Doom Loop

I've always enjoyed Willamette Week though I seldom read it. I would pick up a print copy whenever I was in Portland and saw one, but that didn't happen often, maybe a couple three times a year. I added it to Feedly a few weeks ago and while there is a lot of fluff, there are some stories that nobody else is talking about and Doom Loop is one of them.

Want to roll a grenade into holiday conversations in Portland? Bring up the “doom loop.”

At WW, we’ve decided it’s the term of the year. In the strictest definition, a doom loop starts when remote work frees people from commuting downtown. Office buildings tumble in value, shrinking property tax collection. Restaurants and stores that rely on the lunchtime trade go out of business. Foot traffic suffers.

The decline in government revenue means services get cut—like police and social work—so crime increases along with the number of homeless people per capita downtown. More people opt to work at home, many out of fear, and a kind of tornado spins into being, silent and unseen, but capable of great devastation.

One example:

On Dec. 15, the Morgan, a landmarked, eight-story building in the heart of downtown, sold for $6 million in cash, or $40 a square foot. Eight years ago, it fetched $27.6 million, or $184 a square foot. That decline is what doom loops are made of. Last year, Morgan’s owners paid $271,472.36 in property taxes on an assessed value of $13.6 million.