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"Welcome to Oregon," indeed. This is a sign that about one million new Oregonians will see between now and 2025, according to U.S. Census figures. (Well, some of those one million will see the inside of an Oregon maternity ward first, but you get the idea.) The census has some other figures that stand out:
- Oregon will rank eighth in the country for internal US migration.
- It will go from having the 17th highest proportion of elderly in the country in 1995 to the 4th highest proportion in 2025.
- The state's Hispanic population will more than double from its 1995 percentage of 4.8 percent to 9.8 percent in 2025.
That's a whole mess of numbers to basically say that Oregon will be older, more Californian (or Northeastern; I only arrived a few weeks ago), and more Hispanic. But what else will this more populous Oregon be?
"Demographics" can sound amorphous, but there's nothing amorphous about the societal changes the state's facing — as this "Welcome to California" sign posted in Portland suggests — or the questions they bring up. What happens to a state's economy when so many people arrive so quickly? Do you see your new neighbors (me included) as more taxpayers or more burdens on social services? Is this cause for economic celebration or environmental concern? What's going to happen to your schools, your hiking trails, your roads, or your farm when one million more people arrive?
Of course, they're not distributing themselves randomly around the state. Assuming recent trends continue and the Willamette Valley absorbs most of the newcomers, will Oregon's East-West political and cultural divide only deepen?
And then there's identity: As Oregon and Oregonians change so dramatically, is it still possible to say what it is that makes this place unique in the first place? And are you afraid that ineffable quality is on the wane?
Maybe the first question is: Are you ready?
GUESTS:
- Carl Abbott: Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University and author of the soon to be released "How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America"
- Caitlin Baggott: Co-founder of the Oregon Bus Project
- Steve McClure: Commissioner of Union County
Tagged as: development
Photo credit: jimmywayne22 / Flickr / Creative Commons
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I would like to comment on the plight my neighbors and employees from Mexico. As a state and a nation, we need to face the realities of immigration and acknowledge the people that do infinite amounts of necessary HARD work for our community. My employees pay their taxes, generally stay out of trouble and should be given the respect they deserve. The unspoken amount of social security income generated by 'illegal' immigrants must be staggering (14.4% of gross pay) and they will never see a dime of it. Lets give a pass to current workers and start a new system from that point on. Also, don't get me started on the new DMV rules taking effect in february.
thank you -
OR Landscape Contractor, I personally would rather have a native from Mexico move in next door to me in Portland trying to start a new life for him and his family who will appreciate our community and add cultural value to it than an over privileged out of touch Californian moving to Oregon to use and take advantage of us because their dollar goes farther.
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Just an observation. But I seem to see a disproportionate amount of Texas Plates. It seems I see more Texas Plates than California or Washington.
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We moved here in the height of a recession around 1980 when i was a child. Not from California, but from the south west.
I don't believe there was a welcome sign. If so it was followed by enjoy your visit, but don't stay. Though we experienced some tough times, I think it is better for me anyway to be poor in oregon, than rich in many other places.
We have it all desert, mountains, coast, what more could you ask.
Sure, I got "through" and would love to bar the door, but maybe anybody who can take all this rain and enjoy it, and respect the environment, should not feel excluded. We later moved to California, and then returned. Glad no one closed the gate. :) -
You will find that many of these Texas cars are driven by migrant workers coming up from the southwestern USA to work on farms throughout Oregon and Washington.
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Bkerney and mageeraej:
We'll ask our demographer about both California and Texas. And bkerney, thanks for the links. I think I was more struck by the numbers than you were, actually. One third of all in-migrants came from California. And even if 18% of out-migration is TO California, it doesn't necessarily follow that that group were all native Californians to begin with. Even if only two thirds of the incoming Californians are staying, that seems like a pretty distinct harbinger of Californification to me.
The really fascinating question that follows from your comment is: Beyond the weight of the numbers, does California represent a convenient southern scapegoat for many of Oregon's perceived changes for the worse? If so, what homegrown changes or tendencies are being obscured? -
I am from New Jersey, and when I bought an old home in Milwaukie I treasured the "Oregon-ness" of the place. No sidewalks, few streetlights, and almost no property fences. Neighbors could wander back and forth among yards and have great conversation. I embraced these things and I felt welcomed.
