The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-23
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (19,720 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 Portland City Council Homelessness and Housing Committee met on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, convening at 12:01 p.m. and adjourning at 1:59 p.m., with roll call and a statement of conduct read at the outset. The session covered four items. First, representatives from Multnomah County provided an update on the Homelessness Response System Steering and Oversight Committee, focusing on development of new Key Performance Indicators, goal-setting phases, segmentation of behavioral-health-related homelessness, and discussion of the "Domicile Unknown" mortality data report, followed by committee discussion. Second, the committee considered reappointing three members to the River Community Advisory Committee through April 2028; no public testimony was submitted, and votes occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. Third, Portland Permitting and Development staff presented a building code cleanup ordinance to reference state statutes rather than specific code years, with questions raised about omitted references in testimony submitted by a member of the public; votes occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. Finally, councilors and a community partner from Albina Vision Trust presented takeaways from a study tour of Vienna's social housing model, discussing financing structures, tenant protections, mixed-income housing, and potential applications for Portland, followed by extended committee discussion. A progress update on the related social housing study is expected by December 9.
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.
0 Trains.
1 Good afternoon. I call the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee to order on Tuesday, September 23rd at 12:01 p.m. Diego, please call the roll.
2 Good afternoon. Morillo here.
3 Zimmerman.
4 Here.
5 Dunphy.
6 Here.
7 Ryan. Avalos.
8 Present. And, claire, can you read the statement of conduct?
9 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 gov slash 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. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
10 All right. Thank you claire. Today we have four items on our agenda. First, we're going to hear updates from Multnomah county on the current work of the homelessness response system steering and oversight committee. Then we're going to have two items from Portland permitting and development reappointments to the river community advisory committee and a building code cleanup ordinance. And then finally, councilors Dunphy Green and I will share takeaways about our recent social housing study tour in vienna, and we'll be joined by one of our community partners from albina vision trust for that presentation. With that, diego, can you read the first item.
11 Item one homelessness response system steering and oversight committee.
12 All right. So I have asked jillian, shonie and Ryan deibert deibert.
13 Correct.
14 Deibert deibert from Multnomah county to provide the committee with an update on the current work of steering and oversight and I. Hello. What am I trying to say? And then following your presentation, we'll have councilor Zimmerman, who is our representative on the soc, give some thoughts as well. But part of bringing you all here is just so we can have a direct connection with the county government and get updates every committee meeting on what's going on over there. So with that, I'll pass it over to you to great.
15 Thank you. Councilor Avalos okay, to start, I'm going to make this as quickly as possible before I hand it off to councilor Zimmerman. So just by way of reminder, last summer, the Portland city council and the board of commissioners over at the county with the action plan, an initial set of key performance indicators attached to that agreement, not only do the current set of kpis expire at the end of this calendar year, the action plan was never intended to be something that was set in stone. The intent was always that it would be responsive to the needed system and programmatic work of the moment, and therefore the iga does envision annual check ins, if you will, and updates accordingly. Today, we're here to report out on the latest soc meeting. And much of the time over the last two meetings has been focused on our next set of key performance indicators. I pretty much provided you the exact slide deck that we presented in the last soc meeting, which was just this past Friday. I won't spend a lot of time going in detail down those slides, but you and your staff have it there to have a complete picture of where we are at within the soc. Next slide. And just again, quick reminder like we we started this process to do a check in on our plan and where we're at, what we've learned back in may. That action plan is being that that sort of version two of the action plan is being put together right now. You will receive it in the coming weeks. And we've now, as I just said, the last two meetings have been heavily focused on the key performance indicators. And all of this is is coming at the soc meeting in October next month for further discussion and ideally, approval from that committee to refer those two items out to the city council and the board of commissioners for votes later in the year. Next slide. So this is just by way of reminder. These were these are our current performance key performance indicators. And again they expire at the end of the year. Next slide. To sort of help just create a foundation for the conversation in the soc. We have spent time defining and discussing what a kpi is and is not. Next slide. We have also been very clear about how they are connected to the policy and budget decisions of any given elected body. Changes at the top of this graphic are directly tied to the decisions here at the county. At the state metro, the federal government. Next slide. We then sort of divided up our key performance indicator discussions into two phases. The first phase was the what deciding the what we are going to measure and use this selection criteria to drive our recommendations. When we brought that to the soc, they largely agreed with what we had recommended, but gave us several directives to do more digging on several fronts and just by way of example, adding a kpi related to the overall length of homelessness, which we have added. And they discussed this past Friday. And then again, next slide. Let's see at our very recent conversation, we have pivoted to phase two of our work. And that is the goal setting, right? That is the harder part of this effort. Next slide. And for that discussion what we did is gave them four recommended approaches to any given kpi. And that is outlined here with the explanation behind each one. And then on the subsequent slides you will see that we gave them four specific options to start thinking about in terms of next slide. These these next two slides sort of give you some examples of directions. We are recommending that body approve for at least four of the kpis that will have specific goals tied to them, whether it's a ratio or a number. And then on the final slides I will just I gave you sort of a cheat sheet. If you could go down to this color code of what we did for you is we color coded the kpis that we are discussing. There are three across the entire continuum of the system. And then on the next slide you will see that we have an additional nine that we divide up among inflow, outflow and safety on and off the streets. And the color coding is tied to the recommended approach for goal setting. Some of these are just going to be truly just indicators, right. That finger in the wind to see which way something is going. I think the eviction judgments is a really good example of that, where we're watching that data that gets reported out at the staff level to know what is coming at us in terms of inflow and then others again, the Green and the orange will have very specific ones with either ratio or numbers. But that gives you sort of a roadmap based on where we're at. And the next discussion, as I mentioned, is on October 15th, where we get very specific about goal setting. Around at least five of them with sort of more directional or or other staying as indicators at the end of the day. I did that fast.
