Street Roots • September 29-October 5, 2017
Page 3
E d ito r ia l
Success lies in sustainable, systemic changes to housing
multiple “plans to end homelessness,” but
t comes as no surprise that the City
then, people who are experiencing poverty
Council next week is poised to extend
and homelessness have been under the
the state of emergency to address
homelessness. There is little on the ground screw for years.
We do ask ourselves, though, whether
that has changed since it was first declared
in 2015 by then-mayor Charlie Hales. It has
this latest deadline is the cart or the horse:
already been renewed once, in 2016.
are the numbers the target or is it
But that doesn’t mean a lot hasn’t been
sustainability?
done. After two years, the city, county,
Because the homeless and housing crisis
private organizations and businesses have
didn’t begin when we started noticing
accomplished more
people on the streets, or when white,
than meets the eye:
middle-class families could no longer afford
f t B Ï B 1
■ We’ve added
their homes. It didn’t begin when people
hundreds of
started noticing homeless camps, or seeing
emergency shelter
gentrification or even watching “Portlandia.”
beds for times of
It started back when we decided not to
harsh weather conditions. The city launched
protect tenants rights to housing and
three new permanent shelters, and an
instead let the highest possible prices rule
initiative of health care and housing
the market. It started when we took housing
organizations intends to build 382 new
for granted. In other words, it’s been a long
affordable housing units.
time coming.
Since the declaration,
We fully support the
we’ve cleared the way to
work being done to get
site storage facilities,
people off the streets and
The homeless and
restrooms and needle
into shelters. It’s what we
housing
crisis
didn't
disposal containers.
should be doing. But we’re
begin
when
we
started
■ Policywise, the city
guarded in our optimism,
noticing
people
on
the
passed an inclusionary
because the crisis is not
zoning ordinance that
streets, or when white, going to end if our goal is a
requires apartment and
street-level correction on
middle-class families
condo developers include
could no longer afford the numbers.
low-income units in their
Here’s what we all need
their
homes.
It
didn't
to keep in mind: Success
housing projects.
b
e
g
in
w
h
e
n
p
e
o
p
le
doesn’t mean just money to
Developments 20 or more
b
u ild o r s u p p o rt h o u s in g -
s
ta
rte
d
n
o
tic
in
g
units must reserve 20
although we definitely need
h om eless c a m p s , o r
percent of those units for
households making less
seein g g e n tr ific a tio n o r additional dedicated
revenue streams; it also
than 80 percent of the
even watching
means we put in place
median family income, or
"Portlandia." ... It
regulations to keep the
just under $60,000 for a
started when we took
housing profiteers from
family of four in Portland.
running away with the city
housing for granted.
■ In 2016, Multnomah
- and not just for the short
County residents passed a
term. Along with
$258 million bond to build
regulations, it takes
permanent affordable
initiatives that break the
housing, and the city
cycle of homelessness and help preserve
enacted construction excise and short-term
people’s housing before the situation
rental taxes to support housing efforts. And
becomes catastrophic. This is at the heart
we’ve enacted mandatory relocation
I
I F
f t W
assistance and extended eviction notices to
give families and individuals a better chance
at landing on their feet.
All of this is great work. Still, we are not
keeping up with our population growth and
our rising housing costs. The city reports
being short about 23,000 housing units - a
seemingly perpetual shortfal. We still have
an inadequate number of emergency shelter
beds, and rents and housing costs continue
to outpace incomes and available units.
Family-sized apartments are among the
most scarce, and if a family has a child with
special needs, or if one or more spouse is
unable to work, or if life happens, the most
vulnerable families are simply pushed off
the edge.
So the city is extending the state ot
emergency, but this time with a mandate
that within six months, the Portland
Housing Bureau and the Joint Office of
Homeless Services will determine criteria
to end the housing emergency and
recommendations on how to meet that
criteria by April 9, 2019 - the date this
latest extension would expire. That s a lot ot
pressure for a city that’s rolled through
of the crisis.
We’ve experienced brick and mortar
accomplishments, and each and every one is
critical, but the city also needs to reinforce
the collective mindset that is the real
energy behind our state of emergency, a
community-wide conviction that our
homeless crisis and our housing emergency
can and must be corrected. We can’t accept
evictions, rent hikes and $1.5 million condos
in what were once middle-income
neighborhoods as the new normal. And we
are undercutting the essential foundation to
real change by promising point-in-time,
political successes such as shelter beds or
statistics, if the machinery behind
homelessness is allowed to grind on. Not all
of that is within the city’s power, but it’s all
interconnected, and the city can be a leader
in facilitating real changes on the state and
even national level. However, if we
simultaneously prepare for success and plan
for failure, we’re only halfway in the game.
We don’t have to live with the failure on our
streets day in and day out when there’s
room for all of us on the winning team.
Executive Director Israel Bayer
israei@streetroots.org
Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl
joanne@streetroots.org
Vendor Program Director Cole Merkel
coie@streetroots.org
Operations Director Sarah Beecroft
Development Director Sarah Cloud
Program Assistant Caelin M iltko, Jesuit
Volunteer
Volunteers
Jan Bayer, John Barker, Stacey Heath, Anjali Rathore,
Zoe Klingmann, Dan Jones, Dennis Hogan, Monica
McKune, Susan Wolfe, Lucas Hawthorne, Thomas
Buell Jr., Jeanie Lunsford, Jason Cohen, Doug
Spangle, Susannah Kamala, Jon Raymond, Diana
Richardson, Paul and Madeline Gefroh, Mary Anne
Joyce, Del Shawn Davidson, Gillian Floren, Mark
OIDani, Blanca Butler, Alex Cherin, Jenny Farres, Evan
Firsick, Camber Hansen-Karr, Miranda Woods, Henry
Brannan, Megan Smith, Luke Scheuermann, Annie
Aube, Helen Hill, Mark Brown, Lily Krai, Mary
Emerson, Adam Bruns, Brooke Anderson and Megan
Pickerel-Winer. If you're interested in volunteering
with Street Roots, please submit a volunteer
application at streetroots.org/volunteer. Or you can
call for more information at 503-228-5657.