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ARE UNPAID, NOT GUARANTEED AND CHOSEN BY THE EDITOR
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Tanner Todd
Karisa Yuasa
Christopher Ward
Eric Shelby
Nova
Kat
Justin
Alberto
Tanner Todd
Alex Aldridge
Zerr
Pujazon Bogani
COVER DESIGN BY WHITNEY McPHIENEWS: PORTLAND’S DOWNTOWN STRUGGLES TO
STABILIZATION
Whitney McPhie
Angela Nguyen Casey Litchfield
Mia Waugh
Kelsey Zuberbuehler
Rae Fickle
George Olson
Sara Ray
Tanner Todd
Reaz Mahmood
STUDENT MEDIA ACCOUNTANT Maria Dominguez
STUDENT MEDIA TECHNOLOGY ADVISOR
Rae Fickle
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After a month-long hiatus from publishing, the Portland State Vanguard is back—with an update! We will be reviving our “Letters to the Editor,” a recurring Opinion feature that publishes and spotlights voices from around PSU, as well as the larger community of Portland, Oregon.
This is a section devoted to spotlighting the opinions and feelings of our readsers, rather than the writers and contributors in our newsroom, and we welcome submissions from anyone. We’re particularly interested in perspectives related to current Portland events and community issues, as well as circumstances that impact the Pacific Northwest overall. We’d also love to hear your thoughts on stories we’ve covered—if you have a strong opinion about something we’ve reported, write us! We’ll happily read your submissions.
To share your letters for publishing consideration, email your thoughts to opinion@psuvanguard. com with the heading LETTER TO THE EDITOR, followed by your subject line.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
The Vanguard Editorial Staff
SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK SEX WORK IS WORK
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It is a well known fact that Portland has the most strip clubs per capita of any city in the United States. The city tends to lean into this part of its brand as a quirky and weird place full of alternative thinkers and dreamers—and much ink has been spilled elsewhere about how there are clubs that cater to vegans, craft beer enthusiasts, metalheads, punks, hip-hop trap fans, karaoke singers, Victorian burlesquers and beyond.
What has not been highlighted is the plight of the human beings who work in these clubs. First things first—sex workers are people who work in the sex industry, such as full service prostitutes, pornography models and actors, phone sex operators, erotic dancers and web cam performers. Although the majority of sex workers are cis women, there are also many transgender and nonbinary individuals in these trades, as well as some cis men.
Historically sex workers have been demonized by pretty much every society that kept written records, even though they have been prevalent in them all going way back to ancient Mesopotamia where prostitution even had spiritual and ritualistic connotations.
Patriarchal world religions—which means almost all of them—created an uncomfortably familiar purity dynamic that women continue to be held to. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, dubbed this dynamic the Madonna-Whore complex. It essentially boils down to the notion that women are either pure and viriginal—and thus worthy of respect, marriage and child-rearing—or they are sexual and promiscuous, the proverbial easy woman, and thus filthy, impure and unworthy of human dignity or respect.
It is a brutish and nasty business, as men are traditionally lauded as studs for their
sexual prowess and virility, while the double standard proclaims women to be sluts for the same sexual behaviors.
This also warrants a mention of the regressive school of feminism known as SWERFs (Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminists) who argue “that sex workers, particularly those in the prostitution and pornography industries, become the victims of regular sexual objectification, exploitation, and violence; and that, by participating in this kind of industry, sex workers become co-perpetrators of these crimes. While most feminist schools support an individual’s right to choose what sexual activities they do or do not engage in, SWERFs take it upon themselves to tell other people what to do and what not to do with their bodies.”
This is a tired line of argument. Saying that sex workers sell their bodies is redundant and hypocritical considering that all of us who work
jobs and participate in this late stage of capitalism rent out hours of our lives to employers and literally sell our bodies in the form of labor every time we work. To add a moralistic component to the kind of labor we sell seems to me informed by those same aforementioned purtianical and patriarchal traditions rather than on the truly feminist principles of female agency and autonomy. Rather than focusing on ending violence against sex workers, SWERFs focus on policing and punishing women’s bodies and sexuality. There is a very real and devastating problem of sexual slavery, trafficking, exploitation and abuse but SWERFs fundamentally fail to meaningfully address this by conflating consensual sex work with it.
