The future of housing in Portland
I want to share some exciting news about major advancements that will help shape the future of housing in Portland for years to come.
First, I recently proposed Portland’s inaugural Housing Production Strategy, a five-year plan to promote new housing development and meet the urgent needs of a growing socially and economically diverse population. This proposal builds on more than a dozen actions led by my office since I was assigned the Community & Economic Development Service Area in early 2023.
Everyone deserves to live in a secure and healthy home, but not all Portlanders can access safe and affordable housing. Economic, social, and physical barriers often limit residents from finding homes that meet their needs. And the rising cost of living has made it even harder for people, straining the budgets of many Portlanders.
Over the next 20 years, Portland will need up to 120,000 new housing units – including projects like Gooseberry Trails, Portland Housing Bureau’s largest affordable homeownership development investment, which broke ground last month. To help meet that need, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability conducted in-depth analyses and extensive stakeholder and community engagement to determine more exact housing needs in Portland.
The resulting Housing Production Strategy emphasizes equitable outcomes for communities facing bigger challenges to meeting their housing needs – especially low-income households, communities of color, elders, people with disabilities, and people experiencing houselessness. According to the Portland Housing Bureau’s 2023 State of Housing Report, Black, Indigenous, and Latine households earning the average income could not afford the average home sale price in any Portland neighborhood.
Some of the strategies – such as creating new Tax Increment Financing districts – are already well under way and coming to Council in the coming months, while others will be incorporated in bureau work plans over the coming years.
I’m particularly excited about the City’s commitment to supporting major redevelopment projects that include housing as a key component, such as Albina Vision Trust, Broadway Corridor, OMSI, and Lloyd Center. In addition, the City will be looking at further ways to incentivize office-to-housing conversions in downtown and analyzing density and height across the Central City.
City Council will discuss the proposal at a public hearing at 2pm Wednesday, August 28th, where community members are invited to testify.
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In addition, this week City Council unanimously passed a resolution I co-introduced to create a framework for the future of the Lower Albina neighborhood and to repair significant past harm on Portland’s Black community.
City Council also unanimously adopted an ordinance to accept an $800,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for the Reconnecting Albina Planning Project. The Portland Bureau of Transportation, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, and Prosper Portland will use the resources in partnership with Albina Vision Trust to develop a plan with extensive community outreach in the Lower Albina, Rose Quarter, and Lloyd areas.
The Albina Vision Trust Community Investment Plan is a visionary framework for equitable economic, social, and environmental innovation in Portland’s Central City. Together, we can establish a reconnected and thriving neighborhood district while reclaiming home and rebuilding wealth for historically displaced communities.
Albina was once home to four out of every five Black families in Portland – a thriving, creative, and affordable neighborhood consisting of Black-owned businesses, homes, faith institutions, and world-class jazz venues. But over the past 70 years, the neighborhood was decimated by disinvestment, urban renewal, and racist public policy – displacing primarily Black families and creating severe generational hardships that persist today.
The Albina Vision Trust Community Investment Plan provides a 50-year roadmap for a 94-acre restorative redevelopment plan for the area – the largest such initiative in the United States. The plan is centered on restorative justice by spurring inclusive economic opportunity for property owners, business owners, and contractors while introducing transportation and infrastructure connections to knit community together.
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Finally, we just received some great news thanks to Governor Tina Kotek, who shares my commitment to addressing our housing crisis: The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has received funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a Climate Pollution Reduction Grant – including millions of dollars to incentivize conversion of existing office buildings to residential housing projects for their positive sustainability impact!
At $422,333 per unit who in their right mind thinks this is affordable housing? Affordable to whom, certainly not to Portland’s taxpayers?
The thing about these numbers is that they don’t account for significantly large costs for the government Staff and Agencies creating these expensive apartments, expenses that can mount into many millions of dollars for each separate apartment building, nor for the cost to taxpayers to run the public housing in perpetuity, something local government has failed at time and time again due to DEI policies and the lack of management skills in many who have been hired under these flawed requirements. Does Columbia Manor, the destruction of which added significantly to the decline of our centralized African American community, and the horrendous crime and living conditions in outer SE Portland, ring any bells?
For $400,00 we could “GIVE” a nice house to the 206 individuals and families who will inhabit this new apartment complex, or, for $32,000,000 I can build 600 brand new houses in a series of parklike settings that will rent for <$900/month, pay back the original investment in 3+years, and allow residents to own their home at the end of 10 years of successful renting. All of these 600 units will be built in less than one year as long as our local governments live up to their many Emergency Declarations to solve the housing, drug, mental illness, and crime crisis that we have seen do nothing but grow in desperation since 2016!
My proposed housing parks will be vehicle free, with all parking restricted to the perimeter of each development, shielded by native vegetation from the housing units and landscaped common areas. Housing developments like my proposed plan have already proven very successful for “MANY DECADES!” in the Sunshine States of the Southern portion of our country.
Get the Politicians out of the way and let’s get people housed so they can enjoy their lives and create the bonds of community that are essential for human happiness. We can do this over and over again until every Oregonian has adequate housing, a chance to build currently non existent generational wealth, and the wrap around services to help them manage their problems and to restore their emotional health. We can do what the government cannot!
American-Venezuelan here. "Latine" indeed. Carmen Rubio is the Latina commissioner who disrespects the Spanish language spoken by almost 500 million people. She panders to progressive white gringo elites and their gender neuroses over real Latinos who want nothing to do with Frankenwords like "Latinx" or "Latine." Your hangups about gender are not ours. We have had it with progressives and their constant catering to the fringe of the fringe.
I do not support collective racial claims to Portland neighborhoods. That's racist. So were the racially segregated meetings Albina Vision Trust held a number of years ago that were plainly documented on the organization's web site. Every resident of Portland should have the right to live wherever they wish so long as they can afford it. Deliberately creating black enclaves is odious redlining in reverse. I hope the attempt to grab Albina for blacks gets Portland sued.
And no, not everybody has the right to live in Portland. I would love to live on the waterfront in Vancouver, B.C., in a condo overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge or in a co-op with a view of Central Park. Well, I can't. I don't have enough money to live there. If people who are gainfully employed can't afford to live in Portland, they can leave. As a taxpayer, I am not going to subsidize any housing except the minimum required for the most impoverished people.