Housing for all
Housing is a human right, and everyone deserves a place to live. Housing should be safe and affordable. City government is not the whole solution, but must be a large part of the solution.
I grew up in a family that owned a home. I took it for granted. I didn’t understand what it was like not to know where you’d live next month. I’ve been a renter since 2006. I graduated from college in 2008, and the state of the economy at that time taught me about uncertainty, fast.
In 2024, eviction filings reached the highest level they’ve ever been in Oregon’s history, far above pre-pandemic levels. Across the board communities of color face higher rates of eviction, with Black households facing the highest rates of eviction of any group, followed by Latinx households. Black and Latinx households that include a member with a disability, and large families, in particular, experience higher rates of displacement. Between October 2022 and March 2023, 2000 families a month were evicted, 87% of them for not paying rent.
We have to fix this.
We must do three things at once:
Keep people in their homes
Preventing houselessness means keeping people in their homes. I’ll fight to ensure that people on a fixed income and renters are able to stay in homes, because these are the populations at the greatest risk of becoming houseless.
I was a Day 1 signer of the Renters Bill of Rights to ensure kids and teachers can stay in their homes during the school year, that we aren’t evicting people for late or incomplete rent during extreme weather events, and that everyone has a right to an attorney in eviction court.
The Renters Bill of Rights also includes:
Ensuring rental properties are up to code before rent increases.
At least 6 months’ notice for rent increases.
Relocation assistance when rent increases exceed 5%.
Caps on fees and deposits, including late fees, laundry fees, and pet rent.
A commitment to pursue state legislative action to allow local rent control.
We also need to support people on a fixed income - older Portlanders, and Portlanders with disabilities - with direct cash assistance to help ensure they can keep up with their rent or mortgage. With older Portlanders now the fastest-growing houseless population, this intervention is both the moral thing to do and the most effective at preventing houselessness.
Place people in short-term shelters and housing, and connect them to services
We don’t have to sacrifice our values to solve our problems. We can address unsheltered houselessness in a way that is both effective and moral - and has the benefit of being cheaper than the alternatives.
Being effective means using data to see what gets people into short-term shelter and transitional housing with a path to long-term housing. Being moral means not causing unnecessary harm. In other words, we should neither brutalize houseless people through sweeps and property destruction, nor leave them unserved and vulnerable to the elements.
We need to:
Scale up Shelter Services’ outreach team. By changing their approach and increasing coordination - and without adding new staff or budget - this team has dramatically increased the placement of people into shelter. This is a pilot that worked, and we need to make this the City’s default approach. It’s patient, persistent outreach, without giving up on people.
Build a City-run dashboard, so both people in need of shelters, and people trying to help, can see shelters on a map, with their rules, what services are present, and how many beds are available - in real time.
Build more shelter and transitional housing capacity, so everyone’s needs can be met, including models like the Queer Affinity Village for LGBTQ+ residents, and also sanctioned campsites where connection to services is more effortless, in particular self-governing shelter models like Right2Dream2.
Stop brutalization and displacement through sweeps, and end contracts that lead to contractors kicking people when they’re down; in other words, stand against those who want to criminalize poverty. This includes reforming time/place/manner rules to ensure compliance with the ADA while preventing further harm to houseless people.
Expand housing supply and ensure it’s all usable
We need more housing, and we need to make sure the housing we build remains in the market.
First, we need to build. This includes market-rate housing, but also affordable and subsidized housing. It also includes permanently affordable social housing, which efficiently uses public funds to build housing which the City owns and which serve a broad range of potential residents
Second, we need to make it easier to convert offices, motels, and other properties to housing, including through purchasing and retrofitting buildings to add to our social housing portfolio as well as supporting office and motel conversions.
We need inclusionary zoning, to ensure a percentage of newly-developed housing is set aside for low- and middle-income families so that private development is encouraged in a way that meets Portland’s needs.
Finally, we need policies that keeps housing in the market rather than being hoarded. This includes a long-term vacant property tax as a disincentive to hoarding and speculation (and which would collect revenue to support cash payments to people on a fixed income and keep them in their homes).