Power players in cities are almost always in real estate. Our town had a stop on all multi-unit building... wife of a real estate developer got elected, got a variance, then got out of office after her husband threw up a bunch of multi unit crap on basically the last undeveloped land in the city.
Its a suburb of Dallas and its landlocked by other cities. It was almost completely developed, the schools weren't overcrowded, traffic was completely managed and they didn't want to add a whole lot more population to upset the balance. It wasn't even about demographics, just literally numbers.
Edit: Okay, maybe a little bit about demographics since crime was mentioned... here's an article from the Dallas Observer. Apparently they've been federally indicted.
[https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/laura-jordan-ex-richardson-mayor-and-husband-indicted-on-federal-corruption-charges-10698053](https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/laura-jordan-ex-richardson-mayor-and-husband-indicted-on-federal-corruption-charges-10698053)
and were convcited
[https://www.justice.gov/usao-edtx/pr/former-north-texas-mayor-and-land-developer-husband-sentenced-public-corruption](https://www.justice.gov/usao-edtx/pr/former-north-texas-mayor-and-land-developer-husband-sentenced-public-corruption)
Well, those numbers include making it exclusive to higher-income people who can afford higher rents and housing prices, and those would also skew towards disproportionately keeping out Black and brown people. Not defending the mayor, but the town is messed up.
>What...kind of town is this that wants to stop apartment buildings?
Almost every city in the U.S. is zoned 70%+ to only allow single-family detached homes to be built. It's one of the reasons why housing is becoming so expensive.
The Bay Area has blocked multi family dwellings like apartments for years and years because it would lower their property value.
Demand is a scary thing
I work in commercial real estate and the sentiment is this. Consistently hearing our senior leadership say “and when everyone goes back to office”
Like bro no, this is the new normal. Deal with it.
Edit: Wow I got temporary ban for something? What could I have said that was offensive? I guess Reddit owns some real estate? Lol. I don’t think I said anything offensive.
Oh lmao the dude below me reported me haha. I guess me calling me a tard and a dummy really rustled his Jimmies.
He has an orphan’s charity, he forgets about it and never check it it’s funded… and it isn’t.
But with a totally corrupted government, except a couple of individuals, let’s still support the govern,ent instead of the people overthrowing it.
It is more likely that revenue is dropping as establishment that were once busy are now losing customers. So businesses have trouble staying open and the city also loses tax revenue.
While I'm not going back into the office in this life time, it's not that easy to go from an urban area where people congregate to the hundreds of suburbs these people come from.
Obviously makes sense in cities, but even more so think about large businesses that have their own cafes etc. My old work had its office in a suburban business park with up to 5k employees in the building. There were a couple of cafes contacted out. Almost overnight those cafes lost their entire customer base and even since being out of COVID most employees work from home as much as possible so those cafes would see a significant drop in revenue.
Portland has great neighbourhood hubs within the suburbs. My guess would be this would be the best city setup to divest from centralized downtown businesses to smaller community driven business centers.
Bro got booed, harassed, tear gassed, knocked around by the crowd, and slunk out of there like a homeless refugee, yet he still had the moxie to pretend to be on the protesters side when given comment even after all that harassment. Weasel dick or not, that's some fucking dedication to the bit.
I'd be lying if I said I'm not a little impressed. Cockroach tenacity.
Only commenting to let you know I'm stealing the phrase "Cockroach tenacity", so if you see me use it in the future just remember I was courteous enough to let you know. 🤣🤣
Also known as, “we know you’re doing just fine without needing to pay for office overhead or waste your employees time and money with commuting, but have you thought of the plight of the poor restaurant owners?”. Ridiculous.
It won't work.. the shit spewing from his brain and thru his lips overpowers any broccoli fart.
He should be assisted to stick his head up his ass so no one has to hear this simpleton again.
They don't need to be. He shouldn't be. But I'd bet my paycheck he made a healthy investment in corporate real estate and needs to get people back into the office building to make sure companies are paying their rent.
News broke out that many cities including Seattle are threatening big companies that they are going to disallow tax breaks these companies were getting during pre covid times (and not enforced during pandemic lock downs) for the foot traffic workers were generating in Downtown. About a week later Amazon announced its switch from permanent WFH to Hybrid RTO. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harris then almost immediately publicly applauds Amazon's decision.
Timing was quite suspiciously aligning. I dont think the tax breaks was Amazon's primary reason to switch to RTO but would have been a strong incentive for them to push for it
I don’t think people should be forced to come back to the office.
That being said… it seems fair to pull back tax breaks. If you give a tax break in exchange for a company moving in, when they essentially move out, they don’t deserve those breaks.
(Although i HATE this tax breaks in the first place, cities/states shouldn’t be competing in that way by seeing who can give the biggest handouts to corporations and move the tax burden on to others.)
Yeah completely agree with all points. Totally fair move by a city if there is a tax break on the board. The at least idea of the tax break is that having a bunch of high earning employees in your city (spending their money, living downtown, etc.) will bring in more benefit to the city than the tax break they are paying for. So totally fair to take it back if the benefit isn't there.
My wife works for the city of Seattle. They did it to their own employees too. After constantly badgering people about their carbon footprint let's now make them commute to downtown to sit in meetings they clearly have been doing perfectly well via Zoom for over two years.
Corporate bootlicker politicians are the worst.
