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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 16, 2015)
S tr e e t R o o ts • O c t. 1 6 - 2 2 , 2 0 1 5 Commentary BY JOHN MULVEY C O O N NT IM G r - C O L . U . . M . N IS T C T R R IR IB I U I T TIN Tohn Mulvey M u h u n t was a _ member ____-L . o e f - the .. - — John Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Advisory Committee from 2 0 0 7 to 2012, a n d a contributing writer friends. The effects reach into every area of our city’s life, from the educational impacts of uprooting our kids from one school to ™ ghl>orlm>‘1 bl°e fro m Oi l to 2014. He s been homeless since another, to the diminishing air quality that February. comes from the extended commutes of the working poor. Recognizing the unprecedented scale of Portland’s housing problem, the city’s Renters’ State of Emergency in the city. Housing Advisory Commission recently Escalating rents have displaced long-term recommended that the city and the Portland renters from their homes and made large Development Commission direct 50 percent areas of the city unaffordable to all but the of all urban renewal spending to support highest-income Portlanders. affordable housing. We support that Even people making middksclass incomes proposal and call on the mayor and City have been feeling these impacts. According Council to enact i t to the City’s 2015 State of Housing report, By any metric, the current commitment single mothers earning the median income of 30 percent has been inadequate to have almost no chance of renting a home address the problem. Taking just one with more than one bedroom in Portland example, in the Lents Town Center Urban today. Renewal Area, PDC claims to have funded For people of color, the situation becomes 135 affordable rental units - a meager total of only eight units per year over the 17 much worse. The same report shows that in years since the urban renewal àrea was almost every neighborhood in the city, a created. median-income black household can’t afford And even those numbers are inflated and to rent anything bigger than a studio misleading. The PDC’s figure includes 31 apartm ent There are only two of Portland’s affordable units at the Greenview 95 neighborhoods where median-income Apartments at Southeast 148th Avenue and Native American households can afford a Stark Street - a project that is two miles studio apartm ent away from the Lents Town Center and And very low-income people have no which received no TIF funding. affordable, private housing options left T I T I V-/ fba.nDrenf wal ® the most powerful tool Portland has to direct development in the ways that we as a community w an t Without i t we are at the mercy of private forces that we can’t control. But when we harness the resources of urfian renewal, we Portlanders are able to put development to use to address the community’s needs. Since the adoption of Oregon’s urban renewal law in 1957, the.program has done some amazing things and some horrible things. In the 1960s, clearing the “slums” that were the vibrant centers of Portland’s African-American and immigrant communities was a tragedy for the cultural life of our city. But urban renewal dollars were also a vital part of creating the modern transit system that today makes Portland a world leader in the movement away from carbon fuels. These examples show that urban renewal, and its revenue-generating mechanism of tax-increment financing (TIF), can do good or it can do bad, depending on how we and our elected leaders direct i t We believe that current conditions dictate that our city again reprioritize TIF funding and direct it to where it’s most desperately needed: affordable rental housing. anywhere in the city. Portland today is in the midst of a crisis in housing affordability. Last week, the Community Alliance of Tenants declared a The crisis is tearing apart the character of our community, while inflicting pain, ' humiliation and stress on our neighbors and Town centers like Lents are where we as a community are hoping to see resid en tial growth, an^ w e Ye m ade significant public in vestm en ts th ere to accom m odate that growth. As a result, the Foster/Lents area has become one of the fastest-growing parts of the city. We all have the right to ask why the development of affordable hopsing hasn’t kept pace. A Housing Bureau analysis shows Lents and the surrounding neighborhoods as particularly vulnerable to gentrification and displacement in the next few years. As a community, will we learn from our mistakes and act now before it is too late, or will we replay what happened on the Williams/ Vancouver corridor along Foster? To be sure, increasing the TIF set-aside won t, by itself, fix the housing emergency in Portland. The crisis demands a. concerted effort along multiple fronts, including reasonable regulations on private rentals, commitment of new resources, and stepped- up efforts to remove misguided state preemption laws such as the one prohibiting inclusionary zoning. And without a doubt our mayor and council must demand more public accountability and transparency in how affordable housing funds from urban renewal are allocated and accounted for. But right now we as a city have only one significant source of public dollars dedicated to affordable housing: urban renewal. When we as a city commit to creating and funding urban renewal areas, we have every right to insist that those public resources benefit the broader community and serve our whole community’s goals. In our fast-changing city, th ere is n o m ore critical public g o a l th a n ensuring affordable rental housing. C a re O re g o rr goMobileteam OHP Navigation Clinics CareOregon and our partners make Oregon Health Plan navigation easy! We offer help with: • Medicaid medical, dental and mental health appointments • Medicare eligibility for disabled and elderly adults Find us at these locations: City Team, 526 SE Grand Ave. O ct 7.__ ____ 8 -1 0 a.m. O ct 2 1 . 8 - 10 a.m. Clackamas County Transition Centerr 1024 Main Street, Oregon City O ct 1 4 _____ V 3 p.m. O ct 2 8 ...........1 -3 p.m. Lloyd Center, 2nd Floor by Cinnabon O ct 7 ______11:30 a.m .-1:30 p.m. O ct 2 1 ...........11:30 a.m.- 1:30 p.m. P:EAR 3 3 8 NW 6th Avenue Oct 9 .......... 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Portland Rescue Mission, 111 WBurnside Oct Oct Oct Oct O ct 1............... 8 -1 0 a.m. 8...^.M .....8-10am . 15.................... 8 -1 0 a.m. 22....»..... . 8 - 10 a.m. 29............ 8 - 10 a.m. Virginia Garcia Newberg 2251 E. Hancock St, Newberg Oct 10............ 11 a.m.- 2 p.m. Union Gospel Mission, 3 NW Third Ave. to Oct 27.............2-4 p.m. Conveniently located on SW 1st & Taylor (95 SW Taylor Street). Stop in, call (503-275-0300), or visit us online at USACU.ORG.
