Street Roots •
Jan. 20-26, 2017
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time it takes to get affordable housing
online. We can move affordability to the
front of the line. My view is, in a perfect
world, if somebody comes forward and says
I want to bring workforce and affordable
housing to Portland, Oregon, I want to roll
out the red carpet; I want to eliminate as
much as possible. I want to speed up the
process for building affordable housing as
much as possible.
I.B.: Talk to us about tenant rights and
what the city of Portland can accomplish and
what the Oregon Legislature needs to do.
News
T.W.: No. Listen, you and your readers
certainly know this - homelessness is
almost a ridiculous term because it covers
so many different circumstances and
situations that require separate
interventions. It’s tiie term we give to all of
urban America’s societal ills, right?
There is no ope easy solution. I have
spent enough time walking the streets, even
this week, talking to people who don’t want
to be on the street. They don’t want to he
there. I don’t want them there either. We
need humane alternatives to people living
on the street, and we need those
alternatives pronto. We also need more
opportunities to get people the support they
T.W.: We have struggled as a city to get
regional collaboration around the homeless
issue. Life is much simpler if you don’t own
the problem, and in the city of Portland,
homelessness is very visible. Therefore, we
own the problem. People understand it is a
complex, expensive problem to solve.
I am actually happy that there are more
regional conversations on this issue and
others, and I was pleased to see Clackamas
County begin to really step up their
outreach around homelessness.They’ve
hired a director of homeless services. Marc
John, who is the director of our joint office
between the city and the county has been
building regional partnerships as well. .
T.W.: What I can tell you/is we are looking
at a tenant bill of rights platform that
includes a just eviction process, which the
city doesn’t currently have. That would be in
support of the efforts that are currently
happening in Salem to lift the pre-emption
of a just eviction process for the city of
Portland,
I.B.: Are there other revenue sources for
affordable housing that you're exploring.
Where are we going to get the cold, hard cash
to invest in more affordable housing?
T.W.: There will always be a revenue
question. I can’t deny that among my fellow
commissioners we are having what I would
describe as quiet conversations about
revenue for affordable housing. My top
priority right now is a just-cause eviction
policy and making sure that the 15,000 units
that are currently in the supply chain
actually get built and that the city step up
and do more to get affordable housing in
particular online. It’s got to move to the
front of the line. We’ve got to treat it like
the crisis that it is.
I.B.: How do you see your relationship with
law enforcement and people on the streets?
T.W.: Could you be more specific when
you say law enforcement and people on the
streets?
I.B.: I'll cut to the chase; do you see yourself
leading...
T.W.: Am I going to criminalize
homelessness?
I.B.: That’s what I ’m going to ask.
pay enough that you can afford to live here.
Where I’d like Metro and the city of
Portland and Multnomah County and
everybody else to continue to go is to also
address the racial disparity question. I’m
sure you’ve seen the chart that shows that
there is no ZIP code in the city of Portland
that is affordable to African-American
families of median income. That’s disgusting
to me. I mean, that is a completely
unacceptable statistic. I hope that Metro
doesn’t just talk about where roads should
be built and where communities should be
built, but who can afford to live in them,
where they are located and where are the
jobs that go with that housing. I get to sit at
the regional table. We have representation
on both the planning side and the
transportation side, and I intend to be
aggressive on both.
I.B.: When you think about transportation
planning, when the community is doing any
kind of big project - a bridge, a new train line,
whatever it might be - there is an
environmental impact study that determines a - i
formula that says we have to do XYZ to
mitigate whatever environmental impact that
project might create. Do you think that that
same kind of policy should apply to housing?
, I.B.: What are the next steps in regulating
the short-term-rental market? Are we getting it
right?
T.W.: No, we’re not getting it right. Ihave
had a number of meetings with the Airbnb
folks in particular.'They’re at the bleeding
edge of this issue, whether they want to be
or n o t But, clearly, there’s not enough
enforcement of the city’s existing short
term-rental policies, and it may be the case
that we need to take a look at a different set
of strategies. Other cities seem to have,
formulas that work. F o rw h a r^ ^ re a sfe , w
the enforcement mechanism for the city’s,
policy isn’t working. I’m in the process of
evaluating what other cities have done, and I
may come back to our City Council and ask
us to adopt a different strategy with regard
to Airbnb and short-term rentals.
