Alison McIntosh, Contributing Columnist
Too many Oregonians today are forced to choose between paying rent or buying groceries or medicine. Too many of us are busy looking for work, holding down two or three jobs, hunting for an apartment or affordable day care, or trying to hold off a foreclosure. Many others of us are trying hard to sleep through the night while worrying, or while sharing shelter space with dozens of other people.
In February, the Oregon Legislature will convene for a short, one-month session. This makes us anxious for yet another reason, holding our breath nervously in anticipation of what might occur in February. It is almost certain that we’ll hear more grim news about the budget, and we’re worried that the Legislature will act to do even more damage to our community’s system of support for people facing hard times. During the last legislative session, there were cuts to emergency housing assistance and other housing programs, severe cuts to child care and work support programs, and more. There’s nowhere left to cut, and many of these cuts have already gone too far.
We do need to be optimistic, positive and proactive, in spite of these hard times. So, while we take comfort in talking about all the reasons we have to be optimistic, including the shift in the political dialogue about income inequality that the Occupy movement began, it’s also important to focus in on what we can do to be proactive — particularly as it relates to the Legislature.
The representatives and senators who will come together to face these issues in February are our elected representatives, sent to Salem by us to manage our public resources and systems to keep our communities safe and intact. As they go to do this hard work, it’s our job to step up and remind them what our priorities are as Oregonians, and stand beside them as they fight to do what’s right.
Looking around us, we know that the public structures and systems that make up our safety net are not meeting the needs of far too many Oregonians today. We also feel in our hearts and know in our heads that we can make different choices. We can choose, as Oregonians, to help all of our neighbors get their basic needs met, and in the process, make our communities stronger and healthier for everyone.
Our state has tremendous resources at our disposal — hard working people, ingenuity and financial resources which can be brought to bear in order to build a better quality of life for everyone in our state. The state budget decisions we will make in February will reflect our commitment to making that future a reality.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people.”
Some of us seem to have forgotten that it is important how well we do together as a state and a nation. Our state budget benefits high-income taxpayers and businesses while leaving many more Oregonians homeless or on the brink of homelessness than ever before. Let’s act together to make different choices — let’s choose to protect those programs which help people stay in or find a place to call home, to stay warm, dry and fed, to have a chance at opportunity and a pathway out of poverty.
We obviously can’t do this alone. We need our elected officials to make choices about the budget that reflect these priorities, that act on the certainty that we rise and fall as one. We need the Legislature to protect basic services and to seek every opportunity to raise additional revenue.
About: The Housing Alliance brings together advocates, local governments, housing authorities, community development corporations, environmentalists, service providers, business interests and all others dedicated to increasing the resources available to meet our housing needs to support a common statewide legislative and policy agenda. Alison McIntosh is a Policy Manager with Neighborhood Partnerships.