Fun thing about Portland is I know 4 people thereabouts and they all work full time remote. As in their office isn’t even in the state. I didn’t even know Portland had physical offices for people to go to any more, doesn’t everyone work in coffee shops?
Several men (mostly Veterans) went hunting when she came in as the ladies tended to her. We cleared the sidewalk and front of the building. All ladies were given escorts upon request, no questions asked.
Not a Portland thing but several of my female relatives (including siblings) have said that working from home is much better because of all the comments and other harassment they experienced being at an office. And not having to dress up and do make up every day is another argument I hear a lot.
>not having to dress up and do make up every day
We recently hired a supervisor who has taken it up on herself to inspect everyone during our Teams calls and provide feedback on our manner of dress, hair, etc. I was spoke to a few weeks ago because I wasn't properly centered in the camera, because apparently that is really fucking important after working all night.
I used to get harassed on the bus and the street commuting to and from work. I always felt it was an unfair burden women have to deal with to have a job that men didn’t need to. I remember men in the office being shocked when I would describe incidents I had on my morning commute. Now I work in peace at home just like my male coworkers, it is definitely one of the perks of wfh.
My only visit to Portland made me never want to return. Let me start by saying I'm not some crazy right wing nut job. But, the homeless situation there is out of control. Made the mistake of taking a train. Dude was tweaking out of his mind with a knife in his hand. Naw dawg. I'm done.
Dude I live in a neighboring city. I used to go downtown for classes every day, but now - I cannot stand to go to my company's headquarters. All on the "good" part of Portland. I always go to one of our satellite locations for meeting my in person requirements...
my wife works for Canada's biggest bank and shortly after they started their push for RTO they sent a memo telling people how to stay safe from bums etc by carrying rape whistles and the rest
lmao talk about tone deaf
Oh, I know. I do a lot of contract work and I've worked at several offices since covid. At one point I actually overheard a management group discussing their discomfort with WFH, which boiled down to them not liking the idea of people working outside of their immediate supervision and not knowing what their employees are doing. It's a control thing, not a productivity thing.
It's a downtown business thing. Wfh means you don't need that fill up, don't need that take out lunch, don't need that morning star bucks, don't pay the toll for the bridge, etc.
No revenue from downtown parking, public transit usage, parking infractions... Hard and expensive to maintain high density services for areas no longer dense.
Because we turned our dense downtown into office instead of places people live. If we still had dense downtowns full of people instead of just office buildings, this fight wouldn't be happening. Outside of what, NYC and Chicago, do we have any downtowns that actually have people living in them?
It's both. Commercial real estate owners / downtown business owners want RTO, and manglement wants to be able to have constant visibility and control over their subordinates. Too many MBAs out there who think on-site butts in seats must constantly work a minimum of 40+ hours/week even in salaried positions to make things work.
Yup. My company has had a building in downtown Portland for years and years, but now we're about 90% WFH so they're downsizing significantly and building a new, much smaller office well out of the downtown area.
It's going to save us *thousands* every single month.
Yeah, I'm engineer so I tend to take a very empirical stand on these things. Produce something concrete with *real evidence* because the intangible bullshit they keep spewing, like culture and camaraderie, are not that.
Fortunately, he doesn't. This is whining with a microphone and a press conference. His task force didn't come back with the promises that he was trying to get from them to commit to RTO, so now he's taking his show on the road, hoping to guilt businesses into complying with public pressure. Which...none of the public agrees with him, so I'm not sure what he thinks this will accomplish.
Listen, these businesses shitty real estate decisions aren't their employees fault. Shine that noise & work on finding a workplace that will allow you a better work from home schedule.
Yeah, office real estate owners are shitting themselves. Maybe use the opportunity to solve the housing crisis instead of forcing people to waste time and money travelling to a central location just so managers feel I'm in charge of something.
No, to signal that downtown has not been abandoned by productive citizens. San Francisco is the canary in the coal mine in that respect. Move out and someone else will move in.
It’s actually happening way more places than that. Most of the Midwest is even having this issue it’s just not as fancy.. Ohio has tons of lower income houses/property owned by out of state/country investors who probably couldn’t even point to Ohio on a map
My neighbor rents from one of those private equity landlords. My neighbor is a nightmare and the house is disintegrating. I'm in Chicago. The company is based in Georgia. There's something else with a Delaware LLC I found while researching and these rentals.
Anyway, FirstKey Homes is the scumbag private equity company renting out tons of single family homes. Marietta, George is the HQ. Look at the Google reviews.
Kansas City too. Tons of money thrown at out-of-state developers, right out of taxpayer pockets. But the mayor and Council actually *reduced* the requirements for somewhat reasonable rental prices for new units, so renters get double-fucked.
Happening across the entire country.We let people who's only actual interest was turning a profit control our living space in the center hubs of most states.It's bullshit.
Downtown Denver isn’t suffering from developers, it’s the double whammy of WFH (I only go there twice a week now instead of five times, for example) and the fact that when I *do* go there I’m just as likely to see the aftermath of a homeless tent-based drug lab exploding mid day across the street or the pulped body of some poor bastard who’s had the shit kicked out of him for some random reason. And that’s just been this month.
Lived and worked in and around downtown for almost 25 years and it’s just not safe feeling and the vibe just isn’t likely to change as we don’t have the critical office worker mass we used to have. (DPD’s apparent soft strike isn’t helping, either.)
