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Last week’s edition of WW featured a yearlong investigation of a city program designed to reverse decades of gentrification that displaced Black families from the Albina neighborhood in North Portland. Supporters of the North/Northeast Housing Strategy point to the hundreds of households that have apartments and homes in the historically Black neighborhood. Critics say the policy does little to address the underlying problem: Portland remains unaffordable to most people of color. Here’s what our readers had to say:
Mayor_of_Sassyland, via Reddit: “Trying to undo gentrification is like trying to unshit the bed; you can’t really do it.
“What you can do is recognize the factors that led to gentrification (lack of building new housing, leading people with more money to outbid existing residents for the existing housing over time) and implement policies that help lower the rate of displacement going forward.”
Mt. Hood, via wweek.com: “You can’t re-create the Albina of the past in order to assuage white guilt or claim social justice victory. Who from old Albina would even want to live in new Albina now? The question is, how can we help people thrive today? Where can people build for tomorrow, feel connected, respected and part of a community. And what did we learn from the past that will prevent us from screwing up the future?
“Step one…stop electing idiotic, hyper-progressive, virtue-signaling, delusional leaders with no practical leadership or business experience. They will waste an incomprehensible amount of taxpayer money trying to compensate for their inexperience.”
Iain Maccoinnich, via Twitter: “I can’t help but notice that the two people in this article with the strongest criticisms of the N/NE Preference Policy, Gerard Mildner and Craig Gurian, are both white.”
maccodemonkey, via Reddit: “Honestly—it kind of feels like a new form of redlining to me. The city should have programs to get these families into Laurelhurst, into Grant Park, into Foster and the Pearl and Richmond and every neighborhood in the city. They should be able to benefit from the schools and parks and businesses that have had decades of investment. And we can benefit from having that diversity in our neighborhoods and our schools.
“But I don’t think Portland wants to do that because that would require sacrifice, or at least uncomfortable change. That would require the neighborhoods of Portland to bring diversity to their front doors and confront a deeper history of discrimination. So it’s easier to find a corner of the city to push the problem into. Everyone feels a lot better but no one has to make changes in their own neighborhoods.
“I’m also salty because Portland is still actively ripping down other minority neighborhoods but we’re not asking ourselves questions about that.”
A THIRD WAY FOR ALBINA
WW’s useful look at Portland’s “right to return” policy ends on a confusing note: the idea that instead of atoning for displacement of Black Portlanders by building price-regulated homes in Albina, Oregon should allow more subdivisions outside of Sherwood.
Frustratingly, the article perpetuates a blind spot many Portlanders have had for decades, one of those that contributed to the rapid displacement of many Black Portlanders from Albina. Our potential locations for additional homes are not just (a) farms and forests or (b) “high-rise” steel and glass towers around downtown, which the article correctly notes cost much more to construct per square foot.
WW seems to have lost sight of option (c), four-story wood-frame apartment buildings in the close-in low-density areas that are currently occupied mostly by white homeowners. If these less expensive housing types were allowed to exist more than half a block from our major streets, these buildings would house many thousands of Portlanders and reduce involuntary displacement. But the city doesn’t allow such homes to exist, because some homeowners would be annoyed.
Michael Andersen
Sightline Institute
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