The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-05-27
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (15,631 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Homelessness and Housing Committee met on 2025-05-27, opening with roll call showing the body present and a reading of the standard meeting conduct statement. The session covered three agenda items. First was a monthly update on the Homelessness Response System Steering and Oversight Committee, including discussion of Medicaid payment alignment work, shelter engagement and accountability models, differences between county- and city-funded shelters, timelines for shelter stays, and the challenge of defining measurable success for service providers; committee members discussed these topics at length, and a June workshop on metrics was mentioned. Second was an ordinance updating Portland City Code Title 24 to adopt the 2025 Oregon Energy Efficiency Specialty Code, presented by permitting and development staff who explained state versus local building code authority, cost implications, and delegated enforcement; one person testified on unrelated city property and easement issues; a motion followed, votes occurred, and outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. Third was a resolution directing the City Administrator to assess and align existing housing plans into a Unified Housing Strategy, presented with a staff walkthrough; four people testified, addressing aging populations, veterans' housing proposals, and Swan Island property use. Two amendments were proposed—adding the Aging and Disability Inclusive Neighborhoods Action Plan and adding homelessness prevention language—followed by discussion and votes, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting closed at 1:37 p.m.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Thank you very much. Oh. Yeah? Yeah. This is mic check. A great question. I think that's.
1 Okay. Good afternoon. I'm going to call the meeting of homelessness and housing committee to order at 12:04 p.m. Diego, please call the roll.
2 Ryan.
3 Here.
4 Morillo here. Zimmerman. Here. Dunphy, here. Avalos.
5 Present. Claire, please read the statement of conduct for council committee meetings.
6 Good afternoon, and welcome to the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland council agenda, slash homelessness and housing committee, or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard if public testimony will be taken on an item. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
7 Thank you claire. So today we've got three items on our agenda. First, we're going to hear from councilor Zimmerman for his monthly committee update on the work of the steering and oversight committee. Then we will hear an ordinance from permitting and development on bringing local code into compliance with the Oregon energy efficiency specialty code. And then lastly, we will discuss the unified housing strategy resolution. Also, I just wanted to note that I attended the league of Oregon cities conference last month, and there was a really good presentation about middle missing middle housing that I took some notes and brought some materials back. I was going to do a little update on that, but I'm going to hold that off to a future date. But I wanted to flag for you all that. I think there's some good info we should discuss as a group. That gave us some good insights on, you know, what are the barriers to production and just the all the things. So I will send that out. But just wanted to flag for you. So then let's go ahead and jump into the first item. If you could go ahead and read that.
8 One one update on the homelessness response system steering and oversight committee.
9 All right. So this is our monthly report from councilor Zimmerman. And please note that the presentation slides from that meeting are posted on the committee agenda page. We're going to try to be better about including any presentations that the soc receives and putting them on our agenda when we do these updates, so that we can also just get the information. And the last meeting was on may 9th. So with that councilor Zimmerman, please take it away.
10 Thank you. Given that our city and county had a joint meeting between the meeting, the soc and now a lot that occurred that day was discussed with all of you already. I will say that we got a little bit more of an in-depth discussion regarding the health share work of aligning medicaid, aligning those payments. We've all kind of asked about, heard about. It landed, I will say, as important work, but not very well fleshed out in terms of what are the outcomes. What are we talking about here? It was a little bit difficult to track from a how does this affect today versus how does this affect many, many years from now that, you know, some folks commented on the what I did appreciate as well is they had providers from some of the different shelters come and discuss kind of the challenges of and I think you've heard, commissioner Singleton say this is that it's not appropriate for us to tell the providers, prioritize where the ones the policymakers are, the ones who have to prioritize. When we talk about certain populations who are a focus to get transitioned more quickly than others. And I think she was quite accurate in that description. Like, we have a role here, and we need to lean into that role as the policy makers and not just putting that decision making on the shoulders of the of the nonprofits that we pay to do the work. But then hearing how those impacts are felt at a shelter level. Right. And we had a variety of different approaches that were discussed just in terms of how they either incorporate the wraparound services if they don't have services, just that evolving model. Right. And it's I think watching 20 years of shelter life kind of come. We're in this point where if you got into the business of shelter in the last five years, you likely have a model that has other services along with it, because we kind of said that's the standard, and there remains some legacy groups who don't. Right, who who have the old model of just create a space for a certain amount of time, and there's no other wrap around around it. And there's that struggle between the two types of models. There was a little bit of discussion about where where it's appropriate for shelters to stick to the requirements for whether or not you stay right. One of the, one of the shelters talked about, you know, you've got to be in part of the program, so to speak, whatever that is, engaging, meaningfully engaging. And that's different for every person. And when a person chooses not to, what is the threshold when you say, okay, well, this place, this this large pod village is designed for people who are willing to engage. And if you're going to go 30 days, 90 days, six months without engaging, do you still have a right to this place? And I think that's a challenge that we've kind of placed on them because we've said, we like your model. We like that you put these engagement strategies around who participates. But what if someone says, no? How do you and I don't know that that's an answered question, but I think it's reasonable, and it's something that I think is mostly within the county's wheelhouse. But given the fact that the city is paying for a number of these shelters, it is important that we consider that as well. My own take on it is that I appreciated that they were willing to let us know that that is one of the struggles they have with, because at the end of the day, what we're really talking about is if a person is here at xyz village and they refuse to do anything when it comes to maybe it's drug treatment, maybe it's housing placement, it's employment placement, looking for the next stop. How long are we willing to put up with? Sounds harsh, but how long are we willing to create that space for them? And I just think that's an interesting struggle that right now I kind of have faith that they're making the call on individual bases based on this person's not engaging for reasons that their case manager understands, versus this person's not engaging for a lot of reasons that we can tell they're just they're uninterested and they're probably not ready for this type of shelter at this point. And so I appreciated that that part of the discussion and just kind of seeing how different, different folks commented. And I think also the rightfully and respectfully, I think that there was a little bit of pushback about what will an overnight system mean, right? What were the impacts of an overnight shelter system mean as it relates to all the types of shelters and how they work with the day center? So good conversation from that aspect. The health care part, I would say was, was it needs a lot more work to get to the meat of the question and how they're actually going to solve anything in an urgent manner. And then everything else was presented here in our joint meeting last week. And so that's all I've got to share, chair.
11 Thank you, councilor Ryan.
12 Yes.
13 Thank you, madam chair. Councilor Zimmerman, I really appreciate the conversation that I guess the conversation I'd like to have. And you making it clear that one of the dialogs that you had was, are there any rewards or consequences? So when we're envisioning the safe rest villages, we did ask for the providers to track the willingness and participation rates of those working with case managers on behavioral health and mental health, the participation rates on getting into workforce. And the vision was that those that were connected to workforce, connected to services, would probably start to move towards a place of independence, which would indicate that when they're housed, they'll have a much better success rate. And their pathway into independence and away from dependance would be much higher. It's been disappointing in dialog with the county to not be able to see that implemented. And I think that unless we have clarity about those rewards that would come with getting into services and showing that resilience that's being built, that agency that's being built so they can move towards that, those would be rewarded into housing that would then give people a more return on investment, that that's the flow that we're building, that's actually moving people out of chronic homelessness. Yeah. So what's that? Was that like the was that a little bit of the conversation or is this this is the conversation we had like for two years in a row, the last two years, and it wasn't very popular at the table. Having making these statements probably still aren't from some in the industry, but I just think it's really important that we continue to speak for the many taxpayers who really are begging for us to ask such questions.
14 I think that it highlights just the difference in perspective based on who holds the contract, the city or the county, and how comfortable we are with those different requirements. It's right there on the surface, right? The difference between a county funded and a and a city funded shelter. When we're talking about the pod villages, the regardless of the size of them. We are also at a point where the placements out of the pod villages was higher. At one point it's kind of dipped down. And I think there is my reading of how they were interpreting that is that some of the folks who are easier to place, who went through a few months are now now we're in this this point where there are a number of people who are a little bit more difficult. And then and then also placements continue to have placements available or places to go is also those are filling up as well. And so that then it's a reevaluation of what the timeline is. Right. Is, is 90 days too long or not enough. Right. And that that becomes a question the.
