How so? Are you saying the reason immigrants are allowed to immigrate there is to elevate the price of housing? Is there no rent control?
The influx of people to Portland is partly responsible for the high price of real estate. And, I am talking about U.S. citizens moving here from other states and even Oregonians who've moved to the city from rural areas and even from the suburbs, like where I live in order to live closer to downtown Ptl. My house in the city would sell for twice as much as it would go for here. Although, the median home price is over $100,000 less in Portland.
Interestingly the much smaller and more rural city of Woodburn, 32 miles south of Portland, has the greatest number of Latinos at 56% as compared to white non-Latino or Hispanic people which are less than 40%. I don't know if there is a housing shortage there, but there is definitely allot of new residential construction. The median home price is $100,000 less than West Linn. The median household income is almost half of what is in West Linn.
The previous real estate bubble that crashed has mostly re-inflated right back into the same bubble as before. I guess a few rural places might have been left out, but not any contested places or high traffic areas. Also, back in the old days (when really old people like pellius were alive) you could buy a house with like 2-3x the average yearly salary. Now home prices are like 10x the average yearly salary.
This was solely a function of the bankers manipulating the market into a state permanent NINJA loans and getting the government to backstop their losses if it all blows up on them by everyone defaulting. Meaning if banks did not exist and everyone had to pay cash for houses, the prices would be extremely low since nobody can extend the payment process over 30 years. If everyone on the planet can take out a 30 year NINJA loan, this means people who wouldn't even need a loan to buy a house before now need to take out a loan to get one too.
People buying up all the houses using zero collateral (many times the bankers themselves) create artificial scarcity, thus skyrocketing prices so you're required to labor decades more than normal for the same house. It's in the banker's interest to create housing bubbles because it forces the entire population into taking out loans which they otherwise would not need, or a giant transfer of wealth from the bottom 99% to the top 0.000000001% in other words.
The housing market is starting to look up, though. Pretty soon we'll all be saying "remember back in the old days before the bankers were holocausted (this time for real)?":
