Special Housing Edition
The Portland Observer
Congrats Grads
See Pages 8-9
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‘City
of
Roses’
Volume LII • Number 10
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • May 18, 2022
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Ivory N. Mathews, the new executive director for Home Forward (upper left), addresses the housing crisis during a meeting in Portland this month with President Biden’s
Housing Secretary, Marcia Fudge (center, head table), and other local officials, including members of Oregon’s congressional delegation.
New Leader in Housing Crisis
Ivory Mathews
takes helm at
Home Forward
By Beverly Corbell
The Portland Observer
For Ivory Mathews, the first Black wom-
an to lead public housing authority Home
Forward, the job is a continuation of a life-
long journey from poverty to activism.
Public housing has changed drastically
over the years, even in Home Forward’s
decades long history for Portland and
Multnomah County, she said, which in the
past had harmful policies, as did other pub-
lic housing organizations.
“When you look at all the properties that
we purchased early on, they had harmful
restrictions, like properties that might say
only white people can live here,” she said.
“And in the early 1960s when fair housing
came about, those things were supposed to
have changed during that time.”
But change has been a long time com-
ing, and is still an ongoing process, and
a recent memorandum from Housing and
Urban Development Secretary Marcia L.
Ivory N. Mathews
Fudge directs all HUD organizations to
eliminate barriers that prevent those with
criminal histories from participating in
HUD programs, examine all policies and
report back by Oct. 14.
That work is already underway at Home
Forward, Mathews said, as she promises to
meet the deadline with ease.
“We’ve come a long way, but we still
have a long way to go,” she said. “Home
Forward is an organization that has over
80 years of harmful policies and we’re
doing the work to make sure that as a part
of our reparations is getting rid of those
harmful policies.”
That means “Creating a culture where
people who are our residents, and where
our community understands that we will no
longer tolerate these inequities in provid-
ing services to the families that we serve,”
she said.
Over the years of working in public
housing, Mathews said she realized that
she wanted to work in her career at a
higher level.
“I wanted to work my way up to the
highest point of oversight in the afford-
able housing arena so that I can have the
opportunity to sit on boards and talk to the
media and try to provide truth and mitigate
all this negative conversation about what
affordable housing might mean to some
people,” she said.
That goal has come to fruition not only
as executive director of Home Forward,
but her recent appointment to the Council
of Large Public Housing Authorities, and
as assistant chair for legislation for the Na-
tional Association and Redevelopment Of-
ficials, both national organizations.
In addition to her work heading up the
local office, as a member of those two
organizations, both based in Washington
D.C., Mathews also has the opportunity to
lobby for local support, and she’s getting it.
“HUD is very responsive now,” she said.
“They’re not just appeasing us, they’re ac-
tually listening and coming back and giv-
ing us the autonomy that we need to do this
work better.”
Home Forward is much more than
housing, Mathews said, more than brick
and mortar.
“We look at our families from a 360-de-
gree lens,” Mathews said. “We care as
much about putting a physical unit in place
as we do about making sure that the family
is thriving and that what we provide to in-
dividuals is more than a house. It’s a place
they can call home, something where they
can live, and thrive and work, as any oth-
er citizen does in the city of Portland, or
Multnomah County, or Gresham, or wher-
ever our footprint is.”
Part of that Home Forward lens is creat-
ing of a new strategic plan, Mathews said,
which will be released in about a year.
That means a lot of internal work with
Continued on Page 5