15 And it should be a good dialog on that could be I think six months is what we heard from most people in the behavioral health community, 6 to 9 months.
16 What I appreciated about part of the conversation, and I haven't heard it in all my years at the county, was there used to be a deep unwillingness at the county level to create a shelter? That was I'm not going to use the term high barrier, but anything less than the lowest of low barrier and the thought process around that was those exist in other places of the community and nonprofits in like churches, etc. And private sector, but that the county, the government has to be the one that there is no barrier to get in. And one thing I think is changing is we are. Upon entrance. Upon entrance. Yeah. One thing we're seeing start to at least be talked about at the county level that I appreciated was, I think it was. Commissioner singleton again said, we also have to acknowledge that there are some people who, when they get into a shelter, they need to be in a clean and sober environment to continue to be successful. And that's okay. I've never heard the county admit that before until this season. And I just think that that was important. And I certainly as a as a proponent of test sites, have now heard that a couple years later from from people who have been residents at the test site, which is this didn't work for me because I'm a clean and sober person, and now I'm in a place where, yes, my pod and theory there, all the outside areas are all clean and sober. But but that environment still exists and we have to have to acknowledge the test sites were set up for the most difficult folks and that we could be a safer environment, but it doesn't work for everybody. And so I just there's a rub that's happening now. Not not that the conversation solved that rub, but it some of the first honest conversations I've actually heard regarding the different types of shelter and not just being kind of dogmatic about this or that. And so I'm just saying that was that was a welcome experience from my point. But the difficulty and this is why I asked the question on Friday with the whole city and county commission here for our joint meeting, is, is understanding what people want out of the slc, because that still remains a big question mark, and I appreciate those who are able to give feedback. But if you continue to have it, I'll have I'll be open to it. I'm struggling to understand the role of the soc and how it fits into the overall wrap outside of the contract language, but truly, what do they want out of those decision makers that have been appointed to? It remains a little foggy for me.
17 I appreciate that I haven't met anyone in recovery circles that don't ask for a little bit of that accountability, and they just say they would never have gotten sober if there wasn't some of those consequences. As a part of the journey, I wanted to just ask real quickly. We passed amendments three years in a row for the county around accountability connected to the providers. We didn't need them to measure every community wide indicator, but or any or they're all lot of indicators. We just wanted to measure something, but it seems like there's been a real resistance from the provider network at the county to measure things. And where's that dialog going? Because we keep passing it here with with positive with positive votes, and then it always gets dropped once we send it over. And they, they, they weren't supposed to send out their annual contracts without making it clear there's a contract with the provider that they would like them to focus on these key measurements of success, and it's not shaming them if they don't meet those. It's that having that clarity, that transparency.
18 Yeah, I don't have a good answer to that question. Right. It's an area that I've also said is I'm, you know, not not all that jokingly said, show me who all the providers are and tell me where the bottom third is, and tell me why we shouldn't just cancel the bottom third and reallocate to those who are successful, which is kind of getting to the point of you've got to have something. You're trying to struggle, you're trying to solve, and that you're good at. I think it remains a challenge for the county because they are continuing to solve for, you know, there's micro communities. You got to make sure that get taken care of and, and legacy providers. And I think that's still informs a lot of how they make decisions there or what they kind of limp along. But I haven't seen a, a, a full come to whatever that tells us, okay, we're actually putting these on them. And I think it might be better for rf director and others to respond on that.
19 Okay. Thanks.
20 Councilor Dunphy.
21 Yeah. Thank you. You know, I think what I'm also hearing ultimately is, is two things that I think are are ultimately, I don't want to put the responsibility for the failure of our system on the nonprofits, because I think that government has been so unclear about what we consider success. I think that the city and the county need to be better about defining what success is and driving at that and holding folks accountable to that. But I don't think we've done a good job of laying that out. I also think that what I'm hearing is maybe, like, I'm not an academic, I only have my bachelor's degree, but I understand that housing first is an academic approach that really began around the idea that there are some folks who are so either mentally ill or so deep in their addiction, that the act of them being in public is causing so much chaos in their lives and the lives of folks around them, that it is simply going to be easier to get them into housing and then figure it out. But we've misinterpreted that as saying that housing first means everybody needs to get into a house today before we can have that conversation. I do worry, though, that what some of the folks that I'm hearing about are, you know, the most problematic in our current system, the ones who are not engaging with these things. The alternative there isn't put them back out on the streets where they will continue to cause themselves and the community more harm. It's more that we need to get ourselves aligned into what the actual benefit of a housing first model means. We take care of the low hanging fruit where we can with the tools that we have. But I think we really need to be a little bit more intentional about this, because a lot of times, these sort of academic models get broken down into bumper sticker level slogans, and then people think they know what that means, and that's just not what it was ever supposed to be doing. And I worry that we are at a point now where we have completely detached ourselves from the actual needs of that, I mean, you know, to the point that if the cities or if the county is operating under a housing first model, but we are saying there are folks in housing who are not participating in the program, that's not even actually a housing first model at that point. So we need to like maybe have that bigger conversation. And I actually I look forward to what we're talking about a little bit later around our unified housing plan. And, and some of these bigger conversations. But I, I can hear where we have gotten off track, and I hope we can start bringing that back in.
22 So thank you, councilor. Morillo. Okay. Thank you for the presentation. Yeah, I think combined with what we heard on Friday, what is definitely still clear and we're all saying is we as leaders need to be giving the guidance. And so we need to talk through that. And I definitely think not only with the unified housing strategy, but I'm planning on in June, making some space in our agenda to workshop this a little bit more so we can talk through, you know, what do we feel are metrics of success? What do we feel is our north star? What are we working towards? So hopefully the city at least can start to set that path forward. So anything else you want to add, councilor Zimmerman on slc? Briefly. I think that's okay. Sounds good. Thank you everybody. So let's go ahead and move on to the next item. Diego, could you please read that out?
23 Item two amend building regulations code to adopt state of Oregon 2025 edition of Oregon energy efficiency specialty code.
24 All right, so this item comes to us from permitting and development. And I'll go ahead and hand it off to staff who are going to talk to us about the code amendments we're considering. Thank you. Please introduce yourself and welcome.
25 Thought it was sharon.
26 It's usually delayed a minute on the screen there so we can see your screen. It's coming.
27 Oh I'm good okay.
28 Let me just click. Right there.
29 This one.
30 Yep. Just click.
31 It.
32 Okay. Thank you. Hello councilors. My name is natalie didion and I am happy to be here and introduce myself. I am the city building official and I work in thank you. And I work in the bureau of Portland permitting and development. With me is jody orrison, and I will let her introduce herself in a moment. We have a short presentation today for a small code amendment that is coming due. And in addition, we thought we could use this time to share general information about the building codes and how they are adopted by the city. We also want to provide some insight into the opportunities that may come up in the future for city council to make recommendations or changes to the code policies. I will hand this over to you now, jody, jody, orson, for the record building code analyst with Portland permitting development. As natalie said, we want to use some of our time to talk about building codes. More generally. We recognize you're expected to legislate on a wide variety of complicated systems and processes. In contrast, we have a very narrow area of expertise, so we wanted to use our time to share that and see if you have any questions. Oh, sorry, I know, I apologize, I don't know why. There's a delay. I apologize, I can't get it to. It's not moving forward.
