Today’s Luxury Housing Will Be Tomorrow’s Workforce Housing

Joe Cortright wrote in his City Observatory blog last week about “filtering” in the Portland metro area. Throughout the city’s current building boom, residents have pointed out that new construction has been concentrated at the high end of the market. According to Cortright, this is not unusual. In fact, many buildings that is currently mid-market housing was built as luxury housing 50 or 100 years ago. While filtering is not a short-term solution to high housing costs in Portland, Cortright points out that the biggest impediment to maintaining a supply of naturally occurring affordable units in the long term are periods where housing does not get built. Read more.