Page 7
T.W.: Absolutely it should. Understanding
now that development impacts housing
prices. We should both be understanding
what the impact is on housing prices in .
communities where we are doing
development. We should be making sure
th at the economic benefits of those
developments are staying in the
comim^ne^^oiat are lm pacteffty tiiat "
need to get off the streets. For some people,
it’s a job; for other people, it’s
transportation; for others, still, it might be
drug or alcohol treatment or mental health
services.
We also need to acknowledge we will
probably never in the near term have the
resources that we need to end
homelessness. This country does not value
community-based mental health services; we
just don’t, and we should call it out and own
it. Therefore, we will not have the capacity
to address the mental-healthmeed, and on
top of that, when we look at the resurgent
heroin and opiate epidemic, the meth
problem - we’re going to be living with
homelessness in this community for a long
time. So the question isn’t how do we
enforce the homeless away; the question is
how do we support and build the services
necessary to help people in a humane way.
That’s the challenge, and as you know,
there’s no easy solution.
I.B.: People say Portland is a homeless
mecca, which is a complex argument. On one
hand, we know every urban environment on
the West Coast is experiencing a housing and
homeless crisis. We know people aren’t moving
to Portland en masse to be homeless and live
off of services. A t . the same time, Portland and
Multnomah County are holding the water for
the region when it comes to providing services.
It’s true that if you find yourself homeless in
the suburbs, some of your only options are to
access services in Multnomah County. How
will you work to motivate regional partners to
step up their game when it comes to affordable
housing and homeless services?
I was elected as a regional mayor, and I
intend to continue to push these issues
when we are talking about economic
development, housing and transportation.
For me, it’s just continuing to push the
message about the facts. To your first point,
the fact of the matter is every city on the
West Coast of any size has a massive
homelessness problem. We are not the only
city that has it, and other cities I would
argue have even worse circumstances. It all
has to do with housing affordability and our
inability to provide enough of the kind of
services that people need to get off of the
Streets. I would like to think the public is
beginning to better understand this. I’m.
feeling less pressure from people who say,
“Portland has some unique Portland
problem.” I’m not hearing that anymore,
whereas a year ago I was hearing that all
the time.
US.’. Staying on the topic of the region and
homelessness, Metro talks a big game about
affordable housing but has done virtually
nothing to create affordable housing in the
region. It’s one excuse after another. What
gives?
T.W.: So Metro is a really geeky
government, and I say that in a positive
sense. They are transportation planners,
and they are urban planners. All of those
things lead to the question of housing
affordability. Where is the housing? How
affordable is it? For whom? And where is it
located in terms of economic opportunity?
This, of course, gets to the question of
people having the education and skills they
need to be employed for jobs that actually
development. T hat’s a fancy way of saying, 2
let’s make sure that m ore people have
access to housing and jobs that are
associated with those developments. That
may mean proactive job training and skills
development in addition to supporting local
contractors. It may mean additional
investments in housing.
I.B.: What’s going to happen to Right 2
Dream Too?
T.W.: I don’t have an answer. I’ve watched
the city spend $800,000 in four years and
get zero results. I can’t sit here and say and
tell you I have a solution. Saying that, Right
2 Dream Too has done a great job of self-
governance and creating standards for
themselves. They are inspiring organization.
Real estate options are limited. I don’t know
the answer today.
I.B.: In many ways, you have a dream team
at City Hall with all of the other
commissioners either caring deeply about
housing or having the experience of overseeing
the Housing Bureau. How do you take that
collective energy and expertise and move in the
same direction?
T.W.: I ran into a fellow that told me this
morning “I don’t believe anything you say. I
will believe everything you do.” I think
that’s the best answer that I can give. Watch
what we do. I can tell you generally speaking
that the team we have here is a highly
motivated team that you’re going to see
some great things on housing come out of
this City Council, and you’re not going to
have to wait very long.