street roots
5
July 8, 2011
MILLER, fro m page 4
year before, or even two years ago when the
recession h it They had jobs, they were
making ends m eet This is especially true on
the foreclosure side, but also in rentals.
Then as they lose their jobs, they lose their
housing, and suddenly, demand for services
and more affordable housing, everything
goes up. That’s a different person than
maybe eight years ago needing services. I
think job creation and employment
education programs and other things to 'help
get people back to work, those are things
Oregon ON would probably be supporting
pretty loudly whereas eight years or so ago,
it was more we really need services for folks
who are chronically homeless and have lots
of other issues that are keeping them from
being able to earn a living. Well, now, the
jobs just aren’t there.
J.Z.: Equity is the big buzzword these days,
even before the census report showed Portland’s
core lost 10,000 people of color, and before the
audit by the Fair Housing Council of Oregon
showed high rates of ethnic and racial
discrimination. .What does Oregon ON do with
that information and how does it apply to your
lobbying for your members?
J.M. Before I took this position, I was
with HOST Development here in Portland,
and we sold to low- and moderate^ income
folks. The big part of what we focused on
were minority homebuyers, and we did
about 400; houses, and about 200 of those
were sold to minority home buyers over the
years. And so with that, we saw a challenge.
We noticed a lot of times the banking
industry was tough, and even that folks just
didn’t really understand that
(homeownership) was a good option for
th em ....
Portland has been a tricky place as far as
these issues go. Most of the members’
missions are to serve underserved
populations. When we look at our ,population
compared to the general population, our
percentage of minority tenancy is higher
than the rest of the community, which is
good. We welcome these audits and, in fact,
we’ve asked that they be done every year for
sure and randomly as needed. If there are
offenders, we’re not going to wait another
year for another test.
J.Z.: What actions would you like to see
taken, at a policy level, taken to correct this
and be a model for the rest of the nation on
how to overcome something that every city has
struggled with?
J.M. It’s an ongoing issue. You hear about
what’s happened at the Interstate Corridor
in particular, where they’ve built up all this
nice new housing, but it’s not the same
people that are going there. (See “Interstate
and beyond,” Street Roots, June 24) And a
lot of the African-American businesses along
the area have closed and are moving out and
they’re being replaced. What we did at
urban renewal districts are built out. Where is
our money going to come from?
J.M. Everyone’s scratching their heads
on the TIF cliff. One of the things that TIF
is good for, and other funding is good for, is
building new housing. And we all agree that
there is a big demand for affordable housing
and the supply isn’t keeping up with the
"A lot of the folks that our members are serving are the folks
who were employed six months before, or a year before, or
even two years ago when the recession hit. They had jobs,
they were making ends meet. ...Then as they lose their jobs,
they lose their housing, and suddenly, demand for services
and more affordable housing, everything goes up. That's a
different person than maybe eight years ago needing
services."
HOST was to focus on marketing to the
local community. We went to them often,
got them engaged in the process. I think
that helps. It’s tricky when you allow the
market to really just do its tiling and you
don’t have any safety net in there to make
sure -the market just doesn’t go wild.
Ofie of the problems with urban renewal
areas is we allow the market to just run with
it. And sowe fix,it up. But who comes? Is it
the people that we wanted to build it for or
is it unintentioned? But without intention
about being inclusive and marketing to folks
and giving financial support to businesses
and so forth, and if you just sit back and say
let the law of market forces build this
community on its own, then I think that’s
where we get in trouble. The big money isn’t
always necessarily in the areas we’re trying
to help. And that’s a problem. So in URAs,
along w ith building nice buildings, th e re also;
needs to be job training and economic
development activity going on for those
folks that we’re trying to serve. If we’re
really going in to try to build up a
community, than it has to be more than just
the infrastructure, it also has to be the
people in it as well, and we need to bring
them along.
J.Z.: Money: We had the economic housing
collapse, the low-income housing tax credits
aking a hit, federal blog grants were
restructured, and we know that there is a TIF
cliff, with the revenue from tax increment
financing begins declining dramatically as
demand. But there are different ways to
meet the demand. One way is to build new
housing, another way is to find housing that
is existing and convert it to long-term
affordable housing. How do you do that?
Basically, buy existing buildings, rehab
them. Presumably you can do that more
economically than building a brand new
building.
J.Z.: So just get smarter with the money we
have?
J.M. Yeah. Unfortunately, the way our
system is set up now, we build new buildings
as often as we can, and that keeps the whole
industry healthy, but eventually you run out
of money to build new buildings. Using our
existing housing stock, converting it to long
term affordable, is one solution, and that we
don’t spendas much. When you look at TIF;
it’s hard to say ... T^F m ade a lot of sense
when property values were rising and
everything was on the upswing. It’s probably
going to be a while before we get back into
that kind of a mindset. Banking on the
future didn’t turn out very well ip some
areas as far as property values. I guess
there is no easy answer.
J.Z.: The 30 percent set-aside. Obviously
Oregon ON has been involved in the push to
preserve it, and for it being applied to each
urban renewal district. The mayor has said it’s
not specifically for each UFA, and there are
timelines shifting. Why is this so important?
J.M. It’s extremely important for the
reasons we talked about earlier. I often
think that the gentrification isn’t the bad
thing, it’s the displacement that’s the bad
thing. But the displacement that the
gentrification causes gets even more
confounded if we’re not setting some of that
money aside in every single district to
provide affordable homes. That’s the
answer, really. If you’re making investments
in the community, it has to be made for
everyone in the community, and not just the
more affluent folks who will be coming in.
We have to have affordable options in every
community. And so I absolutely believe it
needs to be by district. And I agree with
Commissioner Nick Fish that it needs to be
a floor, not a ceiling. I think we should be
striving to exceed 30 percent in every
district I’m sitting on the committee that’s
doing the five-year review, and I was part of
the group that set up all the numbers five
years ago. We fought pretty hard to get by
district, and we were actually pretty
disappointed that it wasn’t 30 percent
across the board. I understand why the
Memorial Coliseum area gets an exception.
And in some areas, people just didn’t live
there, and it didn’t make sense to push for
30 percept when no one was there in the
first place. But it needs to be preserved, and
we’d like-to see it even more.
J.Z.: So what are the priorities fo r Oregon
ON moving forward?
J.M. The bigger picture: sustainability.
Organizations are concerned. They see all
these financial things on the horizons that
you’ve mentioned, and the government is
scratching its head as well. There’s really
not a clear way in how to keep this whole
system moving forward. That’s really risen
to the top of the priorities. How do we
sustain and keep this whole system going
forward, this industry statewide? Hopefully
we’ll come up with some great best
practices that can he emulated around the .
country. I went out to a national meeting in
D.C. about three weeks ago with a group of
people just like me from all over the
country, heads of CDC organizations, and
everyone’s facing the same problem.
Sustainability is the big thing. A lot of times
when they’re talking about sustainability,
they’re talking about mergers and things
like th a t We just want to make sure that our
whole network — we’ve got all kinds of
service industry support groups — is
working together.
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