Last week, Commissioner Dan Saltzman announced a recommendation that advocates have long been looking forward to. He filed an ordinance proposing that money specially reserved to build affordable housing should increase from a minimum of 30 percent to 45 percent of the money snatched up in five of the city’s urban renewal areas (URAs)—potentially adding $67 million to the coffers for cheap housing over five years.
Affordable housing advocates are thrilled, calling the proposed increase a victory. Leah Greenwood, a former senior policy manager for the Portland Development Commission (PDC) who’s advocated for ratcheting up affordable housing money, said after the announcement that she was pleased with Saltzman’s calculations.
“To seriously address the affordability crisis, we have to look at all potential sources of funding,” Saltzman said in a press release. “Increasing the amount of money we spend in urban renewal areas is a community-led solution.”
Commissioner Nick Fish and Mayor Charlie Hales say they’ll vote in favor of the increase, which means the proposed ordinance should make it through council with three votes.
Despite the jubilation, though, history suggests there’s a hiccup in the announced funding increase: There’s no guarantee Portland will meet that 45 percent requirement.
Since 2006, Portland’s required that at least 30 percent of the tax increment financing (TIF) money generated by urban renewal districts be dedicated to affordable housing. But the city hasn’t always achieved that goal. According to data provided by Saltzman’s office, in 2006—the very first year of the requirement—the city only set aside 21 percent of its TIF funds for affordable housing. It wasn’t until 2009 that the city got up to 30 percent.
Since officials started hitting the 30 percent citywide goal in fiscal year 2009-10, the city’s spent slightly more than the 30 percent baseline amount much of the time.
So what’s to say officials will start consistently hitting a 45 percent goal?
Saltzman’s policy director, Shannon Callahan, says the Portland Housing Bureau will report on the URA goals and present them annually to city council in a State of Housing Report.
And Fish, who formerly ran the housing bureau, says it’s important not to look at TIF spending as a moment-in-time snapshot. He recommends looking at progress over a five-year timespan.
The latest State of Housing Report produced by the housing bureau shows the city meeting or exceeding its housing funding goals for TIF money in each of the affected URAs and in the city overall. But it has largely failed to maintain or replace affordable housing rental units in those districts, falling behind on target numbers.
New money from the increased housing pot could make a real difference in the number of regulated units in the city, where 20,000 families are living below the poverty line, Fish says.
“The community, and particularly housing advocates, have been pushing city council to do more,” he tells the Mercury. “This new money will allow us to do as many as four substantial new developments. That’s 800 new units, to put it in context.”
Advocates had initially pushed Saltzman for more.
The original proposal for increased housing money, made by civic group Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good (MACG), suggested Portland City Council raise the housing set aside to 50 percent of collected TIF money. Folks from MACG teamed up with Greenwood, the former PDC policy adviser, to come up with the proposal. She scoured the city’s budget and found $55 million that could be reallocated to address Portland’s lack of affordable housing [“The Common Good,” News, Sept 9].
“I was ready to vote for the 50 percent,” Fish says. “The reason why I can accept the 45 is that it’s going to generate more money than Leah Greenwood had asked for in the first place, so this is a huge win for low-income families.”
The PDC’s board recently expressed reservations about putting more of its money toward affordable housing, warning that doing so cuts into the amount of money the city has to dedicate to revenue-generating projects. Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Steve Novick also have not lent their full support to the plan, fearing it could eat away at money promised for parks (Fritz’s bureau) and transportation (Novick’s).
City council is scheduled to discuss the ordinance on Wednesday, October 28.
The real estate bubble burst and tax payers bailed out the banks, which then proceeded to foreclose on mass quantities of homes, and evicting the buyers into the streets to become homeless. The banks continue to withhold these properties from the market in order to create an artificial housing shortage, which keeps values over priced. At the same time, banks have resumed lending to new buyers who can’t afford the high payments. Another bubble is about to burst. Banks should be forced to liquidate the vacant foreclosed realty at auction in order to increase supply and lower the price. There is no need for tax payers to pony up more dough to subsidize over priced property for the benefit of banks, realtors and landlords.
What do we need affordable housing for when all we have to do is let our current administration manipulate and change our zoning laws and throw all of her homeless people into a illegal homeless tent encampments like “right to dream too”. It’s a lot more affordable to let Pearl District developers pay the city 800,000.00 to install, move or create homeless tent camps rather then affordable housing!
