TRUST IS DIFFICULT to regain once it’s been lost—whether that sundering came in one fell, foul swoop or merely over several decades, a series of half-promises never more than half-kept.
Consider North and Northeast Portland and the plight of the city’s African American community.
First, city leaders gutted traditional neighborhoods around North Williams and in what became the Rose Quarter, creating blight in the name of fighting it. And then Portland City Council kept promising to right those wrongs—drafting an Albina Community Plan in 1993 and creating an urban renewal area around the Interstate corridor—only to do relatively little while redevelopment made displacement worse.
(Curiously, the two current council members most tied to development issues, Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Dan Saltzman, were both on the council when the Interstate zone was crafted. Hales, meanwhile, served during formation of the Albina plan.)
This history is why it was such a big deal when Hales—looking to end a fight over a Trader Joe’s at NE MLK and Alberta—grabbed $20 million in urban renewal cash that would have been spent on other things (like improving North Lombard and developing businesses), and earmarked it for affordable housing.
That history also looms over what comes next, now that the promise has been made.