Further, from the objectification point of view, many sex workers—including those I am friends with and spoke to for this article—found sex work to be empowering, fun and rewarding when it is at its best.
WHITNEY MCPHIENow that all of that is out of the way, and getting back to the well-being of sex workers—and strippers in particular—in my conversations with workers in the field and upon further research I found a plethora of deeply troubling issues that must be addressed.
Several individuals I approached politely declined speaking about their industry for fear of retribution and those who did speak with me wished to remain anonymous. That says a lot about the safety and job security—or lack thereof—in their profession.
Both of the individuals I spoke with brought up harassment as one of the most persistent threats to their well-being.
Customers often get aggressive and violate the boundaries of sex workers with little to no repercussions as club owners are eager to retain business even if it is abusive of their workers— and especially now in the wake of the pandemic and inflationinduced spending woes. Sex workers routinely face stalking and clients following them to their cars outside of clubs, and bouncers are technically not allowed to use force if a client is violent. Both said that this dynamic has worsened as of late.
Club owners have also themselves been the perpetrators of abuse and harrassment, including sex trafficking of minors, sexual abuse and racial and gendered discrimination.
In 2020, a local dancer named Cat Hollis organized with some of their co-workers to form the Portland Stripper Strike. According to Willamette Week, their aims were to “require cultural sensitivity training on a regular basis for all club staff, owners and management; ensure that Black dancers get fair hiring opportunities and desirable shifts; and require owners and managers to participate in listening sessions with Black dancers to learn about their experiences working at Portland clubs.”
They were successful in pressuring nearly 30 local clubs to adopt measures that protect their workers and have continued to gain momentum, including the foundation of the Haymarket Pole Collective, who state as their mission, “advocating proactive policy and equitable treatment for Black and Indigenous workers by facilitating restorative justice in the adult entertainment industry.”
They have also sued six local clubs in Oregon alleging federal wage violations akin to those faced by gig workers, with industrystandard malpractices ranging from management stealing tips, demanding illegal kickbacks and superfluous house fees.
One of the tricky things about working in strip clubs is that dancers are technically classified as private contractors. This means that they essentially pay the clubs to work when they do. Thus they found themselves in dire straits during the height of the pandemic when they could not work due to state-mandated shutdowns, but also did not qualify for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance or Paycheck Protection Program loans.
In spite of all of this, in 2020 some strippers were able to cobble together imaginative and brilliant stop-gaps like the socially distanced drive-through strip club pop-up at Lucky Devil Lounge and the stripper food delivery service called Boober Eats. Sex workers are incredibly smart, resourceful and flexible—as one of the dancers I spoke to said, “you don’t last long in this industry if you are not.”
That same source also emphasizied the impact of the rise of OnlyFans and other online sex work spaces. On the one hand, these platforms have opened up space for different bodies and diversified the industry as well as bringing crucially important conversations about sex work, racism, gender and expression to the fore. There is also broader acceptance and appreciation for sex work as a creative outlet for and by creators with full agency, consent and autonomy regarding their sexuality and content.
The negatives that they brought up regarding OnlyFans are the glamorization of the sex work industry by online creators— some of whom have not worked at in-person full service sex work environments—which has been creating some friction between veteran sex workers and these digitally-based newcomers.
Both of the people who spoke to me expressed their hope that sex work will be decriminalized, legalized and guaranteed the same kinds of worker protections most other industries already enjoy. The people who engage in this work must be safe and a key to that is destigmatizing the industry and changing social and cultural attitudes. Sex workers have long
been targets for a disgusting level of abuse.
One of them brought up the old police code NHI, a designation meaning “no humans involved” that was applied to various violent crimes ranging from murder, rape, assault and theft committed against individuals who were considered a low priority by law enforcement. Most often those considered low-priority individuals were sex workers, people of color, transgender individuals and other oftenoverlapping and oppressed marginalized identities. While the police supposedly no longer use this code, that attitude carries on in their criminalization of sex workers and the wider social stigmas that sex workers face.
That brings us to the 2018 passage of FOSTA-SESTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) and the disastrous consequences for sex workers ever since. On its face the bill purports to be about targeting sex traffickers, and as such it passed 97-2 in the Senate. The Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law (BJCL) reported that “FOSTA-SESTA has pierced the shield of net neutrality, curtailed free speech, and severely impacted the emotional, physical, and financial well-being of people, primarily women, who engage in sex work consensually or who have been sexually trafficked.”
