Maine Event: Day 29

For some time now I've been thinking about the economy and the obvious imbalances that are making life more and more difficult for ordinary people. My thoughts are not perfectly distilled so this might come out a little jumbled but writing some of it down will hopefully help move the thinking forward. Specifically, housing has skyrocketed and wages haven't kept up. Low-income renters have never been more at risk and those that have complications around physical or mental health have significantly fewer alternatives than even 10 years ago. There is a concept that I've been calling edge areas where people with fewer resources and larger obstacles can live and often work and survive with some dignity intact. Those edge options are getting fewer and fewer and this is worrisome - the question is how do we increase the edge areas? 

While there are immediate repercussions to the housing crisis the long-term shortage causes other kinds of societal weaknesses. 

What does this have to do with Portland, Maine one might ask... well, I guess I've been thinking since wages are less here I was expecting housing and food would be cheaper. In fact, food is generally more expensive as I've mentioned previously, and a topic I hope to come back to it in a future post. Housing while there are more options across a wider cost spectrum (as compared with San Francisco) it still seems out of whack with wages. Most rentals are roughly $1000 a room so one-bedrooms start at $1200 and a 2 bedroom is in the 2K range and so on. This is not so different than in San Francisco there was a 4 bedroom apartment on our block for 4K. 

Nearly every business has a "help wanted" sign and several have gone out of business since we have been here. I read that Yelp estimates that in the US 61% of small restaurants have permanently closed but if we pay people minimum wage how will they be able to afford to live. It's true that here you can live out of the city center and the prices go down but then you have other costs like needing a car. It seems to me that one should be able to have a job and find a place to live nearby and be able to be a part of the community that you work and live in. 

Maine minimum wage is $12 and tipped employees must be paid $6.08 an hour. I'll leave it to you to see how many hours you might need to work to simply live or live simply. 
I've also been thinking about the tourist economy which both Portland Maine as well as San Francisco rely heavily on tourism. That feels like another conversation for another day but take a look at these two charts from the FRED.

The top one is the San Francisco Bay Area and the bottom is the Portland Maine area. All the rapid jumps in the line for Portland is seasonal unemployment. I'll leave you with the information that tourism accounts for 16% of employment in Maine as compared with 4.5% in California.

This image doesn't do it justice but this is the draw bridge and the first time we saw it up. This is a busy highway with cars and a pedestrian bridge and it folds up to allow cargo boats to go up or down the Fore River. So incredibly cool to witness.

This is another view of the Clark Street Community Garden.

Something pink and pretty since we all need that.

In the picture below all the lights you see in this image are all giant parking structures. They are the largest parking structures I've ever seen and they were so well lit until now I thought they were offices. Our guess is that they are for the nearby Maine Medical Center.

This ended up longer than I meant it to be.

Have a great night. I'm really looking forward to our long weekend in Rockland, Maine with friends from what feels like light years ago when I still lived in Berkeley and was single.

Sending love, Tawnia