Portland and Property Taxes
Portland, property taxes, and self-conception
Some reporting from local station KATU: Portland’s 20 largest office buildings have lost $2 Billion in market value since 2019. It begins by going through the numbers: the twenty largest office buildings in Portland had a combined value of three billion dollars in 2019, a combined value of $986 million today, and the resulting drop in local tax revenue is creating budgeting problems for local municipalities.
The problem, of course, is that Portland is overrun with vagrant drug addicts who are allowed to commit crime with impunity, and people are choosing to live, work & shop elsewhere as a result. Portlanders are resolute in their refusal to do anything about this. For some insight as to why that might be, I refer you to last year's New Yorker article And Your Little Dog, Too. The author was visiting Portland when he was bitten by a dog belonging to a drug addict he passed in the street (while the addict was openly using drugs). When he complained to locals about his experience, he found little sympathy. "You have to understand that these addicts, especially those with an opioid-use disorder, lead incredibly difficult lives" said one. Mused the author: "How hard should it be to get a little sympathy when an unleashed dog bites you? …Why is everyone so afraid of saying that drug addicts shouldn't let their dogs bite people? Actually, I know why. We're afraid we'll be mistaken for Republicans".
Donald Trump & Fox News, you see, have said mean things about Portland, and its drug problems in particular. Therefore, no self-respecting Portlander may acknowledge the problem, lest they give aid & comfort to Donald Trump & Fox News. Senescent & exhausted, the establishment left today can offer nothing other than blind opposition to an imagined enemy. The joke on X is that if Trump were to cure cancer tomorrow, the New York Times would be running articles on the unemployment problem among oncologists and activists would be in the streets rioting for the cancer cells' right to live.
Lest you doubt me, let us proceed to the conclusion of the KATU article with which we started. There is zero interest what might have occasioned this precipitous drop in value– that is treated as an act of God. Rather, they proceed to the question of what might be done to make municipalities whole. The problem, of course, is a pair of ballot measures passed in the nineties limiting the ability of said municipalities to raise property taxes beyond the rate of growth in property values.
The entire article is a window into the minds of Portlanders: jejune opposition to Trump paired with a core belief that government spending must always go up, no matter how disastrous the polices implemented by that government.
02/17/26 17:32