33 Oh.
34 Thank you so much. Okay, jody, building codes, layout requirements for how a building is constructed. They focus on health and safety, but also cover federal and state accessibility requirements and energy efficiency. Oregon building codes division adopts an updated version of each building code roughly every three years, but each code is on a different timeline. So April 1st, July 1st, October 1st January 1st of any particular year could have a building code update. I'm using the term building code, but there are multiple code books that cover different scopes of work. So you see here all the different organ building codes. They cover electrical, plumbing, mechanical, all the different sections. This year there's a new addition of the energy code. It becomes mandatory July 1st, which means that any building permit that comes in after July 1st will need to use the new version. Next slide please. Portland city code title 24 lists the currently adopted edition of the energy code. We've listed all the different titles that the different building code editions are cited inside of. So like the plumbing code cited in title 25, etc. So today's ordinance simply changes the 2021 to 2025 to locally adopt this new version. In previous years, this change went through the system on the consent agenda and never came before. A committee never went before the council, but the process is different. So we're showing you all of this extra stuff because there really isn't an option for local independence around building code adoption. Oregon has a statewide building code, and we are required to use the state's adopted version per state statute. Next slide please. However, there are some areas where the local jurisdiction can make changes. This is an illustration that the state puts out to explain what local officials can and cannot do. Within the center of the circle, portland's building official can approve alternates on individual projects that meet the intent of the code requirements, but cannot waive or add to the requirements. Although Portland cannot alter the bulk of the building code, there are portions that require local adoption to regulate. That's the outer two levels of the diagram. So the portion in in gray is are the pieces that you still use the same state building code, but you have to put them into your local title in order to have building permits for them. And the section on the outside, the outside ring is actually things that you need to put in local requirements for as well. So not only do you have to reference it to require a building permit, you also have to add what the requirements are. We've added most of the structures and activities shown in the outer two layers into Portland city code through local ordinances. We've listed a few here as examples, but there are many more. Title 2410 072 other structures. That's where we put back in cell towers, tanks, retaining walls. Title 2455 is demolition. This section covers. Not only that, you need a building permit to take down a structure, but Portland also added extra requirements dust suppression, notification, all the things that portlanders were worried about with the demolitions and neighborhoods. Next slide please. Finally, we want to provide all of this context for you because we will be back. Regular city code updates will always be needed to adjust local authority in response to changes at the state level. And the last five years, the state has moved many items to those outer layers. In 2019, the state moved tanks out of the center, and so we had to add that back into title 24 and 2022. They moved encroachments in the right of way, like balconies, door swings over the sidewalk, completely out of the code book. So we had to add a reference to the national model code and update PBOT admin rules to cover that gap. Most requests will be like today's ordinance small, almost clerical updates necessary for accurate city code references, but some will be worth discussing and will need council action and engagement, please. So in summary, we are here today to update a code reference in title 24 from the 2021 Oregon energy code to the 2025 energy code. That's it, and we're happy to answer any questions you may have about the ordinance or about building code authority.
35 Councilors. So thank you to our presenters. Appreciate you. We've got some questions in the queue. But councilors, we have one person signed up to testify would be all right with letting them go. Okay, diego, if you could bring them on.
36 Arlen Smith.
37 I'm here in person.
38 Come on up. Have a seat.
39 My name is arlen Smith, and I think there's a story here that ties in with a number of things in Salem. The current move is we want everybody on the same page. So this type of change to the state regulation, there's going to be more. Will there be the political will to actually do that? Remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Portland has a couple of little glitches, flies in the ointment, so to speak, that it probably should address. Two years ago, I bought a property from the water department, sold it back to the city. Eight months later at 15 times what I paid for it. There's quite a story there, but before I bought that property, I took the weeks it took to go through the archives to learn a lot about it and other skeletons in portland's closet. Back in the day, before portland's borders were way out, almost at the edges of Multnomah county, there were a lot of private water companies and private utilities owned significant pieces of property. In the early 1900s, the city of Portland started buying those properties and taking over those private utilities. Then, as the city annexed out and expanded its actual borders for the most part, instead of incorporating those properties into the city, we annexed around them, there are dozens of islands of unincorporated property inside the city limits. Now, one could look at it that, hey, we already own the property. Why should we do the paperwork on it? Or one could look at it. This is a utility. We're tearing stuff up. We're building stuff. We're tearing stuff down. Why should we put ourselves under building code regulations? It might be time for the city to go back and figure out what it wants to do with these unincorporated islands that are all over the city, and more interesting to in relation to that, you've got some serious squatters on the property. And I'm not talking about homeless, I'm talking about centurylink. Now, lumen and a few other companies, they don't have easements, they don't have permits. They just moved in and took over because that's what they do. I set the stage for the city. If it has the willpower to do something about that. I haven't seen any indication yet that the city wants to take on centurylink, but it needs to be done by somebody.
40 Thank you. Are you complete with your testimony? Great. Thank you so much. All right. So we've got some questions in the queue here. And we're going to start with councilor Dunphy.
41 Yeah. Just so I'm totally clear, we don't the majority I guess. What what percentage of the level of code that we are enforcing is ours versus, like, what? We're just enforcing state code. Is it like a majority of it is just state code, and we are just simply enforcing?
42 Absolutely, definitely. The majority is state code. Yes. The pieces where we have local is usually where we're using the state code in a place where they said, you can decide whether you want to use the state code or not. So it's even still the state code. When we say the cell tower has to get a building permit, it's the state code we're using to decide if it's compliant or not.
43 Does the state pay us to do that, or is it just the privilege of having a city? We get to enforce their rules.
44 So if we don't, they will. We actually pay a state surcharge on building permits, right? Yes. But we want to be doing our own.
45 Sure.
46 So that we can have local control over how we enforce and the timelines we use and some of so other other small jurisdictions that do not have the bulk of Portland, they do defer to the.
47 To the building code, building codes division of the state.
48 Okay. So it is but it is a an active choice that we are.
49 Opting into.
50 It's a delegated program.
51 There you go. Okay. Great. Thank you.
52 Councilor Ryan.
53 Yes. Thank you, madam chair. First of all, natalie and jody, that was a great presentation. It's good to see you. And thank you for the testimony. That was compelling. Fascinating.
54 I got.
55 A little of my mic. All right. Thanks. My second one is adding the energy efficiency code. That was the new. That was the reason why everything got updated.
56 It it we already had an energy efficiency code. It was the 2021. Now we're the 2025. Upgraded model code ashrae from 2019. And now we're using the 2022 as a model code.
57 Okay. Sounds good. And then you made me want to ask this question. I'm curious now how many states have a statewide building code?
58 I do not know. Washington does not.
59 You said that most states don't, so I didn't.
60 Know that. I don't know for sure. I do know that it is. I don't know the timeline of when Oregon did that, but it was very purposeful. They the intent was that they took that control back so there would be consistency across the state years.
61 And for my much younger colleagues, that was like in the 70s. Yeah. So but I'm just curious how many have it. So thanks for letting me just know that's a thing.
62 We can look that up.
63 Yeah, sure.
64 Great presentation. And I'm supporting this.
65 Councilor Zimmerman.
66 Thanks. I really appreciated the graphic. Shall maybe or don't or whatever the terminology was, I appreciated that. It does get confusing always when I'm in a building code conversation, particularly in this city. My question is, will this make it easier or more difficult, cheaper or more expensive to do yesterday? What we're going to now do tomorrow with respect to this new energy code, I'm curious about your opinion about what was changed in 21 to 25, because we didn't really get into specifics about that.
67 Sure.
68 Yeah. No, it will be more expensive at the orig Oregon there had let's see, governor kate brown did an executive order in 2020 that said that new construction needs to be 60% reduced or energy usage from what the codes we were using in 2006. So we are on this extreme level of aiming toward energy efficiency in buildings. In the past few years, we've done all the easy bits, and now the state is going to further and further links to try to squeeze the energy efficiency out of buildings. But there's only so much you can do. So now they're adding other things. This particular code, and it is based on a model code. But this particular code adds something called credits. And so now new buildings are going to have to get some percent, some number of credits based on construction type and use that. And those will be like additional to what they were doing before. There's 33 credits to choose from, but all of them are going to cost more money.