Sex workers had previously been able to use online harmreduction tools like VerifyHim—a service which helped them screen potential clients through past references to ensure they respect boundaries and are safe—or to share “bad johns” lists compiled by fellow sex workers to avoid disrespectful and violent clients. They have since been forced to use other less safe venues. After FOSTA-SESTA passed, crimes related to pimping tripled in San Francisco and increased interactions with police led to an 180% increase in arrests for loitering and prostitution in New York City.
These laws do not make sex workers safer—rather, through increasing their contact with the police they are put at greater risk, as well as being criminalized in the so-called justice system.
BJCL also reported that the police have a well-documented history of violence and sexual assault of sex workers, citing a study on the interactions between sex workers and the criminal justice system in New York City, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and published by the Office of Justice Programs’ National Criminal Justice Reference Service: “30% of [sex worker] participants reported that they were threatened with violence by a police officer, and 27% reported that they were harassed by an officer because of their gender presentation. Often, this violence involved sexual contact during stops. Additionally, 15% of participants reported that an officer did not arrest them in exchange for sex.”
They conclude that the act hasn’t even led to the effective prosecution of real sex traffickers, arguing that in pushing the purveyors of both consensual and non-consensual sex farther underground and into the dark web, the law has actually worsened the problem of sex trafficking in the U.S. and that there has only been one case prosecuted using the act as of 2021.
Clearly we as a society owe it to one another to respect each other’s agency and bodily autonomy. It is beyond asinine and hypocritical that sex workers are shamed, stigmatized and attacked when this work is clearly not going anywhere and is one of the oldest professions in the world. Sex work can be a net positive to our society by aiding individuals in consensually and safely exploring their kinks and sexuality and by providing enjoyable, lucrative and empowering livelihoods to the workers within it.
Even when the exploitative social relationships of capitalism and patriarchy are finally relics in the dumpster fire of the past—and that world is struggling to be born right now—sex work will likely persevere, as it has through the many epochs of human social life. Human beings like sex, with and without strings attached, and there will always be people who exchange it in economic terms. It is not for us as individuals to curtail the agency and consensual choice of other individuals regardless of whatever personal moralities one may subscribe to. Rather, it is incumbent upon us all to stand up for the safety and rights of sex workers as we would hope others will stand up for us.
There is a deep connection between nourishment and creativity that is ripe for exploring in art. “Art takes inspiration from our daily life, and food is such a pivotal factor of that,” said Anna Kienberger, the Education and Communications Coordinator at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State. The Museum has just unveiled their current exhibit from the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation titled The Art of Food
The free-to-the-public exhibition runs on-campus until Dec. 3, in the relatively new PSU Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.
“We’re still very much a young museum, only opening in 2019, and fairly quickly after we opened we were immediately shut down [due to COVID-19],” Kienberger said. “So last year we finally completed a full year of being open to the campus.”
The Art of Food was curated by the University Of Arizona using the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his family foundation. Kienberger explained that the exhibit’s origins came from a serendipitous museum visit by Jordan Schnitzer himself. “Jordan Schnitzer was visiting the University of Arizona art museum, and while he was there, he got in touch with the exhibition curator Olivia Miller, who approached him about doing an exhibition surrounding food,” Kienberger said. “Food is a huge realm, and all these artworks touched upon so many different meanings beyond just its bodily nourishment and fuel. And so that was the origin of the exhibition itself.”
The exhibition, as curated by Olivia Miller, was broken into seven sections. “These different sections are community, dissociation, food for thought, still life, control, elixirs and libations, and eye candy,” Kienberger said. “And all of these delve upon the various metaphors and meanings, and associations that come with food.”
These seven sections focus on three overarching themes: community, control and sustainability.
“What is so amazing to see in this exhibition is how all of these artists have taken different facets of food and explored them,” Kienberger said. “[The art] delves further than its purpose as body fuel, and goes more into the complexities that it holds as something that also brings community, that recalls memory through taste. But also how it’s used as a tool of control and oppression and its role in our consumer climate.”
For example, one piece that explores food as a way to engage in community is titled Deli by Red Grooms, who created a 3D lithograph. “[In this piece] you see this bustling deli of various people all in community together,” Kienberger said. “It really shows that bustling community and just the different people that come together in food spaces.”
