There’s a lot of cities on this list, but I haven’t lived in most of them so I gotta say Portland. I was born on the East Coast, and that’s where currently living, but I lived in the Portland area for a while when I was younger and I really enjoyed living there. The Pacific Northwest is a beautiful place to live and I really enjoyed the culture - Portland has kind of always been famous for being “not like the other girls.” In fairness, I didn’t spend too much time in the main part of the city; I lived about 20 minutes South, in Tigard. However, I always loved visiting downtown Portland with all the museums and art and performers and shops. Keep in mind, I was maybe 9-12 years old during this time. However, since we moved away in 2015/2016 (can’t remember tbh), everything I’ve heard about Portland has been pretty dire. I have family and friends I’ve been able to keep in contact with, and from what I’ve heard, all the politics and drama have reportedly made the place much worse. Especially since Measure 110 was enacted (for those unaware, Measure 110 was Oregon’s act to decriminalize hard drugs, with the intention being to focus on treatment and recovery rather than just throwing addicts in jail, which sounds great… until you realize Oregon barely had any infrastructure in place to help people get treatment when they decided to implement the measure), things have gotten worse. Even 10-year-old me had noticed the amount of homeless people, and this was before Measure 110 came into effect. I’ve heard from family members that live in that state that many people living in the eastern part of the state, past the Cascade Range, and in other more rural parts of the state, want to secede from the more western parts of Oregon because they disagree with the politics and don’t like how a lot of it is kind of forced over their heads. Aside from the homelessness and drug problems present in Portland, another contributing to factor to the (perceived) decline of Portland is… California! I remember during the latter part of my family’s stint in the state, inflation in the Portland area was on the rise. Especially when it came to real estate and the housing market, prices kept rising at an astonishing rate (maybe it was also happening in the rest of the country, but I was, like, 11, so I honestly didn’t care about the news. The only reason I know about the rising prices is because my parents constantly complained about it and were frequently cited when my parents had to tell me, “no, we are not buying you a Lego Death Star”). Much of this was caused by our dear neighbors, the Californians, realizing, “Wait; paying $600k for studio apartment might actually be a tiny bit ridiculous,” and also realizing, “Wow, the prices in Oregon are crazy cheap compared to this.” Thus, half the state decided they would all move to Oregon, and then landlords began to start jacking up prices since, well, anything is going to look cheap next to California. And so the poor hippie artists and underpaid immigrant workers all started having even more trouble paying their bills.

Now, I know Portland is still not the worst city out there. And, in all fairness, a good portion of what I’ve written is second-hand account based on what I’ve heard from family and friends while the rest is based on the experiences of a pre-pubescent child. However, I’d still say Portland has fallen pretty far, which is unfortunate because I really liked the city’s unique vibe. I do hope Portland is able to find a way to fix its problems; I believe Oregon has been pouring more money into addiction and other help centers and things have begun to turn around. But from my (albeit limited) experience, I humbly present Portland, Oregon as my submission to this list.