69 I just appreciate the candor, frankly. Thank you. I think this is the challenge of building code as it relates to cost and safety. And I've, I have been the deputy city administrator, where the building official reported to me in another community at one point. I understand the struggle a bit in terms of how it comes forward. But this is this is refreshing. Just to hear such a clear eyed like this will cost more. And I think that that is a reasonable question for us to discuss is because on the one hand, I believe in a state building code which says I should expect a similar standard whether my home was built in reedsport or in Portland. So for fire life, seismic safety, I shouldn't have a lower, higher quality based on the town I live in. So that from that perspective, I think I understand, but I. I am also cautious about a Portland who can create its own building code.
70 Which we can't.
71 We would prefer it though, if the state right in the world of lawmaking, we could always add to the agenda of like we should get rid of the building, the state building code and see what Salem could do for us. But I would be cautious there because I'm not sure I have faith in us building a particularly affordable building code, either or manageable for that sake. Yeah.
72 And we don't I maybe I, I want to make sure that I was clear the building code itself to answer from an earlier that one by state statute is statewide. The implementation of the code is what we have taken on and want to do, but we don't get to change the rules.
73 I see. Okay, one thing that has been coming up recently, and I'm just curious how this relates to this larger question. So from that standpoint, I just also appreciate that this has been consent previously and that you chose to bring it here. And I just want to say thank you for that because.
74 We did not choose. To we were told.
75 To directed it someplace. At some place a choice was made, whatever, whomever that is I. But I appreciate that just a lot because I think this is helpful. But we here on this dais from people and there is things like the single staircase movement, so to speak. And I am just curious where, you know, we get lobbied for a lot of things that the city has no power to change. That's a daily occurrence. So in this case, is that type of code a state building code or something that the city has popped on top of the state code? That is something we can change.
76 We can use that as a perfect example. Like there are options, things that come up different scenarios. So with the single stair it is going to be adopted by the next state building code. That is going to be accepted in October and then enforced starting in January. So they've put a single stair option in, but they've put it in an appendix. And as an appendix, the city of Portland can decide whether or not to adopt it or not.
77 Interesting. Okay.
78 Yeah.
79 Thanks. This has been.
80 An an outside of that, just so that you can know that, that there are more options. The building official is allowed to approve alternates on a case by case basis that meet the intent of the code. So in theory, somebody could say, I would like to have a single stair building in. My floor plate is super small and I'm only going to go up four storeys. And here's how many great fire access roads I have around me. And as the building official, we can say, yes, this looks good for this site. We cannot change the code itself to say now Portland allows for story whatevers, but we can do it on a site by site basis. Based on the particulars.
81 You have some leverage and flexibility to off ramp from the code stays the same, but you always have. It sounds like you have some flexibility on. Yeah, with implying intent. Okay. Thanks that that's all my questions. I think we'll have larger conversations with some other items, but great to meet you all. Thank you.
82 Nice to meet you.
83 All right. So that is the end of the q last call for questions from my colleagues. Well then with that, I would like to entertain a motion to have the. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Go ahead, go ahead.
84 Since this was you mentioned that we have to do this. What happens if we don't? What would what would be the situation then?
85 I think if, if we had a building come in that we did not apply the new building code to. I'm pretty sure that the state building codes division would do some sort of corrective action on us as a delegated authority.
86 Thanks for.
87 All right. So I would like to entertain a motion to have the emergency ordinance document number 2025 211 be sent to full council with a recommendation that it be adopted.
88 So moved.
89 Moved by councilor Ryan, do I have a second second by councilor Zimmerman? Any comments? All right then. Clerk, please call the roll.
90 Brian I.
91 Morillo.
92 I.
93 Zimmerman I.
94 I Avalos.
95 I and the motion carries. Thank you. Thank you so much.
96 Thank you.
97 Have a good day. All right. Now let's head into our last item. Diego, please read it.
98 Three require the city administrator to assess and align existing plans in the development of a unified housing strategy for the city.
99 All right, so let me introduce this a little bit and then we'll get into it. So Portland has many different housing and housing related plans and strategies for homelessness, affordable housing, land use anti-displacement. But they don't coordinate with each other. So this resolution directing a unified housing strategy brings all these efforts together into one roadmap, so that progress on preventing homelessness also supports affordable housing and new development strengthens rather than displaces communities. This is not about creating new programs or bureaucracy, it is about aligning the excellent work that's already happening. We're building on years of community input and existing plans like our housing production strategy, our anti-displacement action plan, and by getting our own house in order, we can become stronger partners with the county, state and metro. We are looking to create a comprehensive approach with clear timelines and accountability measures that help people at all ages, stages and wages to find stable, permanent housing. Before I turn it over to my chief of staff, Jamie, who is going to walk us through the presentation explaining the resolution further, I would like to give my co-sponsor, vice chair Dunphy, an opportunity to make some remarks.
100 Thank you, madam chair. I'm really proud to be partnering with councilor Avalos on today's unified housing strategy resolution. Portland has no shortage of plans or policies on housing, and too often they live in seclusion and beautiful pdfs sitting on people's desktops, never to be considered again. This resolution is about building on the good ideas and the community input that we've already received, and knitting them together into a single, cohesive, coordinated strategy that can meet the meet the urgency of this moment. We need to stop reinventing the wheel with every new plan and program. It's about aligning our values with our actions, centering equity, accelerating production, and protecting the rights of every portlander to a safe, stable, and affordable home. Because housing is not just about the buildings, it's about the people, and it's about the choices we make as a city. So this resolution directs our city administrator to bring many of these moving parts of our housing work. As councilor Avalos said, from anti-displacement and tenant protections to land use and permitting and unify them in a single strategic direction. And we need to define success. If we're going to make progress, we need to hold. We need it to hold ourselves accountable, to prioritize public investments and to build trust with the community. And we need it now because too many. For too many portlanders, housing instability is an everyday reality. So I want to thank councilor Avalos for her leadership and our housing and planning bureaus for their collaboration on this process. This resolution is a down payment on a more coordinated, more responsive and more equitable housing future. So colleagues, let's get to work.
101 Heck yeah. Thanks. And with that, I would like to invite my chief of staff, Jamie evenstar, and she is going to explain the resolution. We've also got staff here in the room that will be able to answer any questions. Jamie and sophia.
102 Thank you is going to help run the show for me. Right. Good afternoon councilors. For the record, my name is Jamie evenstar. I'm chief of staff for councilor Avalos. We're going to get that pulled up. I am happy to walk you through this resolution that we developed in partnership with councilor Dunphy's office, as well as staff from the various bureaus of the community and economic development service area and Portland solutions. And this presentation is pretty short, so you'll have plenty of time for discussion and questions. And to that end, we have staff in the room available. Director Eric engstrom and brock knapp are all here to answer questions you may have after the presentation. So first I want to say pardon my amateur graphics. It is not my skill set. Hopefully what I've provided here is enough to inform, even if it won't impress. So as an overview, what you're seeing here is really just trying to explain that the unified housing strategy isn't about creating new plans. It's about pulling together all the existing city of Portland plans and strategies, identifying gaps, and moving forward in a coordinated way to make the work we are currently doing more efficient and effective at addressing housing needs and housing affordability. Next slide please. So this then enables us to be better partners with other jurisdictions once we have our own house, in order, so to speak, we can work toward a one housing plan that aligns our different roles and responsibilities under the same umbrella with a shared purpose and direction. But to be clear, the one housing plan is a longer term goal. The resolution you are discussing today sets us on that path by asking the city to first look internally and make sure we know exactly what direction we want to go in through a unified housing strategy. Next slide. Thank you. So I'm not going to read through all the language of the resolution. You've had it in front of you. Hopefully you've been able to read it. But I am going to describe the purpose of what was included. So the first seven clauses are intended to set some context for the continued housing crisis that we are in, basically setting the foundation for why we need to prioritize the work of being more effective and efficient. And as you can see here, we have been in a declared state of housing emergency for close to a decade now, and housing affordability has not improved. In fact, while great work in permitting and in permitting improvements are happening, our housing production continues to lag significantly behind the need. There is no other entity whose job it is to build housing in the city of Portland. Infrastructure and land use is the city's book of business, and there is significant need for the city to focus its attention in this direction. So that was the housing need.
