June 3, 2015
Page 5
On the Front Lines of a Housing Crisis
C ontinued from F ront
If all 1,000 housing sites come to reality,
the targets would more than double the im-
pact PCRI is making in the community. The
organization had 352 homes when it start-
ed in 1992, 70 of which were single-family
homes that came on the market because of
fraudulent land sale contracts, and it cur-
rently holds 700 homes that house roughly
2,500 residents, Fitzpatrick said.
PCRI will be hosting a series of meet-
ings to reach out to residents who have
already been displaced or who are on the
verge of displacement. The goal is to bring
in those that are closest to and experiencing
the full effects of Portland’s housing crisis
and are best-suited to some of the housing
PCRI can provide.
“Homeownership is a stabilizing solu-
tion to displacement,” explains Fitzpatrick.
“We’re looking at different housing mod-
els that work with the space we have – like
duplexes, triplexes, and row houses. We
want to create homeownership that engag-
es the community in that process, finding
the right kind of homes and making sure
more people can get housed.”
Fitzpatrick also knows that the city has
a poor track record of keeping some of its
promises to predominately African-Ameri-
can residents, citing the distrust after city-
backed projects pushed communities out
on multiple occasions, including when
Memorial Coliseum was built in the 1960s,
or when Legacy Hospital made room for
expansions in the 1970s.
Fitzpatrick not only wants to bring dis-
placed residents back to the city, she also
wants people to become informed about
their rights and needs as homeowners.
“We’ve all heard of low-information
voters, or folks who might not fully un-
derstand their rights as voters or what
their vote is doing – but there are also
low-information homeowners, people
who don’t necessarily know what they
might be getting into and what their rights
are, and they have previously been vic-
tims of predatory lending practices and
I want to empower and educate more of
...there are also low-information
homeowners, people who don’t necessarily
know what they might be getting into and
what their rights are, and they have previously
been victims of predatory lending practices...
--Maxine Fitzpatrick
them, so that it’s harder for banks to take
advantage of them.”
If the “Pathway 1000” program shows
some success, it could set an example for
dealing with the effects of gentrification
and displacement across the whole country.
If you or someone you know is interested
in housing through this new initiative, a
questionnaire to determine eligibility and
housing needs is available at pcrihome.org.