The story of North Portland, Kenton and Albina's black neighborhoods and community and their treatment reminds me a little of the government's early approach to Native American people: isolate them in an undesirable part of town or the country until a developer sees money to be made by taking property and crowding them out yet again.

The current targets seem to be small businesses and people with jobs and kids who drive cars. "Blight" is whoever's land guys like Homer Williams and Hoffman Construction want.

The story of North Portland, Kenton and Albina's black neighborhoods and community and their treatment reminds me a little of the government's early approach to Native American people: isolate them in an undesirable part of town or the country until a developer sees money to be made by taking property and crowding them out yet again.

No kidding. "Progressive" Portland at it's finest. Remember, big money and political power around these parts was once closely tied to one of the largest chapters of the KKK this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

I'm glad the Skanner is doing this story. Unfortuntately, you won't see it in the O or the Trib, or the WW, where most of the non-black readers would have a chance to see it.

CoP will disregard this as whining by the irrelevant.

I could never understand why everything has to be "redeveloped" anyway.

The city throws that word around almost as much as "sustainable."

“In cities across the nation, urban power brokers, with the help of the federal government, eagerly engaged in central-city revitalization after World War II,” Gibson wrote in “Bleeding Albina.” “Luxury apartments, convention centers, sports arenas, hospitals, universities, and freeways were the land uses that reclaimed space occupied by relatively powerless residents in central cities, whether in immigrant White ethnic, Black, or skid row neighborhoods.”

As the wicked witch of the West said, "all in good time, all in good time."

If only a bucket of water would rid us of the witch and her monkey minions. Perhaps the continuing financial meltdown will serve the same purpose.

In my view, very few neighborhoods, livability or character are safe now. This means nothing to those who are into the redo game except for what economic benefit they can extract.
Tax dollars are being poured into this redevelopment agenda, at the expense of all else.

The PDC gleefully razed an Italian and Jewish immigrant neighborhood to create the Auditorium district. When I was a kid, we'd drive west over the Ross Island bridge in my Dad's Chevy with fins and when we went through the curves into downtown Dad would say "we're in the urban renewal".

If there is any neighborhood in Portland I wish I could go back in time and see for myself it would be Albina before the Colosseum and hospital "renewal". It's one thing when cities naturally change over time. It's another when the powers that be stamp out whole areas to impose "progress" from above. And yes, they're still doing it.

Jack Bog:

"Blight" is whoever's land guys like Homer Williams and Hoffman Construction want.

Bob T:

States and local governments have redefined "blight" to fit whatever "flaws" a desired piece of property has, including not enough bathroom space in one example in some other state.

But keep in mind that people like Homer Williams and those running Hoffman Construction cannot take (i.e. force to sell to them) anyone's property unless the government does the dirty work for them. And as five of the USSC justices pointed out in the dissenting opinion in the Kelo case, people with less clout are vulnerable.

In the Poletown case, the politicians in the Detroit area joined with GM to screw many blacks out of their homes, and more recently in a mostly black section of Manhattan people are getting the shaft by the NY City/Columbia University partnership playing the eminent domain card against them.

Bob Tiernan
NE Portland

And the blacks never learn who their enemies are.

Many posts have nailed it. For me the most profound sentence in The Skanner article is:

"Although some of the people have been made whole financially, they lost something just as important: They lost the sense of safety and security of belonging to a cohesive community, a community that had a shared identities and values."

In most of the PDC's history of urban renewal, I believe in 14 different URA's (some reconstituted), the quote applies. And in the more recent URA's where TIF dollars are used to create a larger component using lightrail, a more linear configuration, the effects are even more disastrous and spread out. The examples being lightrail along Interstate, to Gresham, the in-question Milwaukie line, and hopefully the stopped line along SW Barbur to Sherwood.

With the use of lightrail/streetcars urban renewal has become a mastitis cancer.

The links don't work. Anyone know why? Is there another way to access the story - it sounds like something I'd like to read!

Link is working now.

What I see in Lake Oswego is that Urban Renewal hits the poorest worst - both through higher taxes and fees to replace lost TIF funding, and through loss of their community as government-enforced gentrification pushes them out. But then, in Lake Oswego, the mayor suggests we start our own low income housing fund, or have people come begging for utility rate relief leading to more stress on the other residents. It's a spiral into hell.

So does this mean that we will be seeing more boondoggles like public housing coming down the pike? My guess is yes. Lots more. Lots and lots. Remember, publicly-funded construction is the name of the game here too. Who cares about the cost? The government pays for it!

So does this mean that we will be seeing more boondoggles like public housing coming down the pike? My guess is yes. Lots more. Lots and lots. Remember, publicly-funded construction is the name of the game here too.

Nolo,
I am afraid we will be seeing lots and lots more public housing.
There is a plan to reduce single family housing and I wrote about that awhile back.
I can only wonder what this term workforce housing really means?
Is that the end game to get as many people out of homes as possible into these housing "units."
It sort of looks like this, on the one side it is all about money and then the people are viewed as the numbers to fit into the units.