103 It's a little slow.
104 Oh, there we go. Can you next slide please. Particularly because this lag contributes to intense affordability pressures for both renters and homeowners of all ages, stages and wages, but has disproportionate impact on black, native American, pacific islander latin. A senior single mother and foreign born households in Portland. So we not only don't have enough housing to get people permanently out of homelessness, but our lack of housing is also contributing to factors that lead to even more homelessness. Next slide please. The city in part responding to the crisis, but also as part of long range planning and growth building, has spent years creating plans and strategies in various departments of the city. They have worked intensely with community stakeholders, subject matter experts and jurisdictional partners on everything from comprehensive plans, climate plans, workforce development, housing production, homelessness prevention, fair housing and more. We do not lack for plans or strategies, and what we have listed here is not a comprehensive list, it's just a snapshot. Next slide please. These plans and strategies are often connected to or funded by federal, state and local resources, some granted to projects and programs, some restricted by federal or state regulations, and some more general. These resources are precious, competitive, and often fleeting, making it even more important that we become more effective and efficient at our book of business. Next slide please. And yet, despite all of the smart work that has been and is currently being done, it is largely uncoordinated with each other, without a unified strategy that would enable the city to stay focused on its unique roles and responsibilities, there is a new opportunity in this new form of government, where the different departments of the city can work together in ways they were unable to before. Therefore, the resolution requires the city administrator to assess these various plans and strategies and create alignment where it currently does not exist. The topics listed here identify the areas we are asking the city to identify any existing work that may contribute to a unified approach to solving for housing and housing affordability. Next slide. To be clear, we are asking that the deliverable is not yet another plan that sits on a shelf, but rather an implementation tool that reflects our city core values and aligns specific housing outcomes with specific housing needs. Next slide. We recognize clearly that this project to assess and align will not be without challenges. We anticipate the need to make future policy choices when different strategies that were developed by different departments for different purposes don't prioritize the same outcomes. We expect that while this work should be informed by our jurisdictional agreements, there is a lot of future alignment that still needs to be done, and we expect there to be hard conversations about how any of this gets funded once the strategy is determined. And finally, this committee is expected to be an active part in those conversations. We will be asking staff to come back to this committee for periodic review as the housing unified housing strategy is developed, so you can all inform the process and help work through the issues as they arise. All of this is expected to result in a first draft to this committee by December 1st of this year. And that's it. Short and sweet. Thank you.
105 Thank you so much. Jamie and sophia. And so let's see, before we move into public testimony, which I'm going to have us do first before we start talking, we've got four people signed up. I also wanted to and we'll open up the floor for any clarifying questions from committee members. I also want to offer an amendment. I'm going to put it on the floor now so that folks in the testimony line can respond to it. But essentially, I we realized after we submitted the resolution that I neglected to include a really important strategy called the aging and disability inclusive neighborhoods action plan, or the aden plan, which is another great body of work that has been done by the city. And it's an important part of the larger infrastructure and vision. So it was important that we add that in. So I want to make let's see, I'd like to move an amendment to include that plan in the list of city of Portland plans and strategies that are in the ninth whereas clause. Yeah that is a motion. Do I have a second?
106 Second. So moved.
107 Yes. Sorry. I was like I think I moved it. So yes I need a second. Thank you. Okay. So why don't we go ahead and put that on hold. If that's okay with everybody. We can talk about it and vote on it after. And then let's go ahead and open up public testimony. Yes.
108 I have the tiniest. Yes.
109 Go ahead.
110 I also have a very, very small amendment to offer. I printed out to pass it down, but basically in the first therefore, be it resolved, I just add homelessness prevention as well as part of the strategies to ensure that we're keeping people housed as well. But it's very small, two word change.
111 And I will go ahead and second that. And then we can pick both of those back up after testimony, if that's all right, with the group. All right, diego.
112 First up, laura galeno de lovato, followed by alain de la torre. Laura is joining us virtually.
113 Good afternoon, chair Avalos and vice chair Dunphy, thank you very much for the opportunity to provide some testimony and input on this unified housing strategy. My name is laura galeno de lovato. I use she her pronouns. I'm the executive director of northwest pilot project, and very quickly we provide a housing navigation placement and stabilization assistance to very low income older adults in Multnomah county. I really, really appreciate the creation and intent of this plan and support its goals and applaud all of you for moving this forward. At a time when both the city and county are facing financial shortfalls and the risk of more federal funding cuts feels all too real. Coordination on policy and service delivery for homelessness and housing services could not be more critical. While this plan is about the city of Portland and aligning its housing related bureaus and its commitments to housing production and older adults, I'll say and the rest of the community members, the plan recognizes, I think, very smartly, that the city can't go it alone. The housing plan will position the city to better coordinate with Multnomah county, specifically through the homeless response action plan, and work throughout the metro region, where one of our biggest significant funding sources, the supportive housing services measure tax, is a key part of our achieving our housing and homeless service goals. The plan also has the potential to be a tool for ensuring that the city and county are not duplicating services or creating parallel service systems that use valuable resources. Perhaps most critically, this plan represents a real opportunity to align the city's housing and homeless services work as a part of a regional approach to this problem. Our clients come to us when they're in crisis. Rent has increased. They've gotten an eviction notice, they've experienced domestic violence and aren't safe. Their home is their car and it's been towed. Loss of rent assistance, a medical crisis, etc. They are not thinking about the geographic and political boundaries that dictate so much of our housing and homeless service, access and delivery. A unified housing strategy should make it easier for a vulnerable community members to access services and secure housing when and where they need it. I'll add one more piece that I urge this committee and city council as a whole, to consider and to consider, including specifically in the resolution, the work that homeless and housing service providers do every day to actually bring resources and service to the people experiencing homelessness or in a housing crisis, is the way that housing policy becomes a reality. Housing and service providers are skilled and experienced workforce, and are both a resource to and partners with the city in this work. With providers own voice at regularly at the table. The unified housing strategy will be much more effective in meeting its goals. Thank you.
114 Thank you laura. Next up alan.
115 Chair Avalos, vice chair, vice chair and members of the committee. My name is alan de la torre. Pardon me. All right. My name is alan de la torre. I'm a gerontologist who's been working on aging policy with the city for about 20 years now. So I've got some experience. I've been an author of plans that sit on the shelf, and I'm very excited about actually helping to move move some things forward. I'm a policy advocate at northwest pilot project, although my time with that organization ends at the end of this week. I'm an adjunct faculty member at Portland state university, in urban studies and planning and in gerontology certificate program, and I'm a coordinator of portland's age-friendly initiative that has almost 16 years of work under our belt here in the city of Portland. I want to talk first about age friendly Portland. Many organizations that comprise the aging network, this loose set of actors, organizations that work on older adult issues applaud the fact that last last week you celebrated older Americans month. We've got lots of work to continue to make Portland a great place to grow up and grow old. Second, portland's age friendly efforts are critical. Not only our cities growing older, but because older adults and people with disabilities and caregivers are struggling to find housing in our city, it's important to highlight that the committee and portland's age friendly initiative has two plans that have been passed and accepted throughout the city. The first is the action plan for an age friendly Portland that was approved in 2013. It's on the list of the housing production strategies plans to consider in the work of the housing production strategy, and also the plan that chair Avalos had mentioned earlier, the age and disability inclusive neighborhoods plan. I want to throw a note out here because it was missed during last week's kind of celebration that this work was championed by the late commissioner Nick fish, and we owe a lot to him because he was a leader in that area. This work is continued through institutional homes, Portland state university, the bureau of planning and sustainability, and now where we are, which is kind of sitting as free agents outside of the city infrastructure, but still wanting to do work to move the city forward. I help to coordinate the executive committee for an age friendly Portland. This includes Portland state's institute on aging, Multnomah county's aging, disability and veteran services, aarp Oregon, and members of the community we continue to meet, even though there's not a wide age friendly initiative and will continue to meet to keep moving this forward. In my last kind of 40s, I just want to highlight a couple of pieces of work that needs to be considered as we move forward with our housing production strategy and the one housing plan. First, that I want to applaud the bureau of planning and sustainability for allowing me to download some of the work I did and continue moving that forward in the housing production strategy. There's a wealth of knowledge that exists in documents. We continue to work from strategy f of the housing production strategy, specifically details promoting age and disability friendly housing. That implementation is scheduled to start in 2027, and we need to start thinking about that now. And the final piece is I want to say is that there are multiple pieces within the one housing plan, everything from engaging older adults to thinking about 15 minute communities that work for older adults, people with disabilities. And I'll continue this in my last kind of two sentences and caregivers. And then we don't know what our accessible housing stock is in the city of Portland. We know it's not enough to meet our current needs, but it's something we need to consider working. While I would have a magic wand that would make all of our housing inclusive, we understand that we operate within the confines of our bureau. Sorry, the building code division and the work that's happening at the local level. I want to be a part of the work that's happening and have been for 20 years, and look forward to continuing to work with you moving forward.
