Seattle, Portland and San Francisco have taken different paths through many of the same challenges Minneapolis faces. Some worked. Some didn’t. All are worth studying.
Part 2 of 6 of the Tale of Four Cities series
By David Therkelsen and Terry White
As we begin to report on our visits to three cities that have faced issues and problems similar to Minneapolis, let’s start with this stipulation: none of them are hellholes, nor have they ever been. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, like Minneapolis, all have struggled over the last decade with housing, homelessness, addiction, and crime. They’ve lost and have tried to recover downtown and commercial vitality. Their downtowns have been further carved out by COVID and remote work. They’ve had pitched intramural battles on how to govern effectively. They’ve had to confront intimidating budget deficits.
Each city also has a lot on the positive side of the ledger: great beauty, natural resources, fine neighborhoods, lively events and attractions, friendly people who take pride in their community.
Rather like Minneapolis.
In the articles to come, we’ll write about many of these current issues. We’ll aim to discover and share what Minneapolis can learn from other cities that have faced problems similar to ours—both their successes and their failures. We’ll tell you about conversations we had with leaders and observers who come from multiple perspectives—elected officials and public administrators, activists and advocates, business owners and business leaders, journalists, residents, and scholars.
Seattle
A few years ago, social problems might have been the most intractable. They are by no means gone, but today the knottiest problems facing this beautiful city on Puget Sound are economic. The city, along with San Francisco and Portland, has a high commercial vacancy rate. In downtown Seattle for Q2 of 2026, it was 35.8%. The big tech employers they have depended upon for growth—think Amazon and Microsoft—have shifted jobs to the neighboring and more tax-friendly suburb of Bellevue. They have also experienced a significant increase in tech employees working from home.
The JumpStart tax is one that businesses regard as hostile but some city officials view as vital. It’s levied on businesses with payroll expense of $9 million or more and with one employee or more earning more than about $200,000 annually. (Both figures are low bars.) It’s understandably unpopular with business in its own right, but on top of JumpStart, there is a housing tax on high compensation and higher property taxes than surrounding areas. There’s a millionaire’s tax, too, approved by the state legislature, but Initiative 645 on this fall’s election ballot is an attempt to repeal it.
Social issues, while appearing to be in decline, do persist. Seattle leads most cities in property crimes per 100,000 population. Mayor Katie Wilson ran on supplying more shelter beds, yet some streets and parks are overrun with encampments. Overdose deaths remain the biggest public health menace.
Mayor Wilson, who took office in January 2026, was not endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America, but still calls herself a socialist, and lives a modest, working-class life, with a one-bedroom apartment for her family and a daily commute by bus to her job in City Hall. She has surprised many observers with her pragmatic approaches to governance. One surprise was the retention of the police chief (though he later resigned in the aftermath of a mass shooting at the city’s big food festival). As the city faces a $175 million budget deficit, she is requiring each department head to provide a “what would it look like” view if they had to cut 5% or 10% from their budgets.
Leaders believe Seattle showed itself well as a major World Cup venue. It’s a city rich in culture and amenities, and, as one leader told us, a great place to live if you can afford it.
Portland
Portland was once a thriving city, with mountains and ocean easily accessible. The mountains and ocean haven’t gone anywhere, but the economic abundance has. Start-ups drove early Portland success—people came for the natural resources, founded business, built wealth, and used some of the wealth to build a fine city. Now, downtown office and retail vacancies are above 30%, driving down commercial property values. Loss of high-paying jobs and unemployment are above the national average, and young professionals have particular difficulty finding jobs. More people move out of Portland than in, but more disturbing is the people who leave have, on average, household incomes about $25,000 a year greater than those who come, creating a drag on the economy.
And taxes? Oh, do Portlanders love their taxes; one city official told us voters have never seen a tax they don’t like. Oregon has no sales tax, but income taxes stack up in multiple layers. On the state level, the income tax tops out at 9.9%, one of the highest rates in the country. There’s also an Oregon Corporate Activity Tax. On the region/city level (stated this way because the area also has not only Multnomah County but also a three-county metropolitan government), there is a Metro Supportive Housing Services tax, a Preschool for All tax, and a Portland Arts Tax.
Help is not on the way. The Urban Land Institute and PwC ranks Portland as 80th among 81 metropolitan areas in attractiveness to investors. Just nine years ago, the city was ranked third. Unlike Seattle and San Francisco, Portland has fewer means of picking itself up by those proverbial bootstraps. Its “Silicon Forest” consists of employers such as Intel and Lam Research. There are also the apparel headquarters of Nike, Adidas, and Columbia Sportswear. But these companies are not expanding the way they have in the past. Their one major-league sports franchise, the NBA’s Trail Blazers, was recently purchased by Texas billionaire Tom Dundon. He is negotiating with the city for a $573 million renovation of the Moda Center and there is speculation he will move the team if they can’t agree on terms. Keeping the team in Portland is seen by many as a make-or-break matter for the local economy.
Homelessness, encampments, and substance abuse were highly visible to us. The Council President, Jamie Dunphy, estimates that for every 1,100 housed each month, another 1,400 become unhoused. Violent crime is high but trending down. Interactions with police, emergency room visits, and homeless deaths are trending downward as well.
Not a pretty picture. And yet … we gained some optimism because of our meetings with community leaders who are smart, energetic, have great pride in their city, and equally great determination to regain their former stature. There are parks everywhere and abundant public transit. Like each of the cities we are studying, and like Minneapolis, they have large splits in their political leadership, but it appears they’re not letting that get in the way of making progress toward vitality.
