Navigating Immigration and Black Identity in Portland

Chris Woods

The Advocate

MHCC hosted a screening of the documentary “Priced Out” in the Student Union, Feb. 18, 2026  “Priced Out” explores the intertwined histories of Vanport and Albina, highlighting how exclusion laws, wartime migration and redlining shaped the lives of Black Oregonians. The event will included a short discussion following the film, offering students and community members a chance to reflect on how this history connects to present-day Portland.  

Albina and Vanport 

Vanport was at one time the second-largest city in Oregon and the largest concentration of Black Oregonians and other minorities in the state. The community formed largely because of the labor demands of World War II shipbuilding. This migration marked the first large influx of African Americans to Oregon and the Portland area, following decades of exclusionary laws that restricted property ownership and settlement. 

When a flood destroyed Vanport on May 30, 1948, the city’s population had declined to about 18,000 but remained attractive as low-cost housing. The community was about 40% Black and included a large number of minority residents overall, as well as many returning World War II veterans using the GI Bill. Students also attended the nearby Vanport Extension Center, later Portland State University. (Construction of Interstate 405 in the 1960s had a similar effect, displacing affordable housing for minorities, students and veterans.) 

The few Black Oregonians who did settle in Albina, in Northeast Portland, beginning in the late 19th century, were often tied to jobs in the nearby rail yard or service industries. By 1940, the Portland-area Black population was about 1,900, with roughly 1,000 in Albina. As war production ramped up, Kaiser Shipyards opened on the Columbia River in 1942. Built on a floodplain nearby, the city of Vanport housed 40,000 shipyard workers and their families by 1945, including about 7,200 African Americans. At the same time, the combined Black population of Albina and Portland grew to about 20,000. 

After World War II, Albina experienced a period of prosperity and cultural growth in the 1950s. But from the late 1960s through the early 2000s, the neighborhood faced decades of decline due to redlining, disinvestment, disruptive construction projects, the use of eminent domain and repeated failures to deliver promised replacement housing. 

Redlining 

In 1933, during the Great Depression, federal leaders sought to address a national housing shortage. The Federal Housing Administration, established in 1934, insured mortgages and helped finance new housing development. Its guidelines categorized neighborhoods into four rating tiers: 

• Best: Affluent suburbs on city outskirts 

• Still Desirable: Newer neighborhoods 

• Declining: Older neighborhoods 

• Hazardous: Communities with Black residents, other minorities, immigrants or low-income families 

“Hazardous” classification meant mortgages would not be insured, a risk most lenders avoided. As a result, African Americans received less than 2% of federally backed mortgages. Although African Americans earned, on average, about 60% of white income, they held only about 5% of generational housing wealth. This disparity provides context for Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement about being told to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” while being systematically denied access to “boots.” 

Redlining created chronic problems of low ownership and disinvestment — conditions lawmakers later labeled “urban blight.” Proposed solutions often involved destructive construction projects, expanded roadways, eminent domain or dense, isolated housing developments. In Albina, these “solutions” took the form of transportation expansions, an abandoned hospital project and multiple rounds of promised but undelivered replacement housing. 

“Priced Out” screening in the Student Union, Feb. 18, 2026 

Cornelius Swart’s 2017 documentary Priced Out explores the history of housing and the African American presence in the Portland area. A sequel to 2001’s NorthEast Passage: The Inner City and the American Dream, Priced Out follows up with Nikki Williams, the subject Swart has filmed since the late 1990s, as she searches for solutions to the dangers and lack of opportunity facing her and her daughter in Portland’s Albina neighborhood. 

In the original documentary, she described living near three drug houses, along with abandoned homes, abandoned cars and the genuine danger of gang activity—circumstances that made her hesitant to involve police. Despite the official end of discriminatory home-lending practices, the neighborhood’s decline lingered. On camera, Nikki openly asks for any solution, including gentrification. Priced Out documents the changes that came as mostly young white families and investors found the lower-cost housing increasingly attractive and area businesses shifted to reflect new residents’ tastes. As longtime friends sold their homes or had already moved away due to previous redevelopment efforts, Nikki began considering Black-majority communities in states such as Arizona and Texas to regain a familiar neighborhood feel. 

After the screening, Dr. Rashida Willard, interim associate vice president of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, led a group discussion on community and the effects of gentrification. An African American millennial in the front row shared that her mother had lost their home in Northeast Portland just months before she was born, and that moving frequently afterward meant she never experienced a stable community. 

A Gen X homeowner from the area recounted being the last remaining member of his original neighborhood community. He said he followed advice from an older relative not to sell his home a couple of decades ago for $60,000—a decision that likely preserved his family’s generational wealth—but he still feels isolated from the culture that moved away. 

A baby boomer also spoke about the diaspora of friends and family from the area, as well as ongoing efforts to gather the old community at annual events. Demographic maps show that many former residents have moved east toward Gresham and Troutdale, while others—similar to the trend depicted in the film—have left Oregon for more affordable states. 

After the three Black speakers shared their experiences, Dr. Abio Ayeliya, director of the Office of Student Life and Civic Engagement, talked about immigrating and navigating life as a Black person in Portland. He emphasized that everyone is searching for community. He also quoted Albert Einstein, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” 

Maurice Nicholson, Multicultural and Diversity Programs coordinator, followed by sharing his experience growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the visible effects of redlining there. 

Priced Out is available for screenings and is also accessible online via YouTube.