This brief post is a distillation of my reaction to a half dozen posts and articles I’ve read today. The problem of Portland, Seattle, and Chicago is not the damage that has been done to those cities’ “brands” or, more precisely, it is not just the damage that has been done to those brands. That is far too post-modern a view of events. The problem is the at best ineffectual responses of government in those cities and others in response to the events of the last 18 months and the run-on economic effects of those responses. So, for example, Amazon started moving its workers out of Seattle long before COVID-19 or the reactions to the death of George Floyd due to the hostile business and living environment that the city was creating. If they can’t get the people they want to work for them to move to Seattle, that is a genuine concern and cost for the company. And it’s more than just a branding problem.
They are not branding problems, they are governance problems. In turn, they are voter problems.
Then if things are as bad as you say people will stop moving to those places and others leave. People other than retirees moving to warmer climes. We should see housing costs bottom out in those places if it is real. I regularly work in coal country where towns have half the population they had int he past so no place has a guarantee.
Steve
The first moves are from Seattle and Portland to their respective suburbs. That is proceeding fairly quickly.
And it’s not what I say that matters. It’s what they say and that’s what they’re saying.