Sounds SO familiar

If you like your community, you can keep it, unless it is in an area that is popular or "up and coming."

This is the reward for neighbors who like where they live, who make a place what it is, who have a sense of community.  And who feel that their city has turned against them - the public the city is there to serve.  This is top-down government planning in a nation where the power is supposed to come from the people: The consent of the governed.

Look for the word "entitled" below, and see who the speaker is referring to.  The term "entitled" is no longer restricted to a particular socioeconomic group, it is a general slur against anyone that doesn't go along with developer plans or Central Planning, which is seen by some to be "for the common good,"  no matter the cost to disadvantaged (or any group of) people.

Excerpts from The Oregonian, 12/5/13:

North Williams Avenue developer Ben Kaiser: 

Once a beacon of revitalization, now seen as demon of density

A decade after arriving, Kaiser hasn’t built anything on North Williams Avenue. But neighbors have made him the personification of their anger. Like activists in Southwest Portland’s Lair Hill, in Southeast Portland’s Richmond and Hillsboro’s Orenco neighborhood, they’re arguing against taller buildings and greater density -- traits city planners and builders say are necessary to keep the region vibrant and growing.


Portland planners routinely nudge developers to use all the space available to them, to fill every square foot a particular zoning category allows. Kaiser, thinking about the larger picture, proposed an 85-foot-tall complex. That’s two stories higher than anything in the surrounding neighborhood. But Kaiser, who now lives in nearby Sabin, said he isn’t thinking about today’s Williams, a place with plenty of vacant land. He’s anticipating Williams in a decade, the hip hotspot where his now 7-year-old daughter will hang out when she’s in high school.

He expected neighbors would greet this plan with the same approval he enjoyed before the recession. They didn’t. They were fine with a six-story tall building, but eight stories seemed unreasonable. Paul Van Orden, who lives two houses away, said Kaiser’s project would prohibit his family from using solar panels they’ve spent a decade saving up to buy.


The Portland City Council approved the zoning changeanyway. Only Commissioner Amanda Fritz voted no, questioning why Kaiser wanted to build so tall.

In response, he cited the city’s own plans for more density.

“We cannot go backwards,” Kaiser wrote Fritz. “We cannot let these entitled neighborhoods dismantle decades of previous work.”

This kind of fight has become common in the Portland area, with similar recent skirmishes in every quadrant of the city. Even suburban Hillsboro, which has tried to replicate the Pearl District’s success in its own Orenco neighborhood, has seen longtime neighbors fighting with developers about density and building height. The two sides aren’t just fighting about specific buildings. They’re arguing, block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood, over the future shape of the region.

Kaiser said he has learned this year that he will never make anyone happy. At some point, he said, he has to move forward with the kinds of projects that fit the city’s long-term planning goals, regardless of neighborhood opposition.