Street roots., December 09, 2011, Page 5, Image 5

5
Street roots
Dec. 9,2011
H A LES, from page 4
city maintaining streets on either side of the
county bridge? So let’s look at housing and
mental health services and poverty and
really think about what the city and the
county do because there’s not going to be
extra money raining down from Washington
(D.C.). We’re going to have to be smart and
careful about how we spend money.
J.T.: The city’s stock of affordable housing
continues to shrink, despite promises to not
lose any of it. Meanwhile, the wait list for some
of these units is very long. What are your ideas
for sustaining and expanding the stock of
affordable housing?
,
C.H.: I think the 30 percent set aside is a
good policy and we should keep i t And we
should look for more opportunities to do
what we did in the Pearl District which is to
have development agreements that require
private developers doing major projects with
city help to commit to a high level of
performance with affordable housing. So I
helped negotiate some of those agreements,
and that has worked out really well, and it
has actually exceeded the 25 percent
affordable housing.
I think we need a combination of the 30
percent set-aside and development
agreements while trying to get the rest of
the region to participate in affordable
housing. Years ago, I was trying to get other
local governments to take their share of
affordable housing, rather than just having
the suburbs being expensive cul-de-sacs with
their homeless and poor being forced to
move into PortiancLylwant thè region*
including Metro, to step up and take a
reasonable share of that responsibility and
not just let Portland do it. If you think about
it, Portland is a third of the metro region’s
population. Tell me there’s no low-income
require affordable housing. Portland should
be a leader, but shouldn’t be doing this solo.
J.T.: Employment is at the foundation of
self-sufficiency. What are you going to do to
help create jobs for people with multiple
barriers to getting hired?
C.H.: One secret to innovation is finding
the good ideas that someone else has and
growing them. I’ve seen some great work
being done with Central City Concern to
help people get back into the workforce. It’s
just phenomenal. So how can we work with
nonprofits like Central City Concern to
expand what they’re doing? It works; it’s '
cost effective; it’s much more effective than
what the government can do by itself. So
let’s grow that program.
The Portland Workforce Alliance is doing
this great effort to connect kids in our high
schools who àre not necessarily college-
bound with great job opportunities in our
manufacturing businesses. There are 45,000
C.H.: In the short run, people have to
family wage jobs in those areas. So if we can sleep outside for a while, but let’s make sure
connect more of oqr underemployed and
that it’s safe and it’s not a public health
younger workers to those great job
issue. With the Right 2 Dream Too
opportunities, they get to live a good life and encampment, I don’t know all the twists and
buy a home and be part of Portland as a
turns, but it sounds like the city made the
productive citizen. Sometimes government
situation difficult for the property owner,
is smarter if it finds really successful
and he felt that he had no choice but to use
innovative partners like those and uses our
the property this way. I’d rather not have
scarce dollars to help them expand rather
our property owners feel like they’re backed
than come up with a brand new partner of
into a comer and the only thing they can do
its own.
is have an encampment Again, Pm not
interested in just sending in people with
There are so many great nonprofits in
billy clubs because someone’s violating the
Portland. One of the things that’s different
camping ordinance. I’d like to solve the
about our city compared to other cities is
problem, but solving it at Fourth and
how broad and sophisticated our nonprofit
Burnside might not be the most cost-
sector is. Jt’s amazing. Again, everything
effective solution.
from planting trees to running the Pioneer
In the long run, it’s hot about the right to
Courthouse Square and the Chinese Garden
camp, but working together for more job
are run by nonprofits.
and housing opportunities. The rights
The community development
arguments are a great place to argue, but no
corporations are great I used to be on the
one makes much progress in real life when
board of REACH and HOST, a couple of the
you get lost in a rights argument.
more successful nonprofits in the city. So I
think if we’re going to be smart and
, J.T.: WZwzf are you thoughts on the creation
innovative on how we solve these problems
of the Office of Equity
with limited tax
and Human Rights?
dollars, we need to
use the nonprofit
C.H.; By the time
sector in a smart and " If you think about it,
I take office as the
innovative way.
