Carmen Rubio is new to public office as a city commissioner, but she has walked the halls of power for many years. She served in the offices of Multnomah County Commissioner Serena Cruz, Portland Mayor Tom Potter and the late Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish.
In 2009, she became the executive director of Latino Network, a nonprofit that advocates for Portland’s Latino community, herself the granddaughter of immigrants. As city commissioner, Rubio oversees the bureaus of Parks and Recreation, Planning and Sustainability, and Community Technology.
Our interview with Rubio is the second in our series on the City Council’s trio of new commissioners. We also interviewed Dan Ryan and Mingus Mapps.
Joe Opaleski: What is your biggest policy priority for the year?
Carmen Rubio: I think my biggest policy priority, right now, that’s framed the rest of everything, is really around COVID economic stabilization, and then recovery for our community — and particularly the most vulnerable in our community, for obvious reasons.
COVID has really crystallized the deep disparities that exist in our community. They’ve always been there, but more than ever, the critical needs and services have elevated to a degree that we need immediate action now on these things. They can’t wait. They never could wait, but the consequences are much more dire, in a way that we need to take action to do that.
I envisioned, when I came on to City Council, to collectively prioritize taking care of hardworking frontline and low-income families first, taking care of BIPOC, vulnerable families and communities first, because the city’s prosperity has often come at the expense of our communities.
Opaleski: From your position in City Council, what would be the first steps that you would want to take in order to ensure that these vulnerable families are protected, amid COVID?
Rubio: A lot depends on being ready to be a good partner to different jurisdictions in terms of testing and vaccination. Working with our federal delegation to make sure that we pressure Congress to get the resources and stimulus for families and communities that we need to make sure that we keep individuals and families stable. What basic needs are being met, that people have access to health care, that their children are being supported and have access to stay engaged in their education — when it’s safe to do that — and also making sure our small businesses and neighborhoods are surviving this time. That they have the ability and the support they need, as well as low-income communities and families.
Opaleski: Which of these priorities comes first?
Rubio: I think it really comes with basic needs stabilization. This pandemic occurred in the midst of an existing housing crisis, so making sure that we have our basic needs being met, that we have very important goals with the passage of the recent initiatives, to make sure that we have those wraparound supports, that we have dollars to invest into housing and particularly our most vulnerable communities and our houseless communities. That work cannot stop, and in fact I feel like it needs to be prioritized because these are basic needs, human needs, that people need to survive. Food security is another basic need that we need to make sure that our frontline communities have access to food security.
Digital access has emerged as a new basic need for many families and individuals as a connection to the outer world, in the midst of all this going on. We need to be here to make sure that we’re responding to these things in a way that is equitable and that prioritizes those that need it most, first.
Opaleski: Is there a specific proposal that you have made, or plan to make, that will address these issues?
Rubio: We just had our very first meeting around talking about our collective council priorities, and everybody agrees that a lot of the things I just mentioned are the top line. So I feel like that is to come.
It’s really nice to see that our council is definitely coalescing around a set of ideas and values that are going to make this something that we’re all in alignment about.
I’m convinced that the way we actually turn the dial on a lot of this is we need to build programs, we need to build a workforce, we need to build policies with community, that they are at the table, co-creating the answers, and programs, and solutions and initiatives, so that they’re relevant in the lives of impacted communities.
Opaleski: You linked the COVID-19 crisis with the housing crisis, and you’ve also done work in the past to ensure eviction safety nets. Is there anything like that in the pipeline?
Rubio: Absolutely, I believe so. Dan Ryan is the housing commissioner now, and I hope to support his work and also bring my values forward. I still plan to be very engaged in housing even though it’s not in my portfolio. We’re all responsible for housing as a council.
I take this very personally and seriously because of my role over the last 11 years leading a community-based organization where we regularly worked with vulnerable families in making sure that we prevented people from falling into homelessness or into deeper homelessness.
It’s not just that one issue; it’s really connected to the decades of disinvestment from the federal government around housing, around supportive services, around all these other things that are contributing to the crisis that we have today. I hope to work as much as I can to bring in the voices of the impacted, to bring in the voices of community members who are living at the margin, who are definitely having to take it day by day right now, or had before and now it’s even greater impact.
One of the things that I’m really, really hoping that I can bring voice to, as a former community advocate and nonprofit leader, is how community experiences the services of our interjurisdictional partners, and making sure that we’re not creating secondary trauma, applying existing experience of having to navigate through systems that aren’t friendly to your vulnerable population.
The onus is on us as public leaders to really create a system that is seamless and that is effective, and doesn’t start and stop somebody who’s on that path. Our own system can be re-traumatizing. So, that’s something that I’m hoping to bring voice to in those conversations and I’m eager to engage.
Also, it’s a personal issue for me. I experienced housing insecurity as a child. We moved several times before finally stabilizing around the age of 14. I understand the impacts. I definitely was fortunate to have had a lot of different supports that enabled me to continue in school and to be successful. I had access to different kinds of supports, but clearly not everyone has a lot of supports, and especially in the middle of a pandemic it’s incredibly worse.
