Most seats on our City, County and Metro boards are up for grabs this year. County and Metro races could be decided in the May primary. We need leaders who will steer toward a more inclusive, prosperous and sustainable economy. We don’t need more sweeps, privatization or tax breaks for the wealthy rather than the basics: housing, childcare and the environment.
For 30 years, local leadership has failed to compensate for property tax revenues lost to Measures 5 and 50. While our population and needs were growing, Portland officials pandered to business lobbyists with endless tax breaks while overseeing a descent into long-term, structural budget deficits. Now we can’t even repair the streets.
Only hard-won, grassroots initiatives have raised funds for essentials like affordable housing, support for people on the streets, climate resilience and the best preschool and childcare program in the country. Leading the opposition, always, is the taxpayer-subsidized, conservative lobby Portland Business Alliance (PBA), the umbrella organization for the re-branded Portland Metro Chamber and Downtown Clean and Safe, as well as Partners in Diversity, an affiliate dedicated to philanthropy.
1. Meet the spectrum of housing needs
In Multnomah County, more than 5,000 people are on the streets, with another 6,000 in shelters or couch surfing, including children, the ill and the elderly. Metro has completed about a quarter of its enlarged goal of 4,361 affordable homes, but it won’t be enough. People lose their housing every day. Nearly 9,000 eviction cases were filed in Multnomah County last year, where just one in 20 tenants had legal representation in 2023, compared to more than half of landlords.
From the County, focusing on short-term and transitional housing, we need more and better:
Emergency housing during the growing number of extremely cold, hot or smoky days, open all day and all night.
Transitional housing that helps people feel safe, such as hotel rooms with bathrooms and kitchenettes, with support services including mental health and addiction programs, as well as transportation, if needed.
Eviction representation and rental assistance to keep people housed.
Coordination and communication among service providers and houseless individuals.
A plan to expand County staff to provide services that are now contracted out to nonprofits that employ people with low wages and limited benefits, creating serious recruiting and retention problems.
From the City, taking on permanent housing, we need commitments to:
Create mixed-income, permanently affordable, largely publicly owned housing, sometimes called “social housing,” through the construction, purchase and renovation of apartment buildings, trailer parks and houses.
Bonding that can raise start-up money for a revolving fund, kept topped up with rent payments that exceed the costs of bond payments and building maintenance. Montgomery County, Maryland has been creating “social housing” like this for decades, as have Vienna and Paris.
From Metro, we need a campaign to extend the funding of both affordable housing creation and support for houseless people.
2. Expand and support Portland Street Response
The city should expand and properly support Portland Street Response, to interact appropriately with unhoused people struggling on our streets. Before Portland Street Response existed, more than half of arrests by Portland police were of homeless Portlanders. Replacing a police response with social workers and medics saves the high costs of policing and incarceration.
Mayoral candidate Rene Gonzalez seems intent on destroying this popular program, the legacy of his predecessor Jo Ann Hardesty. Portland Street Response is modeled on Eugene’s 30-year-old CAHOOTS program, promoted nationally by Oregon’s senators.
3. End private policing, criminalization of people on the streets and the strong appearance of a corrupt relationship witht the Portland Business Alliance
The City should stop paying for private policing in “enhanced service districts” Downtown, the Central Eastside and the Lloyd District. With huge city subsidies, the Portland Business Alliance contracts for private security as well as extra Portland Police officers, to police the business districts more harshly than the rest of town. The PBA collects mandatory fees from property owners — including Portland State, the County, nonprofits like Sisters of the Road and condos — though only business owners can affect PBA’s decision-making.
Perhaps worst of all, the City’s contract with PBA’s Clean and Safe District funds the entire salary of three Portland Business Alliance staffers and a big part of four more, including their top officers. We taxpayers cover nearly half of both PBA CEO Andrew Hoan’s total compensation and of Jon Isaacs, VP of Governmental Affairs, of $324,065 and $222,820 in 2021, respectively. Furthermore, Isaacs is also the Director of the Portland Alliance PAC, which often opposes progressive candidates and campaigns.
4. Protect the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) while building on it
City commissioners who have failed to raise the money Portland needs hope to snatch PCEF’s dedicated funding source. Instead of diverting funds from PCEF’s thoughtfully crafted Climate Investment Plan, commissioners should explore a similar tax on the largest global corporations doing business in Portland, in sectors other than PCEF’s retail base.
PCEF predated the state’s preemption of similar taxes by localities. The City may well be able to extend the pre-existing PCEF tax to other industries and other uses. No retailers are walking away from the Portland market for what amounts to a tiny slice of their profits. Big retailers that closed stores had tried smaller versions of their big boxes inside urban areas that didn’t work. The story floated that shoplifting was a big problem proved to be false.
5. End tax cuts for requiring workers to commute, stop swallowing the idea that the Preschool for All tax hurts Downtown, and rethink Downtown for the 21st century
Downtown and Central Eastside building owners’ lobbying gained them big city tax breaks for requiring workers to commute to the office at least half-time. Instead, they should stop fighting people who can and want to work from home and pay their taxes to fund our schools and services. Working from home saves employees’ money and time to spend with family, while sparing the rest of us traffic, worse air quality and accelerated climate change.
Downtown real estate moguls absurdly assert that the Preschool for All’s tax on the wealthy is responsible for office vacancies Downtown, rather than over-building, the work-from-home revolution and the ongoing housing crisis. Instead, they should come to grips with the reality, in lots of big cities, that it’s past time to shift Downtown projects toward more housing and other amenities, like grocery stores. Let’s use our tax revenues recovered from tax breaks for Downtown parks, community centers, public childcare and more free events.
6. Require risk bonds from businesses with toxic chemicals or fossil fuels in tanks on unstable soils, or trainloads of combustible fuels
Portland’s running big risks from large tanks of toxic fuels and other chemicals located on a river-front landfill predicted to liquify in a large earthquake. Long trains carrying flammable fuels through our neighborhoods add to the danger these businesses create for local residents. To push corporations to mitigate these risks, Multnomah County should move forward with requiring them to post bonds pledging full payment for any potential damages. Portland’s Harbor Superfund Site demonstrates the difficulty of getting companies to pay for the big environmental hazards they’ve created.
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