🏠 Why Portland home prices are still going up

Home Prices Up

As of March, Portland metro area’s median home price rose 1.9% in the last year to $535,000, according to the latest report from the Regional Multiple Listing Service. There’s a low supply of houses in part because many homeowners are reluctant to move while mortgage rates are relatively high. [Willamette Week]

Clackamas Town Center Shooting

Just before 6 p.m. Sunday evening, there was a shooting at Clackamas Town Center mall. Apparently no one was injured, but multiple bullet casings were found in the parking lot outside the Cheesecake Factory. It’s generally a safe place for families, though a 2012 shooting killed two at the mall. [KOIN]

No. 1 for Highest Water Bills

Portland officially has the highest water bills in the country. The average monthly water bill is $121.68. By contrast, San Antonio, Texas, has the lowest water bills — $19.51, according to the analysis of the 50 largest cities from Bluefield Research, a research firm focused on water and wastewater. [Water Online]

The $1.3B Powerball Winner

On the midweek roundup, there’s a $1.3 billion Powerball winner in Northeast Portland. [City Cast Portland 🎧]

I feel a civic sense of pride when I read about our local reading habits (my latest reason for looking them up was yesterday's City Cast Portland podcast).

We live in a place that’s full of readers. And I imagine that means Portlanders are maintaining a sense of curiosity — and interested in staying informed about the world around us.

According to the latest stats, Multnomah County Library “ranks No. 2 in annual circulation of books and other materials” — for any library serving up to a million residents.

We checked out 16.7 million items from July 2022 to June 2023 — and that averages out to 21 items per person. If you want to be like other Portlanders, pick up a library card and a book — an old-school one or e-book, no matter. Let’s read on:

Other Local Indicators

A couple of other stats on our city and state seem to illustrate who we are right now:

Kids Are Missing a Lot of School

True, the pandemic has exacerbated the problem of kids not making it to school everywhere in the U.S. But it’s gotten particularly bad in Oregon: Between 2017 and 2023, the number of Oregon students missing at least 10% of the school year — around 18 or more days — grew from 20% to 38%. (It started to get better recently in many places, but not in Oregon.) “Terrible news for our children and the state’s outlook,” tweeted the Portland-based economist John Tapogna.

Few Babies

Oregon has one of the lowest fertility rates in the country — at 1.4 births per woman (over her entire life). Few babies can be a sign of good things, like people choosing when to have kids. But to maintain the state’s current population, you need a birth rate of about 2.1. That means we rely on people moving here to keep our population growing (or at least the same), although it turns out Oregon is like many other states in that regard: “Worth pointing out that Utah - still one of the highest - has seen their [birth] rate plummet to 1.9. Oregon may not be that different, just leading a national trend,” tweeted local economist Christian Kaylor.

City Camping Ban Revised and Portland’s Giant Powerball Winner. Plus, Plans for 503 Day

The midweek roundup includes Mayor Ted Wheeler’s new proposed camping ban ordinance and the $1.3 billion Powerball winner in Northeast Portland. Plus, there’s listener ideas for the very real 503 Day.