Shortly after we arrived, another new arrival- from California- moved in. She surveyed every border of her property, the proceeded to fence out her neighbors. She is an isolated fortress in an otherwise open, friendly neighborhood. And she's complains that she is not welcome here. -
I'll admit, Californians are an easy scapegoat for all that ails Oregon and I too have said there are too many Californians moving up here. The funny thing is if you go around the country, there are other examples of superiority complexes between states. For example, when I was in Charlotte, NC I met a woman who actually lived in the Portland area for a while and she talked about a similar relationship between the peoples of North and South Carolina. The north would put down the south and she actually cited the relationship between Oregon and California as being similar. I knew then she had actually lived here for a while if she knew about that.
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Californians aside, it sure seems like I see an amazing number of cars with out-of-state plates. I just picked up eggs at the market this morning and as I left a family with Virginia plates were extricating kids from car seats, looking very much like residents. Is it possible that our culture and quality of life will continue to lure people even against the backdrop of a possible recession? Could this benefit our economy?
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My concern is that people who can afford to buy a nice home here in Oregon, with money leftover, thereby drive up demand for homes in our state. While there are numerous foreclosures elsewhere in the country, the housing prices are remaining stable in Oregon. I believe this is largely because of the immigration from California. It is really frustrating as a young person who wants to buy a home, but can't even get close to affording one because the prices are artificially high -- based on the price structure that reflects Californian demand.
My prediction is that Bend, OR will continue to experience growth; but without real industry Bend will not continue this growth as the baby-boomer-California-transplants die out and the healthcare infrastructure that has been built collapses. -
ORSunshine, a bigger issue related to what you are talking about are Californians coming to Oregon, paying the asking price for real estate without barginning down as they would in California because they see our prices as such a "bargin" by California standards. By paying the asking price, it drives up home prices thereby pricing native Oregonians OUT of the local housing market forcing native Oregonians to leave the towns in which they grew up and move elsewhere in order to find affordable housing. This affects the elderly unable to pay increased property taxes and college graduates who can no longer afford to move back home to the town in which they were raised due to the prices going up from Californians moving in.
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Mydogatemyemail: Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. During this last housing boom I heard about people offering MORE than the asking price for homes. In their minds, it was still a great deal.
And yes, I'm a recent college grad who is faced with not being able to buy a home because of this exact reason. -
ORSunshine, I feel for you. I had a family friend move back to Woodburn from college hoping to run the family farm that now has to pay such high property taxes from all the California owned and based businesses building along that corridor that the family is actually having to sell the farm to afford the taxes. It is very depressing.
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Back in the 1980's, our OFFICIAL tourist slogan in Oregon was, "Oregon: A nice place to visit, but please don't stay!" I really wish we would go back to those days. Native Oregonians such as myself remember the grand days in the 1980's and early 1990's when rental car companies would NOT rent cars with California plates inside Oregon because they would get keyed or vandalized in Oregon. As the guest said, Californians move to Oregon claiming to want OUR lifestyle, then complaining that Oregon isn't like that place they left. Many people moving to Oregon now are Republicans also affecting the political make-up of our state. I live in downtown Portland, and I am surrounded by more neighbors who have emigrated to Oregon from another state than native Oregonians, and I find this to be alarming.
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You nailed it, mydogatemyemail. As a fourth-generation Oregonian, I am so sick of hearing how all these transplants have had to educate us about the finer points of dining, wining, shopping, design, and so on. Just pick up any edition of the NY Times or the Portland Monthly for that matter. They come here to escape their deteriorating qualities of life in L.A. or NYC, capitalize on our fabulously "afforable" real estate, and then spend their time to recreate what they ran from. Many of my friends are transplants, and I'm happy they're here enjoying Oregon's bounty. But, the vast majority are moving their condescending, greedy attitudes into our state, forcing out the local fabric that originally drew them here. What a drag.
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I just bought my first home in a town of around 200 in Eastern Oregon. Our mayor is an ex Californian. I think a lot of boomers are going to move to Oregon because you can buy a nice home for very little compared to what you can get in California. I say bring it on, I will sell to a boomer in a few years and be able to buy a house in Bend.
