Philip Higgins

Anthony Effinger and his team at Willamette Week just dropped a chart and analysis that should make every Multnomah County taxpayer furious!! Between 2015 and 2025, County revenue didn’t just grow—it exploded, jumping from $1.1 billion to $2.7 billion. That’s an 80% increase even after inflation. And yet somehow, despite this windfall, Chair Jessica Vega Pederson is now telling departments to slash budgets. You can’t make this up. Effinger points to three main drivers: the expiration of urban renewal districts, a hike in the Business Income Tax from 1.45% to 2.0%, and a flood of new taxes—most notably the Supportive Housing Services (SHS) tax, the so-called “Pre-School for a Few” tax, and a 5-year library bond. The real problem is that third category. The SHS tax massively ballooned operating grants from $351 million to $1.14 billion. But this isn’t flexible funding—it’s locked into programs that don’t address the County’s core responsibilities like public safety and public health. Worse, Vega Pederson chose to spend it on policies that enable street camping—tents, tarps, and low-barrier shelters—while homelessness surged 177% over the same period. That’s not a coincidence; that’s a policy failure. Then there’s the “Pre-School for a Few” program—another Vega Pederson pet project. It’s a narrowly targeted, inefficient system that serves a fraction of families while duplicating existing state efforts. Instead of empowering parents broadly, it props up a limited supply-side model that leaves most people out. And because income tax revenue is volatile, the County has socked away a staggering $600 million reserve—effectively insulating politically favored programs from the very instability they created. That reserve is now even inflating reported “investment income,” adding another $92 million to the books. So yes, they’re now making money off the taxes they over-collected. Meanwhile, the County’s core functions—like the DA’s office and the Sheriff—are stuck relying on a General Fund that barely grows thanks to property tax limits. So while specialty programs swell, the basics of governance are left to scrape by. Bottom line: this isn’t a revenue problem. It’s a priorities problem. Effinger’s piece is essential reading. The next step? Someone needs to run this exact same analysis on City of Portland spending. @jvegapederson @MayorKWilson @GovTinaKotek

@EmergentLand @aarmlovi Yes!! But… I’m also reluctant to adopt new tech from a start up that may not be able to warrantee their product. If I’m risking 20m on a project I want to know I can insure and refinance (or sell ) the asset.

@aarmlovi I think a hidden problem with our land use law is that not only does it ban affordable housing, but it also bans wide scale innovation to produce better housing. There's so many emerging construction methods to build housing and their all non-viable for the exact same reason.

Mass timber *intends* to couple with panelized/off-site construction methods to provide cheap, lightweight, fire-rated Type IV midrise & hi-rise structures In practice in the US, like all off-site factory plays except the HUD Code, it hasn't *yet* delivered

Think of zoned capacity like an oil deposit. Just because the oil is there doesn't mean it will be economical to extract. Much more from @aarmlovi in his post on our blog! open.substack.com/pub/abundancea…

Portland is a municipal Ayn Rand villain.

@jasonc_nc Parks SDCs for $1000 Alex

“Plant a tree so that future generations can enjoy its shade” became “bitch give me my money”.

10,000 times this.

“For decades, Oregon’s central economic question was how to manage growth. Today the question is whether we can generate it at all.” opb.org/article/2026/0… #orpol

@jdcmedlock I have been saying this.

@Dirtdog @KyleTibbitts For what it’s worth my 22 year old daughter is pleased with her SLC experience. Safe, good employment opportunities, reasonable weather (Altho we are visiting next week and it’s gonna be 55? Down from 80 degrees…)

I’m a 6th gen Utahn and my kids are 7th gen. The state dynamics are shifting for sure, but that is understood as so much net immigration continues to occur. That being said the political process appears largely unchanged during my lifetime. The same special interest groups continue to impact the politics in the same fashion that have always been there. We are experiencing lots of growth pains. - increased property taxes to pay for many of the common things citizens expect from the gov’t: parks, roads, utility connections, etc. - new political ideas and ideals coming in on a variety of topics that are challenging the historic operation of the state I have a unique perspective as I get to travel throughout all of the Mountain States and west to the coast regularly with my day to day business of building drive thru fast food restaurants. Utah is still the place my wife and I choose to raise our 5 kids. They appear to me to be fairing these growth pains as good or better than many of the states I work in.

