4
street roots
Dec. 23, 2011
Jefferson Smith
Eastside’s legislator hits the
citywide circuit with his own
style o f grassroots campaigning
BY JAKE THOMAS
avoidance.
And the last one I want to say is schools.
efferson Smith hopes to make history
Schools are not directly within the ambit of
next year by becoming the first mayor to the mayor, but nor do I think a mayor or a
come from east of 82nd Avenue.
city can abdicate its responsibility. We have
to be looking at routes to increase school
pince 2008, Smith has represented part
capacity. When I was at Grant High School,
of East Portland in the Oregon House of
it was about 1,600 students. David Douglas
Representatives and has been a champion
is about the same size. Grant is still about
for a part of town that has often been
that size. David Douglas is now about 3,200
overlooked by City Hall and faces challenges
students. Eighty percent of those students
in education, transportation and poverty.
are on free or reduced-price lunch, and 73
Smith grew up in Portland where he
languages are spoken in the school district
attended Grant High School. He went on to
We haven’t kept up with school capacity in
graduate from Harvard Law School. After
taking a high-paying job at a law firm, he left some of our poorest schools as population
has increased.
to start the Oregon Bus Project, a nonprofit
In addition, another thing we can do with
venture that seeks to increase civic
schools is set an objective to have the most
participation through get-out-the-vote and
robust set of summer programs of any city
voter-registration initiatives.
While serving in the House, Smith, 38,
in the nation. We can do that without
has worked on how the state manages
spending too much because we can stitch
water, helped upgrade schools, made
together existing nonprofits as well as SUN
budgets more
schools and the parks department and see
transparent, made it
where the gaps are and help address what
easier to register to
Street Roots is
we’re learning to be one of biggest drivers
vote and even made
conducting a
in the achievement gap between upper-
series of interviews national headlines by
income and lower-income students: the
summer gap. This is particularly important
with the candidates rickrolling the
Legislature to the
for kids who are making critical choices on
for mayor and City
tune of Rick Astley’s
whether they’re going to end up like
Council. If you
“Never GonnaGive
someone who puts a microphone in niy facF'
missed an edition,
you Up.”
or like the 13-year-old kid who was beaten
you can catch up
and shot to death 10 blocks from my house.
at www.streetroots.
Jake Thomas:
I skipped parks and sidewalks and streets.
wordpress.com
You’ve long
I applaud Commissioner Fish’s efforts at the
campaigned for greater
E205 initiative to get more parks in the
reinvestment in East
area. We have an objective in the city for
Portland, home to a
everyone to be within a 20-minute walk of a
large population of
park. There are various parts of the city that
immigrants, families in poverty and working-
aren’t. One of the biggest swaths of those
class communities. What are some concrete
areas is in East Portland.
things you are going to do for this part of town
We have 59 miles of unpaved road not just
as mayor?
in East Portland, but in Southwest We’re
not going to pave all of them, but we should
Jefferson Smith: [Scribbles down points
pave some of them. We should see if we
on a legal pad.] Six things. One: Using
can’t find other funding options to add some
economic diversify as a lens through which
more sidewalks to areas that could use
we make planning decisions. When we have
them.
built developments in inner Portland we
have often not done enough to avoid
J.T.: You’ve talked about the need to address
displacing housing that’s displaced by that
the foreclosure crisis on the local level. I was
development elsewhere, including largely in
hoping you could talk more about that and
East Portland.
how this would work.
Two: As we make affordable housing
investments, making sure that our design
J.S.: According to a joint congressional
review process, while not making it more
committee, the economic cost of a
cumbersome, makes sure to improve the
foreclosure is about $77,000. The estimated
flavor of the neighborhoods.
cost of avoiding a foreclosure is about
Third: Looking for some centers of
$3,000. One thing the city can do to help
excellence in the area, including the plan for families facing foreclosure is actually buying
the Gateway Education Center.
their house and working out a deal so that
Fourth: The safety on the MAX line is
they can stay in it Banks are not moving
something I’ve been working on for the past
money aggressively and aren’t terrifically
year and a half with a bunch of people to try
motivated to help with some of those
and find low-cost alternatives to improve
purchases.
safety on the MAX line. Crime on TriMet is
The key question is, will the economics
down everywhere in the city except for east
work? You can buy the properties for 50
of 82nd Avenue.
percent to 80 percent market value and get
One thing we can do is link to my fifth
sufficient leverage to do th at So even
point, which is community policing with a
without that many millions of dollars you
strategy. The plan we’re working towards is
can get a lot of properties. If you do it at 50
an “adopt a station” plan. The easiest way to percent, the risk per unit is higher; if you do
think about it is combining neighborhood
it at 80 percent the risk is lower. We can
watch with Adopt A Highway and doing it
use some of our leverage with local banking
around MAX platforms.
institutions to also get in the mix. The
Sixth! Do what we can around
question remains, how should the public-
foreclosures. That part of town is hit harder
private partnerships be set up? What pots of
,
^ re forecl°sures than other parts of
money are we talking about? The one that
xxi
sure we don t lose the
seems most obvious is the trying to dedicate
settlement money from the attorney
a meaningful portion of the bank settlement
general’s lawsuit against the big banks, we
money should it come so it can kickstart
can dedicate that toward foreclosure
this.
STAFF WRITER
J
P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F JEFFER SO N S M IT H F O R M A Y O R
J.T. What if the bank settlement money
doesn’t come?
J.S.: Yeah. Then I don’t think we can set
aside the priority merely because of that,
but I can’t promise to defund current city
obligations in order to do i t So we’re
looking for other pots. So it could be
displacement mitigation funds out of urban
renewal zones or certain city deposits that
we have. We need to prove this up as a
meaningful investment so it’s fiscally
responsible, but doesn’t take money out of
the general fund. So there’s a couple routes
we’re looking a t We’re also looking at what
remains from potentially other federal
monies.
J.T. Wew previously neglected parts of town
see a renewal in investment, it often leads to
properties rising in value and people being
displaced. Do you worry that if we get all this
renewed investment in East Portland, it will
just lead to gentrification?
J.S.: Yes. We’re trying to make a hallmark
of how we’re approaching the race by trying
to get to the hard part of questions facing
the city. First of all, it’s not a bad thing to
invest in neighborhoods to make them safer
and better. That’s a necessary and good
thing. It is a bad thing not to do more to
avoid undue displacement So what are
some answers?
One, looking at the kind of development
that we do so it’s culturally relevant so we
don’t turn it into Bridgeport Village, but we
look to support things like Lily Market,
which is a really great Asian food market
near my house.
Two, look at aggressive minorify-women-
emergmg-smaH-business contracting and
local-source'contracting arrangements so
that it’s more likely to help with jobs.
Because both homeowners and renters need
jobs.
Third, if, for instance, we enter into a
no-net loss-housing, working hard so that
housing is nearby.
Fourth, looking holistically at how we do
our city investments. It wasn’t merely the
investment and no net-loss of housing
arrangements in inner Northeast Portland
along Interstate that led to displacement, it
was also simultaneous under-investment in
East Portland. It wasn’t just that housing
prices in one part of Portland were going
up, it was that they were going up
disproportionately to other places.
Another is to look at a displacement
mitigation fund. When we make urban
renewal investments, we need to look for
how to make sure that if we break it we buv
it.
J.T.: You’ve called the requirement that
30-percent of urban renewal funds go toward
affordable housing an imperfect tool. I was
hoping you could talk more about that.
J.S.: We have too few funding streams for
affordable and public housing. The
30-percent set-aside ought to be a floor not a
filin g . But, for instance, with the
significant reduction in national or federal
See SMITH, page 5