Vandalism on Californian couple as many Californian transplants drove up Real Estate price

By KwakMin-jung Posted : July 5, 2017, 06:42 Updated : July 5, 2017, 06:42

A Southern Californian couple was targeted and their property was vandalized with hateful messages. [Courtesy of Jessica Faraday]


A Southern Californian couple, Preston Page and Jessica Faraday, who moved to Portland, Oregon in February this year was shocked to find their property vandalized and a target of hate crime on Sunday morning.

The couple's home and car were discovered with gold-colored graffiti and with messages that said, "Go back to California" and "Get California OUT of Portland", Oregonian reported. Their car was also keyed and scratched. 

Page's job at Adidas made the couple to relocate to Portland. Also, there have been many Californians moving to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington due to extremely inflated apartment rental cost and living fares in Californian especially in San Francisco, and Sillon Valley. Many companies relocated their headquarters to Oregon and Washington states due to the same fact, forcing their employees to relocate with them. 

However, these newly transplants drove the local real estate prices to go up rapidly, triggering anger and resentment among locals. 

Page said in an interview with Oregonian, "So much industry has come in here and, I'm sure, pushed some locals out. That can be rough ... you see housing prices double, or triple in the past five to ten years. I don't think it's directed at Californians, just noticeably because a lot of them [are] coming up here. But I'm sure it's all the transplants [add to] the frustration."

Faraday also made a statement to SF Gate, "We have such a great community and such great neighbors. This was one person who obviously is uneducated as to what is really happening in Portland. I can understand that there is some tension with people surrounding the housing market, the job market, things like that, but if you look at it, we have very large corporations that have multiple employees and they bring in employees from other places."

The couple said they decided to look at the only positive side because otherwise, Oregonians have been "fantastic here". They installed surveillance cameras and flood lights to their home since the incident. 









Kwak, Min Jung = abiel@ajunews.com

 
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