I have been living here in Vancouver Washington (just north of Portland Or) for my hole life, 29 yrs. This town was a bunch of orchards and fields when I was growing up. Now all you can see is houses and apartments. All the little roads are getting crammed full of traffic. I saw on the news a few weeks ago that this area is growing so fast that housing can't be built fast enough. The news showed a clip of two families sleeping in cars out in the drive way of a new house going up for sale. It sold that day to the first person who saw it! The reporter also stated that realtors are having a hard time making any money because the area doesn't have enough houses.



I have also noticed a lot of homeless people that we never had just a couple years ago. People with the "help me I need money" signs, people living in buses, more crime, more litter, more graffiti. AAAAAHHHHHHRRGGHHH!!! I think I'm going to have a melt down!



Oh yeah, Oregon has made it harder for meth heads to buy cold meds over the counter to make meth, so I'm sure the junkies/dealers will just move over here to set up shop!



I work a early morning shift so I miss alot of the traffic etc, but if I go anywhere on a Friday/Saturday night I notice all of the crazies are out. I just got back from the corner market to get fuel. Had to wait for a old beat up charter bus full of hippies to move away from the pump then as I was getting fuel two dirtballs came flying in to the island behind me and actually hit my truck! It was just a small tap that didn't hurt my hitch at all but they idiot just said "sorry I was trying to pull up far enough". Of course he had pulled forward way to far.



Does any body else get rubbed the wrong way when they are around these type of people? Should I seek help? Overpopulation sucks!

 

My city is losing population.

But our board of supes still make it tough to live here.

We have our big city problems here too.

And we're actually a small city (area wise-49 sq. miles)

Nowhere to build, that's why housing is so expensive here.

But you won't find S.F. featured in "COPS".

 

Where I live was country when I moved here the day after my junior year of high school ended. Friendswood was a stoplight every mile or so, the speed limit was 65, there was a field full of trees, fireflies, and field rats behind my house.

Needless to say, the country is gone. The field was replaced with a bunch of little league baseball fields--not the worst thing, I guess. Friendswood is city no matter how far you get beyond I45, the speed limit on FM 528 is 40-55 along the road.....but at least that place is high class and most of the local hotties are able to fit in at Hooters.

 

We're doing great

Just like it should be.

 

My town is growing a lot, it's more of a city now, but in size we're growing out all directions. We border Tulsa so we can't go any farther that way, but we used to have a ton of sod fields and whatnot. But now it's all buildings. I think we're on the top 10 list of fastest growing cities.

 

Yeah, they're all moving up here. This used to be a nice, quiet backwoods (or is that backwards?) county with affordably low property values. Since the Bay Are discovered it, things have gone through the roof! We have gridlock on our highways (heck, I sometimes have to wait almost 30 seconds for a break in traffic so I can pull out onto the highway!) and property values have gone way, way out of sight. I see bare 1 acre lots going for 150 grand and up. Used to be able to pick up something like that for 15-20 gees. And not so long ago, either.

 

not fast enough for me. i'd love to sell, make a little bit of money and get myself a bit of property further away from people. just got the letter saying we have too many cats. they should worry about the jerk driving his honda down the street going 3x the speed limit when there's kids out playing.

 

Welcome to the brave new world- and thank the Portland City Council for extending an invitation to so many Portlanders to move to the other side of the river.

 

polarbear, do I detect a slight bit of sarcasm there?

 

I grew up in this town and up until the past 2 years have only had to wait at 1 stop light and didnt have to cross any intersections to get to wally world and now I have to wait at 5 lights and and intersection. We have shopping centers and resturants popping up all over the place. Dont mind it though, nice change for a hole in the wall town.

 

You're right Ben- that was thoughtless of me. I forgot to include kudos to the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, the Metro Service District, and Portland Public Schools. The current trend is for outlying communities (like Damascus) to incorporate, just to keep themselves out of the long reach of these fine institutions.

 

I've been at both ends of the spectrum, from living in the town of Mojave, Ca. (pop. 4,000) to S.F. (Peak pop.750,000).

I hear Mojave has grown a bit. I must go back and check it out someday.

Damn near every city/town is growing.

Progress?

 

polarbear, you mean the ever loving paws of politicians trying to grab more of what you need and they want-your money?

Naw, never heard of that.

 

A related question is: where are all these people coming from to need so many new homes?

When they introduced no-fault divorce and the divorce rate skyrocketed, you could explain a good part of it on the growing proportin of society that needed two homes per family. But that's levelled off now.

The baby-boomers are coming to downsizing age.

Now, in Canada, immigration plays a big role. We take in about 200,000 newcomers every year. In a country of just 30-million, that's about 2/3-of-a-percent per year. That'd be 2-million immigrants per year scaled to the US' population. And I don't recall the politicians asking any Canadians if they really wanted their towns transformed overnight by waves of newcomers.

They tell us that this is absolutely necessary because Canadians aren't producing enough babies themselves and there'll economic apocalypse if the propulation doesn't grow rapidly. I think they're feeding us crap to further their multicultural agenda. I think this for several reasons:
a)Many countries with low population growth rates (Japan recently) or small populations (Netherlands) have proven by their high standards of living that neither a large population nor a high growth rate are necessary to prosperity.
b)On the other hand, the countries with the highest population growth rates and the largest populations are coincidentally in the worst troubles.
c) High population growth via immigration hasn't produced the economic shangri-la it was supposed to - I read a recent report that said that when you factor in inflation, most Canadians are actually earning less today than 15 years ago because (i)wages haven't kept up and (ii) taxes have gone up so much to pay for social programs.

But even beyond economic considerations, I can't help thinking that a nation whose economy depends on a constant influx of bodies, using the rest of the world as a baby farm, because something about the society discourages natives from having families, is a nation that's really f****d up. We should be fixing it instead of flooding it.

 

Ours is growing, but not really in population much. When we moved to the country....there was nothing for about 5 miles. Since then, just down the road, still about 3-4 miles towards town though, theyve put in restarants, Walmart, Kmart, Lowes, 2 strip malls, post office, and 2 hotels. I definetly preferred the old way when we were in the middle of nowhere. Now we got people flying down our road from the next smaller town to get to Wallyworld. The hotels are sort of nice though, when there's a big sprint car race in town that weekend, I stop by and talk to the drivers when they're in the hotel lot workin on their cars.