116 Thank you. Thank you alan.
117 Next up.
118 Steven furnish, followed by arlen Smith.
119 How are you today? My name is Steve furnish. I am the executive director for veterans three, which is a nonprofit organization that I've been trying to put together since 2022. It breaks my heart every time I drive down the streets and see veterans that are spanging for money and not being taken care of. It's a tragedy. And I think we should do something about that. I know that you guys are doing what you can. I put together a program that I think is really a good program, and it includes providing housing, housing. I'm sorry I haven't done this before. So it's kind of new to me, but. I've been trying to work on a piece of city surplus property down on swan island to get that property and start building housing on that. I've already sat down with the city planner, and we can do a lot of things we want to do. My plan is to not only provide housing, getting them out of homelessness, which is what this committee is about, because homelessness is more than just physical, but also to provide them with a means to be able to work, because on each of my properties or our communities that we want to put together, like down on swan island, we would have a boat ramp. We'd be able to provide income from boat moorage and boat. Using the ramp, we can put in a food cart pod down there, which on swan island would be an awesome place to put one because you've got all those workers there. But the plan is to not get the money from the state, or the city, or the county or any of that federally. But to create our own way of taking care of the community. And that, in turn, would help them to be able to get to work and start being a part of the community in a in a way that they're working and contributing to security or groundskeeping or any of those type of things. It would be a gated community. So anybody that comes on the property would have to be vetted to come in, because I'm sure you all know that homelessness is a whole different kind of world out there, and sometimes it has its bad things that come in. But the point is, is I'm hoping that I can get some support from you guys as well. I know it's a new idea. It's not something you're trying to go with what you already have. But I think the biggest thing that we have to really consider is the small things that prevents homelessness from being being solved. It's not the big things that happen. It's all those little tiny things that prevent people from even wanting help or getting help. So hopefully I can be of service to you as well and working with you all. Thank you. I'd really like to be able to do that.
120 Thank you so much for your testimony and I would like to hear more. So if my office could, we could follow up with my office. That'd be great.
121 Perfect. Thank you.
122 Thank you. And we have one more testifier. Yes.
123 I'm back.
124 All right.
125 Come on up.
126 I make a arlen Smith again. I make a fair amount of money buying stuff from the government and quite frequently selling it back to the government because they don't know what they have or what to do with it. The swan island boat ramp that mr. Furnish was talking about is an example of that. It's been closed for almost five years out there, but the locals still go out there and use it because that's what they've done for 50 years. It's a multi-generational park. Homeless have moved in, been evicted, moved back in, been evicted. It's a resource that the city needs to put to better use. And the city needs to partner with private people on this, and more particularly, probably a coalition of non-profits, local churches, the people who live there. Who drive by the place every day. The swan island boat ramp is out in the industrial park. There's no restaurants. There are tens of thousands of people who work out there, and they go to the 7-eleven, the one 7-eleven out there to eat. It's a good place for food carts, and that would be an opportunity to put people to work, to have an income. And it's best managed by people who live in the neighborhood. There's a handful of homeless people out there now. They're actually taking care of things out there. There were some problems on the other side of the tracks over there, and a couple of weeks ago there was some, shall we call them evictions? That type of publicity isn't good for the city, but you got to figure out the line. Are we helping somebody be homeless or helping them not be homeless? Anyway, I'm available to help in any way that I can. And I've said enough.
127 Thank you so much for your testimony. Okay, that concludes public testimony. So let me recap. We've got two amendments that we should deal with here in a moment. And then, of course, open discussion. I don't see anyone in the queue yet, so I'll just start by priming it up to say, you know, first, thank you again to all of the bureaus that we've been working with over the last few months. I think part of what I believed was my role as chair of this committee was to start to just better understand the systems and how they're communicating with each other, and it was just very clear from the get that they weren't in the way that, you know, would help us as policymakers make better decisions, as we have plenty of big issues that we have to tackle as a city. And so in the discussion with the bureaus, this idea came about of like, how do we really get everyone on the same page? How do we enter this new form of government that is designed to break down these silos and start to actually do that, because we know it's going to take active work to break those silos, and then also just trying to bring some energy around, you know, reviving some of the good work that has happened so that we that doesn't get lost because we are a new government, we have a whole bunch of new people here. And so I think there's also a bit of like institutional memory that is important part of this process to bring everybody up to speed on where we've been so that we have a clear way forward. Still not seeing folks in the queue. Is there any early discussion or. No? Well, why don't we move on some of these amendments and get those out of the way. So, so oh, okay. Sorry. So then let's we'll go ahead and kick back up with my amendment which again was hold on, let me reread it. All right. So the amendment is just to include in the ninth whereas clause in the list of different strategy documents adding the aging and disability inclusive inclusive neighborhoods action plan or aden plan. I received a second on that. Any discussion on that amendment? Okay then diego, please call the roll.
128 Ryan I.
129 Morillo I just wanted to give some flowers to alan because he has done immense and great work for the past so many years at the city that has gone largely unimplemented. And I really support this amendment I.
130 Zimmerman. I Dunphy. I abalos. I with five ayes. The amendment is accepted.
131 Great. And then let's move on to the second amendment, which is from councilor Morillo to add into the first into the first, be it resolved clause, adding homelessness prevention in the list of in the list. I'm sorry, I don't know how to say it in the list. Any discussion about this amendment? Okay then diego, please call the roll.
132 Ryan I Morillo. I Zimmerman. I Dunphy. I Avalos. I with five ayes. The amendment is accepted.
133 All right. So now we're back into the main amendment or I'm sorry, the main resolution. Both of these amendments are now included. Any discussion here? No. Okay. Well that's fine. Oh, there you are. Okay. Go ahead, counselor Ryan.
134 Thank you. Thank you both, councilor Avalos and Dunphy, for keeping housing production and housing continuum at the top of mind as we desperately, obviously all want more housing supply. And I really like the efficiency attempts of really linking in all of the public sector players. What was the feedback like from members of the building and development community on this idea when you met with them?
135 I don't know that we met with the building and development community. This was very much internal. So this strategy is for the bureaus to get aligned on that strategy.
136 So as an internal cat, herding is what this is.
137 A big part of it, yes. But with the goal that it will externally show our positions that will be able to go to our partners with this information and just have a good a new starting place is the goal.
138 Well, the reason I bring that up is because the reality is that unless there's a bond, there's no money for there to be much housing built. So the people who build housing are builders and investors, and it will be very necessary that their voice is a part of this system, that that you're trying to bring more efficiency to. So I don't know if it needs to be an amendment that that would happen before this comes back, but it would feel very incomplete without their engagement.