Portland is a third of the
next mayor, if th at’s
metro region's population.
what the voters
J.T.: I ’d like to get
your thoughts on the
Tell me there's no low-income decide, we'll have
had more than a year
Right 2 Dream Too
people in the suburbs, no
to see how the office
encampment and the
is doing. It’s
camping ordinance the low-wage jobs that require
affordable housing. Portland important to have
city has in place
real objectives to
coupled with the lack
should be a leader, but
of housing. w
shouldn't he doing this solo." determine if there’s
progress being
made. It’s easy to
C.H.: In our
talk about equity. We
climate, camping is
don’t need to hire
not a good long-term
people to talk about equity; we need to hire
option for anyone. So we’ve got to start with
people to make the city more equitable.
that rather than arguing over the right to
camp or th e rig n t n o tto x a m p .'E a P s^ rg ^ * 1,"mi “^T w as able Touo ffiat witnm
over the right to good housing and how to
provide that to people. Because Portland in
January in a tent is not a good life. The right
to sleep in a doorway isn’t such a great
right. Neither is the right to sleep in a tent
at Fourth and Burnside.
I’d rather be arguing about how to find
more affordable housing, especially in places
other than downtown, the most expensive
real estate to buy and develop. We’ve
concentrated a lot of our efforts in the
central city; Why don’t we think this through
and where we can more cost effectively put
more truly affordable-housing? Because the
housing that’s affordable in downtown is ;
affordable because it’s been deeply
subsidized. So we need smarter solutions
than $200 per square foot land for the next
affordable housing project,,
J.T.: That’s going to take a while to
accomplish. What do you do in the meantime?
bureaus when I was a city commissioner
before. We had a fire bureau that wasn’t
equitable at all. It had two women and six
African American men in a workforce of 800
people. I brought in a fire chief who, with
me, put together a trainee program that
changed the face of the fire bureau forever.
Now there are 150 people of color and
women in that bureau. Just watch the. trucks
go by and you’ll see what I mean. So we did
that because we were committed to the
principal of equity, and we did it without the
Office of Equity. If we have an Office of
Equity it ought to make us even better at
what we do, not just talk about it more.
That’s the standard.
J.T.: After the office has existed for a year,
what sort of things will it do or not do to affect
your opinion?
C.H.: Every city bureau has tobe held to
the requirement of performance. Every city
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bureau ought to be putting more money into
real services and less into overhead and
administration. I’m going to start in the
mayor’s office where there are now 24
positions, and there used to be only 10. And
we’re going to slim down overhead, and
we’re going to increase the number of our
scarce general fund tax dollars going to
streets and parks and neighborhood
services.
So we’ll hold every office in the city to
that common sense standard: that if dollars
are not infinite then we’re going to make
sure we spend as many of them as possible
on real services, instead of just studying the
problem.
I’m not interested in people studying the
problem of equity. I want to see that they’re
actually improving the situation of our
citizens, and so we’ll hold that office to that
standard, just like we’ll hold the
transportation bureau to making sure the
pot holes are filled and making sure that the
police bureau is intervening in the lives of
our kids before they become gang members.
J.T.: You’ve expressed reservations about the
Columbia River Crossing. Do you think the
environmental justice component of the project
has been addressed, and what are you going to
do to ensure that it is going forward?
C.H.: Well, I think that we clearly need a
new bridge across the Columbia. Getting rail
to Clark County is part of making sure we’re
simply not increasing automobile pollution
over time. So there are parts of the project
that make sense.
I suspect that the next mayor will be
helping to refine that project, and that’s one
of my great advantages compared to my
opponents. They’re both great people, but
neither of them have any experience in local
government or these types of complex
transportation projects, andT’ve had
decades of experience in both the private
sector aind being tne commissioner in
charge of transportation before. So I have a
belief that we’ll be redoing that project, and
I know how to do that.
J.T.: How about the environmental justice
component?
C.H.: I am concerned about that. Let me
put it this way, if we’re going to invest for
the next 100 years in anything, it ought to
have positive results across the board. It
ought to be better for neighborhoods, better
for long-term and short-term employment; it
ought to be bettpr for our quality of life. And
we ought to hold ourselves to that standard
for any big expenditure of public money, and
the Columbia River Crossing should not be
exempt from that standard. So the ultimate
project should make it better to live in those
neighborhoods, not just mitigate the ,
damage. That’s the standard we ought to
hold ourselves to.