Why retire to PDX?

A personal perspective from a former resident of Silicon Valley and Seattle

My wife and I retired to Portland in 2018 after two stints in Silicon Valley (1990-2001, 2006-2016) and two stints in Seattle (2001-2006, 2016-2018). With six years into our time in Portland, we’ve really enjoyed it here.

We live in Portland’s Pearl District in Northwest Portland, home to many bars, restaurants, galleries, and high-rise residences. We live in a condominium in the North Pearl, close to both Fields Park and Tanner Springs Park. We walk everywhere, and our condominum has a walk score of 98 (“A Walker’s Paradise”).

We are often asked what we like about retiring here, and here are some top “pros”:

Pros:

1. Walking everywhere. Portland has been cited as a “20 minute neighborhood” where all essentials are a twenty minutes by foot, bike, or public transit to meet all non-work needs. We almost never drive, as we are a 4 minute walk from Safeway or a 15-minute walk from Whole Foods. We felt trying out lives without so much driving was important to us especially as we watched our moms age.

2. Great bars and restaurants. Right within our neighborhood, the Pearl District has great food and drink (more on this later!) We also frequent adjacent downtown, Nob Hill, and Slabtown for a great selection, and we even walk across to the Central Eastside from time-to-time. We have not run out of places to go, but we always feel like there is more to discover.

3. Great walking trails. We live a couple blocks off the Willamette River, which makes for great walking and jogging, and we’re a 45 minute walk to trailheads for Forest Park. We love not getting in the car to get outdoors. Still, we do this from time-to-time. For example, with a short drive, we can easily make it out to Multnomah Falls.

4. Easy access to healthcare. The urgent care clinic I go to (ZoomCare) is walking distance, close to Whole Foods. I take care of my more advanced needs at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) down at the waterfront or up on Marquam Hill. The streetcar goes straight to OHSU down in South Waterfront, and the Portland aerial tram goes straight from the OHSU South Waterfront campus up to the Marquam Hill campus. I have friends that left Silicon Valley for places like Aptos, Santa Cruz, and Carmel that have found themselves making the journey and having to stay back to Silicon Valley (particularly Stanford) to get the best care. Having a leading teaching like OHSU very close by was important for me in retirement.

5. Compelling, multifamily housing options. Here in the Pearl District, we live in a high-rise condominium, and there are many very nice choices here. It’s not only nice for the easy access to stores, restaurants, walking trails, and healthcare, but we also enjoy having great neighbors and the density to support community. We regularly see people we know just walking down the street! We also enjoy having a management staff, and we don’t worry about exterior home maintenance, yard work, or even security issues when we go on vacation.

6. Good community events. In our neighborhood, there are a number of events, including the “First Thursday” events in the Pearl District, the annual Art in the Pearl festival, and a number of other scheduled events around art, beer, and food. We’ve even met friends that we still meet with regularly at these events.

7. A good cultural fit. We’ve found the native Oregonians really nice, and we’ve also made friends with a number of similar people from elsewhere who chose to move here. We’ve found it easy to make friends in our building, through volunteer work, through friends-of-friends, and even (as mentioned above) at local events. This will be a subject of a future post, but having and making new friends is an important part of early retirement.

8. No sales tax. While we’ve found in retirement that we spend more on experiences and travel than we do on goods, it’s often fun to host out-of-town visitors who like to take advantage of no sales tax here while visiting.

Cons:

1. High income taxes. Here in Portland, we have both City of Portland and Multnomah County taxes, this is on top of the high Oregon State taxes. Even in retirement without earning income, it’s important to note that selling your portfolio, while treated as capital gains in the federal tax system, is subject to the normal personal income tax here in Oregon. This high tax rate is certainly a downside relative to other areas, but it’s a price we have assumed to live here.

   

   source: Tax Foundation
   

2. High Multnomah County property taxes. In addition to the high income taxes, Portland has the fifth highest effective property tax rate in the country, too. Again, this is effective tax rate is high, and it was actually even higher on an absolute basis than the property tax we were paying in Seattle for a more expensive downtown condo. Of course, property tax is certainly less on an absolute basis than it would be buying a new, comparable (but much higher-priced) home in Silicon Valley.

   

   source: Axios

3. Rain. We’ve grown accustomed to SAD (seasonal affective disorder). While Portland is slightly less “gloomy” than Seattle, it’s not nearly as nice as it was when we lived in California. One advantage to high-rise condo living is that we don’t have to worry about home maintenance issues typically associated with Pacific Northwest homeownership. There’s an expression here in the Pacific Northwest. “There’s no such thing as bad weather; only bad gear.”

4. Still the whitest big city in America. Our kids have joked that visiting us in Portland reminds them of watching “Get Out.” It is true that Portland remains the whitest big city in America as of the 2020 census. That said, Portland is still a West Coast city, and we’ve found here that people are very open.

5. Homelessness. This is a humanitarian problem. I think it’s important to recognize the efforts of both the government and NGOs, including Portland Rescue Mission, Rose Haven, Join PDX, Raphael House of Portland, and others. There are many people in the community who have a lot of compassion and who are working to minimize the suffering. That said, I do think we have a problem common to West Coast cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, LA, and Portland where housing prices remain high. Still, I believe the answer for society is to continue to support the efforts of the cities and communities to face these problems rather than to simply retreat to the suburbs to avoid them.

On balance, we’ve loved retiring and living here!