Street Roots recently sat down with Portland Mayor Charlie Hales and talked about homelessness and climate change. Hales will be joining mayors from Eugene, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco in a summit on the subjects Dec. 11 and 12 in Portland.
Israel Bayer: Thinking about defining moments in Portland’s history, such as our urban growth boundary or stopping the Mount Hood freeway, how do you think Portland should come together to have that same moment and turn the tide on displacement and affordability with a new kind of Portland moment that creates lasting change?
Charlie Hales: I believe having the council declare a state of emergency and then follow up swiftly with very real things is an important moment, if not a defining one.
In 44 days, we’ve created the first-ever rent protections in the history of Portland, enacted $67 million to go toward affordable housing, and made all the preparations for a new women’s shelter. For government to get that much done in a time period measured in days instead of months or years is something we’re proud to be doing. I’m proud of the community for coming together and demanding action and the leadership we’ve had on the council.
I.B.: You’re holding a mayors’ summit in December with other West Coast mayors — concentrating on both climate change and housing. What do you hope comes out of the summit?
C.H.: It will be our goal to learn from one another. I go to these U.S. Conference of Mayors conferences, and it’s what we do. Most mayors are pragmatic and generous with their ideas. There’s no one hiding behind any kind of political agenda, and we get into the weeds about what we can do to make our cities better.
(Seattle Mayor) Ed Murray and I were together at the Vatican talking about housing and homelessness, and that’s what led to this gathering.
I.B.: Did the pope talk to the mayors about your responsibilities around poverty?
C.H.: Oh yes, very much so. We were there to talk about climate change, and the pope talked to us very in-depth about how climate change is not just about the environment; it’s about people. The pope’s encyclical is billed as being specifically about the environment and climate change, but he told us this is as much of a social issue about people as it is about the environment. Obviously, they are very much connected.
The pope talked to us about displacement of people due to climate change and the erosion of culture. He talked about how climate change is disrupting culture and the disrupting of culture creates displacement and refugees which leads to trafficking and survival, which leads to people dying trying to cross an ocean or a border to simply better their families’ lives. It was a very powerful experience for me. Climate change and poverty are interconnected. The Vatican is noticing that most forward motion and innovation is happening on a city level, and he challenged mayors to do more. It was powerful.
I.B.: Declaring a state of emergency on housing sends a very clear signal to Salem and Washington, D.C., that this is a crisis that can’t be ignored. Do you plan on asking for additional state and federal support this year to support the housing emergency?
C.H.: One of the reasons we created a state of emergency on homelessness was inspired by the federal government’s efforts on ending veterans’ homelessness — by witnessing how we’ve been able to house so many homeless veterans in a red-hot housing market. The reality is, when you have the right partners, and we can scale up our support for housing, we can be successful in getting people inside. Being a part of efforts to end veterans’ homelessness has been a teachable moment for me, because it shows with the right investments and partnerships we can move the needle. We need to be able to do the same for other vulnerable populations. We can make a difference on the issue of homelessness. It isn’t a permanent condition. We need all the partners we can get.
I.B.: What you have learned about homelessness in your time in office?
C.H.: To be honest, I didn’t think a lot about housing and homelessness in the first couple of years because I had a city budget that was in crisis and we had a Police Bureau that was in crisis. We had to right the financial ship that was in bad shape, and we have. Secondly, the Police Bureau has made progress month after month. We are, every night, de-escalating a mental health crisis.
I just got a letter from a citizen thanking the police for literally getting a person off the Vista Bridge who had climbed over the fence and was ready to jump. I get those kinds of testimonials from residents all of the time. We know that the police are de-escalating tragic cases day after day. Obviously, that’s not always the case. Sometimes people are committing suicide or even worse, committing suicide by cop. But overall the police are doing an amazing job in the community.
Yesterday, we had the formal ceremony to remodel the Holladay Park Hospital into the new Unity Center. I think it’s the most important construction project in the history of this city, because you have all of these parties paying attention and working on mental health services and public safety, understanding the connection between the two and doing something about it. We’ve made a lot of progress at the Police Bureau.
