Since I took office in 2019, I have never been assigned control of the Housing Bureau or the Joint Office of Homeless Services. During that time the City of Portland, Multnomah County, and the State of Oregon have failed to provide enough shelter for people experiencing houselessness and have failed to provide anywhere near an adequate supply of housing people can afford to live in. I’m a renter in East Portland and every day when I leave my apartment, I see large encampments. I see the suffering on our streets. And every day my heart is broken at our failure as a society to care for our most vulnerable.
Mayor after mayor has declared housing emergencies during the last decade, yet we have seen little progress. We need a bold, ambitious plan that maintains that housing is a human right and ends the suffering on our streets as soon as possible.
It is critically important to realize that fining or arresting people suffering on the streets solves nothing. No city plan for shelter expansion should involve sending people to jail because they live in extreme poverty or may be suffering from a mental or behavioral health issue in a state that ranks at the bottom of the country in providing those needed services. I am encouraged to see that despite previous information leaked to the media, there does not appear to be any legally enforceable punitive or forced entry approach to sheltering our most vulnerable Portlanders written into these proposals.
My office led the effort to create the only city sanctioned camping areas in recent memory following the onset of the pandemic. I also advocated for the successful preservation of the Hazelnut Grove tiny home village that was on the chopping block. Creating safe, serviced areas for those living on our streets is a concept I support - if done correctly. When we created the villages known as C3PO, we didn’t have to force anyone in. We voluntarily moved people through extensive outreach, by creating culturally specific environments, and providing the ability to build self-agency in democratic structures. This is just one example of something we could expand on quickly as a City.
I support providing everyone currently suffering on the streets a safe, dry, healing space to lay their head at night. I am not ready to endorse or oppose any of these proposals today, but appreciate there are elements of the plan that are intriguing, yet lacking substance and detail. For example, I’m a big proponent of creating a large public land bank. I have spoken with our District Attorney and support the concept of more diversion programs that provide treatment and services over prison sentences. I’m curious to learn more about how we can create job opportunities for people currently living unsheltered. And we must rapidly accelerate the production of affordable housing.
We all agree we are in an emergency and should respond with more urgency. That should start with immediately expanding our temporary shelter capacity to meet current needs, protecting renters so our crisis doesn’t get worse, and rapidly expanding housing that people can actually afford to live in. I’m hopeful as a Council we can work together on an urgent response to our houseless crisis that is grounded in compassion and lending a helping hand to those most in need. Those are the values I will bring to the discussion that will occur over the next few weeks, and I look forward to that work.
We will need to work collaboratively with our jurisdictional partners to move anything significant forward and I’m happy to utilize my strong relationships with elected officials across the County, Metro, and State to advance that dialogue. I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this conversation with my Council colleagues and look forward to learning more, asking questions, and hearing from the public this Wednesday, October 26th at 2pm.
Here are just a few thoughts I hope will be a part of this conversation:
- Work with the Joint Office of Homeless Services to maximize capacity in current shelters as an immediate first step.
- Enhance protections for renters to prevent our crisis from getting worse.
- Utilize current city owned property such as a city owned golf course to establish sanctioned, serviced camping areas and affordable housing.
- Expand the current use of eminent domain to utilize vacant, unused buildings and land for emergency temporary shelters as part of a larger strategy to move folks into permanent housing with supportive services.
- Aggressively purchase properties that could be quickly converted into shelter and/or housing such as hotels.
- Utilize a portion of existing commercial and government office space that can be reduced due to hybrid remote work arrangements for housing and shelter.
- Establish a “Project Turnkey” program in Portland and access empty apartments using rent support and master leasing.
- Build off Residential Infill Project to increase density and housing production.
- Develop empty nester programs for houseless youth.
- Ensure more new and existing affordable housing is actually affordable, close exceptions and loopholes in our inclusionary housing policies, and remove barriers for people currently experiencing homelessness from accessing housing.
- Advocate for statewide legislation to allocate $1 billion from the expected $4 billion dollar kicker for affordable housing and commercial development at 60% or below area median income.
- Consider raising Portland’s minimum wage.
- Pay the workers involved in this incredibly difficult work what they deserve. These are fast growing employment opportunities, and for sad reasons. The failure of so many systems upstream has led to this crisis and need.
- Ensure new emergency shelters offer a variety of options for different needs and include culturally specific services.
- The wealthiest, most powerful people in Portland shouldn’t lead efforts to aid our houseless neighbors. We must authentically engage our houseless community and actual experts when developing these policies.