The tax payers of this city are currently letting this behavior take place with our administration, this is disgusting behavior that should not be tolerated. Our mayor and Commissioner Fritz should be brought up on charges for excepting payoffs from developers to encourage homeless camps rather than implement more affordable housing.
Has anyone been to Seattle lately and noticed all of the homeless tent camp popping up all over the place? Guess what, if we let our mayor & commissioner Fritz get away with this behavior, Portland is going to turn into the second largest homeless tent camp population next to Seattle! And Commissioner fritz said that tent camps will not attract additional homeless people, that obviously total bullshit if you look at what happened to Seattle!
Wake up people and put a stop to this administration’s behavior before it’s too late and we are stuck with illegal tent camps all over our city.
During the last Great Depression, SE Portland was an enormous shanty town in a gimongous mud field.
“Our mayor and Commissioner Fritz should be brought up on charges for excepting payoffs from developers to encourage homeless camps rather than implement more affordable housing”
1) being homeless is not illegal, and neither is giving them a place to congregateand find safety in numbers and a sense of community which can make all the difference. The ability to connect/ congregate is easily the most overlooked NEED for homelessness. Not living your way of institutionalized life – whether they chose not to conform to it or not – does not automatically equate to being illegal, sorry but you need a much stronger argument than being an entitled middle class do-gooder looking to set his way of live as the natural definition of morality and lawfullness.
I’ll say it again, and again, and again; law is about interpretation so people please quit spitting this “obey the laws” and instead tell us what laws you speak of and how you interpret them and then we can have a productive conversation.
2) so what is your solution? throw more and more money at the problem and pack people in tinier and tinier boxes so they can be more like you? Hello!- these housing options we’re putting on the table are not sustainable and it is inevitable they’ll need to be subsidized or the rent will increase or they will rot and become half way houses.
Got any NEW ideas? sustainable solutions? Something worth saying? No? why degrade the public conversation then?
pearl district is that-a-way –>
bless you Ms. Fritz and Hales if indeed you have actually advocated for homeless being safe at night and finding connection without first needing to come up with millions to do so.
“Our mayor and Commissioner Fritz should be brought up on charges for excepting payoffs from developers to encourage homeless camps rather than implement more affordable housing”
1) being homeless is not illegal, and neither is giving them a place to congregateand find safety in numbers and a sense of community which can make all the difference. The ability to connect/ congregate is easily the most overlooked NEED for homelessness. Not living your way of institutionalized life – whether they chose not to conform to it or not – does not automatically equate to being illegal, sorry but you need a much stronger argument than being an entitled middle class do-gooder looking to set his way of live as the natural definition of morality and lawfullness.
I’ll say it again, and again, and again; law is about interpretation so people please quit spitting this “obey the laws” and instead tell us what laws you speak of and how you interpret them and then we can have a productive conversation.
2) so what is your solution? throw more and more money at the problem and pack people in tinier and tinier boxes so they can be more like you? Hello!- these housing options we’re putting on the table are not sustainable and it is inevitable they’ll need to be subsidized or the rent will increase or they will rot and become half way houses.
Got any NEW ideas? sustainable solutions?
bless you Ms. Fritz and Hales if indeed you have actually advocated for homeless being safe at night and finding connection without first needing to come up with millions to do so.
oops- I waited 20 min later and my fist comment did not show
…I don’t know. I’m in such housing, having lived on the streets and brilliantly screwed up both my college and employment prospects. But, if it encourages more tweaker street trash to clog our sidewalks with human flotsam, until they get industrious enough to jockey box a bag of bath salts, then I’m not so sure I want this to happen.
Besides, if a housing market has to be regulated to such a degree, something is so seriously fundamentally wrong with the local economy, and administration, that this kind of “fix” is about as inelegant solution to a problem that I can think of. Sometimes I think the entire planet is paying for the timeshares of maybe a thousand people, who of course can afford their housing.
There used to be a time when you didn’t have to look good enough on paper to get a military security clearance to land a crappy service or labor job that can’t even pay for a roof over your head and put a decent meal on your plate. Just keep blaming all the world’s woes on the poor, until you join their ranks.