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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 3, 2016)
SERVING ORGANIZED LABOR IN OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON SINCE 1900 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS VOLUME 117, NUMBER 23 IN THIS ISSUE UNION GIFT GUIDE Finding union-made can be a challenge. Here are some suggestions. | Page 3 AFSCME #88 LIBRARIAN RETIRES Janet Irwin worked at Multnomah County Library for 46 years. | Page 5 Meeting notices p.4 Seeking holiday party donations p.4 PORTLAND, OREGON Housing state of emergency Around Oregon, home prices and rents are soaring, and homelessness is on the rise By Don McIntosh In Portland, City Council declared a housing state of emergency Sept. 7 — for the second year in a row. The emergency is real, and wors- ening rapidly. Portland home prices are now out of range for most working people. The median sale price is $385,000, having risen at or above 10 percent annually for the last five years. Portland rents, meanwhile, are rising on av- erage 12 percent a year — faster than anywhere else in the nation, and four or five times the rate that wages are increasing. Rising rents are shap- ing up to be an enormous and permanent shift of income from renters to landlords: At current average rents, two years of double-digit in- creases amount to about $600 million taken out of the pockets of tenants in Portland alone. About 47 percent of Portland households — roughly 125,000 in all — are renters. And unaffordable rent is contributing to rising homelessness. Shantytowns are cropping up un- der bridges, along railroad tracks, and in parks and on the sidewalks of residential neighbor- hoods. As many as 4,000 people may be living on Portland streets. Portland City Council’s response to the emer- gency has focused on supply. The market failed to supply affordable rental housing, so the City will offer tax abatements to developers in ex- change for temporary commitments to rent some units affordably. Relaxed zoning codes will make it easier for homeowners to build detached housing units on existing lots. A $258 million bond issue will pay to construct 1,300 units of affordable housing for lower-income renters. Turn to Page 2 “This isn’t just a Portland metro crisis. We’re seeing a 0 percent vacancy rate in Prineville. It re- ally is an urban, rural and mid- sized community crisis. This is a critical issue facing working people. In order to address it, we need to level the playing field between land- lords and tenants.” —Graham Trainor, Oregon AFL-CIO political director “We’re seeing an uptick of peo- ple who still have their jobs and are living in cars. These are work- ing families, union households that are living in their car with kids.” — Eryn Byram, Labor’s Commu- nity Service Agency outreach specialist “Our students are coming to school tired because after get- ting evicted, they’re sleeping on couches, floors, or in cars. They’re coming to school hun- gry because their parents had to spend food money to cover the rent increase. They’re coming late because af- ter moving out to the fringes, they are being bused back into town through traffic.” — Elizabeth Thiel, Portland Association of Teachers vice president “[City commissioners] need to get their priorities straight and assign the correct urgency to the humanitarian crisis that is facing our city right now.” — Steve Demarest, SEIU Local 503 presi- dent “I’m sending a message to land- lords … The days of treating ten- ants as human ATMs and the days of predicating their busi- ness model on their unfettered right to exploit us, are num- bered.” — Chloe Eudaly, Portland Commissioner-elect DECEMBER 2, 2016 “We will no longer accept underfunded education, underfunded senior serv- ices, underfunded health care and childcare and children’s services while the biggest corporations who do business in our state get away with offshoring their profits and skirt paying their taxes. We are saying, ‘If you are going to profit off our communities, you are going to invest in our communities.’” — Family Forward Oregon Executive Director Andrea Paluso Measure 97 backers plan to take their campaign to the Legislature The union-backed coalition wants corporate tax transparency — and for big corporations to pay their fair share. By Don McIntosh A Better Oregon — the coalition of union, business and commu- nity groups that backed Ballot Measure 97 — won’t be shut- ting down just because the measure lost. At a packed Nov. 17 press conference, coalition leaders an- nounced they’ll ask the state Legislature to step up and solve Oregon’s revenue problems, as well as shed light on how much big corporations actually pay in taxes. Measure 97 would have raised $3 billion a year with a 2.5 percent tax on corporate sales over $25 million. Oregon unions put extraordinary re- sources into the campaign for Measure 97, led by Oregon Ed- ucation Association (OEA), $5.2 million; Service Employ- ees International Union (SEIU) Local 503, $3.5 million; and Oregon AFSCME, $1.5 million. Initial polls showed strong ma- Turn to Page 7 COMMUNITY SERVICE: IBEW Local 48’s Electrical Workers Minority Caucus participated in an International Day of Service Nov. 19 to honor America’s service men and women. EWMC and IBEW chapters across the United States and Canada took the day to help veterans. Last year, all 33 EWMC chapters contributed over 5,000 hours of community service. This year members of Local 48 prepared breakfast for veterans at the Fisher House in Vancouver, Washington, above. The facility pro- vides temporary housing for veterans receiving medical care.
