Portland survey finds strong satisfaction with core services but affordability tops residents' concerns

Mayor Mark Dion convened a council workshop where Assistant City Manager Dina Libner and consultant Ryan Murray of ETC Institute presented the results of a citywide survey of Portland residents.

Libner told the council the study is “a representative snapshot of residents' perspectives and sentiments” and noted it does not prescribe solutions. Ryan Murray summarized the survey's methods and headline findings, saying the study used mailed packets, online and phone completion options and a random sample drawn from every ZIP code touching the city's boundary.

Murray said the team mailed about 6,500 surveys and received 1,112 completed responses, a response rate of roughly 17%. He said the margins of error for the citywide results are just below 3% at the 95% confidence level.

The consultant emphasized that many core municipal services received strong ratings: “You rated above the national average in about 33 or 35, comparing … in over half of the areas that were assessed,” Murray said, pointing to above‑average scores for public safety, customer service and parks. He noted customer service metrics among respondents who had contacted the city in the past year: two‑thirds of respondents (67%) said they had contacted the city and about three‑quarters of those reported being satisfied with the overall customer experience and courtesy of employees.

At the same time, Murray said affordability was the clearest negative across neighborhoods and demographic groups: “Only about 8% of our respondents indicated they were satisfied with the affordability of living in Portland,” he said, and roughly three‑quarters rated affordability as dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Respondents also placed homelessness, housing, substance abuse and mental health among top concerns for the next five years.

The presentation included an “important satisfaction” analysis that combines how important a service is with current satisfaction levels to identify where investments could most improve resident sentiment. Murray said the analysis flags infrastructure and mobility — traffic flow and maintenance of streets and sidewalks — as top opportunities to raise overall satisfaction.

Councilors used the workshop to probe the data. Councilor Brian Phillips asked how many people were asked to participate; Murray confirmed the 6,500 mailings and the 1,112 completes. He and others asked about the owner/renter split in the sample; Murray acknowledged a modest overrepresentation of owners but said staff and the consultant ran cross‑tabulations and significance tests comparing the 619 owner responses to 483 renter responses and that those tests are available to staff for review.

Councilor Sykes pushed the council to treat affordability as a policy priority rather than an external problem: “we should not gloss over all that quality of life stuff, as something that we can't control,” the councilor said, urging the council to place housing at the top of its policy work and pointing to the recently launched social housing task force.

On outreach and inclusion, Murray said the mailed cover letter and survey materials were available in multiple languages, the project set up toll‑free numbers for non‑English speakers and staff placed paid multilingual ads to reach new Mainers. He said the team also provided staff a supplemental, nonrandom outreach dataset to capture voices that are harder to reach, such as people experiencing homelessness, and that he would supply staff with a report showing language‑channel response counts.

City staff and the consultant indicated next steps: staff will use the findings to inform the budget process and to create dashboards that let councilors filter results by district and demographic subgroup; Murray offered to answer detailed follow‑ups in writing when questions require additional research. The workshop closed with thanks to staff and to the consultant for the presentation.

What happens next: Councilors and staff will review district‑level cross‑tabs and the consultant's follow‑up report on language and outreach channels; the results are intended to inform budgeting and, if repeated in the future, to serve as a benchmark for tracking changes over time.