Portland Rental Filtering vs Gentrification, Some Specifics.

I'm generally supportive of the idea of increasing housing supply as a long term means of increasing affordability via filtering. However gentrification can cause less affordability and up until now I had seen little analysis of those forces at work in the Portland metro.  

I recently ran across a HUD CINCH rental dynamics report HERE that compared the changes in housing inventory in the Portland metro area from 2002-2011.  

The report is complex and I encourage readers to spend some time reading it if your interested in learning more how the inventory of housing changed in the Portland metro area during that period (and likely changed even more dramatically in the last few years). 

The table below has the main take away for me: 

The total number of rental units in 2002 that became: 

• LESS affordable in 2011 grew by 33.9% (gentrification), 
• MORE affordable in 2011 grew by only 12.3% (filtering).

So on NET there were substantially MORE rental units that moved to a higher category of affordability (gentrification) than moved to a lower level of affordability (filtering).  

This occurred because the gentrification/filtering disparity was focused almost entirely in the Extremely Low Rent (below 30% MFI), Very Low Rent (greater than 30% and below 50% MFI), and Low Rent (greater than 50% but below 60% MFI) affordability categories. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.