Oregon has no sales tax, and as such its income and property taxes are much higher than many states. This is especially true in Multnomah County (where Portland is located), due to county income and business taxes on top of state. See, i.e.
I've lived in both San Francisco and Portland, and anecdotally I found Portland's infrastructure and services to be far inferior to those in San Francisco: worse roads (climate doesn't help), more homeless, more difficult city bureaucracy, etc. This is of course somewhat subjective, so YMMV.
Personally, if I were to move from the Bay Area due to cost of living and taxes, I'd be looking at Texas.
I haven't seen that many actual homeless in Portland. Mainly hippies, trustafarians, outdoorsmen, and people posing as homeless in order to make a quick buck.
I presume by "arguably" you mean "I have a bizarrely distorted worldview and therefore I'm going to assert this fact that I have just produced from the depths of my colon."
And the reason those articles stated was that people were leaving for "whiter cities"? I think that's a stretch. The last I heard a lot of people were leaving California because the white collar jobs were leaving California. As I'm sure you're aware, there are more white people working white-collar jobs, so maybe that's the reason, eh?
If those articles said that people were leaving because California wasn't "white enough" or whatever, I'd love to see them.
http://credc.sterling.net/business/infocenter/Clark-Multnoma...
I've lived in both San Francisco and Portland, and anecdotally I found Portland's infrastructure and services to be far inferior to those in San Francisco: worse roads (climate doesn't help), more homeless, more difficult city bureaucracy, etc. This is of course somewhat subjective, so YMMV.
Personally, if I were to move from the Bay Area due to cost of living and taxes, I'd be looking at Texas.