Good morning, Portland. Link time.

jade_sturms.jpg
Jade Sturms

First up is this week's feature, out in print as of yesterday, about a Portland entrepreneur helping people with online dating: "We are now in an era when a person’s app blurb and the quality of their photographs dictate social currency."

Portland Police Chief Danielle Outlaw was sworn in on Monday. We interviewed her Tuesday, asking about her first priorities, assistant chiefs, cops who don't live in Portland, policing protests, and body cameras.

The city, in union contract negotiations, is winning authority to drug test its workers, we reported yesterday.

Big housing policy news from Portland City Council yesterday:

Well before an hours-long hearing on those two proposals this morning, it was clear Portland City Council would extend the housing emergency by 18 months—a move that allows officials to disregard zoning rules when siting homeless shelters—and extend Portland's mandatory renter relocation law until next April. The law requires landlords to pay tenants between $2,900 and $4,500 when they issue a no-cause eviction, or cause a tenant to move because of a rent hike of 10 percent or higher.

Both of extensions passed unanimously, amid widespread consensus that, yes, Portland's housing market is still leaving too many people behind, and, yes, the homelessness crisis isn't getting better despite a vastly improved network of social services in recent year.

In the Oregonian: "Three former Portland Boy Scouts filed a $21 million lawsuit Wednesday against the Boy Scouts of America and the local Cascade Pacific Council, alleging they were molested in the 1970s by their Scout leader who was allowed unfettered access to boys despite past abuses. The lawsuit is the latest alleging negligence by the Boy Scouts regarding convicted pedophile Calvin Malone."

"Three girls have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in a series of strong-arm carjackings, according to Portland police," the O reports. "They were arrested after crashing a stolen SUV during a police chase that began late Tuesday, police said in a news release. Detectives learned the trio was "involved" in the carjackings — and at least one cellphone robbery — since the middle of September."

The Portland Tribune wrote about the $285.4 million affordable housing bond that Portland voters approved: "The Stakeholder Advisory Group convened to draft the framework recommended not only where the funds should be spent, but who should live in the 1,300 units to be preserved or built. Priority is placed on communities of color, families, the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless."

TriMet ridership is down because "Land use planning and the concentration of densities have had an impact we haven't thought about," chair Bruce Warner said, as quoted by the Tribune.

Fuck these people: "US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reversed a federal government policy that said transgender workers were protected from discrimination under a 1964 civil rights law, according to a memo on Wednesday sent to agency heads and US attorneys," Buzzfeed reports. "The memo reflects the Justice Department's aggression toward LGBT rights under President Trump and Sessions, who reversed Obama-era guidance that protects transgender students after a few weeks in office. Last month, Sessions filed a brief at the Supreme Court in favor of a Christian baker who refused a wedding cake to a gay couple. And last week, the department argued in court that Title VII doesn't protect a gay worker from discrimination, showing that Sessions will take his view on Title VII into private employment disputes."

Bad person likes bad person. The party of law and order.