I'm pretty sure this is a new sentence for me: I'm glad I haven't been to the zoo in a few years.

LED screens designed to show the current Powerball Jackpot were affected in seemingly random locations, including billboards in Coos Bay, Albany and Portland between Aug. 12 and 14. Roughly four of the affected billboards were in the Portland area.

One of the affected billboards was recorded by Reddit user “HanginWithMrPooper” near the intersection of 68th Ave. and Halsey Street in Northeast Portland.

Post about Eugene but applies to every other metro area where prices are increasing.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18067704

Rent in Eugene is high for one simple reason: it's a highly desirable place to live and the people who want to live here are all competing to rent the same units. There is more demand than supply, by a lot. Period. We have under-built for decades despite consistent net migration into our city. Landlords can charge the rent they do because somebody will pay it. The only way to get lower average rents is to reverse migration into Eugene or increase the housing supply.

Why have we under-built for decades? Because city council is an elected position. Homeowners vote, tenants tend to not vote. And to make this worse, homeowners benefit from this supply & demand mismatch because it causes their property values to go up. Politicians don't listen to blocks of voters who don't vote. Eugene homeowners, the neighborhood associations, etc have all lobbied successfully for "single family only" zoning and kept development out. City Council members also tend to be homeowners because at 15K a year you basically need a second source of income to even scrape by on that salary. Tenants and homeowners have opposite goals when it comes to land value.

So tenants, if you care about rent prices, make sure you vote, and make sure your city councilors hear from you that you want more units. If you don't like the options you get at the ballot box in general elections or think there aren't enough, vote in the primaries where your vote will have an even greater impact since you'll be choosing who other people get to vote for. All you need to do in order to vote in the primaries is select a party and your ballot will be mailed to you automatically. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes, can be done online, and you can change parties whenever you want. Selecting a party doesn't mean you have to vote for that party, only that you get the chance to vote in their primary. And vote YES on Ranked Choice Voting which is a measure that will be up for vote in the November election.

What about private equity? Blackrock? "Price-fixing software"?

I know it's popular to point the finger at private equity, AirBnb, or price-fixing software or whoever, but they are drops in the bucket compared to the massive supply and demand mismatch we have. And many urban areas in America have. Price fixing software won't enable you to charge more for rent than the market will allow, because another landlord without said price fixing software will just rent at a more reasonable price and get the tenant while your unit sits vacant and burns a hole in your pocket.

What about rent control?

Rent control will just advantage people in existing units while disadvantaging anybody who moves here from elsewhere or even from in-town. It also gives your landlord great incentive to constructively evict you and means whenever you move, your rent will take a very steep hike. It just polarizes the rental market. The total amount of rent being paid stays roughly the same, it's just no longer equally distributed among the entire renting population. Rent control doesn't work. Yes, it freezes rents for some segments of the population, but it prejudices in favor of whoever happens to be in a unit right this very moment and never moves and screws over everybody else w higher rent, especially those trying to get off the street!

What about expanding the Urban Growth Boundary?

This would make more cheap land available for development at the expense of nature being harder to access and farther away. We can build up without building out. I'm not in favor of expanding the UGB personally, but it would probably help.

But I hate all these new luxury condos!

K be mad then, but it's more supply. Now people who can afford luxury condos will rent them instead of out-bidding you for other units.

But the condos are all empty?!?

As a tenant, you want vacant units. Vacant units mean landlords have to live with the threat of their units not being rented, which means they will lower prices to make sure they stay occupied. Vacant units mean more negotiating power for tenants which turns up in things like pet-friendly complexes. Every market has inefficiencies and vacant units, this is normal. Trust me, those vacant units are costing them money. If they remain vacant long enough, the price will drop. That only happens if they actually remain vacant though, which our supply & demand mismatch won't actually let happen sustainably.

What about banning corporations from owning homes?

The legal structure of an entity owning a property doesn't matter, they can't actually set prices, the market does. Just like you can't buy a $1 million house and sell it for $2 million tomorrow, neither can blackrock. If they are sitting on property, they are losing money, but that's only true if the real estate market doesn't going up because we keep refusing to build more real estate. You need corporations to build apartment complexes, they require tens of million dollars to build, which means you need investors, which means you need a legal structure for investment to occur through safely. Most single home landlords are also LLCs.

What about forcing developers to make "affordable" units?

How do you make low and medium income housing? You build new, luxury housing and wait 20 years. This is similar to rent control where it just shifts around the rent to different parts of the market. Additionally, doing this makes this place less attractive to developers. Developers want to build units that are actually going to make them money, the more red tape and regulations, the more money they waste fighting or complying with them. And it's not just the developer's decision: they have to answer to investors. Investors don't want to invest in things which don't make money. Apartment complexes cost tens of millions of dollars, you need people to invest to make that happen, so you need to make investment attractive. Investors have the luxury of investing wherever they want. Unless Eugene is "investable", they will go elsewhere and you get no units.

