Portland Financial Crisis: Chamber Report Sounds the Alarm

Portland’s downtown real estate market continues its freefall. Records show the city’s largest office buildings are worth a fraction of what they were worth before the pandemic. And now they’re below a billion. That’s shocking. Yeah, it is shocking. I I think again without without the pandemic, I’m not sure we would have thought these types of adjustments were were even really possible. Almost no downtown property is immune. The Fox Tower lost nearly $54 million in taxable value between 2019 and today. Our economy is on a sustained downward trajectory because of local structural economic policy.

Montgomery Park lost almost $50 million. Standard Insurance lost more than $35 million in taxable value. Empty storefronts remain common in downtown Portland with no sign of a comeback. >> PacWest lost more than $30 million. That’s a combined $170 million loss in taxable value between just four buildings. The changes cost local governments millions in tax revenue. We’ve had homeless like every city. And there’s protests outside of ICE like every city. But what’s different about Portland, Oregon, is that people left the office buildings and then didn’t go back after COVID. EcoNorthwest reports shows downtown Portland’s office vacancy rate rose from 34.6% last quarter from 33.3% in the second quarter.

And this week Wells Fargo also announced 50 more layoffs at its downtown office. By the end of this year, the bank plans to exit its offices in Portland as it moves operations to other states. So we’ve got a new report from the Portland Metro Chamber. It’s an unbiased look at where Portland sits. Latest report shows Portland economy in crisis. Leaders call for decisive action. Hasn’t Portland been calling for decisive action for years now? And what do we get? Much of the same. Much of the same. I’m just going to go through this report because this report it lays it pretty bare. I mean the statistics are not kind to where Portland sits right now.

And in some of the clips that we saw at the beginning of this video, you can see leadership is basically stating, “Hey, we’ve got some policies here that are not conducive to making Portland thrive. You’ve got a whole bunch of policies that have kind of combined, you know, measure 110, decriminalized hard drugs. Oh my good lord, everybody’s dying from fentanyl overdoses. Guess we better criminalize hard drugs again. Hey, no business is able to make it with all the homeless just wandering around. Guess we should do something. Hey, defunding the police, that didn’t work out so well. Now we’ve got Boo Boo Bob literally crying that members of Trandeeva Ragwa are are are being arrested in Portland.

Just just some some sheer insanity. Businesses don’t want to be involved in that and they’re not and they’ve left and Portland is absolutely plummeting in front of our very eyes. Now you you might hear some talk about, “Oh, we’ve got better foot traffic.” If you have no businesses for the foot traffic to go to, what’s the point, right? Portland, Oregon, February 12th. Portland Metro Chamber has released its annual state of the economy report. The report show the Portland region is at a major inflection point. That is calling it out about as much as any chamber is going to do. We are at a major inflection point, meaning if we keep going down, it ain’t going to be pretty.

We need to go back up. But you don’t have leadership in Portland to do that because Portland is predominantly run by Democrats and Democrats run cities into the ground. Because it’s all tax and spend, and it’s a bunch of nonsense. Instead of actually supporting law enforcement, supporting local business, bringing taxes down, bringing regulations down, they can’t do that. They can’t work their way out of a wet paper bag. So, what you see in Portland is what you get. Out-migration has eased. People leaving has eased. But, natural population growth has stalled. Leaving future demographic growth increasingly dependent on international migration.

Got to get those people who don’t know anything about Portland, Oregon to come on in and live here. Because once you get them in, they’re they’re not going to leave, right? Get them all all that welfare. Get them on that welfare fraud. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The same time employment has continued to contract, even as the national economy expands. Departure from Portland’s historical role as an economic outperformer. Portland has not been an economic outperformer for quite some time, way pre-pandemic. Things just got bad. You let the homeless live wherever the F you want. You let Antifa just absolutely bend Portland over and have its way with them.

You know, you you had tear gas Teddy out there with the soccer moms celebrating Antifa, celebrating defund the police, celebrating the domestic terrorism of Black Lives Matter. Half that makes sense, right? The departure from Portland’s historical role as an economic outperformer Portland has done that to themselves. Created a situation where you are no longer even you’re 80th out of 81st in desirability of investing in real estate. You’re almost dead last out of 81 cities. Nobody wants to buy in Portland. Because well, no companies are going there. It’s super expensive. It’s massively overregulated.