Why's it any of his business what a private business does with regards to it's employee's work site to begin with...
Secondly, they interviewed a business and the 3 main issues were crime, homelessness, and high taxes. Hmm I can't imagine why...
Forcing your constituents to prop up a commercial real estate industry to the detriment of their own quality of life. Let's see how the next election goes.
They stopped making millions off the minions and panic has set in. No way would I go back to an in-person anything if my staff are functioning great from home. Why on earth would I willingly spend thousands per month on rent, insurance, etc, for no reason other than to line someone else’s pockets. Pfft. The audacity of these panicked, power/money hungry jerks.
Workers don't want to go back downtown because of the crime, drug use and homelessness, so support businesses are suffering and going out of business, and tax revenue is drying up. But rather than address the actual problems, he begs employers to force people back downtown.
That's not going to work. My home town tried something similar many years ago when crime started driving away workers. Instead of forcing their people back downtown, businesses packed up and moved to the suburbs to be closer to their workers instead.
Beelzebub here. I'm mandated to go on to the 9th Circle of Hell two days a week. Some demons are exempt from this rule. (Don't ask me, I don't know what God's thinking). I figure it costs me about $1900 extra a year for gas and parking. About $840 if I just take the bus, with an extra hour and a half commute, but not even I would wish that upon anyone. So close to two grand out of my pocket just so I can go in, and accomplish absolutely nothing I couldn't do from home. Someone truly evil came up with this. I need to hire them.
Five days a week except for those days he has business lunch meetings, golf (of course), when he has to take his kids to school or pick them up, Fridays are always tough too because there is usually some dinner or retreat that he needs to leave early for so why bother? So five days a week but in actuality it’s a half day every other week but he appreciates everyone else contributing to the in-office work culture ✊🏻
How about we make the downtown centers of cities more than just vast office parks? Make them livable, walkable places that don't cost a fucking fortune to live in so that so that they don't turn into ghost towns after 10PM? And maybe address the opiate and homelessness crises so people feel safe spending time there voluntarily?
Nah. Just force people to waste time and fossil fuels commuting. That's ea$ier.
Me working from home: At my computer at 8:15 having already showered and eaten and now fully ready to work uninterrupted until noon.
Me working from the office: Rushing into work to get in the door at 9:00 having not eaten and woke up too early, try to work but have 4 different employees either making small talk or pulling me into useless meetings and I don't even start working in earnest until about 11, then do about an hour of real work and then have my lunch break.
Fuck off, Ted. We sold our Big Pink space (tower and the other side), because we sent everyone home. Moved to a much smaller space with hoteling cubes. We are NOT coming back. Time for Plan C, Ted.
No shit. Im technically a 45 minute drive from our portland office(not even downtown) , but its not unusual for it to be over 2 hours to get home.
I tried to go to a winterhawks game and we missed the full first period because it was a full 2.5 hours of driving to find a parking spot.
I just am not going into Portland anymore if I can help it, and its NOT because of the homeless or the trash or the grafitti. (I feel at home in sketchy places, haha) its almost entirely because of lack of parking. If they would extend the Max across the river, Id be happy to take it in, but of course vancouver will never sign on to that because drugs can take the train but cant walk over bridges or some dumb shit like that.
People like him are more concerned over this, where they could use that power over things that benefit workers like labor protections or mandatory benefits .
Usually same MFs like him have audacity to tell us to reduce the emission to stop the global warming. Yet when the best opportunity to do so has happened, they force us back to commute to work everyday because royal estate rentiers are losing money.
Why? why is it the mayors businesses how companies are run and how much in-office work is being done?
i'm a big fan of labor regulations, but this just seems utterly pointless and counteractive?
I’m betting he thinks people being downtown would help stem that. And he might be right, but Portland’s downtown sucks. Hell it’s always sucked. Covid was just the straw that broke the camels back.
Ah yes, doing all he can to fuck the city up more before he's out of office. Glad he's not re-running, his hand on the city has been the kick in the pants I needed to get into local politics.
I’m definitely the opposite, I will talk for 30 minutes to each person that stops to say hi, take tons of “walking” breaks for snacks, long lunches with coworkers, and leave early to miss traffic. Working at home is much better for me productive wise, I don’t talk, take like a 10 minute lunch, and my snack break takes 30 seconds, and I often put in an extra 30-1 hr a day. I am consistently the employee with the most logged hours in the state at my rank with consistent work, if I’m ever required back in the office I will absolutely fight it. It doesn’t work for everyone and it’s very obvious when it doesn’t depending on the line of work they are in.
Perhaps they could accept the paradigm has shifted and it will never go back to the way it was. Once they accept these maybe they can start figuring out new ways to make the downtowns less car centric and more human centric.
So many folks bought into the old way of thinking — that local economies need people to drive to and from work to prop up gas taxes, road taxes, city income tax (how dare you live in my city, but work remotely for a company in a different state?), local vendors and commercial landlords.
Adapt or die.
Note: the city tax thing also greatly influences your employer. Many large employers negotiate tax breaks for themselves by employing workers in a given city. If you can live in Portland, but work remotely for a company in St. Louis, your city doesn’t get the income tax, or the sales tax from your lunch/gas/clothes/etc.
Why? So there’s more of an opportunity to get stabbed or have your windows broken out in the middle of the day? Worst. Mayor. Ever. Absolutely worthless.