This piece has become somewhat reflective, given how COVID-19 has kept us from engaging in these spaces in the same way. “[It] is a rarity to be in a space that is that full of food, or at least to be comfortable in a space that’s full with food,” Kienberger said.
Community is not just portrayed in the typical sense, but also in the community we find in family. For example, Hung Liu’s piece titled Women Working: Millstone depicts “three generations of women working a millstone grinder to turn whole grains into meal or flower.”
“This piece illustrates the important role that women’s labor has played in Chinese culture, really illuminating the physical tenacity that comes from procuring food,” Kienberger said. “But what’s so beautiful about this piece, too, is that you see three generations of women as well, three generations in a family, and you see tradition and community in that way, too.”
Several artists in the exhibit also focused on the element of sustainability, including one of the most recognizable names in this exhibit—Andy Warhol.
“Andy Warhol’s pieces really touch upon the consumption of food and the industrialization of food as well,” Kienberger said. “The biggest piece that’s kind of the standout when you
first see the exhibition through the window is his screen print of Cow . In that piece, the repetition that he has of these cows really touches upon the slaughterhouses and the lining up of animals.”
Artists Roy Lichtenstein and Alex Katz also used the imagery of cows and bulls to draw attention to “the dissociation of the consumer versus the nicely neatly packaged meat and food that’s in the grocery store and how we have that level of dissociation,” according to Kienberger.
Artist Neal Ambrose-Smith is also focused on sustainability, as his art is about the effects of the Suncor mining operation in Alberta, Canada on Indigenous communities. However, his art also has a more profound message of control. “[His piece] focuses [on] how control over land and food access is one of the systemic ways that colonialism has repercussions on various food communities,” Kienberger said. “In his piece, he centers on the destruction of the traditional foodways of many first nations communities.”
Lorna Simpson focused on another very important element of control in her work. “[Her] piece really focuses on the slave labor that Black women have historically done through American history and many other countries’ histories,” Kienberger said. “Additionally, how Black women have been consumed in our culture, making that direct reference of food pathways to consumption of people in certain ways... There’s also this lingering ideological memory of enslaved cooks found on grocery store shelves through boxes of Aunt Jemima’s mix or also Uncle Ben’s rice as a way to authenticate these products.”
The featured artists demonstrate how food is a common thread in our lives and communities—a resource that brings people together, a resource that is abused and overused, and a method of oppression and control.
We can see the latter in our own community at PSU, as studies performed by the Homelessness Research & Action
JENNY HOLZER'S SURVIVIAL SERIES AT THE ART OF FOOD EXHIBITION. KAT LEON/PSU VANGUARD ONLOOKER VIEWING THE ART OF FOOD EXHIBITION. KAT LEON/PSU VANGUARDCollaborative found that 48% of students surveyed in the fall of 2019 experienced food insecurity, and that number went up during the pandemic, where 55% of students surveyed experienced food insecurity.
While food is a necessity, for many—including those in our community—access to food has unfortunately become a luxury. That is why it is essential to have resources on campus like the PSU Food Pantry.
However, as a past PSU Vanguard news article pointed out, “Underutilization is a consistent problem with the pantry, where needs don’t align with actual use.” Sources pointed out that for many reasons, from location to lack of visibility, the Food Pantry only serves about 5% of students, which differs significantly from the recognized need for these services.
To help combat this, the Museum teamed up with the Food Pantry to help bring awareness and funds to the Food Pantry. This allows the Museum to not only showcase works that visualize and acknowledge food used to control and oppress, but also to be active in shifting these power dynamics.
“Our main mission as a museum is to be a resource for the campus and to make those connections between different resources,” Kienberger said. “With this exhibition, The Art of Food, we thought it would be a great opportunity to collaborate with the PSU Food Pantry... It is such an important and necessary resource, especially with our large student body and the realities that many do face food insecurity. We really wanted to use our position to help further amplify this resource because I know it’s also a huge institution. Sometimes resources get lost.”
The Museum also engages and encourages community growth in many other important ways. One upcoming example is the Museum’s welcome back to campus event—a talk with Growing Gardens on Thursday, Sept. 29 at 5 p.m. According to the event description, “this local organization uses the experience of growing food in schools, backyards, and correctional facilities to cultivate healthy, equitable communities.”
