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.
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“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-
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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.