139 Well, I can speak a little bit to that. And then maybe. Do you want to speak to that councilor Dunphy okay, how about you take it?
140 Sure. I can say that I have been sharing this with as many folks that I have as I can. The thing I often hear from developers saying, as you were saying, there's no money for the city to be building these things. What I keep hearing is, what is the plan developers saying? Portland likes to talk, Portland likes to plan. But what is the plan? I think having a single place that is not creating new information right now, being able to understand, like what have we already done and point back to and say that is the plan gives us a starting point for that conversation to be able to go back and say, I actually disagree with this part. I actually think that this is a gap, and I think that we should, you know, times have changed since, I don't know, whatever community neighborhood association plan from the 80s was implemented. Right? It's so useless the way it is right now that we have wasted not only time on these plans that don't ever go anywhere, but also just the goodwill from the community that we've received in public input and through. I mean, you know, I still have battle scars from the comprehensive plan, all of these different community level or different district level plans. I think being able to just simply consolidate right now and then use that as a starting point for what comes next is really important. And every developer and every group that I've talked to has been very enthusiastic about just understanding how, again, how do we define success. So that is my feedback. It hasn't been an intentional or coordinated way, but I have spent a lot of time in meetings with folks.
141 And I'll just add one last thing to say to point out in we talked a lot about this when we were writing the be it further resolved clauses, and it's the hold on one, two, three, four, five, six the sixth be it resolved clause that says that this unified housing strategy identifies places where different plans have opposing directives and lists potential policy choices to present to community and council so that be it resolved clause is speaking to what that next step will look like. Right? So the goal is for us to assess what are the opportunities and gaps, and then talk with all of our partners. That will of course include developers include the nonprofits include our intergovernmental partners because we know that once we do this sweeping look at all of our plans that there's going to there's going to need to be new work that we create from that. And so this is just that first step towards bringing everybody back together and saying, okay, here's what we've assessed and here's where we need to go. Let's talk about how we do that together. So that's kind of what that is speaking to. And that's why that work that you're describing hasn't been done yet, because the goal is to get this done first.
142 I'm I'm personally just confused still that we wouldn't take their voice into the engagement process while we're working on this plan, because in fact, they'll be the partners that we must engage with. Because they get us the building results that we need. That community has been screaming that we're not doing enough building for about two decades.
143 Yeah. I'm not I don't I'm trying to understand where you're where I'm not being clear. I think.
144 This is doing permit reform. We couldn't do permit reform work and make improvements without listening to the people who actually have decades and decades of frustration using the permitting system. I think you would find a lot of the builders and developers would say they have that same challenge and frustration working with the government entities, which is one reason why we're not building enough units over time.
145 Chair, can I respond?
146 Oh, so I just continue to be confused.
147 Okay. Yeah. Do you want to.
148 Yeah. I think this makes sense to me as like an overarching guidance, which is sort of what resolutions are, right? This isn't an ordinance directing a legal change. And I think that councilor Avalos, be it further resolved that she read out, indicates that we are going to be meeting with community partners in the more formal development of this strategy. It says, list potential policy choices to present to a community and council. And so to me, it indicates that business and developers and other community members are going to be a part of this process. This is a I, I don't know why I'm talking about pirates so much this week. This is like the pirate code guidelines, you know, but it's not the official law change that we're doing, if that's a helpful.
149 I realize it's a resolution, not an ordinance. And it and it's a plan to plan.
150 So it's actually a consolidation of all the plans that we've already made. So I think that's where maybe we're we're not we're getting stuck because I think what you're describing as far as like the engagement process that you said happened with one of the other plans you mentioned. Correct. All of these plans have done all of that. Right? And now they're just sitting collecting dust as pdfs. So the goal is to take all of that, all of the work that came with that, including all the engagement work that came with it, and then just put it all together in one place and say, okay, let's map things out, let's see where they align, and then figure out where are the areas that we need to get more voices. We need to bring in more people. So it's not so I think that's partly what I'm saying is that this is really a unification of existing things, not necessarily making a new plan. Not yet. Right. This is the first step for us to talk.
151 Amongst yourselves, government entities, get your alignment and your efficiency together.
152 In the city.
153 And then you can speak to those who actually do the building that get us the numbers that we need in terms of housing units.
154 I mean, I don't know that it's like a this. And then I think it's happening in, in conjunction. But I think that's part of what I'm going to be working with the bureaus on, is figuring out what's the best strategy. Again, my goal here is like, let's not recreate the wheel and let's assess what we already have. And that's the main goal of this resolution. But there are going to be parts where we're going to need to develop new things. And we'll that's what we'll be talking about. And that's what I'm going to be bringing to this committee in particular, so that we can do that. Because I would love to be able to have this conversation and say, okay, who are we missing? Let's make a list of the partners that we feel need to be a part of this, and then we can do that. So that's my goal in the next few months, as bureau staff are kind of doing the bureaucratic like, let's look at all of our assessments kind of thing that we're having. The more high level, who are we engaging? What's the vision? What's the north star kind of conversation? So we're doing them kind of in parallel.
155 Okay.
156 Councilor Zimmerman.
157 Thanks. I think this is come a long way since we first saw it, and I appreciate that. Chair. I think it's becoming more clear to me in terms of. The direction to the city administrator for putting resources around this I and so I just want to appreciate that. I got a couple of questions. The I want to note the December 1st timeline and just say thank you for including that. I think that there's got to be deadlines on stuff. And that gets me to my next question is, in a world where a government who talks about plans, about planning to them plan, I'm a little cautious, right, in that kind of language. And so I want to give you an opportunity to either highlight or or predict, I guess, what kind of action steps you think might come out of this. Because I think if there are action steps involved, that will make me feel better about versus just a. An exercise, I guess is what I'm trying, because I'm coming from that urgency of like, what does it take to get units up today? Right. That's kind of what I'm trying to think of. Any anything you want to highlight there.
158 Yeah. Okay. I think the way we've been approaching it when we've been talking about the bones of the unified strategy, we have been discussing, you know, one again, looking at everything, doing a gaps assessment, figuring out what, what have we communicated with the community. Because the other thing too is like, as we also know, community often gets frustrated with us when we keep going back to them over and over again. They're like, we've already told you this, why do you keep asking us? So that's a big part of it too, is we're trying to avoid some of that. And then ultimately, you know, all of these different strategies, they all have different outcomes or different implementations, but they don't talk to each other. And so my goal is that they would all be like, okay, with all of these plans or strategies, what is our city's outcomes that are going to include things around production about homelessness prevention, the entire spectrum? Right. And so I know it. I totally am with you and hear you. I'm not trying to create more pdfs that sit unread. I don't think any of us want that, but this just felt like a really important step to actually read all of those pdfs and feel like we know what's in them. And again, that institutional memory building for us. And because, you know, again, I'm new here, right? Like, I don't know what's been happening over the last couple of years. And so this is, you know, I think also to the benefit of our entire council to have access to a consolidated look at our efforts, and then hopefully then we can start making that path forward. So that's ultimately what December 1st, that that deadline is for is to be like by then. You need to be do all this cleanup work so that we can look at that and then start planning our next year, you know.
