Mayor Keith Wilson has put Portland Housing Bureau Director Helmi Hisserich on leave, effective immediately.

City Administrator Michael Jordan sent an email to city councilors and city leadership on October 30 announcing Hisserich’s leave, according to public records obtained by the Mercury. The letter names Michael Buonocore as the interim director while Hisserich is on leave.

No specific reason was provided for the major staffing decision. “Our decision-making was informed by the gravity of this moment, with competing housing, homelessness, and budgetary crises,” Jordan wrote.

Hisserich has been a vocal supporter of long-term solutions to the city’s housing crisis. In a March 25 Housing and Homelessness Committee meeting, Hisserich spoke about her experience with social housing models, particularly in Vienna, Austria—a global leader in providing sufficient housing for its communities.

“They don't actually put a lot more money into housing,” Hisserich said. “They do it much more strategically, I think, than we do. But that permanent predictable funding source, together with their land banking strategy, has enabled them to be very pro-development and to link together their transportation, their open space and their housing goals together, and their sustainability goals.”

In April, the City Council tasked city leadership, including Hisserich, with studying social housing models as a solution to the city’s housing affordability crisis.

Hisserich declined to comment on Wilson placing her on leave when reached by phone Thursday evening. Wilson's spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing.

Multiple city councilors and staff who spoke to the Mercury said they are not pleased about the shakeup. City Councilor Jamie Dunphy said he was not given a specific reason why the mayor removed Hisserich, but he was told the mayor is “laser focused” on getting people off the streets through his overnight shelter plan.

Dunphy is one of three city councilors who took a trip to Vienna in September to study social housing. He said the move is a major setback for the legislation he and other councilors are working on to address the city’s housing crisis due to her expertise on social housing.

“She is literally a world expert on it,” Dunphy told the Mercury. “She’s an absolute unparalleled expert in social housing on an international scale.”

Former Commissioner Carmen Rubio appointed Hisserich as the director of the Portland Housing Bureau in 2023, and she has served in that role since early 2024. Prior to being tapped for the director role, she spent 22 years working for the city of Los Angeles. There, she worked as deputy mayor of housing and homelessness under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and had various roles in the city’s housing bureau from 2009 to 2021. 

Buonocore, the new interim director, was the executive director of Home Forward, Multnomah County’s housing authority, from 2014 to 2021.

Dunphy said Hisserich has been working to address one of the major criticisms of Wilson’s homelessness approach, that shelter alone does not solve homelessness if people cannot ultimately move into permanent housing. He said the mission of the Housing Bureau should be to plan for long-term investments into the social fabric of the city.

“The mayor has absolute authority to decide who he wants leading his team,” Dunphy said. “This feels like a situation where he wants a yes man, not an academic or an expert in the field. And I hope that’s not a pattern we’re about to see.”