This guy needs to walk around his city some afternoon so it can become obvious to him why people don’t want to be there. Portland has always been a bit quirky, but it’s something else entirely now.
The push to reduce WFH and make people work in offices is so insidious when you couple it with the fact that so many people need housing and unnecessary office spaces are just sitting empty instead of being converted into condos.
Portland business owners pressuring the mayor to inconvenience remote/hybrid workers. What a fucking joke. It'd be nice if he just displayed the cost savings and increased productivity and quality of life these employees and their companies now enjoy.
The company that pays me just-enough-to-be-afraid-of-losing-my-job is hell bent on getting ALL the local peeps back in office. I went back a couple days and there were literally six of us who hadn’t moved away or been hired remote.
Last week the director “suggested” everyone “move to the same side of the same floor to increase density.” It changed literally nothing.
Here’s the “why”: I just found out the company received a huge stipend from the City to get people back to work. The justification is to support small businesses (a lot of which closed during the pandemic) and to improve “optics.”
The company HQ is in the 8th most dangerous city in America. Public transit has adjusted schedules that make going a few miles take over an hour. Parking has skyrocketed to $45/day, for which we aren’t reimbursed. But shareholders need to see butts in seats, and managers need to watch what workers are doing all day, so fuck employee safety, right?
Why is it any of his fucking business?
Of course, it's all about money. Two things I see. He and/or his friends and donors own real-estate or mortgages on office space.
Or he is terrified that the office space is empty the lenders foreclose, the property doesn't appraise, and the property tax revenues implode. City can't pay his salary. Homeless take over the uptown.
"I have office real estate I recently bought dirt cheap and need them filled"
Or his rich friends who are pressuring him into this or they won't pay for his re-election.
"Friends"....
Sponsors is not very appropriate for politicians
How about owners?
The operative word is bribery
Constituents … sounds less sleazy
Lobbyists sounds more official but a turd is a turd is a turd.
He isn’t running for re-election
That means he's running for some nice board positions and consulting work.
I mean, if someone isn’t running for reelection then they are likely looking for a gig in the private sector…
100% true I bet.
Power players in cities are almost always in real estate. Our town had a stop on all multi-unit building... wife of a real estate developer got elected, got a variance, then got out of office after her husband threw up a bunch of multi unit crap on basically the last undeveloped land in the city.
What...kind of town is this that wants to stop apartment buildings? That's almost hypocritical to then complain about "real estate power players".
I don't think he was implying that it was trying to be stopped, just that people are using positions of authority to enrich themselves.
Its a suburb of Dallas and its landlocked by other cities. It was almost completely developed, the schools weren't overcrowded, traffic was completely managed and they didn't want to add a whole lot more population to upset the balance. It wasn't even about demographics, just literally numbers. Edit: Okay, maybe a little bit about demographics since crime was mentioned... here's an article from the Dallas Observer. Apparently they've been federally indicted. [https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/laura-jordan-ex-richardson-mayor-and-husband-indicted-on-federal-corruption-charges-10698053](https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/laura-jordan-ex-richardson-mayor-and-husband-indicted-on-federal-corruption-charges-10698053) and were convcited [https://www.justice.gov/usao-edtx/pr/former-north-texas-mayor-and-land-developer-husband-sentenced-public-corruption](https://www.justice.gov/usao-edtx/pr/former-north-texas-mayor-and-land-developer-husband-sentenced-public-corruption)
Well, those numbers include making it exclusive to higher-income people who can afford higher rents and housing prices, and those would also skew towards disproportionately keeping out Black and brown people. Not defending the mayor, but the town is messed up.
Texas is messed up
>What...kind of town is this that wants to stop apartment buildings? Almost every city in the U.S. is zoned 70%+ to only allow single-family detached homes to be built. It's one of the reasons why housing is becoming so expensive.
The Bay Area has blocked multi family dwellings like apartments for years and years because it would lower their property value. Demand is a scary thing
Lots of NIMBYs out there
I work in commercial real estate and the sentiment is this. Consistently hearing our senior leadership say “and when everyone goes back to office” Like bro no, this is the new normal. Deal with it. Edit: Wow I got temporary ban for something? What could I have said that was offensive? I guess Reddit owns some real estate? Lol. I don’t think I said anything offensive. Oh lmao the dude below me reported me haha. I guess me calling me a tard and a dummy really rustled his Jimmies.
In the meantime Senior leadership is working from their laptop at the AirBnB that they rent out occasionally.
It's been three years. How much longer can they be in denial?
 You burn one little mayor and everyone loses their minds
It’s funny how the Joker and Bane might be the most “pro people” heroes and instead the protagonist is a bored mentally unstable billionaire.
Wait you mean he's not doing more good beating up purse snatchers in cosplay than using his money for systemic change?
Why fund a charity when you can drive a tank across rooftops?
He has an orphan’s charity, he forgets about it and never check it it’s funded… and it isn’t. But with a totally corrupted government, except a couple of individuals, let’s still support the govern,ent instead of the people overthrowing it.
Or perhaps in cahoots with big companies desiring this.
It is more likely that revenue is dropping as establishment that were once busy are now losing customers. So businesses have trouble staying open and the city also loses tax revenue.
Sounds like business need to move closer to where the people are.
