Oregon Public Broadcasting

Over the last few months, OPB listeners have become familiar with unemployed rocket scientist, Michael Smith .

After being laid-off from a high-tech job last year, Smith and his wife had to sell their dream home in Sherwood and move to Happy Valley, arguably the epicenter of Oregon’s real estate problems.

Kristian Foden-Vencil went to see Smith’s new neighorhood and files this report.

Kristian: “So I’m standing in a development in Happy Valley. And I’m at a big house, I’m imagining that the square foot on this house is at least 3000, if not more square feet. But the two front doors, one doesn’t match the other.

There’s no hardware on them, there’s a big thick chain and a padlock there. The windows are boarded over.  There’s bits of wire where light fixtures should be. And then as I look out there’s a great view of the valley, but there’s just gaps in between every single house, there’s just four of five empty lots.

It’s just very obvious that this is where the bubble popped. Developers were building and all of a sudden nobody was buying anymore and worked stopped immediately.”

Michael Smith: “You made it.”

Kristian: “Yeah, how you doing.”

Michael Smith: “Good to see you again.”

Kristian: “Good to see you.”

Nearby, Smith’s house is very nice. It’s newly built and has everything from granite counter tops to a fitted kitchen. He bought it for $390,000 -- a steep discount. But that was after he had to discount his old home, which he bought for $850,000.

Smith’s mortgage payment is now 70 percent smaller and he and his wife can afford it on her nurse’s salary. Also, the specter of foreclosure no longer hangs over their heads. But Smith says, getting a loan was not easy.

Michael Smith: “You would just not believe how slow the lending industry is moving right now.”

Kristian: “They just wanted to check every single detail?”

Michael Smith: “Every single detail but then there are delays that are in the system that just don’t seem to make any sense at all.  I mean how long does it take to generated paperwork that comes off a computer with approvals already in time. I just think that’s jitters and nerves on the part of the lending industry.”

Those jitters started in places like Happy Valley. From Smith’s window you can see all the half-built homes and empty lots.

Michael Smith: “There are stories of transients living in some of these homes and there being sources for crime. But so far we haven’t personally seen any. However, over in Natalia about two days ago, some woman was forced at knife-point into her home by two intruders and robbed. So that’s only a few blocks away from here.”

Kristian: “My goodness, that’s a little different from the neighborhood you lived in before.”

Michael Smith: “Yeah, I’d say so. But city officials still say it’s a relatively low crime rate area and I don’t’ know what the statistics are. I haven’t studied them personally.”

Smith says the new neighborhood makes him feel that somehow the American Dream was supplanted by the idea we could all afford ridiculously large homes and spend with impunity.

Michael Smith: “And unfortunately I don’t believe that was every part of the American Dream. The American Dream was in the 1950’s people working solidly for good corporations that took care of them. Where they had some sort of retirement. They worked 40 years, then they retired in a little house and took pride in paying all their bills off.”

Now that he’s unemployed, Smith has made sure to pay his own bills off -- even though that meant selling his dream home.  He seems resigned to the fact that he’ll be living in an area in flux for a while. But his hope is that in five or ten years, people will have filled in all the empty lots and a strong, safe community will emerge.