"With revenue up, and the area in the middle of a serious housing crisis, the commission today voted in favor of increasing the cap on the amount of foregone property tax revenue to $3 million. Housing Commissioner Dan Saltzman estimates the additional $2 million will add about 200 affordable units per year to the Portland area."'We have very few tools to incent the private market to create affordable housing,' Saltzman says. 'This is one of them.'"

Sounds like more profits (and housing) for the relatively rich and more crumbs for the relatively poor. 200 is about 1% of what we need right now. "According to the best estimate available, Portland has a shortage of about 20,000 affordable units." http://www.opb.org/news/article/portlands-… That said, Saltzman's remarks help bring into focus a very clear though open-ended demand to bring to the Housing Rights For All Rally at City Hall*: if the private market is not compatible with housing as a human right, then the City (or the Housing Bureau) must abandon or else decenter it as a mechanism of securing that right.

*August 28th 6:00PM

So Mena is basically saying that we can't expect developers to actually follow through on contract terms. This is why that affordable housing promise in SoWhat is a joke.