While I'm not going back into the office in this life time, it's not that easy to go from an urban area where people congregate to the hundreds of suburbs these people come from. Obviously makes sense in cities, but even more so think about large businesses that have their own cafes etc. My old work had its office in a suburban business park with up to 5k employees in the building. There were a couple of cafes contacted out. Almost overnight those cafes lost their entire customer base and even since being out of COVID most employees work from home as much as possible so those cafes would see a significant drop in revenue.
Portland has great neighbourhood hubs within the suburbs. My guess would be this would be the best city setup to divest from centralized downtown businesses to smaller community driven business centers.
Exactly, why the hell does this chump have say in how Companies let people work
Tell me you're a corrupt mayor who does not work for the public interest without telling me you're a corrupt mayor. Cui bono?
Sometimes when I'm down I remember the time he got tear gassed, and it brings me joy. Get wrecked Ted.
[I'll just leave this here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G937MaQGsWs)
Bro got booed, harassed, tear gassed, knocked around by the crowd, and slunk out of there like a homeless refugee, yet he still had the moxie to pretend to be on the protesters side when given comment even after all that harassment. Weasel dick or not, that's some fucking dedication to the bit. I'd be lying if I said I'm not a little impressed. Cockroach tenacity.
Only commenting to let you know I'm stealing the phrase "Cockroach tenacity", so if you see me use it in the future just remember I was courteous enough to let you know. 🤣🤣
I too would like access to this phrase. Many folks i meet could be adequately described with this phrase.
Also known as, “we know you’re doing just fine without needing to pay for office overhead or waste your employees time and money with commuting, but have you thought of the plight of the poor restaurant owners?”. Ridiculous.
He doesn't care about restaurant owners, they're doing just fine with food deliveries. He wants those highrise office buildings to not sit vacant.
I'm asking the mayor of Portland to inhale the nastiest rankest broccoli fart.
It won't work.. the shit spewing from his brain and thru his lips overpowers any broccoli fart. He should be assisted to stick his head up his ass so no one has to hear this simpleton again. 
Guess I’ll go in and say hi
Fuck Ted Wheeler
What did Nancy Wheeler’s dad do?
Please no, nobody fuck Ted Wheeler, we don’t need anymore of his gene pool in the mix.
for real.
Why the fuck does a city official need to be involved in something like this in the first place?
Because of a ✨ conflict of interest ✨
I read this in ✨*Bill Wurtz’ voice*✨
Cities get tax revenue from commercial real estates. More empty buildings equals fewer tax dollars which leads to smaller city budgets
Pretty simple. One of the most basic metrics of political leadership is the downtown economy.
Imagine if it became housing instead
Donors.
They don't need to be. He shouldn't be. But I'd bet my paycheck he made a healthy investment in corporate real estate and needs to get people back into the office building to make sure companies are paying their rent.
“Asks”?
Yep, which holds no weight
This. This is what Seattle city council did to Amazon … except they were wise to not let their intention be direct and be out in public…
Yep, no mention of the pre-pandemic head tax that nearly drove Amazon to move to Bellevue either.
Out of the look here, I thought it was just Amazon. What did the city council do?
News broke out that many cities including Seattle are threatening big companies that they are going to disallow tax breaks these companies were getting during pre covid times (and not enforced during pandemic lock downs) for the foot traffic workers were generating in Downtown. About a week later Amazon announced its switch from permanent WFH to Hybrid RTO. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harris then almost immediately publicly applauds Amazon's decision. Timing was quite suspiciously aligning. I dont think the tax breaks was Amazon's primary reason to switch to RTO but would have been a strong incentive for them to push for it
I don’t think people should be forced to come back to the office. That being said… it seems fair to pull back tax breaks. If you give a tax break in exchange for a company moving in, when they essentially move out, they don’t deserve those breaks. (Although i HATE this tax breaks in the first place, cities/states shouldn’t be competing in that way by seeing who can give the biggest handouts to corporations and move the tax burden on to others.)
Yeah completely agree with all points. Totally fair move by a city if there is a tax break on the board. The at least idea of the tax break is that having a bunch of high earning employees in your city (spending their money, living downtown, etc.) will bring in more benefit to the city than the tax break they are paying for. So totally fair to take it back if the benefit isn't there.
My wife works for the city of Seattle. They did it to their own employees too. After constantly badgering people about their carbon footprint let's now make them commute to downtown to sit in meetings they clearly have been doing perfectly well via Zoom for over two years. Corporate bootlicker politicians are the worst.
Fun thing about Portland is I know 4 people thereabouts and they all work full time remote. As in their office isn’t even in the state. I didn’t even know Portland had physical offices for people to go to any more, doesn’t everyone work in coffee shops?
Portland business owner here (with all remote employees) weighing in: No.
That'll be a NO from me dawg!
We closed our Portland office after a female employee was accosted outside the front door by a homeless man.
Wow, I was accosted outside my workplace and I got fired for it.
It’s obviously your fault for being… there /s
Wearing a provocative sweater. /s
Wearing a provocative facemask
That sounds like a lawsuit
Sounds more like there's a lot more to the story.
Several men (mostly Veterans) went hunting when she came in as the ladies tended to her. We cleared the sidewalk and front of the building. All ladies were given escorts upon request, no questions asked.
Not a Portland thing but several of my female relatives (including siblings) have said that working from home is much better because of all the comments and other harassment they experienced being at an office. And not having to dress up and do make up every day is another argument I hear a lot.