Several events such as this provide the community with an opportunity to engage in proactive solutions to the ways in which food serves as a tool to oppress and control people. “We have a lot of exhibition tours open to the public, we have a story time and art activity for families as well as an art workshop happening in November for PSU students and adults,” Kienberger said. “We’re really just hoping to serve the community with our museum.”
If readers go to the exhibition or the corresponding events, Kienberger said she hopes that “it challenges them in certain ways, especially our control section. I hope that it continues to instigate interest in observing more, the sometimes more basic things in our daily life, looking deeper into its purposes and how they affect us in multiple realms.”
CHRIS ANTEMANN'S PIECES AT THE ART OF FOOD EXHIBITION. KAT LEON/PSU VANGUARD DELI BY RED GROOMS AT THE ART OF FOOD EXHIBITION. KAT LEON/PSU VANGUARD ROBERT GOBER AND AND ANALIA SABAN'S PIECES AT THE ART OF FOOD EXHIBITION. KAT LEON/PSU VANGUARDA study of 62 cities conducted by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley has found that Portland is one of the slowest cities to recover its original pre-pandemic foot traffic. The study measured foot traffic across multiple cities by observing points of interest in downtown locations gathered from data on people’s cell phones. The study compared the progress of cities across the United States and Canada, and expressed its findings as a percentage of how much foot traffic has returned to its pre-pandemic size. For example, if a city had a recovery of 50%, that city has half the traffic it had prior to the pandemic.
Portland, as of May 2022, has a recovery rate at 41%. This is a noticeable increase in recovery compared to fall at the start of the pandemic in 2020, which was in the mid-low range of 30%, and a sizable increase from the lowest recovery rate of 28% in Dec. 2020.
While this growth is certainly an improvement, Portland is still lagging. Across the cities in the U.S. and Canada, Portland is in the bottom third of city rankings—and often the bottom quarter when measuring the recovery rate of traffic in the downtown area. Portland’s recovery rate of 41% places itself at third place for the lowest recovery rate among the cities being measured, and the second lowest in the Pacific area just behind San Francisco.
Portland had a high recovery rate right at the start of 2020, but as the pandemic began to spread and became a more prominent issue across the country it became a race to achieve as low of a recovery rate as possible to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
The next few seasons were a success for the city, as Portland managed to reduce its foot traffic to just shy of a third of the prepandemic traffic. The recovery rate then increased by nearly 10% around spring of 2021 when the first COVID-19 vaccines became more available to the public. However, with the exception of a spike in recovery in the fall of 2021, Portland’s recovery rate has consistently remained in the high 30s and low 40s.
Portland remains one of the lowest achieving cities when it comes to retaining its pre-pandemic foot traffic, with only the cities of Cleveland and San Francisco ranking lower as they struggle to get their cities back to the size they used to be. By contrast, a few cities have a recovery rate of more than 100%, meaning that they have more downtown foot traffic than before the pandemic. Generally cities with a lower population density have had more success, with Salt Lake City’s population density being 1,744 persons per square mile and San Francisco’s 18,581 persons per square mile compared to Portland’s 4,795 persons per square mile.
While the ideal number of people in a city is a matter of individual opinion, as far as businesses are concerned, bigger is better and more is more. In the wake of the pandemic, downtown Portland just isn’t getting the foot traffic that used to sustain many of its local small businesses. This leaves businesses in a tough situation, where they have to consider either closing for good, leaving for a new area or braving the business challenges of Portland having just under half the foot traffic that it used to have.
“Intuitively, less foot traffic is going to mean less business downtown,” said political science professor Dr. Joshua Eastin, whose work focuses on the consequences of economic underdevelopment. “Less businesses can open their doors downtown.”
Downtown Portland has already had instances of stores leaving the area, often citing the lack of foot traffic. In March 2022, jewelry store owner David Margulis spoke to KATU news about closing his business, describing Portland as a “ghost town.” More recently, in an August interview with KPTV, comic book store owner Jason Leivian commented that he has “waited two years” for traffic to come back so he can have customers at his store.
