I used to live in a run-down shack of a house on the corner of SE 50th and Lincoln built as a general store in the 1920s. The floors were all uneven, there were drafts everywhere, and the kitchen was home to a rat the size of a small dog. We had a rotating tap of roommates for the five years I lived there.

On my days off, I’d made a habit of walking a dozen blocks or so to a little consignment shop called Village Merchants about once a week. Most of the knick-knacks and tchotchke in my home came from here. Some weeks I’d find all sorts of cheap treasures. Others, I’d go home empty-handed. All that mattered was the unknown, the walk, the routine. Every week, for five years.

Eventually, I tired of the neighborhood. Seemingly everyone around earned double what I did and had popped out a kid or two to justify owning an SUV. The yoga studio across the street featured a cringe-worthy ‘orb’ mural my eyes were sore from having to look at every day. I decided to move out of this charming dump and into a 1-bedroom Buckman apartment with a killer view and six south-facing windows allowing for many rays of sunlight. It was a bit more expensive, despite being as old as my prior 1920s residence.

While equally aged in years, this building is maintained far better. If we know each other personally, you’ve heard me gush about how much I adore my home. Hardwood floors, claw-foot tub, matching trim throughout, and in a location that can’t be beat. And for several years, it was actually affordable. Those days, however, are long fucking gone.

In the last year, my rent has gone up by $125.00 a month, and I’m not alone. Talking with people in my building, they’ve experienced the same. Once they relished coming home. Now, doing so is a reminder of rapidly increasing financial burden. My neighbors are angry, and they are scared. “I can’t afford to stay,” a bar-tending friend who shares our address recently told me, “but I have no idea where I can go, everywhere else they’re jacking up the rent, too.”

I’ve been writing for a bit of time about capital real estate, gentrification, displacement, class, cycles of urban divestment and reinvestment. Lacking the energy to rehash it all over again, you can delve into a few of those prior works here, here, here, and here if you like. Simply put: gentrification isn’t a byproduct – it is an intended, profit-driven market scheme. It is the means and it is the end. It is inarguably an act of violence.

How to resist? How to organize? How to stop the unstoppable? Many neighborhood associations have fought back, have sued, only to be crushed by developers with far more money and a justice system that favors expansion of enterprise over the rights of renters.

Yet most neighborhood associations are comprised of home owners. Rarely will you see the younger classes of renters at their monthly meetings. The idea of knocking on doors and meeting everyone in your building, of creating something of a renter’s union that could wield collective power against wealthy building owner seems like a daunting task. Who wants to pour free time into just fighting to stay in your home? Who wants to run the risk of being singled out and targeted for eviction for being an organizer within their building?

These are the kind of questions that keep me up at night.

Perhaps I’m not suited for that particular form of rabble-rousing. Perhaps I am. Time will tell. What I am good at is organizing bike rides big and small. With that skill in hand, earlier this week I co-lead two rides focused on this threatening issue. Credit for coming up with the idea goes to Joe Clement, who shared such with Nicholas Caleb, who suggested it to me. Joe also happened to host Nick and I prior to the rides on KBOO to talk about gentrification, the full interview of which can be found HERE.

The first Le Tour de Gentrification saw some 125 riders show up, most of whom I did not know. In a town this small, that’s saying something. While Nick spent the bulk of the time on the bullhorn, I initially addressed the crowd. “Who here feels they’ve benefitted from gentrification?” I asked. About a dozen hands went up. “Who here feels they’ve been harmed by gentrification?” Dozens more went up. “Interesting. Good to see we’ve got some diversity of experiences.”

The ride, often stretching over three blocks in length as we moved about Portland’s east side, stopped at 5 separate locations. At each, Nick and I, and whomever else wished to add to the conversation, would talk about the individual sites, their history, their proposed futures, and the implications for new and existing residents. A full run-down of locations and specific issues addressed at each was detailed by Jason Merritt, who himself has been forced out of two different homes by gentrifying developments.

As people shared histories and their own experience, it was hard not to notice a feeling of depression settling in, a feeling of powerlessness. Even grabbing a few pints after the ride didn’t seem to lift spirits much. The Portland we know and love is going away. It’s being replaced by something none of us can afford. Bummers and beers abound.

Still, there was a general satisfaction in gathering well over a hundred people on their bikes in the sun for some real talk about shit that matters. So much so, in fact, that we decided to do it again, just days later.

This time, though, instead of the lecture forum via bullhorn with a large crowd, only a handful of riders showed up for a more personal, get-to-know-you ride. With no plan or notes in hand, we winged it – crowdsourcing the route, engaging in conversation instead of soap-boxing. Arun Gupta of Alternet and Guardian UK fame was on hand to help provide national perspective to our dialog.

After visiting the much beloved urban praire commonly known as the Goat Blocks (which will soon become a 257 unit mega-development with 398 parking spaces, YUK!) our group decided to venture up to Division street. We’d heard that condos had been appearing there practically overnight like some 4-story, cube-shaped mushroom field. When we arrived, I wasn’t prepared for what we encountered.

Turning off of Clinton street, it was like looking down a glacial canyon – smooth, sterile surfaces with no people, anywhere. I couldn’t even tell where this was. Nothing was familiar. Not one of the three buildings pictured below existed more than a year ago. After several minutes, I realized where we were. Where these Borg-cube condos now towered had sat the quaint, single-story Village Merchants, now demolished and relocated, where I’d visited and shopped hundreds of times. Across the street had been a tiny moped shop in a house.

This didn’t happen over a generation, or even over a decade, this happened in just years. Vastly out-sizing surrounding homes, vastly out-pricing existing apartments, offensively imposing their bland aesthetic banality, broadcasting that the poor and creative are no longer welcome here, these developments were sickening to observe. We were shocked, but surely not nearly so as the people living next to these monstrosities. The last Google street view taken from this point looks like a different city entirely.

We wandered up Division a bit further, maneuvering around closed sidewalks. Where the Egyptian Room once was now stands likely the most despised development in the city. Eventually, we retired to a nearby pub that’s been a staple of the neighborhood for a good, long time. We talked shop a bit, strategy, policy – all that stuff. Over dire issues and pitchers of IPA, new friendships were formed. The day was not a total downer.

Where do we go from here? How do we build a Right to the City movement? How do we ensure that existing communities retain more power than millionaire developers looking to carve up the land and squeeze out the working class?

Those are questions we’ll be addressing in the coming months and years. We’ll be meeting with neighborhood associations, we’ll be knocking on doors, and we’ll be building an actual progressive political platform for 2016.

This city is a laboratory of democracy, but only sometimes. Often, Portland has a serious deficit of public process. That’s gonna’ change. Our right to this city won’t be granted to us. It will be necessary to organize to exert those rights. Unless we want Portland to become a developer’s utopia devoid of both creative culture and economic diversity, we’re going to have to fight, and fight hard.

Stayed tuned to Rebel Metropolis, Mismanaging Perception, and the Portland Right to the City Coalition for updates soon.

See you in the streets.

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