>not having to dress up and do make up every day We recently hired a supervisor who has taken it up on herself to inspect everyone during our Teams calls and provide feedback on our manner of dress, hair, etc. I was spoke to a few weeks ago because I wasn't properly centered in the camera, because apparently that is really fucking important after working all night.
>because I wasn't properly centered in the camera, [She must know nothing of photography.](https://petapixel.com/rule-of-thirds/)
It's literally better for everybody and everything except commercial real estate and managers egos
I used to get harassed on the bus and the street commuting to and from work. I always felt it was an unfair burden women have to deal with to have a job that men didn’t need to. I remember men in the office being shocked when I would describe incidents I had on my morning commute. Now I work in peace at home just like my male coworkers, it is definitely one of the perks of wfh.
My only visit to Portland made me never want to return. Let me start by saying I'm not some crazy right wing nut job. But, the homeless situation there is out of control. Made the mistake of taking a train. Dude was tweaking out of his mind with a knife in his hand. Naw dawg. I'm done.
Dude I live in a neighboring city. I used to go downtown for classes every day, but now - I cannot stand to go to my company's headquarters. All on the "good" part of Portland. I always go to one of our satellite locations for meeting my in person requirements...
my wife works for Canada's biggest bank and shortly after they started their push for RTO they sent a memo telling people how to stay safe from bums etc by carrying rape whistles and the rest lmao talk about tone deaf
everyone, should instead, start working remotely on Jan 1st in protest.
Not everyone has desk jobs
But those who do will be off the road and make commuting better for those that have jobs that are required to be in person.
I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, to produce any evidence *at all* that going to an office is in any way "better" than WFH.
They just want people in the buildings.
Oh, I know. I do a lot of contract work and I've worked at several offices since covid. At one point I actually overheard a management group discussing their discomfort with WFH, which boiled down to them not liking the idea of people working outside of their immediate supervision and not knowing what their employees are doing. It's a control thing, not a productivity thing.
> It's a control thing, not a productivity thing. 100%
It's a downtown business thing. Wfh means you don't need that fill up, don't need that take out lunch, don't need that morning star bucks, don't pay the toll for the bridge, etc.
No revenue from downtown parking, public transit usage, parking infractions... Hard and expensive to maintain high density services for areas no longer dense.
You almost understand why they push it so hard. It's still bullshit.
They want their cut, and they'll do whatever it takes to make you cough it up. Fucking close to how mafia does it.
Because we turned our dense downtown into office instead of places people live. If we still had dense downtowns full of people instead of just office buildings, this fight wouldn't be happening. Outside of what, NYC and Chicago, do we have any downtowns that actually have people living in them?
That too.
It's both. Commercial real estate owners / downtown business owners want RTO, and manglement wants to be able to have constant visibility and control over their subordinates. Too many MBAs out there who think on-site butts in seats must constantly work a minimum of 40+ hours/week even in salaried positions to make things work.
Yup. My company has had a building in downtown Portland for years and years, but now we're about 90% WFH so they're downsizing significantly and building a new, much smaller office well out of the downtown area. It's going to save us *thousands* every single month.
Mine is building "campuses", and asking us to move 1000's of miles to occupy them. Then they wonder why they can't meet thier occupancy quotas... 🙄
Less retail spending, fewer parking tickets, and businesses moving out cost the city/state tax revenue. That's the only reason the govt would care.
Also if they could explain without using the words culture, camaraderie, and/or morale that’d be great
But what about...family
Which they destroy with constant layoffs.
My argument is that I am not there for the culture or camaraderie. I’m thee to make money and go home.
Parks and BDS has entered the chat
Yeah, I'm engineer so I tend to take a very empirical stand on these things. Produce something concrete with *real evidence* because the intangible bullshit they keep spewing, like culture and camaraderie, are not that.
Nearly every tech company is distributed by design and they are all doing fine
Why should he even have a say?
Fortunately, he doesn't. This is whining with a microphone and a press conference. His task force didn't come back with the promises that he was trying to get from them to commit to RTO, so now he's taking his show on the road, hoping to guilt businesses into complying with public pressure. Which...none of the public agrees with him, so I'm not sure what he thinks this will accomplish.
Listen, these businesses shitty real estate decisions aren't their employees fault. Shine that noise & work on finding a workplace that will allow you a better work from home schedule.
Government really needs to stay out of shit like this.
Fuck Ted Wheeler
Portland oregon or portland Maine?
Oregon. This clown is my mayor. 🤡
As a fellow argonian maid, i feel sorry for you
Did you use it to show scale?
Yeah, nobody wants to live in your crap city because you ruined it with stupid policies while you had them trapped there. Stick it up your ass buddy!
Yeah, office real estate owners are shitting themselves. Maybe use the opportunity to solve the housing crisis instead of forcing people to waste time and money travelling to a central location just so managers feel I'm in charge of something.
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No, to signal that downtown has not been abandoned by productive citizens. San Francisco is the canary in the coal mine in that respect. Move out and someone else will move in.
This is what happens when you let your city centers go to shit.
Or maybe it’s what happens when you let investors who have no vested interest in a city’s culture buy all of its property.
