To Measure How Portland Is Doing, Let’s Compare Ourselves to Other Cities

The year’s end is a good time for taking stock.

Maybe it’s the looming deadline of New Year’s resolutions. Or the sight of George Bailey seeing that, without him, Bedford Falls would look like Elon Musk’s Twitter. Could just be one too many glasses of eggnog. Whatever the reason, the holiday season is when a lot of us ruminate on who we’ve become—and what we could be.

Across the city, Portland is engaged in some self-reflection. We just completed an election where voters threw out 100 years of tradition and approved a complete overhaul of city government. Three in four Portlanders told a pollster this fall that the city was heading in the wrong direction. We don’t like who we’ve become.

But it’s hard to measure yourself against yourself. Sometimes, like an envious Peacock Lane decorator, you need to look at a neighbor.

It’s a mantra in WW’s newsroom: Any story about a Portland problem requires national context. That’s why we regularly run a feature called “Where We’re At,” which compares a key Rose City statistic against those of other similar cities.

For example: Portlanders delight in debating whether the city needs more cops, or fewer. This fall, we measured Portland police staffing against every other major city in the nation—and found this city had fewer cops per capita than all but two other big cities.

As a confusing year closes, we’re repeating that experiment, two dozen times over. We compare Portland to similarly sized U.S. cities, mostly in the West, in categories from minimum wage to tallest building.

We found reason to worry. This is a city that has too much empty office space, and not enough homes on the market. We pay more than peer cities in cigarette taxes but less in beer taxes. We really are seeing car thefts rise at an extraordinary clip—and gunfire has reached the doorsteps of Portland Public Schools in ways other school districts aren’t seeing.

It’s our hope that looking at how Portland rates will help this city set priorities in the coming year. Failing that, at least you’ll have some numbers in your pocket for the annual argument with your uncle over Christmas dinner.

—Anthony Effinger, Nigel Jaquiss, Lucas Manfield, Aaron Mesh and Sophie Peel

Demographics

Portlanders like to think of themselves as worldly and weird. Census data shows a different story. Compared to peer cities, we are whiter (no surprise), older and, despite our European soccer bars and plentiful Thai restaurants, more likely to be born in the U.S. By a different yardstick, one highly prized by economists and employers—the percentage of college-educated residents—Portland’s looking good, although lagging Seattle. Source: U.S. Census

Population

Percentage of residents who are “white alone, not Hispanic or Latino”

Percentage of residents who are foreign born

Percentage of residents 65 and over

Percentage of residents 25 and over with bachelor’s degree

Population change

Growth is a double-edged sword. It builds Portland’s economy and tax base but also contributes to a chronic housing shortage. The (slightly) good news: Portland grew more slowly than peer cities over the past decade. Frightening: We shrank more than any of them over the past year. Source: U.S. Census

Living Wage

Just because you make enough to stay above the federal poverty level doesn’t mean you can afford to live in a given city. Housing in Portland, for example, costs much more than housing in Peoria. That’s why the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built its Living Wage Calculator, a handy tool for figuring out what it really takes to live and work in a certain metropolitan area. Figures are for a household with two working adults and two children. Source: MIT Living Wage Calculator

Minimum Wage

In many cities, the federal minimum wage prevails, and it hasn’t been raised since 2009, when it went up to $7.25 an hour. In Oregon, workers who toil within Portland’s urban growth boundary get $14.75 an hour. And it’s likely to go higher soon. Starting in July, the state’s minimum wage will rise if there is any increase in the consumer price index (spoiler: there will be), and Portland’s will be set $1.25 over that new minimum. No one’s going to get rich at $14.75 an hour, or at the new rate in July, but it beats getting paid $7.25 an hour in Salt Lake City.

Source: Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries

Owner-occupied housing

The legacy of an era of much lower home prices and a zoning code that has historically favored single-family houses, Portland’s homeownership rate is the envy of its peers.

Source: U.S. Census

Marginal tax rate

There aren’t many places in the U.S. where cities and counties levy income taxes on top of what citizens owe the state and the feds. Oregon is one of them.

Atop the 9.9% top tax rate, and a 0.8% TriMet tax, big earners also pay as much as 3% to fund the Preschool for All program and 1% for Metro’s Supportive Housing Services levy. Altogether, if you make more than $250,000 as an individual or $400,000 as a couple, you’re going to pay a top marginal tax rate of 14.7%, higher than any other city we examined. Source: State, county and municipal tax authorities

Home sale median price

The problem in Portland remains lack of supply. There just aren’t enough houses, even after the Federal Reserve knocked out lots of buyers by jacking up interest rates. The number of new listings actually fell 32% to 2,055 last month from 3,035 in November 2021. Ugh. Source: RE/MAX LLC

Homelessness per 1,000 residents

West Coast cities and boomtowns like Denver have struggled to build enough housing for everybody. While Multnomah County may seem like an island, the counties that include Oakland and Seattle recorded comparable rates of homelessness—and Denver, even higher.