I guess this means we've entered smoke season.

What: Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show

When: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday

Where: Quilts will be hung in Sisters on Main Avenue, Cascade Avenue, Hood Avenue and all cross streets between Oak Street and Larch Street

Cost: Free

Full bill text: https://sos.oregon.gov/admin/Documents/irr/2024/017text.pdf

TLDR; Oregon corporate tax has a minimum rate of 1%. This ballot measure would raise it to 3% and give $750 to each Oregon resident (including children).

Get ready for an Uber/Lyft level of corporate ads and media spamming to try to sink this common sense bill.

The bill was widely endorsed by the crypto and financial industries alike for providing much needed regulatory clarity. Looks like it passed anyways with rare bipartisan support and is now headed for the senate.

OR's house reps and how they voted

Salinas (D) - NO

Bentz (R) - YES

Blumenauer (D) - Abstain

Bonamici (D) - NO

Chavez-DeRemer (R) - YES

Hoyle (D) - NO

Axios article about the bill:

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/22/crypto-legislation-fit21-house-passes

Some other relevant background info:
https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/us-house-passes-sweeping-crypto-fit21-bill/

Vote record if you want to look up your rep:
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024226

Among other things, the bill establishes:

• Clear ways to determine if a crypto asset is a security or not, and a process for making that determination. If a crypto is a security, it is subject to many more regulations and laws which are needed to protect investors.
• Clear ways to determine is a crypto exchange is actually an exchange, money transmitter, or other entity subject to regulation and what those regulations are
• Which federal agency even has jurisdiction over crypto assets
• That sufficiently decentralized cryptos (like Bitcoin) are exempt from many securities regulations. This is because a decentralized cryptocurrency can't rugpull you or otherwise collude to harm whatever investments one has made in them. When you think about bad crypto scandals like FTX, exchange collapses, and other rug pulls, they are all a result of centralized actors taking advantage of the trust of others. Decentralized, trustless systems like Bitcoin do not have this flaw as one does not need to trust a select set of centralized actors to faithfully and transparently administer the system. There is no single entity or set of entities, for example, who can make new Bitcoin which is not meant to be minted according to the Bitcoin protocol or force the transfer of funds from one user to another.
• Likewise would exempt "decentralized exchanges" from securities regulations as there is no trusted centralized intermediary who can rugpull investors. One might use a decentralized exchange, for example, to swap BTC to ETH or another cryptocurrency. They are fast, transparent, and efficient.

Personally I vote straight D on the ballot, I was disappointed to see my reps vote against this bill and surprised to see Rs voting for it.

I've lived in Keizer, OR for a bit over a year. It's just north of Salem, almost an hour south of Portland.

There is a local low power station that I have not yet figured out. I have done some research (albeit surface level) into it, but have been stymied at every turn.

I have no idea how they have funding for a fully ad-free radio station. I don't know why they have such a fantastic music selection 24/7. I don't know anything about it.

It's a mystery.

I thought I would share that mystery. You can listen online if you wish, but also listener beware, you have no idea what might come on next: https://themoon.fm/listen-now/

If anyone can find more information about why I cannot find a way to donate to this station, I'd love to hear it.

Sincerely, Crackhappy.

Edit: I contacted the station, and found out that you can donate, it's just not listed on the site at all. @TheMoonOfSalem is where you can send donations on Paypal/Venmo.

Subheading: If the trend continues through 2030, the state could lose its recently added sixth U.S. House seat, a think tank says.

What does Oregon have in common with West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Louisiana?

They all lost population in the year ended July 1, 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest estimates, along with California, Hawaii, Illinois and New York.

Overall, Oregon’s population fell by 6,021 people, or 0.14%, to 4,233,358. That’s the seventh-largest loss in the nation, just behind high-cost California at -0.19% and ahead of Rust Belt Pennsylvania at -0.08%.

The declines, though small, are dangerous for a state like Oregon, which has relied on in-migration for much of its economic growth.

Bill name: Antisemitic Awareness Act

Current status: Passed house, awaiting vote in Senate

Good explainer by US news https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-05-07/explainer-the-controversy-surrounding-the-antisemitism-bill

Article about 700 Jewish professors who opposed the bill https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4651826-jewish-professors-biden-antisemitism-legislation/

ACLU statement against bill: https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-urges-congress-to-oppose-anti-semitism-awareness-act

Vote tally: https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024172

Voted for bill: Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Salinas (D-OR), Bentz (R-OR)

Voted against bill: Val Hoyle (D-OR), Bonamici (D-OR), Blumenauer (D-OR)

If you feel passionately about this bill, contact your senators and Joe Biden who will have the final say if it passes the senate:

Jeff Merkeley (202) 224-3753

Ron Wyden (202) 224-5244

Joe Biden (202) 456-1111