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So Did Smart Growth Make Portland Unaffordable?

Posted by: Chris Steins
Thanks to: Chris Steins
15 March 2005 - 11:00am

Randal O'Toole pushes back against Philip Langdon's article that questions whether Portland's growth boundary made the city less affordable.

In the March 2005 issue of New Urban News, New Urbanist Philip Langdon argues that the city's urban growth boundary did not make Portland unaffordable.

Randall O'Toole offers a rebuttal to Langdon's article: "[Langdon] reveals that the National Association of Home Builders had used erroneous data in its housing affordability index. Since smart-growth skeptics such as Wendell Cox and me relied on that faulty index to conclude that Portland experienced the fastest decline in affordability of any U.S. housing market in the 1990s, Langdon triumphantly announces we must be wrong.

...[But] the best data available clearly show that Portland suffered the greatest decline in housing affordability of any urban area in the 1990s.

...Yes, Portland's urban-growth boundary, along with other smart-growth policies, did reduce Portland's housing affordability. Yes, Portland's affordability declined in the 1990s by more than any other urban area. Yes, urban-growth boundaries or other smart-growth policies appear strongly correlated with reductions in affordability in other urban areas as well."

Full Story: Did Smart Growth Make Portland Unaffordable?
Source: The Thoreau Institute, March 14, 2005
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The promise of 'communities' yet-to-come must be particularly offensive to people who pre-date incoming developments. What is the 'beginning of a community that has the body language of a community?' Does this imply that the current neighborhoods in and around downtown Los Angeles lack such a 'body language'?
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