When I moved to Utah in 2021 I thought it was a pretty safe red state. Turns out it’s battleground of political stupidity.

This is wild. Senator Warren is now threatening apartment developers and investors, too, with a letter chock-full of misinformation. Such threats can scare off development capital, and they just shift to building warehouses or something else. But America's renters become collateral damage, with less supply and higher rents. This letter fails to note: 1) The role of these groups in adding new housing supply. 2) That America's affordability crisis is concentrated among lower-income renters -- very few of whom live in the properties owned by these groups receiving letters. They generally serve renters making $75k+ and spending 15-25% of income on rent. 3) It also falsely says large investors own 3% of single-family homes, which isn't true. It's 3% of single-family RENTAL homes, but only 0.5% of the total number of single-family homes. We gotta do better than this and start putting the focus on addressing the real issue: We need to build more housing of all types.

@CaseyMericle @SimpleCRE @REExchangor Today’s Friday afternoon call answering got a gas station listing and a new RV park developer client (yes I have some unconventional business lines). Weekend calls you will get a nice text from me letting you know I will call on Monday when I’m back in office.

@SimpleCRE @REExchangor Or call their cell phone on Friday afternoon

If you are a commercial real estate investor looking to sell and are trying to decide on a broker, use this test: Call their office phone (they never answer) and leave a voicemail asking about the smallest and worst listing of theirs that you can find. A bad broker will take forever to call you back (or won't call back at all). A good broker will call you back in 3-4 days when they find the time. A great broker, who treats all their listings with respect and doesn't waste a lead, will call you back within a day.

@SimpleCRE If I’m gonna list it I’m calling people back. I got costar fees to pay

@AndrewDamitio True story, we were looking at doing an affordable project 2 years ago but the difference between market and affordable was $50 a month. And the insanely restrictive conditions you have to deed restrict to for 60 years (!) made the choice pretty easy.

Portland's rents have fallen so much that market rate rentals are even drawing in those making ~60% AMI. The city's housing authority is becoming a cautionary tale of what happens when you overbuild "affordable" units, then market rate rents drop. wweek.com/news/city/2026…

I'll do it for $40k and the city will have its report before the end of the fiscal year.

@SimpleCRE Fortunately-ish my local market is small enough it’s a “take it or leave it” on size and budget. But there’s the “we need 5000 sqft but can only pay half of market” crowd that checks the waste of time box.

If you ask a commercial tenant prospect what their price range is and they say "oh, it's pretty open if we find the right space," they are 99% likely to be a huge waste of time.

Not making the 2nd part up by the way…

I can’t pay my rent but I want to buy something from Nordstrom so I rob or extort a random landowner to pay for it. No one will agree this is a sound plan (hopefully). City with big budget deficit: “you know what we need, nice parks. Let’s raise our SDCs 300%”

@OBIOregon Looking at a 300% increase in parks SDCs in a local town that will kill our 75 unit project ( would be adding $750,000 to our cost ). But yea shocking permits are down …

Building permits for private housing in Oregon have fallen by more than half over the past 20 years. For more long-term competitiveness and data trends, check out the Oregon Scorecard. #orpol #orleg oregonbusinessindustry.com/oregonscorecar…

@CascadePolicy I was in a zoom meeting with a couple colleagues who are in law and finance. Waiting on the client to join we were all discussing how we won’t be spending our sunset years in Oregon because we want to pass on what we built and saved to family not the state government

38 states have NO estate tax. Of the 12 who have an estate tax, Oregon already has one of the lowest estate tax exemption levels in the country at $1 million and is now pushing for a 16% rate. Who wants to stay in a state that keeps carving away at people's hard-earned money?