I moved to Portland in 2018, two weeks after graduating from college.

Amid final exams and writing my senior honors thesis, I devoted upward of five hours each week to my attempts to locate housing. What I heard, from nearly everyone I spoke to familiar with the area, was that there was a housing crisis within the city. Friends of mine who had relocated to the area in the years prior bemoaned the lack of housing options that fit into their budgets. Out of the four apartments I toured when visiting the city, three were rented out within a week – all of them were over $1,000 for a one-bedroom.

Renting a room through Craigslist seemed to be the only viable option for a young, working professional like myself, and I was lucky enough to find one that (barely) fit into my budget. Yet countless others I know haven’t been so fortunate.

The average per capita income in Portland is $29,445 per year, according to Sperling’s Best Places, but the median monthly rent for all units is $1,200, according to a 2018 city survey. That works out to 49 percent of the average monthly salary, 19 percentage points more than the recommended amount an individual should spend on their rent.

If Portland so badly wants to retain young, working professionals – as I’ve been told countless times – then they ought to spend more time trying to fix the housing crisis and less time trying to satiate the desires of landlords and monoliths, like the one currently hoping to “revamp” Bayside Village.

Katie Wilson

Portland

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