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The discussion this morning has been centered a lot around the Californians moving to Oregon. But I think there's an underrepresented portion of folks who moved to Oregon because of Californians' exodus to their states. I moved here from Las Vegas because of what Californians did to that city ? miles and miles of strip malls, increased need for services but a steadfast demand to keep taxes low, no foresight for urban planning and an endless sea of characterless single-family subdivisions. I know of others who have moved or are considering a move here from Phoenix, Albuquerque and Salt Lake because of the same pattern. Portland has little in common with California, and I'm proud that it's my refuge from the "new west" suburbia that has trickled out of California and has turned other cities into endless strip malls.
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Bringtherain, excellent observation! I have a friend who works with a program transitioning the homeless into jobs and housing, and she had told me that the mass influx of emigrants to Oregon from other states combined with rental management agencies based in California controlling who gets an apartment to rent in Portland and who doesn't has set artificial requirements for renting apartments that keep the homeless who do get a job from being able to lease an apartment because the requirements for renting are so high so they get frustrated and give up -- staying on the street.
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What would Tom McCall say about the state of affairs in Oakridge, Philomath, Scio, Mill City, Mehama, Lyons, Gilchrist, Mapleton and all the other areas of my State that have been neglected, not only today on your program, but for decades.....now, with the loss of Timber Payments to the counties...what is the plan? All I see, for the past two decades, is division in my State...every single issue...division....what would McCall do?
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Great question, Jamison! I think part of the problem is the identity crisis Oregon politicians are suffering. We have Republicans running as Democrats JUST to get elected, Democrats behaving as Republicans because they want kick backs from big business to line their retirement from politics fund, and both parties have driven a wedge between Oregonians pitting us one against the other as enemies instead of just someone with an opposing view point so that we ignore political mismanagement.
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He'd McCall you out. Timber payments are suppose to be a temporary solution to the restrictions on the timber industry. Cities and counties that cannot function without those payments should probally just close up shop. I suggest joining the 21st century and moving to a city with money and jobs.
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I think one of the curious things about Oregon is, partly thanks to our land use laws, how isolated those rural timber communities are. If they aren't on the way to the beach or near an insanely popular trailhead, no one knows or cares about them. I'm not advocating a change in land use, by the way, but I do find it disturbing that for all the "progressive" noise coming from the well heeled elites moving into Portland, there is no talk in Salem of finding relief for rural residents. It's no wonder the folks outside of the Willamette valley hate us, we enact broad land use regulations and scream like dirty hippies if they even sniff at a tree, but then we lose interest in the human cost of our feel good policies as soon as we feel that the wilderness we have no interest in visiting is safe. Shame on us city folk for not reaching across the divide and working to preserve our valuable rural communities.
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One of the things that angers me the most about the emigrants to Oregon from other states is that many move here wanting our way of life, complaining once here that it isn't like things were back in their home states, forcing Oregonians to change for them, then they up and move out of the state a handful of years later having polluted out state politically leaving native Oregonians to suffer from the emigrant's identify crises.
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Hey Host! Our real names are listed in our profiles. Click on our user names to see our real names. The displayed name in the forum is only our LOGIN name :-)
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real names are only listed if you fill out your user profile.
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Yes, but mine was filled out and he called me out on the air! LOL! :-) Good start for a new program. I give it two thumbs up. We need more local programming such as this.
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You're right, mydogatemyemail. Glad to see there's a real person behind the funny excuse! (And thanks. Now we just have to do this every day...)
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There is lots of in-migration, and it probably doesn't really matter much where it's coming from. In what parts of the state are these people settling, and is there a difference in their demographic? Are older people moving to Central and Southern Oregon and younger ones to the Portland Metro area?
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Living green in Oregon Land Use planning speak is concentrating affordable housing near urban centers. Modern feudalism. The landed gentry write the zoning so that the serfs and peasantry are kept near their underpaid jobs and out of sight of the gated communities. If you make less than $50,000 a year, plan on neighbors you can shake hands with out your bathroom windows. "Green" is good. Loot wins. From Corvallis. Land of the quarter million dollar two bedroom, no garage, fixer upper.