Street conditions are horrific. You defunded the police, you just went down all these crazy trend libtard roads, and here we are. Huh. Housing production has slowed sharply. There’s only like 600 and something units that are being permitted right now. 600 units for a city that isn’t that much smaller than Seattle. I think it’s 600 and something thousand, maybe close to 700,000. And you got 600 units of housing coming online. There’s no demand. And there’s no builders who want to build in Portland. There’s no builders who want to build in Oregon. Because you’re overregulated, you’re overtaxed, and it’s just not a good call.

So, housing production has slowed sharply, and housing affordability remains out of reach for many households. Want to talk about that for a second, okay? I have a lot of people ask me, “Hey, Shawn, how come um housing prices haven’t fallen more than they have?” Here’s the deal. Businesses don’t need office space as much anymore, cuz you can do everything on the typey type computer, right? People still need homes. They need a roof over their head. So, it’s not like a business that can say, “Well, we’re just going to go work from home.” Call it good. We’re going to go work from a coffee shop. Call it good.

People can’t do that. Well, they do in Portland, but they’re called homeless, drug addicted, whatever, right? Hobos. It’s what we used to call them back in the day, hobos. I say we bring hobo back. Just hobo. It’s a guy that’s homeless, but you know, you have this notion that he’s going to get on and off a train. Right? I’m okay with that. Let’s just go old school. These trends reflect the recently released findings of the Chamber’s annual state of the electorate report on voter sentiment, which found that Portlanders feel deeply uncertain about their economic outlook. Portlanders have concern, and you should.

You have run your economy into the ground. You have run your commercial real estate market into the ground. You’ve run your housing market into the ground. The whole debacle with ICE. No businesses want to come into a city that constantly have a bunch of furries running around playing grab-ass and messing with law enforcement. That’s not the direction that business wants to go. Businesses by and large are conservative, right? Cuz you got to make that profit, which is the opposite of Democratic Socialists of America, which just basically wants communism to thrive. Hey, let’s just have the government take over the means of production.

It’s a genius idea cuz it’s always worked. Oh, it Oh, it hasn’t? Literally, one of my podcasts, not that long ago, was we had Sean Scott, Democratic Socialists of America. He is a um He’s He’s a politician from Seattle, Washington. Brandy Cruz asked him, “What was a good example of of um socialism working in today’s society?” And Sean Scott gave the answer that Cuba was the example of socialism working in our society. Cuba. Yeah, let let let that sink in. You got a bunch of people running around, not just Washington, not just Oregon, California. I mean, all of these states that are literally mentally incapacitated about how to get from point A to point B.

Hey, let’s throw on some more taxes and we’ll hope for the best. I think business will stay. Hope. Hope. Yeah, and they’re not. They’re just not. So, state of the economy takeaways, 3,400 more births. That’s down from 13,900 more births than deaths in 2001. People aren’t having babies in Portland cuz they know it’s not a good idea. Our future here isn’t great and the schools suck. Schools suck in Seattle. Terrible. Terrible. I had a conversation with my son. He’s 30, he’s going to be 33. And um and March, next month. And um at some point he wants to have children. And I said, “Son, there is no way in hell I am letting you have your children raised in Seattle.

It’s a no-go. I mean, I don’t draw the line as a parent I don’t draw the line at very many things, but Seattle, no-go. You got to get out of Seattle. You you you Come back to Bellevue. Seattle is a wastoid as far as education goes. If those KIDS COME OUT, YOU KNOW WHAT I mean? Just a bunch of lip turds that don’t know up from down, never going to be able to get a job. They’re literally educated in such a way that from the get-go they’re they’re up against a brick wall, right? There’s going to be no opportunity for them because they’re mentally challenged. So, we got 8,800 number of jobs lost in the region in 2025, fourth worst of all metro regions in the nation.

