Fred Stewart

Fred Stewart wants to talk—positively, for a change—about gentrification in North and Northeast Portland.

Stewart, a longtime real estate agent in an area that’s seen intense demographic shifts in recent decades, acknowledged this week he’s planning a run at Commissioner Steve Novick’s city council seat in May. It’s no secret Stewart has long coveted public office. He ran for a council seat in 2008, shortly after Commissioner Erik Sten quit the job mid-term, but came in third in a race that launched Commissioner Nick Fish onto the council. He ran for state senate the following year.

Ask Stewart why he’s running again, and he’ll point to the obvious knock on Novick: repeated, failed attempts (along with Mayor Charlie Hales) to push through a new “street fee” without a public vote. “When I walk into the room, if I detect a bully, I’m gonna stand right next to the bully,” says Stewart, who nevertheless claims a lot of respect for Novick. “In this case Steve Novick’s a bully.”

Plan to hear a lot about that if Stewart follows through—as he promises to—on plans to run. He’s also pitching himself as a business-friendly Democrat, though he hasn’t worked out the specifics of his campaign.

More interesting, though, could be Stewart’s take on the titanic shifts that have taken hold of North and Northeast Portland. A litany of terrible public policy decisions first made those areas the only place African American Portlanders could reasonably live, then set about letting them languish or pushing them out (read this entire PDF if you never have). Those shifts have spawned new ire at a time when Portland’s thinking harder than ever about oncoming gentrification and displacement (see: the Trader Joe’s controversy of last year).

Stewart, who figures he’s sold more homes in inner Northeast Portland than anyone, doesn’t agree with the concerns.

“That’s another reason why I’m running,” he tells the Mercury. “I’m very happy with the direction inner Northeast and North Portland have gone. I’ve got people jogging at two in the morning. When I was growing up, you didn’t jog at two in the afternoon.”

Stewart says discussions of displacement in the neighborhood is a “hot topic from a group of people who refused to buy in Northeast.”

“That’s one of the reason why I love to talk to people who want to talk about changes here,” he says. “I remember how hard it was to sell houses here. I remember when people said ‘hell no I won’t.'”

He insists no one’s been pushed from the neighborhood, either. “About a third of my listings were owned by black people,” he says. “You know what they wanted? They wanted to buy in other markets in the city and state. And they did.”

The counter-argument, of course, is that those people sold only after years of abandonment and disinvestment had left the neighborhoods run down and riddled with crime.

This isn’t the first time Stewart’s ran with housing in mind. In the 2008 council race, he ran partly on a rent stabilization platform, and that’s something he’s still clearly concerned about. He says the “street fee” proposed by Novick and Hales (in its many iterations) would have resulted in higher rents. He’s got a similar gripe with a $482 million schools bond voters passed in 2012.

“That school bond measure kicked more people out of inner Northeast Portland than any home sale has ever done,” Stewart says.

Stewart, who’s already commissioned polling he expects to see results for shortly, is the strongest bet right now to run against Novick. Past council candidate Nick Caleb announced earlier this month he’s changed his mind about running for personal reasons.

I'm a news reporter for the Mercury. I've spent a lot of the last decade in journalism — covering tragedy and chicanery in the hills of southwest Missouri, politics in Washington, D.C., and other matters...

14 replies on “Fred Stewart, Steve Novick’s Latest Challenger, Has No Beef With Gentrification”

  3. Because a black man who lived in the ‘hood when the gangs emerged and doesn’t spout the accepted progressive/victim line couldn’t possibly have a clue about what actually was happening there.

  4. Exactly Jimmy Carter. Bring on the clueless, entitled onlookers who read an anti-gentrification article in the NYT and claim to know it all on the subject. Fred is a sharp guy who is in tune with N Portland and has been around the block. This article was brief and more needs to be said on the subject to get a fuller picture on his beliefs, but even if you disagree with the few comments in this article you have to admit he is certainly a thoughtful, insider voice on the topic of N Portland gentrification that needs to be heard….especially amidst the one sided story line that has been told in the PDX media thus far.

  5. I’ll certainly consider him as a serious candidate.
    Wow, to think a Black Man would also consider this bullshit ‘gentrification’ nonsense a non-issue is sweet.
    Oh, but watch out — soon he will be called Clarence Thomas or an Uncle Tom by people claiming to be free thinking.

  7. I like Fred. He’s also a great realtor. Running for city office, “Stewart, who figures he’s sold more homes in inner Northeast Portland than anyone”, also gets a lot of publicity for his business. I don’t begrudge him either. But come on guys. There’s a clear interest here.

  8. He’s running as not-Steve Novick, which is going to be enough of a platform for a lot of people.

    It’s impossible not to smile thinking about a white guy who has lived in Portland for a couple years lobbing loaded questions to a long-time black Portland resident about gentrification.

  9. To be clear, his comment about it being as simple as black “people refusing to buy” in NE being the issue (he isn’t talking about the blatant redlining days here…he is talking about the past two decades..when he has been involved in the market..I believe) is a big oversimplification of things and I think he would agree that there are bigger issues at play. Look up his OPB Think Out Loud interview regarding the debacle with Trader Joes on MLK, and you will hear that he does think more needs to be done by the PDC and others on the topic of affordable housing and other community based programs. I am sure more of this will come out in future, more in depth articles and interviews.

    However…and this is a big however, he also does not shun the positive aspects that gentrification has brought to the neighborhood, and he isn’t completely head in the sand about the fact that many long-time African American (and non African American long time residents) families and property owners have benefited greatly from changes such as property value increases to levels that are closer to normal for Portland, the greater willingness of banks to write commercial and residential loans in the area vs even 10 years ago, reduced crime, greater local amenities, etc. In fact, he is right in the thick of it and lives it daily, so his voice is definitely interesting to listen to on the topic.

    This is where he differs from most of the militant anti-gentrification crowd who it seems would rather have N Portland see no new interest from new home buyers, private investment from developers, etc. and see it rot away into our own inner Detroit NW. BTW, this would happen to any of our older neighborhoods should they all of the sudden fail to attract the interest of homebuyers with the means and desire to invest in and maintain our aging infrastructure, not just the historically black neighborhoods in N Portland.

    Looking forward to hearing more from him. Let the “down votes” begin…never ceases to amaze me!

  11. Blah blah blah… homeowners. Doesn’t anyone remember that redlining made it difficult for people to buy homes at all in N/NE, and were forced to be renters; and redlining made it difficult for black people to rent outside of Albina; and renters all across Albina – many with long-standing history in the area, and who were valuable members to the community – have been displaced by rising rents causes largely by speculation riding on the back of gentrification?

Comments are closed.