Saying that, providing services for the homeless and affordable housing has always been important to us. The combination of the veterans’ challenge by the Obama administration and ending veterans’ homelessness and the overwhelming response from the community about affordable housing right now has raised this issue to the top of the list. It has to be at the top of the list. We are in grave danger of becoming San Francisco, and we have to use every single tool we have and some more that we don’t to change the likely outcome that only the rich live in this city and the poor and working class live in our surrounding suburbs.
I’m in a constant vise and crossfire – any mayor is – between the folks who say criminalize the homeless and get those people out of here and those who say it’s our responsibility as a city to take care of these people. Unfortunately, we don’t have good answers today for these complex problems. Until we can say we have got housing for people, we can’t just criminalize people who are homeless. If we want to get on with the problem and try to solve it, it’s the only solution I can see. It’s one of our greatest challenges, but it can be done.
Right now, we have an amazing coalition between the city, county, Home Forward and the community put together. We have the political will to do great things. We have to go out and execute.
I.B.: Was there a defining moment when you were, like, we need to prioritize housing?
C.H.: I was at a Latino community gathering this past year, and this young couple came up to me with this worry in their eyes. They had two small children in their arms and told me, “I don’t think we are going to be able to afford to stay in our apartment.” I hear all kinds of stories and testimonies every single day. It became this drip, drip, drip of all of these stories, one after another. You can see the worry in their faces and the fear in their voices. It’s affected me deeply.
I.B.: According to the Oregon Global Warming Commission, our state will not meet its 2020 climate goal of getting greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent lower than 1990 levels. You’ve met with the pope and now out-of-state mayors to discuss climate action. What efforts are you making to get policymakers here in your home state on board with meaningful policy changes that will ensure that Oregon meets its 2020 and 2050 targets?
C.H.: Keep doing more of what we are doing and being a leader on climate change. Being a leader on climate change doesn’t mean shivering in the dark. We live a better life in Portland because we use less fossil fuel. We avoid spending a billion dollars a year on gasoline because we walk, ride our bikes and use a great public transit system. That billion dollars that would otherwise go into a gas tank then goes into local businesses and supporting 100 little things that help stimulate a healthy economy, like farmers markets, local produce and so much more. There’s a thousand little ways that we can live better, not just more responsibly.
Build a better mousetrap and the world beats a path to your door. Portland is an international leader in transit, livability, climate action and green buildings, and literally the world comes here every week to come and study use. We will continue to lower our carbon footprint.
I.B.: What are your next steps on climate action during your last year in office?
C.H.: I want to move aggressively on solarized city buildings now that the price of panels has come down so much. We have lots of acres of rooftops and properties that we can cover with solar panels.
We have to move more aggressively on transit. We have been studying the Division-Powell Transit Corridor and the Barber Boulevard Transit Corridor. Let’s try to move these things along a little faster.
If we’re growing this fast and working on meeting our climate goals, we can’t be opening each new transit project every 20 or 30 years. We’re going to have to move faster.
I.B.: How do we bridge the urban-rural divide in the state legislation, knowing many statewide laws continue to hurt our metropolitan area, especially when it comes to poverty and climate change?
C.H.: It’s better now. Having Speaker (Tina) Kotek and a majority of Democrats and progressives in the state Legislature certainly helps. We’ve passed more great legislation and less bad in recent years than ever.
We need to see some political courage on issues such as inclusionary zoning and transportation funding. Waiting for a perfect consensus means we’re just going to continue waiting. We’re not going to have a perfect consensus on things like clean fuels or gas tax increases or minimum wage or how to address climate change.
Portland is in a good position to be influential and persuasive on these issues because we are willing to go and stick our neck out on things that may work that would get argued about endlessly in Salem. We passed sick leave, and the world did not end. In fact, our economy accelerated. Apparently, it’s not creating a bad business climate.
We are moving away from fossil fuels and the movement of fossil fuels in our community. I think we’ll find that we will create more jobs than Pembina (propane export terminal) could have ever dreamed of by supporting a more green economy. Portland has a lot of work ahead of us, but we’re up to the challenge.
Israel Bayer is the executive director of Street Roots. Reach him at israel@streetroots.org.