July 24, 2019 The Skanner Portland & Seattle Page 3
News
Homeownership
cont’d from pg 1
I want to make sure that the
hourly wage earner, if they
choose, can be able to pur-
chase their home.
meeting in September.
“Sixty-seven percent of
Oregonians of non-His-
panic White households
are owners of homes
in Oregon. Only 46% of
Native American house-
holds are homeowners,
and 37% of Latino house-
holds are homeowners,
and 34% of American
American and Black
households, and as low as
24% of Native Hawaiian
and Pacific Islanders are
homeowners in Oregon.”
He and co-chair Sen.
James Manning (D- Eu-
gene) emphasized the
correlation
between
home ownership and in-
tergenerational wealth.
“We know that wealth
all too often begins with
owning property,” Man-
ning told The Skanner.
“And if you’re unable to
own property, then you
are very challenged on
how you’re going to build
wealth -- and more im-
portantly, how you break
the chains of generation-
al poverty. So I think that
right now we’re in a good
place to make sure that
we bring the conversa-
tion out, call it what it is,
and then develop these
types of access to capital,
streamline the process-
es, and make sure that
the bar is at a level that is
affordable.”
PCCEP
egon Housing and Com-
munity Services. When
the group meets again on
July 29, it will specifical-
ly focus on specific bar-
riers to homeownership
it previously identified,
including building costs,
purchasing costs, hous-
ing supply, credit, insuf-
ficient funding for home
ownership
programs,
mortgage lending, and
housing programs and
policy gaps. The task
force will then meet
again on August 14.
“We can identify things
at the state level, and we
can incorporate those
and find out the actu-
al federal laws are not
being taken seriously,”
Manning said.
“Oregon can make a dif-
ference,” Meek agreed.
“And knowing the his-
tory of our state, we can
change that narrative
of who is welcome here,
who can buy a home
here.”
Meek told The Skan-
ner he is interested in
exploring better finan-
cial education programs
in schools, improved
access to education for
first-time homebuyers,
and enforcing regulato-
ry financing processes
throughout the state.
Read more at
TheSkanner.com
Rodney Hines, the co-owner of Métier Brewing pours a beer taster for a customer during the brewery’s 1st Anniversary Celebration July
14. Métier is located in Woodinville and is the only Black-owned brewery in Washington. The establishment is family- and dog-friendly
and, in its first year of operation, won two bronze medals at the Washington Beer Awards.
Homeless
cont’d from pg 1
than 4,100 homeless individuals
in Portland, representing almost
a 10 percent increase in home-
lessness since 2015. While home-
less individuals represent less
than three percent of Portland’
population, people experiencing
homelessness represent more
than half of all arrests in city in
2017, per analysis conducted by
The Oregonian.
Inadequate Data, ‘Mere Conver-
sations’ Lost in Documentation
The IPR report stresses the
need for increased data quali-
ty controls and clearer written
guidance related to documenting
housing status. Insufficient data
and irregularities hinder the bu-
reau’s ability to blueprint effec-
tive policing solutions.
“The Police Bureau has no
written guidance for report
writing or data entry to record
a person’s housing status. Offi-
cers said they received no verbal
guidance either,” reads a portion
of the IPR report. “Sometimes a
suspect may not want to tell offi-
cers where they live. In the past
officers wrote “refused,” but they
were told not to do that and enter
“transient’ instead.” Officers were
also told not to use old addresses
for those arrested.”
Following an arrest, police of-
“
the moment, there is no data relat-
ed to instances where police offi-
cers refer individuals to a home-
less shelter or requests a person
to vacate a sidewalk. Data rep-
The Police Bureau has no written guid-
ance for report writing or data entry
to record a person’s housing status
ficers enter report data into a
database known as the Region-
al Justice Information Network
(RegJIN). In its current iteration,
this database does not include a
field allowing officers to specify
the housing status of an arrested
person. Similarly, a “field relat-
ed to mental health” currently
exists in the database, however,
“officers do not appear to use it,”
meaning the bureau is often miss-
ing opportunities to provide an
additional level of detail to arrest
reports.
Officers are not required to
enter data or write reports if an
interaction does not result in an
arrest. Additionally, interactions
such as “mere conversations” do
not require documentation. At
resenting all interactions with
homeless individuals is needed
to track and understand overall
arrest rates for these encounters.
Policing Homelessness: Unclear
Expectations, Gray Areas
Abound
Pointing to previous programs
— namely the 2016 ‘safe sleep-
ing’ pilot — officers made note of
unclear and inconsistent expec-
tations. The report also under-
scores “broad discretion” when
it comes to homeless policing
procedures and arrests. Clearer
guidance from the Police Bureau
and City Council could resolve
some of these issues.
Read more at TheSkanner.com
cont’d from pg 1
emails, doing PCCEP-related work.
“A lot of my other work overlaps with
this,” Drury said. For the past four
years Drury, who is originally from
Wisconsin and moved to Portland by
“
Métier Brewing First Anniversary
A lot of my other
work overlaps with
this
way of Philadelphia four years ago to
social studies at Rosemary Anderson
High School, recently accepted a new
full-time position as executive director
of Word is Bond, a Portland nonprofit
created last year to improve relations
between law enforcement and young
Black men.
At a Tuesday-night PCCEP meeting
on the PCC Cascade campus, the com-
mittee reviewed the Portland Police
Bureau’s annual report, a city-commis-
sioned private survey on public atti-
tudes toward and experiences with po-
lice and heard – but tabled – a request
from a subcommittee member asking
the city to offer more formal condo-
lences to families of individuals killed
by police.
Amanda J. Marshall, an Oregon City
attorney who serves on PCCEP’s sub-
committee for people with mental ill-
ness (and who uses a middle initial to
distinguish herself from former US At-
torney for Oregon Amanda Marshall)
said after meeting with Donna Martin,
the sister of Andre Gladen, who was
killed by police in January, the subcom-
mittee arrived at some ideas for more
sensitive handling of deaths caused by
police use of force.
The family was still on traveling to
Oregon when they learned that a grand
jury had declined to indict Gladen,
Marshall said, and received only a brief
phone call informing them of the news.
Gladen was legally blind and suffered
from mental illness; police initially
said he charged officers with a knife,
and later it was revealed
the knife in question be-
longed to the officer.
The family also said,
after a long meeting with
Mayor Ted Wheeler and
Portland Police Chief
Danielle Outlaw in Feb-
ruary, they were told, in
Marshall’s paraphrase,
“We’re sorry this had to
happen.”
The family asked PC-
CEP to formally recom-
mend that the city en-
gage in a more detailed
and tailored process for Committee members listen to survey results at a July 23 meeting of
interacting with families the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing.
affected by officer-in-
to them.” The subcommittee would also
volved shootings.
like police to “do something substan-
“We’re not asking them to apologize
tive with regard to this particular inci-
because they’ll never do that because
dent.”
their lawyers will tell them not to,”
Marshall said. “It would be nice to have
Read more at TheSkanner.com
a written letter of condolence tailoedr
PHOTO BY CHRISTEN MCCURDY
“
Manning added, “I
want to make sure that
the hourly wage earner,
if they choose, can be able
to purchase their home.
But all too often the bar
is too high. That means
limitations on access to
finance or capital.”
The task force has been
examining data from Or-
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
ermere Realty Trust in
Portland.
“Homeownership rates
are significantly lower
among Oregonians of
color,” task force co-chair
Rep. Mark Meek (D-
Clackamas County) said,
citing statistics from the
Federal Reserve when
opening the group’s first