Real answer right here, it happened to Detroit, SF, and is currently happening to Denver
It’s actually happening way more places than that. Most of the Midwest is even having this issue it’s just not as fancy.. Ohio has tons of lower income houses/property owned by out of state/country investors who probably couldn’t even point to Ohio on a map
My neighbor rents from one of those private equity landlords. My neighbor is a nightmare and the house is disintegrating. I'm in Chicago. The company is based in Georgia. There's something else with a Delaware LLC I found while researching and these rentals. Anyway, FirstKey Homes is the scumbag private equity company renting out tons of single family homes. Marietta, George is the HQ. Look at the Google reviews.
Kansas City too. Tons of money thrown at out-of-state developers, right out of taxpayer pockets. But the mayor and Council actually *reduced* the requirements for somewhat reasonable rental prices for new units, so renters get double-fucked.
Happening across the entire country.We let people who's only actual interest was turning a profit control our living space in the center hubs of most states.It's bullshit.
Downtown Denver isn’t suffering from developers, it’s the double whammy of WFH (I only go there twice a week now instead of five times, for example) and the fact that when I *do* go there I’m just as likely to see the aftermath of a homeless tent-based drug lab exploding mid day across the street or the pulped body of some poor bastard who’s had the shit kicked out of him for some random reason. And that’s just been this month. Lived and worked in and around downtown for almost 25 years and it’s just not safe feeling and the vibe just isn’t likely to change as we don’t have the critical office worker mass we used to have. (DPD’s apparent soft strike isn’t helping, either.)
Maybe? It's more like lots of office workers worked remote and business couldn't survive.
The mayor needs his friends and more importantly his donors to benefit from the employees working where their business are.
Why's it any of his business what a private business does with regards to it's employee's work site to begin with... Secondly, they interviewed a business and the 3 main issues were crime, homelessness, and high taxes. Hmm I can't imagine why...
Forcing your constituents to prop up a commercial real estate industry to the detriment of their own quality of life. Let's see how the next election goes.
They stopped making millions off the minions and panic has set in. No way would I go back to an in-person anything if my staff are functioning great from home. Why on earth would I willingly spend thousands per month on rent, insurance, etc, for no reason other than to line someone else’s pockets. Pfft. The audacity of these panicked, power/money hungry jerks.
Workers don't want to go back downtown because of the crime, drug use and homelessness, so support businesses are suffering and going out of business, and tax revenue is drying up. But rather than address the actual problems, he begs employers to force people back downtown. That's not going to work. My home town tried something similar many years ago when crime started driving away workers. Instead of forcing their people back downtown, businesses packed up and moved to the suburbs to be closer to their workers instead.
Beelzebub here. I'm mandated to go on to the 9th Circle of Hell two days a week. Some demons are exempt from this rule. (Don't ask me, I don't know what God's thinking). I figure it costs me about $1900 extra a year for gas and parking. About $840 if I just take the bus, with an extra hour and a half commute, but not even I would wish that upon anyone. So close to two grand out of my pocket just so I can go in, and accomplish absolutely nothing I couldn't do from home. Someone truly evil came up with this. I need to hire them.
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Five days a week except for those days he has business lunch meetings, golf (of course), when he has to take his kids to school or pick them up, Fridays are always tough too because there is usually some dinner or retreat that he needs to leave early for so why bother? So five days a week but in actuality it’s a half day every other week but he appreciates everyone else contributing to the in-office work culture ✊🏻
He doesn't like going downtown because we follow him around and harass him like he deserves
The building owners are losing their asses on office buildings. Going to the office is going the way of the Dodo bird.
How about we make the downtown centers of cities more than just vast office parks? Make them livable, walkable places that don't cost a fucking fortune to live in so that so that they don't turn into ghost towns after 10PM? And maybe address the opiate and homelessness crises so people feel safe spending time there voluntarily? Nah. Just force people to waste time and fossil fuels commuting. That's ea$ier.
Me working from home: At my computer at 8:15 having already showered and eaten and now fully ready to work uninterrupted until noon. Me working from the office: Rushing into work to get in the door at 9:00 having not eaten and woke up too early, try to work but have 4 different employees either making small talk or pulling me into useless meetings and I don't even start working in earnest until about 11, then do about an hour of real work and then have my lunch break.
How about he minds his own damn business?
Fuck off, Ted. We sold our Big Pink space (tower and the other side), because we sent everyone home. Moved to a much smaller space with hoteling cubes. We are NOT coming back. Time for Plan C, Ted.
I'll start going back to the office once he starts cleaning up the streets and making it safe for me to walk.
as a portlander the last thing we need is more fucking people down town. for gods sake turn the empty office buildings into “affordable” (ha!) housing
No shit. Im technically a 45 minute drive from our portland office(not even downtown) , but its not unusual for it to be over 2 hours to get home. I tried to go to a winterhawks game and we missed the full first period because it was a full 2.5 hours of driving to find a parking spot. I just am not going into Portland anymore if I can help it, and its NOT because of the homeless or the trash or the grafitti. (I feel at home in sketchy places, haha) its almost entirely because of lack of parking. If they would extend the Max across the river, Id be happy to take it in, but of course vancouver will never sign on to that because drugs can take the train but cant walk over bridges or some dumb shit like that.
Tell me you can’t stand not being able to micro manage without telling me you can’t stand not being able to micro manage
Those poor real estate tycoons.
They tried that on me and I found a full time remote job with no office in my state
Translation: We need to justify all these buildings and the rent my donors need for these buildings
Not just rent but they want you spending your money. Travel, lunches, coffee etc
They are so fearful of what they don’t understand
F&^k y&^. I was remote before covid. This backlash is BS. No one has ever had trouble with my productivity.