80th, Portland continues to rank second to last in national real estate attractiveness ranking. Perfect. 656, number of multi-family housing units in Portland’s pipeline. Lowest since 2011. Same darn thing here in King County. Want to in the county I’m in. You’ve got super low multi-family housing units cuz you’ve had a contraction in the economy. You’ve had a contraction in the real estate market. But more importantly, investors don’t want to invest in in libtard territory. They just don’t. It’s too expensive, it’s over-regulated, the dirt is wildly expensive. Who wants to do that? So, you’ve wildly shrunk the supply of multi-family housing.

Where are rents going to go as a result of that? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not down, right? It’s not down. Quarterly value of exports, 6.4 billion, down from 10 billion. That is a 36% drop. That’s insanity. That’s That is political I mean, that is economic free fall. Here we go. This is the guy from CEO of the Portland Metro Chamber. The economic trends in this report serve as clear warnings. Fair enough. This economic decline is a direct result of major cracks in our foundation brought about by structural policy decisions across the city. Okay? You guys made some terrible decisions. You’re not willing to go back and rectify them.

Counties, metro, and state decisions. Basically says, “Everybody made terrible decisions and you’ve got terrible policy. You tax the absolute heck out of everybody and guess what? They’re They’re looking at what they get and they’re like, “I got RVs up and down my street. I got homeless people running around my backyard. I got homeless people, drug addicts crapping on my sidewalk. Why would I want to pay this much in taxes? I don’t.” Boop, gone. Now is the time to adopt a competitive mindset and learn from our past mistakes. That would take Republican leadership and you don’t have that, nor will you have that.

Same thing here in Washington state, in Seattle. It will take Republican leadership to make the hard decisions. Oh, we got to cut that program. We got to cut that program and we got to put more into law enforcement. We got to do more here. Homelessness, cut that by half. Oh, but what’s going to happen to uh At some point time, the whole tax and spend And And we are looking at that inflection point. Tax and spend. Tax and spend. Tax and spend. It’s It’s It’s not working because the economic engine that you need doesn’t exist. So, yeah, you’ve got you’ve got a huge huge decline. On added, under the status quo, we will continue seeing economic decline.

So, under Democrat leadership in Portland, in Multnomah County, in state of Oregon, under Democrat leadership, we will continue to see economic decline, business flight, and strained funding for public services. Because you’ve got businesses ex-exiting. You’ve got the downtown core is worth a fraction of what it used to be. So, all that tax revenue, gone. Employers, gone. Employees, gone. People sitting their butts in restaurants, gone. People sending their kids to school, gone. The list just keeps going on. Conversely, we can positively turn around our trajectory if public and private partners coordinate on clear, shared economic priorities, retraining and attracting private investment, building affordable housing, and creating jobs.

Okay, but there it’s such an uphill battle. It is such an uphill battle. What What this guy is saying is 100% correct. 100% correct. Whether Portland can do it, I don’t think so. Cuz Portland is so mentally challenged with libtard ideology. They just are. It’s like that woman in Portland who who we saw at the beginning of this video saying, “All All cities have people protesting against ICE.” Yeah, but not like Portland. Portland went next level. And now you are seeing next level inflection point, which is insolvency. Portland’s bank going to be bankrupt. It’s It’s just a matter of when. Just a matter of when.

Positive change is now a must. Okay, but you don’t have leadership that has the balls to do that. And I say that figuratively. Not an an option. The future of the next generation of Portlanders and Oregonians hangs in the balance. I say good luck with that. I say good luck that luck with that with Seattle. I say good luck with that with Washington. Cuz you know who doesn’t have big protests against ICE? You know who didn’t defund their police? Lots of states. They’re led by Republicans, like Oklahoma. And that’s where I’m moving to. I’m I’m I’m leaving Bellevue, Washington. I’m leaving Washington state.

My parents are there. I’m going to go live in a red state because I want that red leadership. I want to wake up knowing I have politicians who actually understand how things work and can navigate us in a positive change is now a must. Okay, we don’t have to have a positive change in Oklahoma. It’s already there. They’re already on track. Not an option. And the future of the next generation of Oklahomans and Oklahoma City hangs in the balance. It doesn’t. It’s not hanging in the balance because they have a budget surplus. Because they have red leadership. People who don’t have their heads clearly up their ass.