Source: 2022 HUD point-in-time counts

Residential vacancy rate

Why are there so many homeless people in Portland? Some say it’s because there isn’t enough housing, or that the housing available is too expensive. Others say it’s because so many people are addicted to drugs or afflicted with mental illness. For the latter to be true, Portlanders would have to suffer drug addiction and mental illness at rates that far surpass other cities’. Indianapolis, for example, has far fewer tent cities. Does that mean it has far less mental illness and substance abuse? Probably not. What Indianapolis does have is much more available housing.

Source: U.S. Census

Office vacancy rate

Maybe you saw the big story in The New York Times on Dec. 17 about how downtown San Francisco has become a ghost town because all the tech companies that flocked there in 2010s have decided to let their employees work from wherever they want. You could write a similar story about Portland. Lots of companies are leaving, and the city has been slow to require workers to return to downtown. The Bay Area overall had a vacancy rate of 18.2% in the third quarter of 2022, below the Portland metro area’s 20.8%. Source: CBRE

Tallest building

Like Duran Duran, Portland’s skyscraper era peaked in the mid-’80s (with the completion of U.S. Bank, KOIN Tower and Pac-West). With greater seismic concerns and the movement away from downtown office space, the top of our skyline is probably set. Various sources

Denver Republic Plaza 56 stories, 717 ft.

Seattle Columbia Center 76 stories, 937 ft.

Austin Independent 58 stories, 690 ft.

Portland Wells Fargo 40 stories, 546 ft.

Minneapolis IDS Center 57 stories, 792 ft.

Nashville AT&T Building 33 stories, 617 ft.

Sacramento Wells Fargo 31 Stories, 423 ft.

San Diego One America 34 stories, 500 ft.

Oakland Ordway 28 stories, 404 ft.

Best-Known Wheeler

In Portland, “Wheeler” is a household name. Our mayor comes from a storied line of Wheelers, timber barons whose name adorns a coastal town (Wheeler, population 436). And Ted has become a national figure, thanks to regular mockery by Fox News. But other cities have other Wheelers.

Portland: Ted Wheeler, mayor (with apologies to Brian Wheeler, longtime radio voice of the Trail Blazers)

Minneapolis: David Wheeler, former president of the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation. Ran for city council in 2021.

Salt Lake City: Max Wheeler, civil and criminal defense lawyer

Denver: Jeffrey Wheeler, plastic surgeon. Founder and former medical director of Anagenesis – Center for Rejuvenation.

Oakland: Kenya Wheeler, transit planner. Former chair of Oakland Bicyclist & Pedestrian Advisory Commission.

Austin: Anne Wheeler, real estate agent

Nashville: Luke Wheeler, fictional country music superstar on ABC’s Nashville

San Diego: Ervin Wheeler, plastic surgeon

Seattle: Chad Wheeler, former Seattle Seahawks linebacker under house arrest awaiting trial on domestic violence charges stemming from a 2021 incident

Number of City Councilors

For decades, Portland stubbornly refused to add members to its City Council, keeping its ranks far smaller than most peer cities’. That changed in November, when voters approved an expansion from five commissioners to 12. Source: City government websites

Austin 11

Denver 13

Minneapolis 13

Nashville 40

Oakland 8

Portland 5 (Will be 12 in 2024)

Sacramento 8

San Diego 9

Seattle 9

Worst Political Gaffe in Recent Memory

As devoted readers of a scandal sheet, you know how badly Portland politicians can embarrass themselves. But shameless public officials are a common blight. Here’s the low point for each city in the past several years. The criteria are extremely subjective.

Austin: Two years ago, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) vacationed in Cancún while much of Texas lost power in a deadly freeze.

Denver: U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) represents a district well outside of town, but the secondhand embarrassment of her scandals—she’s “tired of this separation of church and state junk” and denies that her husband exposed his junk in a bowling alley—can nevertheless be felt acutely.

Minneapolis: A nonprofit called Feeding Our Future, with ties to mayoral staffers, is the subject of a federal fraud probe for allegedly pocketing $250 million in pandemic relief intended for hungry children.

Nashville: Mayor Megan Barry resigned in 2018 after pleading guilty to a felony theft charge that stemmed from her affair with her bodyguard.

Oakland: Two of the 10 candidates running for mayor in 2022 had been arrested in the previous year on gun charges.

