Do something!” yet another citizen pleaded with the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners last month, calling attention to our county’s affordable-housing crisis.
Actually, Multnomah County is acting on affordable housing, but it’s not enough.
For example, the county allocated $3.3 million in the 2017 budget to produce 84 units of affordable housing for people with 30 to 50 percent area median income.
The county has given some of its surplus property to nonprofits to use for affordable housing, rather than putting it out to bid for developers.
The county recently approved property tax relief for veteran’s families, some of which may keep low-income veteran families in their homes.
But all this is a drop in the bucket.
The county also provides homeless services and rental assistance, but these are short-term solutions that do not address the affordable-housing crisis.
I have been making an ongoing series of three-minute speeches to the Multnomah County commissioners for the past five months in which I have called for two specific things: emergency rent control and affordable housing impact statements.
Emergency rent control
Emergency rent control is the only way to stop the affordable-housing crisis from getting worse. There is no end to what property owners can charge renters – only the bounds of the market and their personal greed.
Homeless people are sleeping in tents, at encampments only blocks away from where the county commissioners meet. Thousands of homeless counted; thousands more uncounted. The skyrocketing cost of housing is the No. 1 cause of homelessness.
In April, several dozen advocates packed the commissioners’ meeting, demanding that the county enact emergency rent control.
Not a single commissioner perked up. After Chair Deborah Kafoury allowed an hour of moving testimony, she and the commissioners left the room!
The city and county are spending millions of dollars every year to construct new affordable housing, but we will never spend our way out of this problem!
They’re spending $3.3 million this year to create 84 units. Meanwhile, there’s a hole in the boat that they’re not fixing: we’re losing so many of our existing affordable units to demolitions, land use changes and, most of all, rent increases on the private market.
In fact, spending money on subsidies, without rent control, has the perverse result of inflating our housing costs.
The state law on rent control in Oregon allows local governments to adopt rent control only in emergencies – only a “natural or manmade disaster.”
I told these commissioners it looks like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in our public parks and sidewalks, with people’s most cherished, remaining possessions scattered about.
I advised them that I was not able to find a single case interpreting the state law on emergency rent control to indicate that our present circumstances could not be declared a “disaster.”
Actually, I believe we have a strong case for emergency rent control, and one that is worth fighting for!
Affordable housing impact statements
In the meantime, I have drafted an ordinance proposal for the county commissioners for something called affordable housing impact statements and have provided this to them in public remarks.
Affordable housing impact statements are a cutting-edge policy tool to help the county keep track of its progress, or lack thereof, in meeting our housing needs.
I co-founded a nonprofit organization, SMART ALEC, that is currently working to promote this model ordinance across the country, and also to empower low-income and homeless people to take part in the democratic process. SMART ALEC stands for State and Municipal Action for Results Today/Agenda for Legislative Empowerment and Collaboration.
The city of Atlanta adopted a similar ordinance last year; and the city Planning Commission in New Orleans in late August recommended adoption of affordable housing impact statements. It is also pending in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Albany, N.Y.
Affordable housing impact statements would require that any time the county adopt any policy that would result in adding to or subtracting from the units in our affordable-housing stock, an impact statement must specify how many units would be added or subtracted, and at what price points.
This is important, of course, because how they define affordability in each project makes all the difference. Impact statements will tell us how many units are serving those families making zero to 30 percent of the area median income, or less than approximately $15,000 a year – those are the families with the most unmet needs in our county.
In addition to being attached to all housing impact legislation before any votes by the commission, the impact statements would be collected in the county clerk’s office and would be available to the public, so the public would know exactly what was being done (and not done), in their name. The commission could point to that every time someone says, “Do something!”
The impact statements would also be a tool for us, as advocates, to make effective comment on policies when they are placed on the agenda, to understand what still needs to be done, and to hold elected officials accountable.
Matthew Charles Cardinale is a citizen advocate based in Portland. He is the CEO of SMART ALEC, a progressive think tank, and Atlanta Progressive News, an online news service.