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I think that there are a lot of things we have the choice to do that can make Oregonians, and our children, more competitive, as well as more able to understand the world context we live in. It is too simplistic to say that Californians drive up the prices of our homes, without looking at why we make less money here than most Californians do, and what we can do to attract the kinds of jobs that will make our standard of living higher.
I think that more investment in education at all levels, sticking with our land use planning system, and creating opportunities for cultural exchange in business and educational spheres is a start. I am glad that the Metro Area has so many bilingual grade school programs, but I wish they existed in other areas of the state. We live here because there were no bilingual programs in Bend, where we used to live, or several other areas of the state we considered, and we want our children to have that leg up. -
150 years ago, when our Anglo ancestors immigrated to this land, there was so little consideration given to the native "Oregonians". So little in fact that they were not considered citizens when the "Oregon" constitution was written.
The true native "Oregonians" had to accept what was handed to them as rights.
Today, we have open forums, discussion, dissension and debate. Today we are talking about how to share our rights democratically. While not everyone's rights are protected 100%, we can say that the migrant population as well as the native population is not having its rights stripped.
Democracy is fluid, but today's is better than it was for those 150 years ago. -
Comments are now closed.
The census summary that you link to above (which you describe as "a whole mess of numbers to basically say that Oregon will be older, more Californian...") doesn't mention California at all.
[EDIT: to clarify, I have no beef with the Think Out Loud post, as it doesn't itself take a position. I'm only questioning this pervasive group-think that I hear everywhere, and that I see reflected in the "Welcome to California" sign. I realize that this is only a small part of the topic at hand, but this post is a good opportunity to raise the question. - bkerney]
The State of Oregon's summary of Oregon Population Survey findings (direct download of DOC file: [url]http://www.oregon.gov/DAS/OPB/docs/PopSurv/OPS06_Press_2-1-07.doc[/url] doesn't mention California at all.
So I downloaded the data behind that survey (ZIP file:[url]http://www.oregon.gov/DAS/OEA/docs/ops/ops2006.zip[/url] the file you want is ops2006_ao_tables_revised.pdf -- ao stands for "All Oregon"). When asked "What state or foreign country were you living in 5 years ago?," 148,328 respondents said California. That's third place -- second goes to North Dakota with 201,304(!), and first by a long shot is of course Oregon. (Disclaimer: I know nothing about the survey or its methodology, maybe someone who does can tell me how I'm grossly misreading the data).
In fact, (caveat: "fact" in this case means about 15 minutes of Googling) I could honestly only find a few articles that touch on the subject, and only one article: [url]http://www.qualityinfo.org/olmisj/ArticleReader?itemid=00005425[/url] that uses actual [i]numbers[/i] to talk about the issue. It suggests that a net 15% of Oregon's population growth ("one-third" inbound from CA, 18% outbound to CA) is Californian in origin. So yes, we will become slightly more Californian --- but considering size and proximity, and the fact that people [i]actually move around the country, both in and out of Oregon[/i], 15% isn't outrageous. I'd think that if the real impact were as great as the impact perceived by clever sign makers, there would be more articles citing facts instead of feelings.
There are of course articles rhetorically suggesting without citation what that sign (rhetorically, without citation) suggests -- that Californians are taking over the Oregon way of life. MSNBC's "Got Problems? Blame Californians" [url]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17791351/[/url] is an overview of emotion-based reasons, devoid of fact, to hate Californians. (Actually, when asked "How exactly is Oregon becoming like California?" in the thread on Flickr following the "Welcome to California" photo above, the photographer pointed to this article.)
Now, I'm not beyond convincing. I'm not even suggesting that this common gripe is wrong. I am not saying that Oregon is absolutely NOT being destroyed by us ex-Californians with our fancy Hollywood hairdos and movie star governor. I'm really not even taking a position at all. And I definitely won't stubbornly defend California's honor in the face of factual evidence. I freaking love this state and was more than happy to turn over my California ID to the Oregon DMV. I just want to know the facts that back up these claims -- not hot air or clever, cynical signs.
Any insights?