San Francisco
The City by the Bay is beautiful. There is tremendous wealth within its boundaries, but 11% of the population lives in poverty. Violent crime is down. The office vacancy rate remains at 30.1%. Much revitalization is occurring thanks to an influx of AI-related venture capital, but it is unevenly distributed. The Mission Bay area near the Giants ballpark is a former railyard turned high-tech and biotech hub. Street parking can cost upwards of $50, but the investments made in the area decades ago are now paying off, making it as big a win as any major city can point to.
Housing costs are one of the highest in the country; you might be amazed at what $1 million won’t buy you. High-tech and AI have driven up prices to unimaginable levels, but not everyone works doing algorithms and training AI models; ordinary people with ordinary jobs and ordinary incomes need to be housed as well. The head of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce told us the city’s rent control policy is a pretty good idea—a position not often held by top business leaders. But his reasoning was that the city has to keep some degree of affordability for the people who SF depends on just to keep things running day to day. Future articles will examine whether various rent control strategies have worked.
Energetic, pro-business mayor Daniel Lurie is a high-powered city cheerleader who has built coalitions to fight homelessness, encampments, and addiction, and revitalize neighborhoods (though, as mentioned, not all neighborhoods). As an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, who appears able to talk to billionaires and ordinary citizens with equal ease, it’s not surprising he’s had success in building public-private partnerships.
San Francisco has long been a high-tech magnet and now is an AI magnet. Entrepreneurs compete for venture capital, and more than half of the nation’s venture capital finds its way to the Bay Area. San Francisco is connecting talented innovators from the likes of Stanford and Caltech with venture capital funds. In addition, as part of Mayor Lurie’s “Heart of the City” economic recovery initiative, the city aims to be a satellite campus for several prominent colleges and universities. Vanderbilt is opening a full-time campus expected to attract 1,000 students in the 2027–2028 academic year.
San Francisco, where Tony Bennett left his heart, will probably be okay, but it’s still got a ways to go.
Good write up thanks. “PwC ranks Portland as 80th among 81 metropolitan areas in attractiveness to investors. Just nine years ago, the city was ranked third” Sad that such a great city flushes itself like this
Portland gets a mention in this Pioneer Press piece below. While the St Paul City Council President helped to make this happen, this would NEVER happen with the Mpls City Council, as it is presently being commanded by the DSA aligned Council President and DSA adherent CM Wonsley…and their cohorts. When folks are looking at a new place to resettle, I suggest taking a look at St Paul.
Community prosecutor named for downtown St. Paul – Twin Cities
https://www.twincities.com/2026/08/24/community-prosecutor-downtown-st-paul/
Excerpt…
The position is funded through downtown property owners and is not unprecedented nationally. Milwaukee and Portland, Ore., have similar programs with prosecutors funded by and focused on specific districts.
St. Paul City Council President Rebecca Noecker in a statement Monday said she was pleased with the addition of a community prosecutor position for downtown.
“Public safety is foundational to a thriving downtown, and our approach should be rooted in listening to the people who live, work, and spend time here, responding to what they are telling us, and bringing partners together to act on what we hear. I’m grateful to everyone who helped turn this community priority into action..”
I have a personal connection to both Seattle and Portland. I spent a summer in Seattle working at the Times on a fellowship for journalism professors. One of the first stories I wrote was about the homeless “crisis.” This was in the mid-90s. Of all the people I interviewed, the truth-tellers were those from social service agencies. If nobody gave panhandlers money for just one day, it would force the problem to be addressed by those with the power to do something, I was told. Thirty years later, nothing has changed. Then I lived in Portland from 2014-2023. Things went from bad to worse. the low point for me was seeing a man defecating on the doorstep of a downtown business. Both cities are so so beautiful, but their compassionate mindset and the very beauty I loved attracted more and more people on the down and out. Combine that with the drug “train” going up the West Coast from Mexico, and the result is toxic for everyone. I miss those beautiful cities, but not the intractable issues.
Thanks for these interesting and very readable sketches of four cities. It used to be said that Minneapolis was the hardest city to recruit top biz talent to, and the hardest one to get them to leave once here. Quality of life overcame the quality of climate.
I think the two other draws were major league sports teams, even if championships elude them (go Lynx!) and the proximity of the airport. (A plan to move it to somewhere like Apple Valley was quickly quashed by corporate poobahs.) Another draw has been the U of MN and medical research, and if we continue to lose funding for that research . . .
Nevertheless, my young adult grandchildren who did not grow up here and live in places like Seattle, NYC and Santa Barbara, hold Mpls in high esteem. When they visit they are blown away by the music, the vibe, the restaurants, riverfront, the trees and parks, the Twins stadium which they can walk to from the North Loop. etc. Said one, “Why aren’t all cities like this?” That said, so far none have announced plans to move here!
Anyway, I’m enjoying your comparisons.
I’ve spent a good amount of time in all 3 of the cities mentioned and live in Mpls. All three are cities with ‘good bones’, but stewards that have in the last 15 years or so began to take the success for granted and milk it vs sustain it. We need new owners that will rehab the home, because the current ones fell way behind on normal maintenance.
Lived in Modesto in the early 00’s. My neighbor did that commute. He always looked like death on Saturday. The trade off for him was a salary to very comfortably afford a nice house while his wife stayed home with the kids. 4 hours a day, at least back then, was an optimistic number for the commute.
Quite a few working class folks in SF live quite a ways away. Can’t afford to live there. A few years ago, while consulting in Modesto, I experienced massive rush hour traffic at 4am. The freeway to SF was basically a very long parking lot. I was told people were on their daily commute from Modesto to SF. It’s a shade over 90 miles each way. What is your quality of life when the commute takes 4+ hours/day?