Portland: There’s a contingent that would point to City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty falsely accusing cops of starting fires at protests—a claim that probably cost her a council seat. But we’ll go with Mayor Ted Wheeler pepper-spraying an irate dairy heir in the face. Because it’s funnier.

Sacramento: Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s dinner at the French Laundry, flouting his own COVID rules in Wine Country for a lobbyist’s birthday party, fueled a recall election he narrowly survived.

San Diego: John Hemmerling, a candidate for county sheriff, quit the DA’s office in May after making disparaging remarks about transgender inmates.

Seattle: Mayor Jenny Durkan’s text messages regarding the George Floyd protests went missing. Come to think of it, this happened in Portland, too.

Can you get an abortion?

Until this summer, the answer to this question was generally yes. No longer. The U.S. Supreme Court overruled five decades of precedent in June. Now, more than a quarter of women in the United States can no longer get abortions, including these Portland competitors. Source: The New York Times

Fentanyl deaths

Counterfeit fentanyl tablets, known on the streets as “blues” or “M30s,” have flooded cities across the United States—including Portland. Here’s the latest estimates for the number of deaths per capita, which include overdoses in the 12 months prior to July. Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, predicted deaths per 100,000 people

Stolen cars

Midway through 2021, car thefts spiked from 600 a month to more than 1,000. They’ve stayed high since—we’re saved from leading the pack by Denver. Car thefts in Portland are nearly double those in Austin, a much larger city. Source: Municipal police departments, as of November

Homicides in 2022

With two record years of homicides in a row, Portland has shed its reputation as one of the safest cities in America. But how bad is it really? Statistics show Portland’s homicides are well above most of its peers’. Some, like Austin, have fewer killings despite being much larger. Others, like Oakland, have far higher rates of violence. Source: Municipal police departments

School shootings

Rising gun violence is a national trend. But when it comes to gun violence at schools, Portland leads the pack among similarly sized cities. That’s according to a database that counts media reports of gunshots on U.S. school grounds. Source: K-12 School Shooting Database

Air quality

Thanks to wildfires, Portland has had more days of lung-burning smog in recent years—and its grade in the American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report card has suffered for it. The report gives two letter grades, one for ozone and one for airborne particulates. The range each city falls into is shown below. Source: American Lung Association

Cost of a bus ticket

COVID hammered transit ridership and the bounce-back has been slow. Short of cash, TriMet’s board is considering fares to $2.80 in 2024, while Los Angeles, after a long deliberation, decided in November the best way to increase ridership was to keep prices low. Source: Federal Transit Administration

DART, Dallas

$3.00

RTD, Denver

$2.80

King County Metro

$2.75

VTA, Santa Clara

$2.50

SacRT, Sacramento

$2.50

MTS, San Diego

$2.50

UTA, Salt Lake City

$2.00

Valley Metro, Phoenix

$2.00

LA Metro

$1.75

SFMTA, San Francisco

$3.00

TriMet

$2.50

Tax on a pack of 20 cigarettes

For decades, a pack of smokes in Oregon was cheap enough to draw carton shoppers to North Hayden Island from Washington state. Not anymore. In 2020, voters approved a $2 tax hike on each pack—making Portland’s cost to smoke among the most prohibitive on the West Coast. Source: IGEN

Austin $1.41

Denver $1.94

Oakland $2.87

Minnapolis $3.04

Nashville $0.62

Boise $0.57

Salt Lake $1.70

Seattle $3.03

Portland $3.33

San Diego $2.87

Professional sports championships since 2012

Winning feels great. Cities are better off when they feel great. Cities with winning sports teams are better cities. Seattle is better than all of us. That’s annoying.

0 Austin

2 Denver (Broncos, Avalanche)

2 Minneapolis (Lynx)

0 Nashville

3 Oakland (Golden State Warriors)

4 Portland (Timbers, Thorns)

1 Sacramento (Republic FC)

0 San Diego

5 Seattle (Seahawks, Sounders, Storm)

Beer taxes

Combine Oregonians’ love for their homegrown breweries and beer and wine distributors’ skillful Salem lobbying and you’ll understand the failure of attempts to raise one of the nation’s lowest taxes on the bubbly stuff. Source: Tax Foundation

What have we learned?

The portrait that emerges from these numbers is of a city with strong points that would be the envy of many U.S. cities but that is deeply afflicted by the most visible and serious crimes. The indicators give both reasons for optimism—Portlanders are well-educated and gainfully employed—and cause for concern: Housing is shockingly scarce, while stolen cars and flying bullets are all too common. Simply, put, residents of this city should expect far more from their leaders.

Corrections:

This story initially miscounted the number of Thorns championships since 2013. They have won three championships, not two. It also mistakenly stated that King County has a higher rate of homelessness than Multnomah County. In fact, it is slightly lower. WW regrets the errors.