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The YARD, in Portland, will have 284 units designated as 'workforce housing', which will be available to those earning up to 60 percent of the median income.

(Kristyna Wentz-Graff/Staff)

By Jeff Wallach

Hate mail? Really? That's what it's come to?

Despite what you think, I'm not your enemy. Yes, I own rental property that you'd like to live in, and yes, rents are high -- not as high as in many cities, but certainly high for Portland, given its population of folks like you who make art and save honeybees and wish to live well in a hip metropolis full of bicycling nonprofit workers.

For the record, I am also an artist, and I actually save honeybees and support nonprofits, too! And I ride a bicycle!

But additionally, I have worked seven days per week for more than 25 years -- and assumed great financial risk -- to afford the property that you are so angry about.

Whatever your politics, we're still residing in a capitalist society. And just as you hope to make a few dollars on the reggae hats you've been knitting to sell at the farmers market, rent is the way I get paid for all my time and effort and money spent taking a nearly ruined 100-year-old building -- the kind of house that makes Portland unique and that you rail against demolishing -- and repairing all the neglect that the truly bad landlords allowed, rather than knocking it down and making scads more money than I ever could by lovingly restoring this century-old landmark.

And just for the record, I've had hundreds of renters who would tell you that I'm actually a tenant advocate -- that I let them slide on late rent (even the third time and despite the fact that I still have to pay my full mortgage. I've even reversed a rent raise because the tenants couldn't afford it.)

I always respond promptly and kindly to tenants regarding even the smallest issues. I upgraded to energy-efficient furnaces and laid down real wood flooring instead of cheap laminates with poison glue. I installed a radon remediation system at great expense, even though I didn't have to. I artfully added density within the urban core so that we can preserve forests and farmland while accommodating all the people moving here.

I truly am sympathetic to folks who can't find affordable housing, but isn't that a separate issue than me renovating a 1905 Craftsman into cool, historic apartments rather than tearing it down? Isn't that also something you want -- especially with me bearing the cost?

So why the vitriolic note in response to my Craigslist ad? Did you send threats and expletives just because you can't afford the apartments that I spent $1 million (mostly borrowed) renovating rather than demolishing them and constructing a big, soulless box like all the other developers you love to hate -- which I did because I thought the building was beautiful and, yes, that I could also earn a modest profit by restoring it?

Do you send angry emails to the Mercedes-Benz dealer, or to nice restaurants because their offerings remain out of your price range or at odds with your values? Do you act badly when your favorite brewpub raises growler prices because the hops they craft your beer with are more expensive this year?

So why hate me? I'm actually one of the good guys.

Painting all property owners as money-grubbing bastards is the way that other party -- not the one that, ironically, both of us may be voting for come November -- paints all Muslims because some become terrorists. Your rant defines you as the opposite of the freethinking, super-liberal that you feel has some sort of special right to exist in Portland.

You're the hater. You're the xenophobe. You're the person who believes in the pursuit of happiness and freedom of expression and ideas as long as those ideas suit you and your sense of entitlement.

And if you feel as if I've stereotyped you here, then mission accomplished: You know exactly how I feel.

What's so ironic about your email -- in addition to its utter disregard for current reality and a powerful lack of thoughtfulness, consideration and knowledge (the very things you think you stand for) -- is that it makes clear that I'm not the problem here. I'm not the one ruining Portland. You are.

Still, we're all in this together, whether we like it or not. So couldn't we sit down over an organic soy latte (I'll even buy!) and communicate without you telling me to (expletive) off and move away?

Isn't that how we roll here in this city we both love?

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Jeff Wallach, a freelance journalist, owns rental property in Portland.