-minute drive—depending on traffic—and is full of strip malls and poor air quality and fast-food restaurants and other things that seem distinctly un-Portland. Now, people are being pushed out of there, too.

A map of Portland. East Portland is generally considered the area east of I-205. (Google Maps)

… Neighborhoods that would have traditionally been too far for gentrification are preparing for a flood of new residents, and rising prices. Living Cully, the coalition where Cameron Herrington works, is rushing to create affordability before prices spike. Living Cully is trying to “move as much land and housing out of the system as possible into some kind of community-controlled model,” says Hetherington. Right now, about 14 percent of the land in Cully is shielded from the market in some way, to maintain affordability, twice as much land shielded from development than in the rest of the city, he says. Because Cully is farther out, groups such as Hacienda Community Development Corporation, which is a member of Living Cully, have been able to take advantage of the relatively low land prices by buying land and building affordable housing on it. Habitat for Humanity also acquired land there and is building homes.

They’re also working with other community groups to ensure the city follows through on affordable-housing commitments in a way it didn’t in the past. The group Anti-Displacement PDX meets every other week and tries to make sure policies are in place to protect every neighborhood from the churn that the city experienced in the past.

… The city’s 20-year growth plan anticipates 260,000 new residents will be moving to Portland, largely because, even with housing price spikes, it’s more affordable than San Francisco or Seattle.

Indeed, despite the affordability crunch, companies can still move to Portland and pay their employees well, and ensure that their employees can have a good lifestyle. The median home price in Portland is $345,000; in San Francisco, it’s $1.12 million.

That’s one reason why tech companies like Simple are listening to the debates over affordability and housing, and they want to be cognizant of the changes, Berlincourt said. Companies moved to Portland to avoid the high prices and rat-race lifestyle required in San Francisco and New York. They don’t want Portland to change, either.

The entire article can be found HERE on TheAtlantic.com

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