That’s what we’re doing. And there’s lots of other cities like that run by Republicans. So, even if you’re in a a city like Austin, Texas, which is Hey, man. You know, kind of Portlandish. You’ve got leadership at the state level that says, “Hey, you guys got to clean up your homeless encampments. We’re sending down the the Texas State Patrol to clean up your nonsense, you libtard mayor.” That’s what you’ve got going on. So, you need to have at least Republican leadership at the state level, in my opinion. And where I’m going in Oklahoma, I mean, you can just roam around anywhere in Oklahoma and it’s red.

77 out of 77 counties voted red. So then we’ve got some more takeaways here in Portland, Oregon, run by Democrats, into the ground. 252,289 is the quarterly average of leased square footage in 2025, lowest on record, except 2020. Huh, why is that? Well, cuz businesses aren’t going to Portland. You ran it into the ground. What are you going to do to turn it around? What are you going to do? Hard decisions. 86% total percent of foot traffic in Portland Central City compared to 2020 levels. I find that number questionable at best. Um, who’s running around? Is it the employees? No, cuz you don’t have any.

Um, maybe that’s maybe that’s basically the security guards and the homeless and the cops chasing them. Is Is that your 86%? Okay. All right, I believe that. 10.2 million quarterly average square foot of vacant office space in the central city in 2025, which is the highest level on record. We’re number one. Portland’s number one. Oh. In vacancy in your downtown core. >> [laughter] >> Mhm. >> [clears throat] >> 2026 State of Downtown and the Central City report shows that compared to last year, the story in 2026 is less about whether downtown activity will rebound through office recovery alone, and more about the region’s new normal.

Detroit has a new normal. Cleveland has a new normal. Mhm. >> [clears throat] >> Office leasing is further declined in the lowest level on record, and vacancy continues to rise, reinforcing that hybrid work is driving a lasting shift in demand. So you got you got to do some Johnny hustle to get that back. You know what? There’s no Johnny hustle in Portland, Oregon. Just not. I was in Portland Oregon uh, you know, last summer checking out the ridiculous anti-ice protests. I mean literally just shocking. It It is shocking that people protest law enforcement. I mean that it’s it’s the kind of mental retardation that puts you in a position where Portland is in the position that it is.

Which is either dead last or number one, you know, in office vacancy. Categories you don’t want to be number one in. Kind of like California. Hey, we’re number one in poverty. We’re number one in unemployment. We’re number one in most unaffordable housing. You you know, we’re number one. And what I saw in the downtown core, which drives every major big city, was literally security officers at night, homeless population, stores, retail level stores. Maybe one out of every 10 either had something in it, quasi look like it it’s open, or that. And And then you’ve got just a bunch of nut job homeless people running around.

And And then you you know, you wonder why things aren’t better and they’re not getting better. Nobody wants to run a business there. And even the people that do want to run a business there can’t because the economics don’t work because the taxes are so high and there’s so much over-regulation. They can’t do it. So, you know, I see Portland as a lot like Seattle. Seattle hired a socialist for its mayor who ran on a platform of affordability. None of the things that people with real lives need to be more affordable or leadership going to make more affordable in these cities. It’s just a no-go. You’re not going to be able to make it happen because everything that is systemic to making Portland, to making Seattle, to making LA so expensive, it’s all the Democrat layers and layers and layers and layers and layers of nonsense.

Here in Washington state, we’re doing a millionaire tax. We’re doing a statewide income tax. We we’ve got 9 billion, 12 billion new taxes. That doesn’t say, “Hey, come to Seattle. Start a business.” It just doesn’t. It it pushes business away. But socialism says, “Ah.” “Ah. It’s okay. Oh, we don’t really care about that business later leaving. We care more about that teacher, that third grade teacher leaving.” Now, I want people to be educated as well. I want people to be able to get an education. But a teacher leaving versus a guy who maybe hands out 10, 12, 15 paychecks, an actual creator of economy, which which one are you really concerned about?

Well, if you go with the teacher, that is a sure fire way to tank your city. And you know what? Seattle’s well on its way. Portland is already there. They’re at an inflection point. Need to do something. Will they have the leadership skills to turn it around? No. And I’ll podcast that journey with you right here on News for Reasonable People. Thanks so much for joining. Love to have you subscribe. Hit that notification bell. I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye for now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> [music] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.