Street roots., April 27, 2012, Page 4, Image 4

Street roots
April 27 2012
i f e le cted , w h a t th ree t h in g s w ill y o u d o to im p r o v e the
With the prim ary election right around the
corner, Street Roots asked the leading mayoral
of h o m e le s s n e s s a n d a ffo r d a b le h o u s i n g i n P o r t l a n d ? .
and City Council candidates one question:
Mayor
he measure of a great city
is how it takes care of its
most vulnerable people. As
mayor, I will work with
Multnomah County Commission
Chair Cogen and City
Commissioner Nick Fish to
strengthen the partnership
between Portland and Multnomah
County to better integrate and
Eileen Brady
coordinate services for
homelessness and affordable
housing. I will also support and leverage the great work
of established organizations such as Outside In, Central
City Concern, JO IN , p:ear and others.
As mayor I will take action on:
1. Faster progress on Portland’s homelessness plan.
By one count, we have over 700 homeless children in
Portland. This is unacceptable and I have announced a
plan to begin work immediately. Also, to stem the
problem, we need to keep more families in their homes.
Foreclosure should be a last option.
2. Fund mental health services. By better
coordinating our public safety budgets and sunsetting
tax abatements for urban renewal areas, we’ll generate
more funds for mental health services. This is vital
because a high percentage of our long-term homeless
population lacks access to adequate mental health care.
I am proud of my leadership to help secure health care
for 94,000 Oregon children. I’ll bring the same level of
commitment to helping our homeless populations get
the care they need.
3. Create sustainable job opportunities to support
people, families and the community. We cannot claim to
be a truly progressive city with an unemployment rate
of 8 percent - a figure that excludes many who have
given up on finding a job altogether. My commitment is
to growing more family wage jobs with benefits and to
increase our tax base to fund vital services. I have spent
25 years building progressive organizations with good
jobs and benefits in Portland. I’ll provide the leadership.
We can do this together.
T
o succeed, you need a place
to call home. We - as a city,
a county, and a region —
have a responsibility to connect
the homeless and home insecure
to resources and social services.
This includes day centers,
supportive housing, residential
treatment, and rent support.
As mayor, I will streamline the
Charlie Hales development review process for
affordable housing from
conception to construction. I will ensure that our
development review process is not a barrier to creating
affordable housing.
Second, I will look for opportunities to partner with
local agencies and businesses specifically around
supportive housing concepts. Supportive housing
programs that combine accessible housing and support
services have proven successful and cost-effective in
helping people stabilize and reclaim their lives as
productive members of society. I will continue to
support the tax increment financing (TIF) set-aside
from urban renewal districts and push for changes that
allow T IF dollars to go beyond building new housing to
include support services.
Third, I will push Metro to re-embrace affordable
housing, as it did before, as a top priority for the region.
I will try to reset the confused, and sometimes even
adversarial relationship between the city and county
that has existed for years around roles and
responsibilities. It has not been healthy and has done a
great disservice to Portland’s most vulnerable
populations. Too often, we have thought about
administrative turf when we should be only thinking of
our responsibility to the people and families that
deserve to live in dignity.
T
ar too many people in our
city struggle to find a decent
place to live. Safe, decent
• and stable housing is a
cornerstone of a healthy society,
yet close to 5,000 people
experience homelessness in
Portland, while many more are
displaced from their
Jefferson Smith neighborhoods. We can do
something about that. A few
places to start:
I support a significant permanent source of funding
for housing, like a housing bond. We can provide
thousands of construction jobs, and make safe, decent
housing available for seniors, people on disability, and
other low-income people.
Foreclosure is traumatic. It is devastating financially
and emotionally for people who lose their homes, and it
brings with it huge costs for the community. This year, I
championed fair foreclosure reforms in the State House
that will end dual-track foreclosure and force banks to
meet with homeowners.
But we can do more. I’ll work to use funds from the
recent settlement against the banks who got us into this
mess to help get us out. We can seed an investment
fund to buy troubled mortgages from lenders at a steep
discount and help people stay in their homes. Read
more on my website.
Right now we have a city that works for some of us,
but not all of us. Making Portland the city that works for
everyone, in every neighborhood, regardless of income,
color or geography, is my No. 1 priority. I’ll prioritize
front-line services, not multi-billion dollar bridge
boondoggles or tax breaks for corporations and
developers that we can’t afford.
F
City Council: Position 4
‘ will
support efforts by
'
homeless
Portlanders to help
;
.themselves, like Dignity
Village and Right 2 Dream Too.
Communities of homeless people
who are prepared to build their
own shelters on private property
and adopt and enforce their own
rules against crime and drug
abuse should be supported, not
discouraged.
Steve Novick
I will lobby the legislature to
allow inclusionary zoning in
Oregon municipalities. The 30 percent set-aside in
urban renewal areas and tax abatements are useful
tools, but with public resources diminishing, the city
needs to be able to require, rather than just subsidize,
affordable housing in new development.
If federal health reform stays in place, I will ensure
that city bureaus work with county and state offices and
with health care providers to ensure that adults newly
eligible for expanded Medicaid are enrolled and receive
health care (including mental health and addiction) and
related services. The fire and police bureaus are
obvious examples of bureaus that should be looking to
identify and enroll people eligible for expanded
I
Medicaid.
rganize staff in my office so
that specific issues receive
additional advocacy and
support. I will ensure that
homelessness and housing is
included.
■ Advocate for a housing levy
to supplement existing housing
efforts and allow us to focus more
effort toward the resolution of
:
homelessness.
Mark White
■ Focus on job creation and
economic development efforts on
those who are typically marginalized in terms of
employment.
O
A
s someone who has been
homeless in Portland, this
us one of the most
important issues we face. We are
not sustainable when our people
are suffering and going without
the basic human needs for
everyone in our community.
First, I will support and push
for more dollars for our safety net.
sSecond, I will bring together a
Jeri Williams
committee of stakeholders with
the most important voices being
those of the homeless themselves, those being most
directly affected by the decisions made. They will also
have the most comprehensive ideas for solutions. We
are going to have to work outside any box that ever
existed and create a new way of looking at housing and
homelessness.
With long and closed waiting lists, it is clear we do
not have enough affordable, low income and shelter for
Portlanders. We must do more to increase our housing
stock as well as spread it equitably across all 95
neighborhoods in Portland. Creating poverty pockets
only in certain areas is defeating our efforts to deal with
this and we need inclusionary zoning.
I would like the see the Oregon Trail Card have a
chip installed with a free or low cost bus pass to address
the transportation issue in Portland as well.
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