Architecture Apr 13, 2016 at 4:00 am

Historian Reiko Hillyer Talks Density, Affordable Housing, and Equal Access to Public Space

Comments

1
Ms. Hillyer is way better at articulating these issues than her counterparts. But I am getting tired of these equity goals being recited without any hint as to whether they are possible.

Here is a kumbiya statement from Ms. Hillyer that is somewhat disingenuous.

"For consumers to enjoy the Pearl, there's an impetus to not just move homeless people along, but to criminalize that state of being for the comfort of other people. I find that horrifying. I think we can do more to see fellow Portlanders as having equal claim to public space and equal right to comfort and right to lifestyle—interpersonally, environmentally, and aesthetically."

I challenge anyone to apply this aspirational goal to the reality of the Pearl's homeless camps, crime, harassment, meth use.

The lifestyle of a unregistered sex offender tweaking in an environmentally sensitive area and living in a tent with a bucket for a bathroom will degrade everyone else's experience of the area. Crust punks on Hawthorne have bestowed upon themselves the right to occupy busy corners and force pedestrians into the street.

What does the average Portlander get? Babble. Bull puckey. Hillyer's views are rooted in the New Testament voodoo about the poor. We need something better than a Bronze Age text and Kumbiya to restore Portland to being a place you wanted to walk around.
2
Does anyone else find it at least vaguely upsetting that it costs $395 to attend a talk about equity, affordable housing and equal access to public spaces? I mean, I was planning on spending that money on a giant pink-marble statue of an upturned middle finger to place in my perfectly manicured front lawn, but now I have to decide if that filthy lucre would be better spent on symbolically feigning support for "important issues". What a crisis.

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