Opaleski: Do you have specific policy actions that you plan to accomplish within your individual bureaus?
Rubio: We just started a few weeks ago, and we started right in the middle of our budgeting process, so it’s enabling me to learn a little bit more, and have deeper dives into the bureaus, as we’re building the budget request for this next fiscal year. So, I am learning right now, and I would say that we haven’t had the time yet to develop those. Although I will say broadly that my vision for a lot of the bureau work is centering community, in any of the work we do.
I feel very fortunate that they already have a lot of values and goals that are very much in alignment with mine. Parks, of course, at the heart of it is serving the community and providing resources and programming that reach families who really need more access and need lower barriers to accessing a lot of the programming, particularly during the summer. And it’s something I have a lot of firsthand experience dealing with in my prior role. We partnered quite a bit with parks. We also know a lot of places where things could reach even deeper into the community, so I’m eager to bring those ideas forward. And I know we have a leadership team that’s right there. Now that we have access to library resources in the coming months, we’ll be able to remove and lower significant barriers for these families in particular.
On the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability side, I’m very excited about the work that’s already in progress. I’m really supportive of their work to center frontline communities and developing future plans about planning for climate response and climate preparation, and their work to develop community-based strategies and capacities to equip frontline communities with being self-advocates and agents in their own communities around this issue. It’s flipping the model from starting from, instead of top down, it’s from the community outward, which is a really exciting thing for me to hear from a city bureau.
With the Office for Community Technology, I’m really excited again about their focus on closing the digital divide (and) creating way more digital access than we have. We are lucky to have Elizabeth Perez, who is the bureau director there. She has a lot of ideas, and it’s very interesting to talk to her, (about) a lot of the things I’ve literally seen on the ground on the community side, and how we connect those experiences and then roll them up to policy ideas or initiatives that we do our part as a city to close the gap that exists.
One of the things just off the top, and again, it’s still too early for me to talk about any policies because I’m still learning, but I do see that there’s a role for us to play in terms of how do we coordinate, and how do we take a big look at what the city is doing across multiple bureaus. Because we all recognize this gap that exists because of COVID and what it’s done to sort of crystallize these disparities, particularly around digital access. So how do we look at how each bureau is doing different strategies, and do we have anything to leverage from one another and learn? Or how do we collectively come up with a plan that’s more of a comprehensive, city-wide approach?
Opaleski: From your new position, what does the first step of empowering communities in relation to these bureaus look like?
Rubio: I believe it starts with the leadership. We need to make sure that our leadership is aligned, and I am very pleased and feel very fortunate that the directors and the leadership in my portfolio feel very much in alignment, and we’re already taking steps and moving along in their work to tackle some of the things that I care about as well.
I think the difference would be, how do we make that value and that ethic more explicit, in a way that the community understands, and that the community trusts the city? …
I’m convinced that the way we actually turn the dial on a lot of this is we need to build programs, we need to build a workforce, we need to build policies with community, that they are at the table, co-creating the answers, and programs, and solutions and initiatives, so that they’re relevant in the lives of impacted communities.
But also there’s trust, and building that workforce. I’m speaking as a former nonprofit director. We get tons and tons of outreach stuff from many different jurisdictions always coming to us saying, “How can we engage with you more?” And it’s overwhelming. It’s like, OK, we’ll hire more, because if you hire more of us there would be internal capacity. We need to build our internal capacity in the city to be more reflective of the government, or of the community that we’re serving, and we’re moving in that direction, but we really have no time to lose. We could be doing way better than we are. I’m just really eager to see what I can do to help bridge that gap, and to help hasten the good work that is already happening in the city in many places.
The city needs to change practices to be more community centered, like flat out. That just needs to happen. I’m just hoping that I can do what I can to shift those systems and rebuild new ones.
Opaleski: Are there any specific issues that, once the budgeting is done and once you know more about your bureaus, you are very eager to act on?
Rubio: I am very much eager to work on police accountability, together with Commissioner (Jo Ann) Hardesty.
I’ve been tracking and am invested as a community member and as a nonprofit organization, with a community that is very impacted by what develops here, and so I’m eager to see a public safety reimagining that centers community.
And I think there are some really interesting and important things in the work that Commissioner Hardesty is involved with that I’m eager to do my part to support and also, where appropriate, contribute my leadership. I think that is No. 1, top of the agenda.
The community has told us what they wanted. I mean, overwhelmingly, that (police reform) initiative was supported by, I think it was 82%. So if that isn’t a mandate, I don’t know what is. It’s incumbent upon us; we need to make this happen this year.
Digital equity is another really important thing. It has entered this place where it is not a luxury to have; it is now a necessity for families to have to be connected in this larger world. There is evidence that it is deeply connected to economic status, and that is something that we also need to address this year.