Not only is the City Club of Portland pushing an end to no-cause evictions and a host of other strategies to grapple with the housing crisis, its members have even voted “by a wide margin” to accept a new recommendation: that the city should be actively rezoning some of its many single-family zoned neighborhoods for multi-family “middle housing.” Steve Novick, who’s been banging the middle housing drum, is pleased.


ALSO, apparently Novick and his wife Rachel were the ones who first tipped off New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz to the Cascadia Subduction Zone and our massive incoming earthquake? She won a Pulitzer Prize for that first-rate piece yesterday, and gave the Novicks props.

Hey, another lawsuit accusing the state Department of Corrections—including one doctor we’ve written about before—of letting prisoners with serious medical conditions languish while those conditions get worse. The latest: A woman who says her kidney stone was ignored to the point the organ had to be removed. Unacceptable, if true.

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In case you missed it, mayoral hopeful Sarah Iannarone is the latest candidate to call for immediate rent controls in Portland, arguing local governments have that ability despite a state preemption. Most mayoral candidates agree with her. Here’s a rundown of where people stand.

One candidate who’s DEFINITELY not cool with rent control? Donald Trump.

One woman who could DEFINITELY use a bit of rent control? The 87-year-old Beaverton woman whose rent is about to go up 62 percent overnight.

Bad news: Toxic waste at the Hanford nuclear site is leaking far faster than it had been previously.

Today In Development-Wary Neighbors: Will someone build a house on Portland’s famed Peacock Lane? My god!

And suddenly Pearl District neighbors dislike apartment/condo buildings?! It appears that’s whats headed for the old building that until recently housed Touché. Give me a break, Pearl District.


This won’t go well. A pastor says a Whole Foods in Austin sold him a cake that was supposed to say “Love Wins” but instead says “Love Wins Fag.” He’s suing. Plenty of “hoax” cries rocketing around the web (partly because it seems to have taken the guy quite a while to notice the enormous slur front and center on his cake). Guess we’ll see.

BikePortland has this story about a children’s camp that’s being cancelled/modified this summer because of fears about safety on the Springwater Corridor.

My god. A third round of body parts was uncovered in Seattle, and likely came from a local nurse who went missing earlier this month. The man who’s been arrested in her death says he can’t remember what happened.

A new report on the Greek system at the University of Oregon contains most of the dispiriting conclusions you’d expect: too much black-out drinking, minimized rapes, and prevalent hazing.

Will the Supreme Court rule President Obama’s 2014 immigration reforms pass legal muster? It’s unclear, but the vote looks like it’ll be close, whatever happens.

Lastly, it’s New York Primary Day. SPOILER: Trump and Clinton.

More heat! More sun!

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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...