Procedural episode · turns 159–167
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159 Yeah. Thank you a couple more. I'm going to use today's. Was it an ordinance that we did regarding the building code. Right. Is a perfect example in my mind where. There can be competing things within our cod. And I think one of the things I look forward to in this alignment strategy is a roadmap, eventually from the city administrator that we could adopt to tell us wherever these either time sucking or money sucking aspirational things exist, and whether or not we really want to keep those. I think this is getting toward that. And there are a number of things that over the last two decades, the city has adopted that have made it more difficult to build housing in this city. One of the. What I'm not sure about yet is even if we were aligned to align all of that, if it would actually help us get any faster because we might have the opportunity to say, here are the things. And then the council still says, yep, we agree with all that. We wanted it to have to do this. We wanted it to have to do that. And that therefore has cost and timeline or or, you know, prohibitive, prohibitive code rules. So. I think as we go through this and the work that the city administrator does, this committee is probably positioned to be aggressive on that work. And I say that from a perspective of bureaucratic work will reflect the flavor they think council wants to hear. And I think if we set a tone about. The seriousness in which we want to develop, I think we could get a pretty interesting alignment here. But I think that I think that rests with this committee and how we how we bring forward, how we allow perspectives to come in. And if we set a goal that at the end of the day, more units is the overarching goal, because that reduces the squeeze that exists in our system. So I'm just kind of I'm thinking out loud a little bit. Chair, I wanted to go back to the third slide, and this is the one with the wonderful art by your chief of staff for one housing, one housing plan, and it has the umbrella. And I'm just curious, similar to councilor Ryan's question about other stakeholders who build homes, you've placed these other government entities under this. We heard on Friday from one of the county commissioners a desire to hear about this resolution. What have the conversations that metro county home forward and city of Gresham and what were your thoughts on some of those where we do or don't have an overlap? I'm just curious how those went.
160 Yeah, those were definitely very preliminary because what I communicated to them was essentially we're getting our house in order. Like I really was like I because they were like, oh, are we getting in on it? I'm like, you will let us cook for a minute so that we can get kind of aligned, and then hopefully we can be more prepared to go into those conversations. So that's what I signaled to them. And then one thing I wanted to note, because you asked me just like the like the barriers in code, I think that's another big thing that I heard when I was talking with dca oliveira in these meetings around, like, where's the low hanging fruit? Where are the like code things? Where are the things that like just didn't get momentum at council or they just didn't have capacity, frankly, to take on that? We can bring in in bulk and start to fix that will help make way for the other big changes we want to do. So they and part of this too, that I think is important is nothing that we're doing here with this resolution or with any of that is things that these bureau staff aren't already doing. It's more so just giving them a clear voice from the council. And I'm really trying to position our committee as being the voice for the city of like, where we want to go and how we're setting these policies and then bringing forward kind of the, you know, the, the code barriers that we need to get through. So I'm hoping we can do some of that in the year, in this coming year, even ahead of this passing or being produced.
161 Okay. I appreciate that a lot. I think, you know, I've said I am I am open to the conversation that cuts us down to the studs. If it's not fire life or seismic safety, I think the reason it should be included in a requirement for development should have to be made again, because there's been a lot over 20 years that has been adopted, but I I'm not sure I still share those values when it comes to a housing emergency. And I think about this strategy as potentially helping us do that. It may mean we have some subjectively less attractive buildings built. It may mean that we have some subjectively less amenity buildings built. If it means there are less people who are putting 50% of their income toward their rent or their mortgage. I'm okay with ugly buildings if it means that buildings go up more quickly and can be more affordable, I'm okay with that. And so I think this is an important give and take point that is really hard to have when they're disparate plans sitting on people's different desktops, growing mold as we've discussed. So I just want to say thanks for that. And then lastly, I think one of the saddest things in this work that we come across is the struggle of a senior to age in place. But I want to go even further. I think aging in place kind of sounds like a potted plant. I think thriving in the community and keeping connection is important, and our town is hard to do that, and it's getting a lot harder to do that. And so thanks for noting that that amendment that was needed, that wisdom and kind of that generational living that places like bridge meadows and others have have furthered, I think is just an important part of our community. And I know in my district there are a lot of a lot of my constituents are very concerned about will I be able to stay in Portland and age in this home that I have? I'm going to have to go through accessibility needs. I'm going to have to change it. I know my own family. We've put in ramps in various members homes for accessibility, and sometimes you do that on the back of a napkin without ever talking to the city. And other times the city comes out and squashes you for doing that stuff. And I think we've got to be reasonable about what a family needs to do to take care of their, their people. And I think this helps that a lot. So thanks a lot.
162 Councilor Dunphy.
163 Yeah, I just want to build off of a lot of the things that councilor Zimmerman just said. You know, we the old form of our government, the silos, were the point. It was intentional. It wasn't an accident. And I am already running into meetings with city staff in which they sort of give, you know, I'll ask a question about, well, how does PBOT inform this? How does the housing bureau inform this? And they sort of will laugh and say, yeah, well, you know, these things don't talk to each other. I think that this is a template for what the future of our city council and this new form of government should be thinking about. And each of the committees should be thinking about, because housing and homelessness responses have been so piecemeal, and they have been so reactive in a lot of ways, and they have been sometimes driven by elected officials agendas that are elected officials who are no longer here. And I think that, you know, there has been a lot of good work that has gone on in the city over the last two years to reduce siloing, but a lot of it was mostly just changing people's letterhead and not necessarily even where they sit or who they report to, and certainly not the strategic work that they want. And so I have heard from staff saying, please help us get to this place. And I think that this is a place this is a good stop, a good opportunity for us to be able to call the question on some of that work that is saying, well, actually, yeah, back in the 80s, it made sense for us to recommend this, but no one has ever had the opportunity or capacity to go back and rethink about that. And I also really want this to be an opportunity for us to think about how we can do interesting new things. You're talking about seniors aging in place, and I've been thinking about what do we do about all these vacant storefronts, right. And, well, a lot of seniors are looking for single room apartments without without any stairs to walk up to. Maybe there's an opportunity, but until we pull all these different parts together and all the players in this into one place, we can't even really have that conversation and get to a position of talking about affordability, because there's always a surprise from environmental services or something you didn't know about that the police need you to. And like, it's just so complicated. And the more complicated we do, we make the system, the more expensive it is. And this seems like a really good way to get to that first step. The other thing I really just want to do is I want to reject the, the, the previous way that the city council or that the city did business where we were, the city that plans and so many community members have burned out on our community involvement processes, where they spend six months giving information to a great plan and then nothing ever comes of it. And then when we come back and ask them to come again, we don't they don't want to do anything with it. I think this is a big step in building trust with our community, with our staff, and with the development community that we are serious about figuring out how do we get from here to there, but we haven't even defined where we're going yet. So this is I'm very excited about this, and I hope other committees and committee chairs are looking at doing something similar. So.
164 Okay, well, I don't see anyone else in the queue. So with that then please call the roll.
165 Ryan.
166 Yeah, I do appreciate all that's gone into this and it's evolved and I appreciate that. I appreciate the amendments today. I think it makes it better. I have some misgivings and I stated them earlier with some lack of engagement in this phase. I'll have to trust and be looking for that as it evolves. And with that, I vote.
167 I Morillo.
168 Thank you guys for putting this plan together. I also really like how it's evolved, and I think it's great that we are taking all of the plans that have been sitting in a dusty box for the past few decades, sometimes, and actually using them and using all the expertise and community testimony that has been gathered so far so that we can make the necessary changes today. So thank you both for putting this together, I though I.
169 Zimmerman.
170 Wait, I'm so sorry I didn't actually get a motion in a second.
171 I don't think for an item you have to.
172 Oh.
173 I think it might have been called earlier for.
174 Public for an item I don't.
175 Well, because we ended testimony and then it just doesn't it just move into it.
176 Or a motion on the amended resolution.
177 Oh.
178 So moved.
179 I'm sorry.
180 I missed a step. Okay.
181 We're with you, chair.
182 I think I'm up, so. Hey, I I'm going to support this chair. I think you should be aggressive in letting this committee. Expect action steps. And so I think we've got a lot of work to do internally, and we've got a lot of folks externally to talk to. But let's make sure that this helps us be more action oriented I vote I.
183 Dunphy.
184 I.
185 Avalos I.
186 With five votes. The resolution is referred to full city council as amended with the recommendation it be confirmed.
187 Thank you colleagues. That is the end of our agenda. I will just say, like I said moments ago, that it is my intention over the course of june's meetings for us to really dig into some of this and talk more big picture so that we can guide the staff as they start to begin this plan. So with that, I will close the meeting at 1:37 p.m. Look at us. Saving time.