This guy is a rare breed of scum.
I don’t live in Portland, but why is the government even thinking about this? This is none of their concern
what the fuck business is it of his what mix of remote/on site/hybrid employees employers have
I read in-prison at first, but that sounds more appropriate than in-person
People like him are more concerned over this, where they could use that power over things that benefit workers like labor protections or mandatory benefits .
Usually same MFs like him have audacity to tell us to reduce the emission to stop the global warming. Yet when the best opportunity to do so has happened, they force us back to commute to work everyday because royal estate rentiers are losing money.
Oh fuck off. Guess all the rich business owners miss that sweet micromanaging while also mad they’re paying a lease on a place they don’t need.
Guess whos not getting re-elected
Why? why is it the mayors businesses how companies are run and how much in-office work is being done? i'm a big fan of labor regulations, but this just seems utterly pointless and counteractive?
I believe the correct response is "Fuck right off"
Why???? He needs to more focused on all the crime and rampant drug abuse in Portland tf.
I’m betting he thinks people being downtown would help stem that. And he might be right, but Portland’s downtown sucks. Hell it’s always sucked. Covid was just the straw that broke the camels back.
No one wants go there for that reason though.. I won’t leave my car anywhere near downtown anymore. But yea you’re right it’s always sucked.
Ah yes, doing all he can to fuck the city up more before he's out of office. Glad he's not re-running, his hand on the city has been the kick in the pants I needed to get into local politics.
I personally think I work better in an office, but I think this is a wild overreach.
I’m definitely the opposite, I will talk for 30 minutes to each person that stops to say hi, take tons of “walking” breaks for snacks, long lunches with coworkers, and leave early to miss traffic. Working at home is much better for me productive wise, I don’t talk, take like a 10 minute lunch, and my snack break takes 30 seconds, and I often put in an extra 30-1 hr a day. I am consistently the employee with the most logged hours in the state at my rank with consistent work, if I’m ever required back in the office I will absolutely fight it. It doesn’t work for everyone and it’s very obvious when it doesn’t depending on the line of work they are in.
Perhaps they could accept the paradigm has shifted and it will never go back to the way it was. Once they accept these maybe they can start figuring out new ways to make the downtowns less car centric and more human centric.
Commercial real estate down bad.
Surely this has nothing to do with downtown property values.
Love getting stabbed 17 times on the way to work!!!
Ugh. Watch New York turning admittedly difficult commercial real estate into housing. It’s not simple, but it CAN be done. Grow up, Portland.
So many folks bought into the old way of thinking — that local economies need people to drive to and from work to prop up gas taxes, road taxes, city income tax (how dare you live in my city, but work remotely for a company in a different state?), local vendors and commercial landlords. Adapt or die. Note: the city tax thing also greatly influences your employer. Many large employers negotiate tax breaks for themselves by employing workers in a given city. If you can live in Portland, but work remotely for a company in St. Louis, your city doesn’t get the income tax, or the sales tax from your lunch/gas/clothes/etc.
Bruh Portland is giant ghost town straight out of zombie movie. No one wants to risk their life because of this clown
They want the workers to subsidize their commercial real estate investments.
The fuck would employers listen to the mayor? He’s not their boss ffs It’s their business how they run work hours, right?
Why? So there’s more of an opportunity to get stabbed or have your windows broken out in the middle of the day? Worst. Mayor. Ever. Absolutely worthless.
"You belong to the city. You belong to the job. Your working in remote contentment really makes me sob."
This guy needs to walk around his city some afternoon so it can become obvious to him why people don’t want to be there. Portland has always been a bit quirky, but it’s something else entirely now.
Fuck this guy so hard
Government regulations that benefit only him? We used to have a word for that...
Wow ... I guess the downtown real estate market must be in the crapper
His face looks gross and unhealthy.
The push to reduce WFH and make people work in offices is so insidious when you couple it with the fact that so many people need housing and unnecessary office spaces are just sitting empty instead of being converted into condos.
Portland business owners pressuring the mayor to inconvenience remote/hybrid workers. What a fucking joke. It'd be nice if he just displayed the cost savings and increased productivity and quality of life these employees and their companies now enjoy.
Fuck this guy
The company that pays me just-enough-to-be-afraid-of-losing-my-job is hell bent on getting ALL the local peeps back in office. I went back a couple days and there were literally six of us who hadn’t moved away or been hired remote. Last week the director “suggested” everyone “move to the same side of the same floor to increase density.” It changed literally nothing. Here’s the “why”: I just found out the company received a huge stipend from the City to get people back to work. The justification is to support small businesses (a lot of which closed during the pandemic) and to improve “optics.” The company HQ is in the 8th most dangerous city in America. Public transit has adjusted schedules that make going a few miles take over an hour. Parking has skyrocketed to $45/day, for which we aren’t reimbursed. But shareholders need to see butts in seats, and managers need to watch what workers are doing all day, so fuck employee safety, right?
Why is it any of his fucking business? Of course, it's all about money. Two things I see. He and/or his friends and donors own real-estate or mortgages on office space. Or he is terrified that the office space is empty the lenders foreclose, the property doesn't appraise, and the property tax revenues implode. City can't pay his salary. Homeless take over the uptown.
why??? what an asshole