Dr. Eastin said that when he moved to Portland in 2013, downtown Portland was “dynamic economically and seemed to be growing.” But as he continued to add, the pandemic, in addition to protests which received nationwide media attention following George Floyd’s death, have been compounding factors in reducing foot traffic. In addition, Portland’s downtown has developed a reputation of being an unsafe part of the city. Last year in May, The Oregonian published an article describing the results of a poll that asked 600 Portland residents to describe the city in three words of their choosing. “Dirty,” “homeless” and “riots” were the leading words used to describe downtown Portland in the poll.
“I think people are less comfortable coming here at night,” said Barbara Mason, who works for the Waterstone Art Gallery in the Pearl District. Mason recalled a recent potential trip
ANGELA NGUYENto Washington where her friend suggested taking a train but expressed hesitation at having to come back to Portland at night.
“Well, I don’t want to come back to Union Station late at night… so I’m not gonna do it,” Mason said of her concern for her safety in Portland. When asked specifically if she thought Portland’s reputation has been damaged in recent years, she replied with, “Of course. You had people getting shot at and pepper sprayed… I certainly wasn’t coming down here [downtown].”
Regardless of the actual level of risk, downtown Portland’s reputation of being unsafe dissuades people from going downtown out of fear for their safety, which consequently leads to less foot traffic overall.
“Without security, people don’t have the capabilities to engage in the market or economic life,” Dr. Eastin said. “You have to make them feel safe and you have to make them feel secure… all of these things need to happen before you see a return to economic life.”
Portland’s lack of recovery growth spells out more difficulty for downtown economic vibrancy as time passes, because the problem could have cyclical repercussions. Downtown businesses closing due to a lack of foot traffic is ultimately a “chicken and egg” situation, where downtown businesses are closing due to a lack of foot traffic resulting in a further loss of incentive to come to the area.
“It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle,” Dr. Eastin said. “The lower the traffic, the fewer the business, the lower the attraction for more traffic, it reinforces a negative feedback.”
The businesses that likely suffer the most from a lack of foot traffic are the ones that bring a sizable amount of walk-in business, such as restaurants or other service industries where the goods or service cannot be replicated online. While Portland’s race to regain lost foot traffic over the years has been sluggish, the people Vanguard spoke to were generally optimistic about Portland’s downtown gaining activity back.
Mason said that she is seeing more and more people coming back to the Portland area and into the art gallery. “I think we’re on the way to recovery and there’s no question about it… we [the gallery] were closed for a few months and gradually it’s coming back,” she said. “I recently had people from Ohio and earlier today I had people from Los Angeles. People are traveling again.”
“I’m excited for the new year to come… sales have gradually been coming up as times have gone by,” said Jason Kwon, who works for the Dosirak food cart outside of the Portland State campus. He said that Portland sees a resurgence of traffic every fall season, likely due to an influx of incoming PSU students in the downtown area. “Most food carts that I know personally schedule vacation around summer… because we’re so close to PSU and most of our customers are students,” Kwon said. The past two years have shown the fall season is the highest in foot traffic for downtown Portland, followed by a decrease in the winter season. With luck, a resurgence of improving foot traffic will be a source of economic relief for the city of Portland, as businesses hope to find themselves with new customers and a reason to stay.
PHOTOS: PEDESTRIANS WALKING THROUGH PIONEER COURTHOUSES SQUARE AND DOWNTOWN PORTLAND. ALBERTO ALONSO PUJAZON BOGANI/PSU VANGUARDEarlier this month, Oregon announced that the allowable rent price increase for 2023 will be capped at 14.6%—the largest increase since SB 608 passed in 2019 and a huge leap forward from the 9.9% increase in 2022.
Considering the rising cost of nearly everything across the board—except the cost of our labor, of course—this ridiculous rental cap can only be seen as an assault on the working class and those who are already struggling to keep their heads afloat. All of this while the wealthy are fattening their wallets at the expense of everyone else. For a city that routinely dehumanizes our houseless neighbors with depraved sweeps, a possible 14.6% increase in rent is the last thing we need when it comes to securing affordable and stable housing.
Online comments on articles regarding the rent increase unsurprisingly blame SB 608. Part of their logic is that a rental cap permits landlords to raise rents to the full amount allowable, an argument that involves choosing to believe in the fictitious benevolence of landlords and property management companies to not raise rent that high on their own. While only a personal anecdote, the cost of rent in the very apartment I lived in a little over two years ago—in a city without a cap on rent increases—has gone up over 45% in the last few years.
