The Mayor's Office is Considering Creative Ways to Fix Portland's Housing Crisis

Portland Mercury:

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Tenants' rights advocates concerned with a recent panel discussion they felt didn't represent those most affected by Portland's current housing crisis—the renters—on Wednesday hosted their own panel at the Community Warehouse.

Portland Tenants United and Know Your City organized a two-hour event called "Rent Crisis: A People's Perspective" and invited stakeholders to speak and answer questions. The panel included Meg Guerra from Hacienda CDC; Josh Alpert, Mayor Charlie Hales' Chief of Staff; Vahid Brown, an activist who's working closely with organizers of Portland's nearly-city-endorsed homeless camp, Hazelnut Grove; Katrina Holland from tenants' rights group the Community Alliance of Tenants; and Margot Black from activist group Portland Tenants United.

The panel discussed several topics: rent control, homeless sweep policies, no-cause lease terminations, minority discrimination by landlords, skyrocketing rents, and possible solutions for all these problems. Following an organized panel discussion, the group took questions from attendees.

I gleaned a lot of interesting information from the discussion, a lot of which came from Alpert. He said the city is currently looking at six properties at which they're considering making either temporary or permanent homeless shelters, though he didn't say where those properties were.

Alpert and Brown also briefly touched on an idea recently suggested by an unnamed developer in town that seems, well, interesting (if not yet fully fleshed out). It goes like this: Renters or homeowners who are short on cash but have an extra room to rent out would be paired with people needing housing who don't have the money to pay for it. The city would provide the money, thereby housing someone(s) while also keeping already-housed someone(s) in their homes. It's a crude idea, at best, at the moment, and clearly has a lot of bugs that would need worked out (How much money would each person get? What sort of liability issues would there be? Who would qualify?), but it shows that both residents (Yay, creative unnamed developer!) and the city are looking for creative solutions to the problem.

Alpert also says the city is in the process of creating a specific set of criteria for when and where homeless sweeps occur following a recent miscommunication. He said until the criteria are approved, the mayor gave each bureau a set of short term instructions.

"When there is bad weather here, and we all know what 'bad weather' means, do nothing," he said. "For the time being all requests [for sweeps] must come through our office."

Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, was in the audience. Dembrow recently announced he'll introduce a bill during the 2016 legislative session that would lift the statewide ban on inclusionary zoning. Alpert says the mayor is in support of lifting the ban.

"We always have lifting any preemption on any policy on the agenda for lobbying," he said. "Everyone knows we're coming for it."

The organizers had a camera person recording the discussion. When it's posted online I'll link to it here.

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