After the summer of stinky hippy love in the late 1960's, the hippies who were too radical to live in the still functional city of San Francisco, or who were just too poor, ended up going to Portland. Portland was an early rust belt city and was falling apart by the late 1960's and early 1970's. It's also geographically spread out, which left parts of the city neglected by the cash strapped police.
The hippies found a cheap place to live where they could practice their degeneracy without being hassled by cops. Half a century of hippies infiltrating and reproducing, lax policing, drugs, prostitution, and a large black population led to the deeply dysfunctional Portland that we see today. It's sad, because it's actually a pretty nice place if rain doesn't bother you.
There really isn't a large black population there.
They have blocks, not hoods. Not entire sections of the city looking like Mogadishu with McDonald's.
PL: I have traveled extensively across the country on shoestring budgets. Portland is maybe the only major city I've seen that didn't have a "oh shit, I just fucked up" interstate exit.
Portland and Oregon in general just aren't a huge economic engine to begin with. Their major claim to fame is Portland Cement. Before the big influx and the construction boom it created, my born and bred local friend from Salem laughed at the idea you'd move to Oregon looking for work.
It's why panhandling is legal.
While doubtless some hippies moved there as you said, in recent years you can blame Portlandia. "It's where young people go to retire!" If that was true, you fucking ruined it telling the whole fucking world about it, you 2 stupid fucking yentas.
Or, maybe that was the idea in the first place.
Seattle started attracting people for muh $15/hour, and while I don't begrudge that in general - YOU go work for $7.17 and hour, show us how it's done - a lot of people can't grasp the idea of limited supply and the timing related to it.
For instance, I worked at a staging company there about a decade ago. $15/hour? No sir, they relocated to Tacoma so they wouldn't have to pay their stagehands $15 per, despite that being the greenhorn rate down in L.A. I was making $13 - as a lead, with staging and tour experience. New hires? $12.
These towns were not ready to expand like that, and at the same time Big Tech moved in and wow, suddenly there's no cheap housing anymore. Look at the I-5 corridor in Portland - you're expanding how? Imminent Domain would be hugely expensive.
Lol NYC had rent control in the 50s, LA in the 70s - Portland and Seattle probably still don't have it. Temu Cali.
Lot of stories of having to move because the landlord suddenly jacked the rent up by 500 a month. Either you paid up, or he got to slumlord upgrade it and charge someone else that rate anyway.
I left when A) winter set in and the reality of Infinite Rain literally soaked in, and B) a local told me that his brother, the successful one, a pharmacist, had to move out to Bum Fucked Egypt because even he couldn't swing the rent anymore.
Imagine, if you will, moving back to LA.
Sad. I could tell those places used to be pretty nice, and very White not too long ago. Real local culture there, not just Buffalo Wild Wings. The rot was just as obvious, literal communist propaganda posters wheatpasted all over Capitol Hill.