One can only imagine how high our rents would have gone up without any sort of rent stabilization legislation in place. Believing that landlords—who profit off of what should be an essential human right—won’t increase rents out of the kindness of their hearts is just as ridiculous as believing that police will ever hold themselves accountable, or believing that fossil fuel companies will self-regulate their own destructive pollution.
Another criticism of SB 608—and rent control legislation in general—is that putting a cap on rent increases doesn’t incentivize developers to invest and build, but rather dissuades landlords in maintaining the habitability of their properties. Since we seem to exist in a system where decisions are made based on whether the incentives are present or not— especially when it comes to something as essential as housing— we can add this mess to the ever growing list of reasons why the issues we are facing are beyond reformist pipe dreams.
In addition to the aforementioned critiques, SB 608 does deserve some fair criticism.
The two main parts of the bill are no-cause evictions and extreme rent increases. Concerning the latter part, in what world is 14.6% not an extreme rent increase? The bill caps the annual rental increases at 7% plus the previous year’s consumer price index (CPI). While a 7% cap itself hardly seems like rent control—even before the additional CPI added on top of it more than doubles that 7% for next year—none of these control measures apply to buildings that are 15 years old or newer.
The 15-year rule was likely implemented to promote new construction projects—the idea being that companies will be incentivized to build more properties by the safety of knowing they won’t have to adhere to those rental caps until their investors get their money back. When the reasoning behind doing or not doing things is based on whether corporations, various industries or the rich are incentivized or not, those who are already struggling will continue to be trampled over. It’s the same type of absurd reasoning behind trickle-down economics. All these incentives, tax breaks for the rich or kickbacks for big businesses rarely—if ever—help out the growing numbers of people who are struggling to even attain what would be considered a bare minimum standard of living.
One doesn’t need to look at data to see the obvious, but the numbers do show that since 1985 the rent-to-income ratio has nearly doubled. Even worse, while median rent prices have increased 149% from 1985 to 2020, median income has only grown 35% in the same period. Additional data shows that 58% of renters are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
What is often missed from this conversation is that the size of rental units has also been on the decline while the cost of rent has been increasing. Compared to older generations, we are paying more for a smaller amount of space, all while making much less than they did when matching these numbers to inflation.
An additional issue with rent control legislation is that, rather than being seen as the sole solution, it should be one part of many that all together can comprise a solution. Much like how body cameras and more training won’t stop the violence police impose on people or how driving an expensive
electric car won’t reverse climate change, the solutions needed will often be dismissed as silly, impossible or too expensive. The solutions that are actually needed are far more bold and revolutionary, not another reformist policy that joins the rest in the slush pile of failures disguised as successes.
We require a bit of imagination and a desire to really change things.
When businesses and corporations can make decisions that negatively impact everyone in the lower levels of the economic pyramid to save a bit of money, then why the hell can’t we disregard rent increases or even current rent costs because they are too expensive?
Another issue that is often brought up concerning housing is supply and demand. When it comes to the percentage of vacant properties, Portland, and Oregon in general, have some of the lowest vacancy rates, with Oregon having a vacancy rate of 7.6% and Portland having a vacancy rate of 5.55%. And although we have a vacancy rate that is quite low, Portland also has 4,178 active vacation properties between Airbnb and Vrbo, adding fuel to the fire with more leeches that are not only adding to our growing housing problems, but also charging you obscene amounts of fees while doing so. While I can grasp the concept of supply and demand, what I can’t grasp is the fact that we place this concept over the well-being of people. When we continue to base our decisions off of growth, the number of people who get trampled over will continue to grow as well. While fingers are pointed towards this politician or that policy, they should instead be pointed at the entire system of government we have that bases decisions completely on economic growth.
While rent control isn’t a comprehensive solution to our problems, we can start to demand housing as a basic human right. Rather than housing becoming more affordable, it’s becoming less affordable for an increasing number of people. You don’t have to be a psychic to see the unsustainable path we are heading down. The future of housing is bleak, and until we ditch the failures of reformism and start approaching things in a more revolutionary manner, the power dynamics that are intrinsic to all hierarchies are going to continue to oppress people.
KELSEY ZUBERBUEHLER