One of the most common refrains in the affordable housing discussion is “developers are targeting the high end of the market” and new apartments are just unaffordable.

Although we at City Observatory–and others–have pointed out that building more high end housing keeps those with high incomes from moving down market and out-bidding those with less income for the existing housing stock, we still hear this argument. For remaining doubters, have a look at Noah Smith’s thought experiment, asking what we think would happen to housing prices if we suddenly demolished 10,000 units of expensive housing.

But today, we take a slightly longer perspective. Housing blogger Iain MacKenzie, who runs the definitive Next Portland website, tracking new housing and commercial developments in the Rose City, shared with us a couple of fascinating historical clips from the city’s paper of record, The Oregonian. They show that today’s affordable housing often started life as self-described “luxury” housing when it was originally built.

The first example dates back a half century, to the 1960s, when, in the wake of urban renewal, the city was building a wave of new apartments. The Oregonian of January 9, 1966 described the city’s booming market for new luxury accommodation: