The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-02-11
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (18,558 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 February 11 (per transcript, stated as Tuesday, February 11th) at 12 p.m., with roll call confirming attendance of the committee's members. After a statement of conduct was read, the session focused on committee logistics and scope of work rather than substantive policy votes. Discussion covered opening reflections on why members joined the committee, touching on themes including shelter models, housing supply, renter protections, and the interconnection of homelessness and housing policy. Topics addressed included potential subcommittee or task force structures, the pace and frequency of future meetings, intergovernmental agreements with the county, budget season timing, and desired briefings on subjects such as permitting, zoning, tariffs' impact on construction costs, the intergovernmental agreement, renter rights, and community-wide performance metrics. Expectations for committee leadership, communication practices, and agenda-setting processes were also discussed, including questions about public meetings law and how policy proposals should be introduced. One member of the public, identified as a housing credit certified professional, testified regarding concerns about rental assistance distribution, eviction proceedings, and alleged conflicts with fair housing law, requesting further involvement in committee discussions. The meeting adjourned at 1:43 p.m. No formal votes were referenced in this session.
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.
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7 Closed captioning.
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10 All right. Good afternoon. I am calling the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee to order on Tuesday, February 11th at 12 p.m. Clerk, can you please call the roll?
11 Dunphy.
12 Here.
13 Ryan. Here. Morillo. Here. Zimmerman. Here. Avalos.
14 Here. And then. Claire, can you please read the statement of conduct for council committee meetings?
15 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 governance 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, please state your name for the record. Your address is not necessary. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent and virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
16 All right. Thank you claire. So today we are going to be discussing our scope of work as a committee and any logistics. We're also going to take a little bit of time to hear from members of the public about their hopes and thoughts on issues we might consider. I understand that we only have one person currently signed up, so I might look at the timing of our agenda and flow and see when might be the best. If we can add more time to our discussion, since we only have one person signed up and that won't take 30 minutes. With that, I will have rebecca, our clerk. Can you please read the item.
17 Committee? Logistics and scope of work.
18 All right, so we've got about 90 minutes total for this discussion. I want to note that we've got many of our partners in the audience. And don't feel stressed that I didn't invite you to do a briefing on the first day. We will trust me. We will have you here to talk with us soon. But today we just kind of wanted to focus big picture on vision and values and just talk through priorities, and then also talk through leadership of the committee and how we want to manage our work. So that is the goal for today for my fellow council members. Claire is going to be helping us out today with just taking notes while you all are talking, so that I can focus on facilitating, but just know that I'm documenting what everyone is saying and that my hope is to gather all that information over the next two weeks and bring it back to us to see kind of where we are all landing. So that's the goal of today's meeting. Are we all on the same page on that front? Okay, I do have a couple of remarks I wanted to make to just kind of set the tone before we enter this discussion. You know, we've got a really strong group here of council members that are bringing various perspectives to this work. And we might be 100 million in debt as a city, but we are certainly wealthy in knowledge on this commission here. Experienced civic servants and community partners as well, that are going to be working with us in this committee to tackle this and produce real solutions and real results for portlanders while we are tackling the city's number one issue, I think it's important to recognize the distinct differences and shared goals of addressing both homelessness and housing in our city, and that, I think, will unfold in some of the discussion we'll have today. But we had received some feedback from the public and fears that the issue was too big for our committee. I agree that it is a big issue and there's a lot in the scope, but I'm hoping that we can parse out our work in a way that will make sense and will make sure that both of those giant areas have the required discussion and attention that they deserve. I think overall, if we are not prepared to strengthen the entire continuum of shelter to housing, then I don't believe we're prepared to succeed. So I think it's really important for us to understand that as we start parsing out the work in its different issue areas, I also expect that it will take us some time to understand the landscape, including our relationships with other government agencies and various funding opportunities to support our work. So I am asking the public to be patient. I know that this is something that folks really want to get the ball rolling, and we definitely plan to, but I'm going to spend some time helping us set up a strong foundation for our committee that will help us tackle this work with both the urgency and intention that I believe it deserves. Lastly, I just want to share my overall values and theory of change for leading this committee. And then I'm going to invite my vice chair, Dunphy, here, councilor Dunphy, to add some remarks as well. I think overall, my goal as the chair is to be communicative, transparent and collaborative. For me, communicative means avoiding miscommunication by providing thorough details wherever possible, resolving any conflicts we might have on policy with conversation, and explaining our process for how we move the work forward so that everyone has the same expectations about how our agenda is moving. Transparent, to me, means I don't like surprises just as much as you all don't. So it's a high priority to ensure that all committee members have the utmost information as soon as possible, so that you feel you have what you need to be able to make good decisions. About what about our work. And I will also do my best to explain my own decision making process and welcome your feedback. And lastly, collaborative. You are all duly elected leaders who have the right to move an agenda for the constituents that you represent. Period. Therefore, I want everyone on our committee to feel empowered to bring ideas to the table. I will do my best to balance my responsibility to manage the flow of the agenda in a strategic way, with my desire to ensure that every committee member and council member, for that matter, has an opportunity to move their ideas forward. Being collaborative to me also means that I will be creating opportunities for community advocates to participate in the process of developing ideas and creating solutions together. And you can stay tuned as I plan to introduce some ideas for how I believe we can do that. So those are kind of my values and we'll be talking. One of the questions later is around expectations of committee leadership. But with that, I wanted to turn to vice chair councilor Dunphy here to add some opening remarks.
19 Well, thank you, madam chair. I'm truly honored to be doing this work. Housing and homelessness are the defining challenges of our time, but they've also been the defining challenges of my career. And I started working on housing policy over 15 years ago, working for u.s. Senator jeff merkley. This council is serious and up to the task of meeting the challenge of the day, but we are entering with fewer tools in our toolbox than we had even last year. There's no more bond money, and we are not going to have any tif dollars to invest for the next five years. We have a lot of big questions that we need to do, and a lot of questions to ask about who who is on first base with and when and where, the role of the city, the role of the county, the role of metro in trying to tackle these major challenges. I'm really interested in diving deep on systems change. I really want to understand more about how we can move the ball with regard to permitting, with regard to zoning, with regard to our incentive structures, with regard to financing. More than anything, I look forward to bringing urgency to this work, to bring creativity and finding ways of flexibility to try and meet the needs of our community. And more than anything, I'm excited to finally center east Portland in our response to both housing and homelessness, so I'm excited to get to work. Thank you for the opportunity.
20 Thank you, vice chair Dunphy. So now I will start facilitating our discussion. And the goal of the first question is to also give the rest of the committee members some space to make any opening remarks and thoughts on how they would like to go about this process. But let me read to you the exact question that I have written for us to discuss. Why did you want to be on this committee? What are your personal goals for this committee? Any you know, if you want to put forward any policy ideas that you're eager to accomplish, that we should all just have a heads up now. And I do not expect that you have that. But I wanted to give you space if you did, and just in general, to share your overall vision for the committee and how you plan to lead on it. So like I said, claire is going to help us out with some notes. And this is just a facilitated dialog. We'll do what we normally do, which is I think we'll just do hands that way. It doesn't have to go in a specific order every time, but I am looking for everyone, if possible, to be commenting on each discussion area. So with that, do you want to kick us off? Councilor Zimmerman?
21 I was kind of hoping you could, since you have some prepared questions, I can either just go on or knowing a sense of where you're going, because I don't know what your prepared questions are and if I'm going to be asked the same thing, I'm going to say, now, I just I'm kind of curious where we're going with this conversation because I've made a list, but these are new and I haven't heard of these questions before. So what other topics are we talking about today from your facilitation?
22 Got it. Okay, so the questions that I have, how about I read all of them. Does that sound like a good first step. All right. So that first one that I just mentioned, the next one is going to be about what you believe. We need to build a strong foundation for our committee including basic systems and infrastructure you recommend, but also what briefings that we want to get on the docket right away. The following question is around how we should prioritize our work. What do you think we should be spending the first few weeks focusing on? How can we parse out the work by issue area? Should we have subcommittees? If so, how should they be structured? So that question is just around overall prioritization of the work. Then I have that question I mentioned about expectations of the chair and vice chair, what you're looking for in committee leadership. And then lastly, I was going to have us given the information and context from our earlier discussion for us to tackle, maybe rewriting the mission of the committee. We've got kind of the regular committee description that was passed in the ordinance, but I want us to spend some time just thinking largely about what the vision and mission of our committee is. So those are the overall questions. Let me drop something in an email for you guys so that I can you can have this in front of you on your screen. I'll do that in a moment. But if does that sound like a good first step?
23 Really helpful.
24 Thank you. Do you want to kick us off?
25 Yeah, I can kick off. In terms of the first question why I want to be on this committee, I think that in the mayor asked me to serve as his appointee on the steering and oversight committee with the homeless response system that we have in collaboration with the county. I think it's important that that person be on this committee. I also and one of my interests in being on that, and as well as on this, is ensuring that we continue to put shelter as a priority. I have worked too long in this community and lived way too long in this community, where certain aspects of our government have told us that shelter was not part of the solution, and I just fundamentally disagree with that. And I get back to a couple of years ago, the mayor's office figured out that the waiting list for an affordable unit in our community was 3 to 7 and a half years. And so tell me, what is the difference between or what is the solution between the street and that? And for me, that's shelter. And I think we fought really hard as a community to change the paradigm in terms of that. And I want to keep us connected to those. I think that people like at the time, commissioner Ryan and others have introduced a variety of different types of shelter. And I think that that has served us well because we no longer fall into the category of a shelter doesn't work for this person because we've only created one type. We've now created so many types that I am less apt to the service resistant idea anymore, and more about which one is going to work for the right person. So I want to center that more than anything. And in my first meeting at the county already, they had backed off by over 100 beds from the goals that they had set for the end of this year. And that is very concerning. That represents a whole site that won't be open. Right. And so I think urgency on the shelter openings is important. I think that when we created the joint office, there was this idea that at the time, the city leadership at the time was giving up a sheltering role, and that worked for a little bit of time. And then it kind of ended. Right. And now the city is back in the line of business of trying to recreate shelters again. And I'm willing to give up some of the, I don't know, the bait and switch of the original iga and things of that nature, because I think shelter is just that important to keep folks out of the elements. And so I'll be supporting some shelters that I think generally fall to other government's roles in order to kind of prove the concept. I think that's important, and I think we've made some good strides in that in that way. The other part that I want to, I want to be involved here is when I go to shelters that are in the community, some are performing, operating whatever the correct word in a way that I think is quite helpful for the neighbors and others seem to ignore the neighbors. And I think that if we get into a space where we are creating shelters that are not taking into account the neighbors concerns, that we will work ourselves out of any friendly environments. And so it's really important to me that we have good neighbor agreements in any community we go into that the providers there are very responsive to minimizing impact, to working with their residents for some accountability when it comes to, you know, taking that step to get enrolled in a class, taking that step to meet with a case manager for housing and treatment and other things. And some providers in our community, I think are doing a great job and others leave a lot to be desired. And so from this perspective, since the county excuse me, the city has so much to do with the other support services that go around our shelters. I want to center that as well. And then the other side, not in the homelessness side, but the other side. I don't want to abdicate our role when it comes to the housing part in our title, to be just about where do we get more money to develop new housing. I want this committee to challenge the land use committee to gut the regulations that are stopping housing from being developed fast, from being developed with less of the aspirational requirements, where we can say we're going to develop affordable housing, and if we want it to be leed platinum, that's a safe thing. It's not a requirement. Like maybe PCEF can help us make things pencil out better. But I want to look and I want this committee to have an opinion about whether or not we think design review should be able to stop a housing project based on the color of the glass that they're going to put into a building. I think that is apt for this. And it's not just about housing bureau stuff, and it's not just about us acquiring properties, but it's also about us having an opinion about quickening the, the, the Lane, if you will, for development. And so I'm trying to carry both of those things, both our, our crisis on the ground and our need to actually, for the first time in our existence, use the emergency that two mayors ago declared and change some stuff with how we develop housing. That's why I'm here.
26 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. I appreciate that framing and opening visioning. I don't see any hands. So who would like to go next? I can just look at you in the eye and be weird. Commissioner councilor Morillo.
27 Me to go next. Thank you for setting this up so well. What people don't see behind the scenes is that councilor Avalos gave us the most beautiful spreadsheet to work from starting out to get all of our feedback and make sure that everyone on the committee felt heard and had had their feedback given. So I really appreciate your guys's leadership on this. I think for the question as to why I would want to be on the committee, I think I'm the only councilor With lived experience, having been homeless in the city of Portland. I'm also one of three renters on city council, and I believe the only renter on the committee itself. I think that we are in a time where renters rights are going to be really important, making sure that we keep people housed long term is going to be really important. You know, we have a growing homelessness crisis that I think is in large part due to the cost of living in the city, the fact that a one bedroom apartment is, on average, $1,700 a month is really unacceptable and unaffordable for the majority of residents in Portland. So that's the perspective, and those are the values that I will definitely be bringing into that space. I agree with some things that councilor Zimmerman laid out. I think that there's no one size fits all approach when it comes to housing or shelter models, and I think that both are urgent needs. The reality is that we need a variety of shelter and housing options. We can't have one size fits all solutions. And I think part of that is, you know, carrying on from the work that commissioner Jo ann hardesty did before she left office, she helped set up the safe rest villages to start, and she created the identity specific villages when it came to LGBTQ and bipoc villages, that was incredibly important because we know that different communities have different needs. We know that, for example, trans people might face different violence in our shelter systems than others, and that it's important that we continue to have specific solutions for the communities that are here and the needs that they have, so that they'll actually use the shelters and the services that we have. And we're not going to be forcing people into them, because the goal is to make services that are so good that people are just willingly going into them. Right. I'm also really interested in digging into autonomous shelter models like right to dream, where unhoused people actually have a council at the shelters, and they can make decisions together about how those shelters are run, and that can include community agreements with housed neighbors as well. Right. But to make sure that people are making decisions for themselves about what their needs are and what they actually need in these spaces, I think that too often we treat people who are actually going through things like they are not experts in their own experience, and like we shouldn't actually be led by them. And I think that that is the wrong way to go. I think we haven't focused enough on actually asking people what the barriers are to accessing shelters, why it is that they don't want to go in the first place. Although, you know, we have such limited beds that that's not even a real issue in my opinion. We don't have enough shelter beds for the people who are begging to get in, so I'll just say that as well. Man, I have a long laundry list for you. I'm sorry. I also am really interested in, you know, housing construction as well. I think it's going to be very easy to focus on homelessness and shelters, and I think that addressing housing supply is going to be part of that continuum as well. Councilor Novick has brought up the idea of having a dedicated staffer whose sole job it is to identify empty lots of land that are city owned for construction. Or I would add to that, even empty buildings, empty apartment buildings, empty hotels, you know, pieces of property that we can actually use to purchase and to create housing spaces more rapidly. I think that's going to be really important, especially as we talk about the federal government and the tariffs that are coming. The costs on construction materials are going to be really painful for local jurisdictions. And so we're going to need to look at what assets we have available to us that are already constructed to make sure that we can meet the needs of people. I'm also very interested in long term housing solutions, like looking at land trusts, public housing and ensuring that if we do look into these more innovative solutions that they are adequately funded. We saw that our neighboring city, seattle, passed a public housing measure, and then the current city council that's sitting there, they had a lot of meetings with developers and business interests. And then that that measure did not get adequately funded. So the policy is doomed to fail. And we need to make sure that if we're passing innovative things, that we are finding ways to appropriately fund it. Lastly, I'll say that as far as things that I plan to bring forward to this committee, some specific policy ideas, I've already talked with a few of you on this. I'll be bringing forward a policy to ban artificial intelligence, rental price, fixing a ban on that in the city of Portland, and to make it a stronger than I think we're seeing being passed at the state level. I think that Portland is an ambitious city. We got a lot of renters and we can do that here. So that's something that I will plan to bring at the next committee meeting. I also would love to see an unhoused, unhoused bill of rights for people who we are actually serving so that we have sort of a north star about how we are creating services for people in our community who need it the most. Thank you.
28 Thank you, councilor Morillo. Councilor Ryan, are you looking like you want to go? I'm sure I'll go.
29 When called. Thank you. So this is like the first area right of this thing. Okay, great I agree. Thank you for setting this up, chair. Avalos. It was very thoughtful. So the first one is why do you want to be on this committee? I have I think I have lived experience too. And you know, from 18 to 30 I was always housing insecure. I did couch surfing in between apartments. I don't know anyone that lived in new york city that was not from money in 85 to 88, that didn't experience that. I lived in apartments that today I would never, ever, ever live in or not let anyone I love live in them. But that was called a young artist living in new york, doing the best I can. So my point is, and then lived experience really for me has been more recent in the last ten years with a brother who was on the streets for four years until he perished, wasn't active in recreational drug use until about a year before going on the streets. So that's why I'm always really honest about the fact that there is a relationship between our behavioral health crisis and the uptick of those on the streets, and that's my lived experience based on not just him, but a friend who had the skill sets to be employed to pay rent until they were consumed with dependance on drugs and alcohol. And that became really difficult. I also have a couple nephews who have been in and out of the streets over the last ten years, so you don't sleep well at night. At times when you think about those loved ones and what they're going through, and you do your best to try to find a chance to listen to them, to understand their perspective. I also have a lived experience of moving work. When I tell people from other parts of the country that we got, you know, we repurposed a couple of the ones that you mentioned earlier with bipoc and queer affinity, and that was hard. It was hard to move them, and we were mandated to move them while we were building the villages. And in that, I learned a lot about who says yes to services, who, how do they build a community within their villages. And I think that's one reason why we're seeing better results from the villages is because of that community aspect, and it's hard for people to go from that into a into an apartment with a restroom down the hall where they suddenly might feel very isolated. And so that transition, I don't think we pay enough attention to that. So I do think the north star that I like to mention, which is going from dependance to independence, that's a north star that I wish we could all get on board with. I think there's a lot of latitude within that, but I've always found it difficult to see if the county, the metro, the state legislators and the city can all just kind of see that as the continuum from chronically homeless all the way to homeownership. To me, I think we should look at the continuum all the way to homeownership. It's the best way to build generational wealth. So I never want to lose sight of that. I know what it was like to save money for 15 years to finally do a down payment. I can only imagine it's worse now. And so I just think we can't lose sight of that. And so in all of my experience as a public servant in the last four plus years, I've always focused on some of these north stars. I feel like it's really important for us as a committee to help with what are those community wide metrics we're going to measure from so we can track how we're doing all the way from those who have been chronically homeless all the way to homeownership. And what are some of the metrics that will allow us to see if we're building that? And we've really struggled. Again, all the entities involved in this to come up with that. And we've also struggled in the culture of the homeless provider system to have discipline, to figure out how to extract that data. And it does take daily discipline. So I hope we can always be putting pressure on the culture to know that that's really important for us to make decisions, to have that just baseline, dispassionate, honest data that says this is what's so. And I've I've found that to be very frustrating. Obviously, I'm well noted for being frustrated about that over the years that that the county, the city, the, the whole entity of government has failed to provide that type of information for the public. And if we don't do that, it's going to be really difficult to continue to have people support the work that we're doing. So those are just some big picture, I guess. It's a, you know, I'm trying to recruit people to be on the dragon boat teams right now, and it's about paddling in the same direction. And it's just we haven't seen that. So I, I see a system big picture spinning at times. I think there's room for someone like the two of us. I'm looking at you, councilor Morley. Though I think our compassion and our hearts in the right place, we might have some different ways of looking at it, but if we had a north star that was similar, if we could agree upon the metrics, then let's have tension about how we get there. But the fact that we haven't set up the scaffolding that everyone can get behind has been a big failure, I think, to move, to get population results, you kind of need those basics. And we haven't we failed to get those basics in order. So instead we, we, we build something quickly. We don't build them quickly. It's hard to build things. What we shouldn't do is destroy things quickly. But it's hard to build, and it's also hard to then get to those proof points. And then we do get to those proof points. Can we believe them? So when we finally, you know, I was mad scramble getting the villages open because I had faith. It was a faith that we would get proof points that mattered. And we did. So now that we have them, believe them and believe the data and do something with it. And that's the place where you probably want to put more investments, not in the places where we don't have proof points or we're not seeing good proof points. So I think we've had a challenge just being honest about even the data when we do receive it, to believe it and to get on the same page about it. So anyway, this is going to be fun. I'll try not to get hung up in any baggage from the past. I'm pressing a restart. I'm on this team and I'm going to say what I think, and that's never stopped me. But I'm looking forward to a fresh start about the oversight role and supportive role that we can play as a committee. Thanks.
30 Thank you. Councilor Ryan. Councilor Dunphy, great.
31 Thank you, chair Avalos, I want to start by by commenting on something you specifically said that there is a concern in the community about whether the scope of this, this committee is too big and that housing and homelessness are obviously interconnected, but very separate things that require definitions and extra effort and extra follow through. I think this committee is up to that task, but I want to acknowledge up front that while they are related, they are not the same and each are going to require really intense conversations about what it is we're doing and what success looks like. I think that one of the most challenging things working in this system is that we don't have clear definitions of success. I'm not I'm not clear today. If we had infinite number of money, amount of money, that we could actually solve homelessness and we could solve solve the housing crisis in any sort of reasonable time. And so I want to start having those conversations about defining what success looks like and how we get there and working backwards. As my colleagues have said, I want to explore more options for folks on the streets. As my colleagues have also already said, I want to be creative. I want to look into intensive reuse and see what we can do with some of the existing empty buildings. Not every building will work for those things, but some of them may. I want to look at the city's policies around foreclosure, and whether or not the city has a role in bidding on some of these buildings that are going to foreclosure for our purposes later. I have some questions about the fundamentals of what we're doing, whether or not the housing first model is actually serving our folks on the streets, whether the way that we have as a disjointed region responded to homelessness on the streets, whether that has led to good results for the folks on the streets or whether or not we have simply taken care of the low hanging fruit and the easy to house. And now we are facing some of the most difficult challenges in the community, and about where and how we connect those folks to services. I want to have bigger conversations about alternative shelters and places for rvs to park short term, and for sros. I am coming to this. Not yet. I mean, in addition to coming to this, someone who is deeply concerned about the crisis on our streets. But I'll acknowledge, while my fellow counselors have lived experience, I'm I am coming to this as a landlord. I own my starter home still and rent it to a family. That means that I have a specific perspective on on the challenges of being a landlord. But also, I spent most of my life as a renter, and because of that experience, I want to bring more rights and right our rights down of what renters can expect when they are operating within the city. They represent nearly half of all the people who live in this city. And if we don't write it down, it doesn't matter. I'm interested in having conversations around a vacancy tax and trying to urgently get some of these vacant buildings tenanted both on a commercial but also on a residential route. I happen to know that there are units in south waterfront that have never been tenanted, and I want to bring that intensity to east Portland. We have vacant land in east Portland. We have places to build rapidly in east Portland. But it is also worth noting that historically, the city's response to clearing camps has been while, as in many cases, an increasingly more humane, a lot of times, if a camp is being swept in Laurelhurst or irvington, those folks end up in parkrose and gateway and Lents without any services, without their community, without their belongings. And that's simply not an acceptable policy solution to be pushing this into other underrepresented parts of the community. That won't be happening as much anymore. Hopefully, with this new situation, this new committee and this new form of government, more than anything I want to I mean, I want to define success. I want to get into the weeds. As councilor Zimmerman was talking about, looking at zoning and regulations and making sure that we're, at the very least, permitting an apartment building as quickly in Portland as we are, as they are in happy valley or in Gresham. There there are situations in which it can take twice as long to permit an apartment building in Portland as it does in Gresham. They're not getting half the quality of housing, they're just working faster. So I'm interested in understanding the full pipeline of obligations that we are putting on developments and figuring out which ones are not serving as well. I'm not willing to compromise on some things. I don't believe that bird safe glazing is why apartments downtown are expensive. But if a regulatory system isn't working anymore or having unintended consequences, we should have those conversations and we should be really honest about them. So I'm excited to get into the, the, the, the meat of this and really try and dig down to the core of getting folks places to live and getting folks who are living on our streets places to be, because the situation right now is just deeply inhumane for everybody involved.
32 Thank you. Vice chair dunfee. All right. So I'll add a couple of thoughts. And I think I'll also just say in general, I'm definitely not shy to use my voice and speak up. And also, I have a responsibility as the chair to make space for the rest of the committee. So I'm going to be constantly balancing that while again realizing I also need to bring forward my agenda. But I'm just sharing a value that I have around how to lead these committee meetings. As far as you know, my desire for being on the committee, I think, you know, speaking to my experience growing up, you know, when you're a 12, 13 year old and your entire family is living in one room while you're renting out every other room in your house and including the kitchen and turning it into a room, that's the kind of experience that I'm bringing. And I say that because I think we look at, you know, housing and instability in, I think, really narrow ways at times. And we need to think, too, about overcrowding of folks. The fact that people are really, you know, they're couch surfing, they're, you know, overcrowding houses and apartments. And those folks also need attention. So it's not just the folks who are on the streets that end up on the streets. How are we preventing all of those other folks who are really on the precipice? And I think in particular, bringing east portland's lens to it is going to be important to me, especially because of the fact that east Portland is home to over 40% of the entire city's children, which me which to me speaks to the fact that many young families are trying to get by in east Portland. And with an average income of $30,000 less than every other district in east Portland, then they have much less opportunities to look for affordable housing and how we're defining affordable housing really impacts east portlanders, because when you're going off of a median and you're already so far behind the average of the city, then those options are are looking there are fewer options for you. So that is kind of some of the lens that I'm bringing into this. As somebody who has been housing insecure for most of my life and also recently became a homeowner through lots of strife. And I think just having navigated that in the last year, being able to offer some perspective to on what does it take to get people across that finish line to homeownership and again, strengthening the sheltered housing continuum, as we've been discussing overall, you know, I think a lot of what my colleagues have said, I'm just going to say ditto to because I won't rename them because you all have shared them. But I think the finer point that I will make is it's really important to me, as we are leading these discussions that we are looking to decriminalize poverty and to ensure that our unhoused community members are a part of these decisions and discussions. People who are closest to the problem are also closest to the solution. And so that is just an overall value I'm bringing. And, you know, as somebody who over the last couple of years have been working with various affordable housing providers, being on different boards, talking about these issues and engaging with community members who are struggling to maintain housing. I want to make sure that the tone and tenor that we set is very inclusive, and we have to be intentional about that, and I think that's our responsibility as leaders. So with that, I'll leave it there. I'll share some more thoughts in the later questions, but let's go ahead and move on to the next one, which is around building a strong foundation for our committee. And, you know, I think part of this question is, are there basic systems and infrastructure you want to recommend for how we move our work? But also I want to have a discussion on what are some of the intro briefings we want to bring in. We've got lots of folks in the audience here that I'm sure will be calling on to give us some information about what things are going on, and I'll just lastly frame it to frame this, to say it is my intention to do some real intentional mapping here of like, what does the whole scene look like? You know, what kinds of assets do we have? What's our relationship with the county? Right. That kind of mapping activity? I'm still workshopping in my head, but I think these briefings are a beginning to that. So I would love to get some thoughts on that front. So anyone eager to kick us off.
33 I'll jump in.
34 Okay.
35 What I would love to see for this committee is some standing structures that we can continue to get updates about specifically meaning I would love to have regular updates from permitting bureaus from our Portland solutions team about what has happened in the last x, y, z amount of time and how you know where those you know how how many future houses are in the in the pipeline now, and what we're doing to try and incentivize more of those how how we are moving forward on getting folks off the street. How the mayor's plan towards ending unsheltered homelessness is working, and what that looks like in three months, six months, nine months at. In my previous go around in city hall, we had started to implement a an affordable housing report card that came to city council every time that the city council was being asked to approve a development that included affordable units. I'd like for that to be something we live. I live somewhere separately so that we can say this year we permitted this many apartments at 80% and this many apartments at 30%. We have that data. We just don't share it in a real clear way. And I do think that there is a need for subcommittees because the work of considering our shelter and services continuum is dramatically different than understanding our incentive structures and our zoning code requirements. And I think that we need to be able to dive really deep. And with just being the five of us every other week, I think that that's just simply not enough time to be able to really get the expertise that we need in order to, to really meaningfully move the ball. Those are my thoughts.
36 Thank you, vice chair Dunphy.
37 Thank you. I agree with councilor Dunphy on everything that he listed, and I think that we do potentially need subcommittees. I'm curious how subcommittees would be broken up, given that it would be like three and two, and who would be chosen for that? I just have questions about that. I'm not quite sure what the best way to approach that is, but I do agree that it's a need. I think the reality is that in all these committees, budget is going to be the main thing that we're bringing up 24 over seven, just given the financial place that the city is in and the federal impacts that are coming. So I think having regular budget briefings are going to be really important. I would also like some quarterly briefings from shelter staff or people that actually work on the ground with folks. I think getting briefings from bureau directors is amazing. There's so much expertise there. So it's not a knock on them. But sometimes I think the folks that are working on the ground are directly with people who are in need of services, have a different perspective to share. And I, I personally learn a lot from from those employees when I talk to them one on one. If I've had an opportunity to in the past. And as part of those budget briefings, I also think that we're going to need and honestly, the whole council is probably going to need a deep dive on the federal government's tariffs and how that's going to impact the cost of housing production. I believe I saw on the news today that there are going to be tariffs on steel and timber imports. That seems like it's going to be pretty critical for housing. And we need to know, you know, we can talk about building and our dream goals for everything. But if we don't have that information in front of us, it's going to feel a little bit like a pipe dream as far as what we can actually get done with our limited funds. I would also like a deep dive on existing renter rights policies at the city. What gaps we currently have, and you know the a cost comparison for vouchers and different programs that we have to either keep people housed or getting them into housing long term. And also a comparison about how those programs have worked, what programs have actually kept people stably housed? How long did those programs have to go on for, etc? And I think as we're talking about building housing as well, I would love a focus on, you know, transportation corridors, making sure that things are built in proximity to other neighbors or to things that people need. But I want that tied to anti-displacement policy as well, and getting information on how we ensure that we're not harming the communities that already exist in those spaces. So those are all things that I would love to get briefings on and to look into. And yeah, I don't think I have much to add on the structures. I think the subcommittee thing is going to become inevitable. Thank you.
38 Thank you, councilor Ryan.
39 Yeah, thank you, madam chair. I first want to say I had a reaction in a good way. Or shocking that district one is 40% of our city's children. That was really good for me to take that in. So. And I want to then, of course, ask that percentage for each district. But that was really important. And I wasn't surprised, having done a lot of work in the school districts of david douglas and parkrose. And we've seen that trend for almost 20 years of moving out there. Okay, back to the question. Well, you're not going to be surprised. I think that the foundation that we should set is for us to have a very lively conversation that includes community, to come up with those community wide performance indicators. And I think that it's been missing. We haven't had that that rudder, if you will. And so it's been hard for us to figure out what our north star is. And my life experience around this is when we saw, you know, graduation rates finally really improve. It was so helpful that all of the six districts in Portland got on the same page about what we were going to measure and how we were going to move to that point, and it just kept the community focused, and it avoided something that I think government is guilty of, which is community everyone's guilty of. This is the shiny new silver bullet. What is that? Oh, that's going to solve everything. And I think it's just important to be rooted and be dispassionately honest about what's so. And I think that if we could provide some leadership for our market, meaning the metropolitan area, on what those metrics are, we would be doing a big favor for people who are homeless today and people who want to be a homeowner in the future, and I don't. If it's not us, then who's doing this? Maybe the committee that you're on, Eric is diving into this better. But my I'm not talking about a presentation that has a gazillion different charts. It's just like, what are the ten big ones? And then I think from there, we subindicators could indicate a subcommittee, perhaps, but I'm not into building subcommittees yet. I think it should come from a data driven perspective. And it could be I'm more of a fan of task force. So maybe there's a couple of us that work on moving this data driven journey that we're on to build these metrics, and that should be done within three months. And then we bring that here. And then from that, there's a new subcommittee task force that will move some work for a few months on something else. Personally, maybe I'm just speaking with we're all like trying to figure out how to do this, and we all have meetings that are taking over our calendar, like so. I guess I'm a little bit shy about building subcommittees until I feel like we're really clear that there's a mission. And for me, it's usually short term task force is how I like to think about it. I think the five of us staying together on the topics will be really important. And this is a fun conversation. The next is role clarity. The role clarity between the city, the county and metro is confusing to people inside. Imagine how confusing it is to those that are trying to understand how we're doing. And so I think the committee that you're on, Eric, with the county is big in that. I think we've failed to really get crisp and clear about that, which is why I was saying maybe it's okay to not just pass money back and forth and have money passing back and forth being the topic, but actually, what are the goals and who's going to do what? Like, I feel like that's where the city and the county's communication usually falls down. And so I think any role that we can play in helping build role clarity would be a big asset to the system that needs a lot of attention.
40 Thank you.
41 Thank you, councilor, councilor Zimmerman.
42 Thank you chair. I mean, first, and I think foremost for me is having a way to report back to this body. And if it's the pleasure of the whole council, the whole council about my dealings in anything that comes out of the soc, I think it's an important communication loop that I owe at a minimum, this group. So I think that probably will be 5 to 10 minutes after after, you know, the week after each of our county meetings. But I want to make sure we build that in because I am taking on a role there. That is one organizationally representative, but also my own agenda representative. I want to make sure that that's balanced. And so then the going right into that is that we all think about what are the things that you would like me to have in my quiver when I walk over there, and that I can represent right from a city perspective. So if this body, this government has thoughts, opinions or problems, I hope I can get those from here because I know I'll get them one on one. But I think having the five of us, you help me round out any of our concerns that I'll take back to the county. I'm not I'm not real keen on the subcommittee idea. I think that one. I think if you look at this, this group, we're going to have some differences of, of approaches on some pretty tough topics. And, and I think that the five of us are a pretty darn small group out of 12 to be able to tackle this. And so I think I if the need arose, I think I could be supportive, but I'm not there yet. I don't I don't know why we would break down quite yet in terms of other foundational briefings that will be interesting to me. I mentioned in my earlier piece, you know, a deep dive into design review the role it plays in our community. And if that role is something that we still support or if we want to take a look at that and its impact on housing development, and frankly, and I don't know enough to have an opinion there, I need I need that kind of briefing to help me form that up a little bit. I have a list all over this page, so please excuse my slowness here. I actually would encourage the chair to consider working with the council president to have this committee meet weekly. I think that there is no more urgent issue on our streets and in this community than homelessness, and I think it deserves a weekly meeting. I'll just leave it there. And I really appreciate some of the comments from from my previous councilors. I agree with a lot of what you both said and role clarity and some of those other reports that I think is good for us to have. Right. The what renters experience on the ground in Portland we should talk about, in fact, instead of in fiction. And I think having that kind of brief that you mentioned, it helps us all know where what the reality is, what the rumors are and where we can tweak to make the system as equitable and fair in terms of getting people housed and staying in that housing as possible. So I definitely would support those types of briefings. And then lastly, and I know that this will land hard for some folks, I think that I really want to hear from the staff who I know on a weekly, if not daily basis, are. Towing rvs and we are paying for the destruction of rvs. What that footprint in the community looks like. And I want to share this as kind of where I'm going on the rv topic. Two weeks ago, we took a tour of some some of the Portland solution sites, and one of those sites I went to had a number of pods, but also rv parking. And this is a hypothesis I've had for a long time because we talk about we need to have a place for rvs to go. And I kind of always questioned I was like, I don't really I don't really think that's the case. Not that they don't need a place to go. It's that if you take some of the rvs that we've all seen in the community and you put them in a parking lot that is next to some very nice, clean, usable pod villages, I expect that a lot of folks will pick the pod, and in that visit, the day before the provider had that exact story happen where an rv moved in, and within days they moved into the pod and they said, to hell with my rv. I think that's the goal. I think that is the goal all over the place. And the reason I think that's the goal is that I think some folks are living in rvs, and a lot of rvs are getting used for a lot of other stuff, all other criminal aspects that have nothing to do with housing. But they do have a lot to do with avoiding being seen doing certain stuff. And I think that most neighborhoods in Portland have suffered when those rv pods have popped up on a street, and then it takes weeks and weeks to move them along, and a lot of bad stuff happens in the neighborhoods. And so I do want to get to a place where we can make a value proposition and offer to anybody living in an rv of, like, we have this lot for you to come to. And I hope that when they're there, they know they can park their rv, and I think they'll eventually they'll move into a pod, but they can park their rv there, because I do think that the city has got to get to a serious point where rv camping in any neighborhood street is no longer allowed in Portland, and that's a lift. And I understand it, and I think it's money well spent and a policy worth putting a line in the sand about, because I think that the impact has been so great over this last five years that the public is. Really losing faith that we have, that we have the means to correct this problem. And so moving toward a full understanding of what we spend on rvs, how many we tow, why they don't get ticketed the same way cars do, why they're allowed to exist in neighborhoods and the places we have for them to go if they want to choose a safer, more environmental and a transition spot. I'd like to know more about that, because I do think we need to move in a very knowledgeable way toward stopping the rv camping.
43 Okay. Thank you councilors, I will just add a couple of notes to say I really want this committee kind of speaking to how, you know, you're communicating with the county committee. There's also just generally lots of partners and bodies, intergovernmental, etc. That we work with. I want to position us as being the main voice for housing and homelessness policy and direction for the city. I think that's really important to, in our new form of government that we have these, you know, this legislative branch is responsible for developing a citywide policy vision through the perspective of our districts, which I also think is key. As we're discussing this, I know I will be having a particular district lens. So yeah, I just want to state that general value that we are communicating, that it is our responsibility to address this, and we are the voices for and leading that discussion. You know, based on some of the things that I'm hearing you all say as far as various briefings or things that you want to get regularly in general. I agree. And vice chair Dunphy and I have talked about creating, you know, a standing space in our agendas where we get some of these updates every meeting and we'll figure out how that looks. But I do think that how we're communicating to the public, what is already happening is really important and where we're headed. And then I think on that note, it's important that we're not starting from scratch. Right? Like this is not us starting from scratch. There is a wealth of information. There are things in motion. And I think it's our job to just map out all of those things. So I'm going to be also this is where like professor Avalos comes in, there's going to be homework. And that homework is us like really diving into some of the reports that the city has already written. Right. You know, just getting a sense of the data. I think that will help us start to develop the vision. So I'm going to be compiling a lot of those things, and I want to encourage my fellow committee members to really spend some time looking into what is already happened, so that we don't approach these conversations from feeling like we're starting from scratch. I feel that for me personally, it will help me inform the way I'm going about these conversations, having the wealth of the data in my head. So I'm going to compile that for us, and I want us to spend some time doing that. As we're setting the foundation for our committee. I wanted to just, if you don't mind, councilor Zimmermann, get a temperature check. I'm curious how people are feeling. I mean, you made a ask of. Maybe we meet more regularly. I kind of just want to get a temperature check. Is that a desire from folks? I think right now, you know, we all know that we kind of have just capacity for every other week and we're all kind of talking about it with different committees. I do agree that this is, you know, a topic that might require more, but yeah, I just want to get a sense on how people are reacting to that. I think you.
44 It feels like there's not enough hours in the day at all for all of the committees and work that we have to do. I also sit on the transportation and infrastructure committee. That committee in itself, it is handling two of the biggest budget deficit areas in the entire city. I mean, it's basically all of public works and then transportation. And I will say having every other week makes it feel, I don't know how we're supposed to get all the information and do everything, you know, discuss policies that are moving forward and everything in the time that we have allotted. This feels the same way. I would say if possible, I would love to meet weekly. I don't know if that is logistically possible within the hours that we have in the week and our other committee commitments as well. I would be interested in that. I guess I would say for transportation infrastructure. I also think we should probably meet more than once a week. And I don't know when that's going to happen, but yeah.
45 Yeah, I'm good with every other week. For now, I think that we have to build this with staff. And when we when I hear that, of course, we'll want information from staff. We want to give them some time as well. So I think we'll be busy in between the weeks. Just not here, but trying to move the work in between meetings. I'd rather start with that.
46 Did you want to add a comment and then. No. Yeah. I mean, this is again, I was just kind of getting a temperature check. I know we need to have more discussion about that, but ultimately, I do, however, intend for us to be moving the work in between the weeks. And that's something I welcome y'all's ideas on. I think that's kind of what I'm saying, too, with the homework part or like how we can, you know, request certain things and work on getting those things and organizing them in a way so that when we come back to this meeting with the public, we have spent those two weeks like compiling data, putting it in a place, you know, a way to discuss it. But yeah, just wanted to get a check on how folks are feeling. I mean, I know we're all feeling really pinched for time in general. And, you know, it's like, yes, of course I would love to meet more because there's more work to be done. And also I have to, you know, eat food, I think, and sleep. So I don't know how we're going to be able to get all the committees to do things every week, but just wanted to check. All right. Moving on to the next thing. We've kind of started jumping into this a little bit, but I'll restate the question as I have it written in. You know, feel free to adjust. But this is where I wanted to talk about how we prioritize our work. And in particular, I want this discussion to be about how we're parsing out the work. So we started talking a little bit about subcommittees. I think regardless of the logistics of subcommittees, I want to understand what if we had subcommittees, what would those be, so that we can know what is the kind of the larger buckets that we feel we want to tackle? I mean, I think we all understand that housing and homelessness kind of have their own, you know, things. They deserve their own buckets. But there's many, many things underneath both of those areas. So I want to spend some time discussing that. And also, you know, how you feel we should be spending the first couple of weeks and what we could be prioritizing. So that's the general topic. Feel free to take that as you'd like. Seeing no hands. Whoever wants to go first, you want to kick us off?
47 Thanks. I, I think when it comes to how to prioritize, I am I am framing that in my mind relative to the choices that the mayor has coming up with respect to developing a balanced budget moving forward. And then our council passing and adopting that budget. So as as it relates to our homeless response type programs, I think this body should have an opinion about those insofar as either to help shape the mayor's inclusion in his budget or to speak and defend in restoring it to our colleagues. If we see that he were to make cuts in an area perhaps that we thought needed to be made whole. So when I think about that, I, I think, what are the things that we need to hear when it comes to irp and. Ss, ssk, street services coordination, something center. I think that those are incredibly rapid type of services that the public expects on the ground. And so I think those that kind of like how much money are we talking about? What what challenges have they faced in the last calendar or fiscal year? What are they looking at in the new calendar in fiscal year? What are so that we are informed and not surprised by those? And I think, you know, transparently, I'm saying that from a position I don't think anybody is expecting that I would want to reduce those because I think they've been important. But I'm sure the flip side could exist as well. But having an idea for those is very important because it's our main foot in with how city of Portland government interacts with homeless population versus what the county is doing. I think from a county perspective, that I probably owe this group and maybe or let me talk this out a little bit. I think this group hearing about the amount of money that the city contributes to the joint office and through the iga is something that we should be experts on. And so the iga was a beast last year for the county commission and the city council to negotiate through. I would imagine that we are not as up to speed as we should be because we were not in place then. And so I think having a really deep dive from the people who authored that agreement in terms of what were they trying to solve for some of those changes, what kind of accountability were they looking to implement so that we can talk, in fact, about the iga and not in what kind of got covered in the in the atmosphere? I think that would be very helpful going into the budget season, but also setting us up, because when it comes to role clarity, I think our role clarity in the iga is important and I consider myself a pretty informed person on that topic, and I feel like I've even got some blind spots there.
48 Thank you. That's helpful. Sorry. No. No hands. Still, who wants to go next? Okay.
49 Ditto to everything that councilor Zimmerman just laid out. I agree, I would love a deep dive on the iga as well and our role in that and how much funding we're contributing to it as well. I also think that there is a I feel a pressure to definitely address the shelter conversation, because the mayor is moving very quickly on it funding. You know, we're going to get the initial budget on February 28th, and then we're going to have to start debating the budget and passing it may June. So that timeline feels pretty quick for us to figure some of those things out immediately, even though I think there's a few of us here that believe that housing and shelter need to be kind of worked on in tandem, I think that there is going to be a pressure to address the shelter conversation and to get more information on funding and what those shelters are actually going to look like on the ground. And, and if that's the vision that we want, or as councilor Zimmerman said as well, if we want that funding returned to us as the legislative body to decide what to do with it, since it sounds like the $100 million budget deficit that we had actually included the funding for the mayor's shelter system. So that's something that I, I think we're going to have to prioritize over the next few weeks. I also feel like after hearing more of my colleagues talk about the subcommittee structure, that I feel comfortable holding off on subcommittees until we have some more things sorted out. It makes sense that, you know, it is already a very small body, so I would feel comfortable holding off on that until later notice. Thanks.
50 Yeah.
51 I agree, would you like to go, counselor Ryan?
52 Yeah. I'll go. It's. Thank you. I agree with everything I've heard so far, and we really do need to see this as a budget season. So I think the deep dive there and the transparency and dialog is going to be really important over the next few meetings. I also see this will come as a great shock. I do think that one of the first things we should prioritize is building the community wide performance indicators. And I think that chewing on that and discussing that will be really helpful. And I think next year at this time, that will provide us a more information on how to advocate in the budget season. So I just I'm not saying it's speculation, but sometimes it does come across that way that we're reacting to the next great thing and the next silver bullet, as opposed to taking a breath and seeing it as a big system. And where the investments working, where aren't they? Why aren't they like, I don't think we dive into that level in the in the government systems that include metro now and the county and where we react too much to the deficit, if you will. And I think at this elevation, the more that we can provide some guiding lights with dispassionate, honest information about what's so the better. So I would think that building that culture early would be necessary. And again, I'm always thinking, like all of you, that this is from the continuum, from chronically homelessness to providing a city that does a better job of providing generational wealth with with the purchasing of homes. So it's that whole continuum.
53 Absolutely.
54 Thank you, councilor Dunphy.
55 Yeah, I don't have a ton more to add, other than I just fundamentally think that we shouldn't be reinventing the wheel from this committee. There are, you know, our our mayor has set a very hard definition of what he considers to be success in this realm. We should hold him accountable to that. He has laid out a plan. We I should expect that he would be. He and his team will be coming back here and telling us how close he is and why, what he needs in order to get to that next step, and why we are going to be doing this work with fewer resources no matter how we look at this. And so I want to find out what is working and what is not working. What can we learn from other jurisdictions that have tried things and failed or tried things and succeeded? And I really specifically interested in understanding how to get candid understanding of the experience of the staff on the ground, folks who are here right now who have been doing this work in the trenches, watching as city council has attempted to fix things from up here and maybe things don't work how they should. I also desperately want to know the experience of folks in the system, especially folks who have successfully made it through the system and made it from shelter or unsheltered homelessness into housing and what actually worked for them, and why and how we what we can learn from those systems in a in a really intentional way. So that's all I have to add.
56 Yeah, I completely agree with those points. And we'll just echo I think it is important in general, not just for this committee, but that we are not limiting our ideas and our perspective to our region. There is a giant large country here that has also faced many of the same problems we have. And I think sometimes it's important to think about that, because sometimes you get a little like, oh, I'm the only one. I always make this comparison about individual and group therapy. I recommend people do group therapy, because then you realize that there are other people that have the same problems and you don't feel like a victim, right? You're just like, oh yeah, we all go through these emotions. I really do think that we need to be more intentional about seeking out partners across the country that have dealt with similar challenges, have proposed ideas that were batting around, and to look for new ideas. So I would definitely encourage us to start doing that. But also, like you're saying, we need to be learning from what we have. We're not starting from scratch. Let's get the framework together. Let's have some indicators that we all agree to. So yes, yes, yes to all of that. I was going to make one more point and I forgot it, so I might make it later. So this is a bit of a hard shift because I know we're talking policy. Oh yeah.
57 Can I I'm sorry chair, can I add one more piece? Absolutely please. Thank you. I have heard a few folks say, you know, hearing from staff and I. And I think that's an important perspective. I also have some reservations from taking too many leads from some of the staff and nonprofit providers in the community. I think that I'll go back to when we first announced as a city that we wanted to engage in the test sites, right? The larger shelters and no local providers would bid it because they didn't think that the model would work. And they were kind of dogmatic about it, which is why we have an out of state provider that had to come in to provide that service. And today it's some of our most successful shelter that we have. So I want the reason I'm sharing this is out of a sense of transparency, which is I do want to hear the experience of workers and sometimes of if they think that our, our tactics maybe need some adjustment to be more effective. But I'm not going to put all my eggs in their basket. And I think that that's I think I, I owe that to this group and to the, to the community that that's not quite where I'm at. And if we do bring in folks to share their, their work, I hope that we bring in folks from a variety of our providers and not just those who. Are going to hold a line on a topic that we're on. And I also hope that we are bringing in neighbors who sometimes I think by the county, by the joint office staff, by this commission in the past have been gaslit a little bit about being about about raising a topic of this is affecting my neighborhood. I can no longer go to this park because it's now surrounded by it. And I don't think we've been great about hearing from the public always about those impacts. So I hope that we also will center bringing that perspective. And I think it is important not just from a let's make sure it's all equal and who gets to be heard. But I want to say it from this perspective, which is I worked at the county before the chhs dollars existed in our community and what we as collective, we in the community were able to do was so small compared to what we're able to do today, I think chhs dollars have been transformational in the available resources for our community to use on this topic, and I think they're at threat right there. They are under threat, meaning metro staff will say if you're on some of their oversight committee meetings, they'll say, this is not about passing the windshield test, which means do you not see homelessness when you drive down the street? I would actually say that they are out of touch. I think it is one of the biggest tests for the everyday joe schmo driving down the street, who doesn't know exactly how chhs is going, but they they know it is this tax that's supposed to solve homelessness. And if it looks the same tomorrow as it did five years ago, I don't know that they ever renew it. And so I do want to make sure that neighbors get a voice at this community. Excuse me. This committee as well, because I think a committee that is willing to hear about neighbors expectations, a committee that's willing to hear about employees who think that we're missing the mark from a policy perspective on how they can do their work better. And then also from folks who are going through the different. Right. I'm a I'm a big proponent of test sites, and I have heard from homeless individuals in our community how test sites don't work for them because they need to be. They want a shelter that is more clean and sober. They can't be around what we allow to happen at test sites. I am comfortable hearing that because that helps me then figure out hearing from a homeless person that a variety of spaces need to be. So I just, I want to center. I want to just bring that up, as I do think neighborhoods have a voice. I think some providers have a voice. I think some homeless folks have a voice. And I don't want to shut out the neighbors there, because if the neighbors give up on the sshws, we will be doing this with $1 million in our hand and not $200 million. And that's a big damn difference.
58 Councilor Ryan.
59 Thank you. Chair. Before we move on, like councilor Zimmerman, I just wanted to say a couple other things that were in my head. First of all, villages. I wish we could call them one thing. I'm going to call them villages for reasons that I think are obvious, but they're the same services. So let's just be in that world. That took a long time to, you know, the community could only tolerate 60 at one time. And then luckily they started doing well so they could handle more. And that's why we could sell those proof points. I do think that those villages give us so much insight into how much work it takes to move somebody from chronic homelessness to stability, and I'm a big advocate for meeting people where they are. But it was hard on that tour to hear that some sites and this is a good number, that 50 when I asked this question, how many people are actively, daily in their addiction and aren't seeking any behavioral health services? Or another way to say it, how many people are trying and that's all you can do, is try and access the behavioral health services. At one site, 15% were trying, meaning 85% were in active addiction daily. That's not good. And if we had oversight over that, I know that would be a tough conversation. We don't. County has it there at another site where the city just happens to have oversight. It was 50% were active in their addiction and 50% were accessing the services. Aspirationally they were embarrassed to give me that number like it was bad. And I said, well, it's better than what I've heard elsewhere, and I know how hard that work is to do. And so thank you. Like no shame with that number. I'm glad that you don't think it's good enough. That's the kind of culture that we want there. So my point is that I then asked how many of those were also engaged in workforce, and there was a correlation where workforce with trying helped someone build their resilience. So my gut says I'm sure yours as well. They'd be more successful once they're in housing, permanent housing. So I do think that we need that type of oversight to ask those questions, or we're just not spending our investments in a way that would help move people to a place of being happy, joyous and free and a part of society. And we want their lived experience then to be the best employees at those sites. It just so happened the site at urban alchemy that has more people with lived experience that have been in their shoes, were the ones that were providing those better outcomes, and I don't lose sight of that. So I'll always be somebody on this committee that will ask for workforce and behavioral health to be an overlap of what we're talking about. So I just want to put that out.
60 I appreciate that, councilor Dunphy.
61 I just want to acknowledge there's a little bit of a tension about, I mean, specifically the idea of a windshield test and the idea that visual signs of homelessness are should be a metric that we use because specifically we don't. We're a largely carrot and no stick city. We don't have a lot of ways to we're not compelling people into shelter. We're not compelling. We're not threatening to people to arrest them if they don't go get clean. And by having people opt in, people who are excited to or eager to get off the streets, they will be the first to get off of the streets. And it means that at some point, we'll have taken care of all the easy cases and all the people who are going to be the ones who were most well suited to meet the system that we have in place, will have already gotten housing. And so I honestly think it's going to get worse at some point before it actually gets better visually, because those folks are the ones who are the worst served by the systems that we've built. And so I think that we need to be conscious and intentional about engaging neighbors, for sure. It cannot be, though, that the loudest voices in our community get the most services in their neighborhoods. So it's a it's a both and I think that there absolutely. We cannot just as we can't continue to ignore my neighbors in east Portland who are saying the way that the city is handling this is making things worse for us. We have to embrace that. But we have to just also acknowledge that we're not going to magically make the streets look better. There will be a, a, a, it will be a curve on that.
62 Well, I appreciate where this discussion is going. Let me just pause and say any other thoughts on kind of what people are bringing up.
63 That's pretty good.
64 Yeah. Healthy tension will exist on this committee. I can already see that. And I think ultimately that's really good. It's good for us because I think what we're all individually bringing and just what I'm hearing today is so many different data points, so many different experiences, and we absolutely need all of those things at the table. I'll just speak a little bit to what you're saying, councilor Zimmerman, as it relates to who we hear from. It's definitely my intention to ensure that we are hearing from everybody. And I do mean everybody. And I think in general, I kind of started to speak to this as well in the finance committee meeting when it comes to hearing from community and community engagement. And, you know, when whether it's, you know, your neighbor who wants to talk about what's going on in their neighborhood to a affordable housing provider. I think what we also need to get clear on is what we are expecting from community, and how we want to use what we hear from them. Right? Because I think the other thing is people are so frustrated and feeling like they're, you know, cries for help are just going into a vacuum and not being heard. And so I'm just really particularly interested in ensuring when we are going out and seeking this information, that we know what we're looking for and that we know how we plan to use that information and bring those people along in using that information. So I think that kind of goes to the metric setting that we're talking about that I think we need to do. And I think ultimately, you know, just from a quick anecdote, from my own experience talking with various affordable housing providers, what I heard a lot, you know, and this was me and my advocate. Right. Space, obviously not being in city hall, I know things are difficult and I'm on the other side of the table now, but I think many of the housing affordable housing providers I've talked to have just felt like they weren't a really, truly a part of the discussion. And that's what I'm getting at. Right? Like, how do we help people feel like they are actually contributing something that's going towards a vision that we are acting on, and that includes our affordable housing providers, who I have heard a lot of frustration from feeling like they're shut out or like they don't see where their feedback is going. And I know that various, you know, partners in this realm feel this way. So I think it's my goal to help fix that kind of, you know, miscommunication, lack of communication and just, again, a lack of intention on what we're trying to seek from this feedback as we're moving our work forward. So it is 122 I'm going to get into the last question, and then I think I'm going to invite our public testimony and then see where we're at on time. I suspect maybe we have some unfinished business from this meeting, which was the last part of this worksheet that I have here is to talk about the committee description. Maybe that could just be a lingering thing. Everybody just ponders as you're reflecting on the discussion we already had, and we could start next meeting with that. Does that feel like a good like we can put that for another time? Okay, so lastly, this question around what do you expect from the chair and vice chair of this committee? How do you want them to lead the committee? Good practices? I think what I'm also getting out of this, or what I want to get out of this question, is, how do we expect to set our agenda right? Because, you know, it's going to be our job to kind of navigate who are we bringing in at what times? What are we putting on the agenda? What, you know, how are we scaling things up. So I just want to get some feedback and thoughts on how you think we should help organize the work. And of course, this is iterative and will continue to be a work in progress, but wanted to get initial feedback as well as just generally what you're expecting from leadership of this committee. So who would like to kick us off, counselor Zimmerman sure.
65 I think I'm pretty forgiving, frankly, with leadership in terms of where you all think from your chairs that we should go. I think that there's a dialog, but also between us. But then also, I guess I kind of have an expectation that you'll you'll take some lead in working with either the specific city teams that, that we need to set an agenda and get the right information, and that if I have a particular need briefing concern that I can bring it up and you'll try and find some space for that. But generally forgiving, and it's kind of the role I'm taking on in my other chair duties. And I'll just say quickly, I'm not sure I have a big opinion about the description of the committee, meaning if I think it's related to the topic, I'm going there. So what's written in some description means very little to me. Housing and homelessness. That's this committee. We're going where we need to go.
66 Fair and noted who would like to go next. Do you want to go up?
67 Yeah. I'll just say that.
68 I'm good right now. Like I think we just had our first experience in our first meeting. The way you led us to this first meeting was excellent. Best practice. And I guess I have a lot of trust in the process. So it's like one meeting at a time and I'm good right now. I don't have any feedback to say, you know, there were no surprises. You actually. I mean, you're putting some pressure on me. I haven't done what you've done with my committee, like, god is on me for two more weeks. But I remember thinking, god, candice is all over this. Like, thanks for like, the way we created this agenda, the thoughtful dialog we're having today. It's we're on the right track. Thank you, thank.
69 Thank you I appreciate that. Other thoughts councilor Morillo Morillo.
70 I'm actually curious from both you and vice chair how you guys would like us to move policy through the committee. I know that there are weird quorum rules where if three of us discuss a topic that maybe, maybe we need to ask a city attorney about this, that I'm under the impression that if three of us within a committee of five talk about the same city business and we're like getting feedback and stuff, then that triggers a public meeting for the committee. And so to me, that creates some challenges as far as like if I want to bring a policy forward, how do I make sure that I'm not ambushing everybody or that it doesn't come off that way when we really can't? We're struggling to talk to each other because of the state law on quorum rules. So that's a question I actually have for you about, like, how do you want us to engage with you as you're setting agendas? Because I know there's a lot of work that goes into that and like making sure we're getting the right presentations and everything. And I think as far as what I would like from chair and vice chair is just I think what you're already doing, transparency and collaboration, innovation. And just if you have any like needs from us as you guys are setting the agendas that you just communicate that clearly so that we can also do right by you and the work that you're doing to.
71 Yeah, I appreciate that question. And it's definitely an ongoing discussion with the attorneys on how we navigate the public meetings. Law. I, I am probably very unpopular with the attorneys because I'm wanting to push those boundaries just a little bit. I think. Let's get back to you on the specific question around, like if three people triggers, so you can't talk about it, I would argue, I think we should push on that, but we'll see. So let me let me get back to you on that. I definitely want to get you that answer, because I'm in the same boat of trying to figure out how do we, you know, move this forward. In general, though, I think, you know, I'm kind of looking at other committees. I'm looking at how we do the general counsel. It seems like on regular council that there is what I don't here's what, here's what I don't want. What I don't want is for anything to be in council that nobody gave me a heads up about. Right. So I think that's a pretty standard expectation, but I'll just state it just for the record, that I think that I would love to discuss with committee members as you're bringing forward ideas, and I think you're modeling that perfectly. We you know, councilor Morillo and I already discussed a policy that she is intending to bring to the next committee meeting. And so I think that kind of level discussion is great. You know, I think we could talk through how you maybe notice things to like the whole committee, because I'm of the impression that you would be able to, you know, flag it via an email like, hey, this is coming down the pipe or whatever. So let's talk through that. I know it's I know it's unclear.
72 It's I think the rule was we can all we can email it to everybody, but no one can reply or have discussion on it.
73 Yeah.
74 Yeah, yeah.
75 So, you know, if there are things that are like, okay, this is you know, maybe it's like I am talking with chair Avalos about putting this on an agenda. I want the rest of the committee to see the language. Like that could be a good practice. We'll work through that. But I think ultimately my intention is for, again, no surprises, right, that people are coming into these meetings prepared. And then as far as setting the larger agenda, you know, the main thing I think part of it is like it's so case by case, right? Because I think there might be some things that are pre-baked like, I think your policy is like it's, you know, gotten it's been vetted, it's been baked and all of that, and it's coming to this committee at a place where it's at a further place than maybe another policy might where we need to workshop it here a little bit. I mean, every policy we're going to workshop and talk through. So, you know, for example, there might be something that you want to put forward that other counselors might feel that we need to have a briefing on this thing to get more context, etc. So I'm not 100% I know I'm not giving you a full answer because I partially don't know exactly how to move through it and navigate the public meetings law, but I think our goal here is to communicate via conversation. Always is the first space when it comes to wanting to shape the agenda. And like I said at the beginning, I really do want you all to feel empowered to bring forward ideas and policies, and I'm going to do my best to weave that into the larger committee's structure and goals. Everything that I'm hearing today, right, I'm going to start mapping out into, okay, what are over the next couple of months, what do we need to be hearing, what briefings do we need to have? And I think in between all of that, we can weave in policies that might be specific and timely and, you know, all of that. So that's kind of my first foray. If that feels okay and we'll work through it. Yeah. Any other thoughts on agenda setting or any of that? Well, we've we were just discussing.
76 I just hope we keep some, some urgency. Right. I think that. This topic can get philosophical and philosophy's not changing anything on the ground tomorrow. Right. And so I just think we have two duties to hold in, in our hands and I. And that that's not lost on me. It doesn't mean I know the answer, but it does mean that I am looking for a sense of urgency that I think this city has shown on this topic, that I hope this committee keeps front of mind in ways that I think perhaps others have not. And I think that we should ride those coattails in some ways. Yeah. Thanks.
77 That makes sense to me. Councilor duffy, anything to add?
78 You know, I'm going to just say that I think my experience in the first five weeks being in this job is that all 12 of my all these city councilors are serious and urgent and wouldn't be doing this job if it weren't for the right reasons. And I also firmly believe that the folks on this committee are only choosing to elect to be on this committee to tackle the biggest problems of our day. And so I inherently want to just I want I want to explicitly say that I am approaching this work with the deepest respect and admiration for the five of us and also the 12 people generally in this body. I approach the work with the same no surprises ethos and the general idea of radical candor. I want to debate ideas, but I don't ever want to let that fall into personal criticism or critique of an individual person who's holding those ideas. But I want to be able to be in a space where we can absolutely tear apart ideas and decide if these are the right choices for our community. And I believe firmly that we're all working towards the same goal of trying to create a community that doesn't have people dying on the streets, and that people can afford to live and work in this community as a place they choose to live. So that is the foundation that I'm bringing to this work. But other than that, you know, I don't hold you know, I like I said, I've spent 15 years working on public policy around housing and homelessness. I care about outcomes. I don't care about processes. I don't care so much about things that we have already historically done or or trying to fit things into the box that doesn't fit the box simply isn't working. So I want to be able to really. Yeah. Embrace what? How we explore finding real solutions to these this this challenge.
79 So I appreciate that. And one final note that I'll just make that I've been thinking about since what I already shared. I think in general with all the committees I'm also still trying to figure out, is it that individual councilors are wanting to, like, take lead on a policy and then maybe there's co-sponsors? Or is there some kind of process where as a committee, we are saying, okay, we're going to move some certain action, it's going to require a resolution or an ordinance, and the five of us are workshopping it together. I'm still not clear on that either. And that goes for all committees. Right. So I'm not sure if like, I'm supposed to be like, you know, pinch hitting on something. And maybe we are parsing out the work in that way where it's like each councilor, you've got this ordinance that you're going to workshop and work through, or if we're going to be like, here's the full agenda and we're going to do it together. So I'm just talking out loud of thinking out loud, of like, what I'm still working through and process. So we'll continue to explore that. But that's one area that I think we should figure out. So with that, maybe let me make a final call for comments before we enter into public comment. Any other thoughts comments you want to make on any of the topics we discussed so far? Let's open that back up just in case. Okay. And then we are in agreement then that we will go to public comment and then end our meeting there. Does that sound good to everybody? Okay. Perfect. All right. Well then with that, let me get the official notes and how to say it. Hold on. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and ask our clerk rebecca, to call on members of the public who have signed up to testify.
80 We have one person signed up to testify, addie Smith. And addie is joining us online.
81 Welcome, addie.
82 Hi, everyone. Thank you for allowing me to speak. My comments are about four minutes and 16 seconds, and I would appreciate your patience in allowing me to get all of the comments out. I am a housing credit certified professional. This isn't part of that four minutes and 16 seconds. I just want to give you just a little bit of background on who I am. I am a housing credit certified professional. I am a specialist in housing credit management. I am a certified professional of occupancy. I am a certified occupancy specialist. I am a certified apartment manager. I am a certified professional. I'm a certified property manager. I am a low income housing tax credit certified professional and the list goes on and on. I've worked in housing for over 30 years now. I'm speaking before you today because I am concerned with how Oregon housing and community services, olc, which is the Oregon law center, eviction defense, united way home forward 211, and these organizations dispute dispersed rental assistance funding to tenants. There are several violations of the fair housing act occurring here. Firstly, tenants who are illegally evicted at trial and appeal have no access to funding. The funding required for tenants. Appealing an eviction is current rent or future rent. Their evictions follow the guidelines for assistance pursuant to all the aforementioned organizations, but the tenants do not receive it. They have a court case and hearing dates like tenants in arrears, but tenants in appeal cannot access the funding. Funding for arrears for tenants goes up to at least $8,000, but for tenants in appeal they don't receive anything. The rental assistance as a tenant who is in trial and not in an appeal, receive the assistance on what's alleged to be the first come, first served basis on the first of each month. Organizations like paid partnerships rely on oaks, united way, home forward, eviction, defense and all these others to use the funding to help prevent evictions. This is not happening in in most instances, judges monica horan, mark peterson, aaron kirkwood and appellate commissioner Teresa kidd are violating housing laws to support multi-million dollar corporate landlords. Landlords like avenue five residential, who is under investigation by the doj and are being accused in a lawsuit by the doj of rent price fixing, have found a way, along with their attorneys, to circumvent house bill 2001. What is house bill 2001? It states a court shall enter a judgment dismissing a complaint for possession that is based on a termination notice for nonpayment. If the court determines that be, the landlord caused the tenant to not tender rent, including as a result of the landlord's failure to reasonably participate with the rental assistance program. End quote. The landlords are illegally returning the rent. What the attorneys and landlords are doing in some cases is knowingly sorry, getting the evictions dismissed the first time and creating a balance that will be above the amount the rental assistance program can pay. They will file another eviction with the higher balance and use part of house bill 2001, along with aiding and abetting of those aforementioned judges to get the event. The evictions. That's just some of the judges, not not all of them. I didn't mention Washington county and all the other counties. Let me break it down. When they return to court with an eviction and the rental assistance program caps at $8,000, they will have a balance over $8,000 and then return that rent. When they come to court. They tell the awaiting and informed judge that the rent was returned in compliance with house bill 2001c, the tenant has tendered a cause to be tendered rental assistance or any other payment covering the nonpayment amount owed under the termination notice for nonpayment, end quote. So if the payment does not cover the amount owed under the termination notice, the landlord and their attorneys can return the rent appearing to not violate the law. What they've actually done is violate the law. They've returned the previous rental assistance payment under the guise of a mistake. In order to create that higher balance, the Oregon legislature created house bill 200 1 in 2023 to give tenants some support and ability to stay in their homes, but judges in favor of landlords, landlords and attorneys who work for landlords are angry and are using these loopholes to get evictions. House bill 2001c, with the amount owed under the termination notice, must be removed or amended from the law. The landlord must work with the rental assistance program. Full stop. There are too many people claiming to be in support of ending homelessness who are actually contributing to it, and oaks does not need to be the provider of the organization, guiding the funding from paid partnerships. Their guidelines violate the fair housing act, and there also needs to be an independent oversight committee to monitor these organizations to ensure that people are receiving the funding and getting these. I'm sorry to ensure that people are receiving the funding and these guidelines, which aren't laws, are being used to the detriment of the tenant. That's all of it. But I do want to be part of this subcommittee, and I do have some ideas for the next meeting. I would like to be there. So I want to, you know, put my name in for public comment. I have a lot of ideas, but I know because I am currently on the ground and see what's happening in these courtrooms.
83 Thank you so much.
84 I appreciate your testimony and giving you a little bit extra time since you're the only one today, but let's talk offline so you can share some more of your thoughts. Okay.
85 Can I respond to her?
86 Sure.
87 Hi, I just wanted to say thank you.
88 I welcome any questions.
89 Thanks, addy. Thank you for your testimony today. I'm councilor Morillo from.
90 I can't hear you. Can you hear me?
91 Can ever can folks online hear us? Is there a tech issue? Testing, testing.
92 Since council chambers?
93 Oh, yeah. Council chambers is needed.
94 Oh, oh.
95 Apologies.
96 It's okay.
97 Can you hear us?
98 Submitted.
99 Are we not unmuting? Can you unmute?
100 There we go.
101 Can you hear me now?
102 I can hear you now.
103 Thank you. Addy, I just wanted to say thank you for your testimony and for sharing that information. I would love if you could send that as an email to our offices as well, so we can look over some of the things that you listed here. I also highly recommend checking in with the state legislators who passed that bill, to make sure that they're aware of those loopholes. I'm sure that you already have, but making sure that if there's an amendment needed to that bill, that they can do that at the state level.
104 Okay, that's going to that's going to come in my second the next time I get to speak, because there's a story behind that as well. Because you're right, I have.
105 Yeah. Thank you for your time. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you. With that. Wait, do I have official what I have to say? Hold on, hold on. Oh, I just have to say I'm adjourning with that. I will be adjourning the meeting of homelessness and housing committee at 1:43 p.m. Thank you.
106 Nice job. Yay yay yay!
107 I was so nervous.