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.
Starting on Thursday, September 18, the Portland Housing Bureau began a series of four community forums, filled with food and charts, meant to remind everyone about that history and tell officials how that repurposed housing money ought to be spent.
But the first such session—a riveting, bracing affair—wasn’t held anywhere near Albina or MLK. It was out at Highland Christian Center, at NE 76th and Glisan—in what’s become an anchor for many who have been forced from their old neighborhoods.
Fittingly, it was also where the housing bureau, overseen by Saltzman, unveiled a central storyline in its hopes for how that $20 million will be spent. It’s building momentum for a “right of return” for at least some of the thousands of African Americans scattered east and north by gentrification.
That’s a noble goal. But it also threatens to raise expectations impossibly high.
The city’s own charts show that $20 million won’t go terribly far: maybe 300 to 500 new apartments, or 100 single-family homes. For rent. It would go furthest if spent rehabbing houses—1,500 of them—but that’s more about retaining residents, the charts say, not bringing them back. (That route might also mean some brisk business for one of the presenters at the forum, Maxine Fitzpatrick of Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives, Inc.)
That’s not the only complication. The city has pledged to spend the $20 million on housing for those making 60 percent of median income or less. The gentrifiers, dare I say it, might shed their Portland passive-aggression when faced with the return of the lowest income of the gentrified. Some of the people who spoke at Highland openly fretted over the possibility they might not be welcomed.
And what of the other qualities that make up a community? The institutions that grew up around African American neighborhoods—bars, eateries, medical offices, barbershops, increasingly churches—have all vanished, too.
“This one will be different,” said Bishop Steven Holt of the International Fellowship Family, “because we have different people engaged and involved. There’s a different intentionality.”
Holt’s correct about the “different intentionality”—the engaging, honest forums are proof of that. But as for the result—a rebuilt trust? That still remains to be seen.
Looking at the cumulative effect of several housing-related decisions, it is clear that the city doesn’t care about affordable housing. For example, studies in San Francisco show that AirBnB reduces rental stock and hurts the working poor, but Portland City Hall has a crush on AirBnB and lets it cheat 24-7. The demolitions of sfh for McMansions is not helpful to affordable housing. Adding 6000k units for singles and none for families is not helpful.
I say we rehab and rent small houses. Fix up the bad house next door, and provide help
to the neighbors.
If rent were cheaper in Portland, then more people would move to Portland. If more people were to move to Portland, then there would be fewer apartments available, and the price would increase. $20,000,000.00 is a lot of money. How about paying each bum who CURRENTLY sleeps on dog shit in the park, twenty grand to leave town? Make this a surprise one time offer, spending the twenty mil before anybody else moves to Portland for a hand out.
C’mon people! Gentrification aint that bad. If you like low income people so much why don’t you just give half your paycheck to them? That’s basically what “right to return” folk will be gettin. Subsidized dependence
Denis: It’s great that the city has found $20m for affordable housing, but it would have been better for the city had The Mercury and other local journalists covered the dismantling of the city’s 30% set-aside policy, which took place under Sam Adams. That represented a far more significant commitment to building affordable housing, and it went away with barely a whimper.
It’s great that you’re on board with this issue now. I hope you stick with it long-term.
Where did PDX find $20 million? Usually urban renewal type money comes from borrowing against the expected increase in property taxes that would be the consequence of increased property valuations resulting from spending that money.
It is called Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, and I don’t like it.
Mike: The city issues bonds (ie, debt) against the anticipated future tax revenues.
So, first they create a URA and project what those increased tax revenues will be in that URA over a certain number of years, then based on that number the City Council passes an ordinance that authorizes the PDC to take on a certain amount of debt. Once the debt is authorized, the PDC Board (and the City Council, acting as the PDC’s budget committee) approve a series of annual budgets that include various projects, including affordable housing, that they’re authorizing the funds to be spent on.
Once those projects are greenlighted and in the planning pipeline, the money people at PDC project what part of the money they’re going to need in the short term –the next three months, let’s say –and they issue bonds for that chunk of money. (In other words, they don’t just have the whole amount sitting in a bank account somewhere –they only get what they need in smaller increments.) The repayment of those bonds is guaranteed against the increased tax revenues in that URA.
They may never actually bond the full amount they’re authorized to borrow.
So when the Mayor pledges $20m over five years, it’s money he knows can be made available when it’s needed, because the Interstate URA has at least that much future borrowing capacity. At this stage, the city is asking the community how they’d like to see the money spent, so here’s no project on the table yet and they’re a long way off from actually taking out that debt.
There would seem to be about five or then thousand homeless in Portland. That would amount to only two to four thousand dollars apiece, a far cry from twenty grand each.
Thanks Euphonius for the excellent description of how it works. And so it is Tax Increment Financing.
The entire area’s debt/proceeds go to the PDC’s projects on the theory that it benefits everyone in the Urban Renewal Area in proportion to their individual tax increases.
-Maybe.
The URA is excused from incremental increased costs for police, fire, water, sewer, etc. within the general area surrounding the URA while everyone else covers the URA’s share.
Awards by the Commission has a faint scent of Cronyism. But lets just say that we are smelling a mirage because there is ‘criteria’ for the commission’s awards.
The alternative is renewal-by-owner which does not, and should not, involve the government or special tax-freezing.
Even if it were fair to the General Area, I would still oppose it because the Commission has none of their own skin in the game as an owner would.
Surprisingly, there’s no requirement that these investments actually increase property values or the tax base. That’s right. Nothing requires that creating a URA or spending future tax revenues today actually has to lead to more money later.
Remember a few years ago when Sam Adams and Randy Leonard wanted to build a baseball stadium in Lents Park? They were going to take at least $42m out of the Lents URA to build the stadium –on park property. Parks don’t pay property taxes. Those guys tried to claim that the surrounding area would see an increase in value but refused to actually study the question. I’m not a real state expert, but I suspect that a single family home across the street from a stadium would probably LOSE value, if anything.
So there’s no rule that obliges the city to show that the things they’re planning to do with TIF money will actually grow the tax base.
You mention the incremental increases in costs to provide all the other city services while a URA is in effect –which is a great point. This has become a huge issue in the city’s overall budget. To his credit, Charlie Hales recognizes it and has been moving to reel in the use of urban renewal. This will take a while, and you won’t hear much about it because it’s complicated and journalists don’t like to report on complicated things that make their heads hurt.
What you might not know is that those incremental costs also affect other local jurisdictions. The property taxes that are diverted into a URA wouldn’t only have gone to the city, yet it’s the city and nobody else that gets to decide. The two biggest ones who take the hit are Multnomah County and Portland Public Schools. Because the county and PPS became such a thorn in the city’s side about this, a few years ago they were each given seats on the various citizen committees that decide what each URA spends its money on.
Last year the city abolished those committees.
(If you missed the Mercury’s coverage of this –well, it wasn’t in the Mercury… or any other local press. I wrote about it here: http://fosterunited.org/pdc-disbands-lents… )
Okay, so then what’s needed to adequately proved each poor homeless person in Portland a grub stake of twenty grand, is about $200,000,000.00, which is what the OHSU Tram ended up costing with “unexpected” cost overruns. Let’s borrow THAT, then.