16 Yes you did. Thank you, I appreciate it. That gives us some more time for discussion then. And then let's go ahead and have counselor Zimmerman give his update, and then we'll open it up for broader q&a.
17 Great.
18 Thanks. Good update. I think that the area that jillian brought us to in terms of the recommended approach, right, in terms of setting a goal. With a positive direction as the indicator setting ratios or just plain numbers has been helpful, right? Some some stuff in the past, is it is it helpful to set a number when the number is not really the measurement that shows us a trend, but at the same time, the soc is debating? I think numbers help establish goals. So I think it's been a helpful conversation for me in terms of how do we a lot of the soc focus the last nine months has been very much in the time now, urgent sense of experience on the ground, experience in the shelter, inflow, outflow. Last meeting was, I would say, significantly more discussion about housing types and supportive housing types. And we also had the director of the Portland housing bureau come to the meeting and just indicated generally what kind of number of development, what what number should the city be developing as a when it comes to ami, like 30% ami so our most affordable units, what is the number that puts us on track for? I think we were talking about a 20 year goal. And you know, those numbers are really indicative. And what I shared with committee is it is helpful as a policy and as a budget person, when we sometimes we'll see a housing project and we'll think, that's great. But if you if you balance it against but we our goal is to be developing over 600 of those. And we only did 200. It really frames it up of we're still short in the mark. And so that's where a number really help us meet a longer term goal. But we spent more time on housing than I think we have in the past. And that was, I think, the right time to do it. As we get into the the second half of this, of this mission is not just about street level issues, but it's also about longer term solutions. So I appreciated that. One thing I think is important for policymakers to keep in mind, you know, the staff's job is to keep us reasonable and achievable. And I appreciate that. And so there's a there's a part here that I brought up with soc of. They've encouraged us not to be too aspirational. We need to be strategic. I also think we have to be able to articulate big goals in this space in a way that allows the staff the permission to get creative on the big thing, and that sometimes aspiration is the driving. Direction that allows staff to put those attainable smart goals around it. And so I think it's a an area where the soc has to establish what do we really want to achieve from this, instead of moving into a position where we're just managing. Managing a really sad situation in perpetuity. Right. So I think that's going to take some aspirational stuff. But but the staff's been good. I think they put together a good set and approach. The October 15th meeting is one of our agreements within the iga that we all come back to, and that we establish the second round of kpis for this. And where I see the city being incredibly focused in this will be in how are we going to achieve the right level of development for the off valve or the off ramp in this greater system? To be fair to our colleague, the mayor, I think the mayor remains more focused on the urgent approach that's right now. And so I, I think that given his mission that he has taken on with respect to the overnight shelter approach and the other shelters, he is certainly feeling that pressure and wants that pressure to be felt at the soc. And so he certainly shared that with with all of us. And I think there was some acknowledgment in the room that the urgent the urgent approach is important. And we've spent many months in that focus and a little bit of housing discussion is appropriate. And I think it's just one of those natures of multiple governments coming together at times disagreeing on on the approach. And so his point was not lost on me either. And that's kind of my recap.
19 Okay. Thank you, councilor. Let's kick off discussion with councilor Dunphy.
20 Thank you. I'm trying to be as brief about this as possible. I'm really glad that the conversation is evolving, that the parties are getting along, that we're moving towards tangible results and goals by which we can hold ourselves accountable. And I think that is the only way that we are going to be getting to the bigger conversation that I keep hearing from my colleagues, which is getting in our own Lane and staying there and figuring out like, what is the county's role, what is the city's role? And historically, the city's role has been bricks and sticks building housing. I just want to note, though, it has been mentioned in this body a few times, but currently of the affordable housing that has been built by the city, 7.1% of it is sitting empty. And it's because we have that's 1538 units that are almost entirely targeted at 60 to 80% of ami. We've been building the wrong housing for decades, and we have 1538 opportunities to try and figure out how to get somebody off of the street and into housing right now. We need to figure out what to do with that. We need to figure out how we are going to use these units and how we buy down the affordability on that, or how we make sure that people who are in those spaces are successful. I think it's a tragedy to have even one affordable unit sitting empty, and it's because of our own policy or, you know, our the city's policies over our history. So I think we need to have that conversation. We need to get to that point. It sounds like we're getting closer, and we're having the conversation about what happens after a triage, which is really where we have been for the last decade. So I'm glad that I'm this report sounds, you know, it feels like things are moving in the right direction. And I'm thankful for everybody getting involved. The city has a lot more work to do.
21 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman.
22 Thanks, chair. I was reminded by councilor Ryan, there's an important point that came up during the slc that I forgot to address in mine. The and this is an area where councilor Ryan has, I think, for a long time beat the drum, but that the soc did get into some of the segmenting out of poverty based homelessness. Homelessness that is highly related to one's mental illness and and then addiction. I just want to share with this group what was notable to me was I felt it to be the first time I saw. I think unanimous head nodding of it is okay to acknowledge the differences, particularly when we talk about permanent supportive housing and that it is okay for those who are providing that permanent supportive housing to to raise their hand and say, this person or this group of people you would like us to take, we're not doing that well or we can't do it well, and that is having an effect on the rest of the units, which I thought was a remarkable turn. There was a time in our community, if you voiced such a concern, I think you kind of got listed as maybe not willing to play. And that that was an interesting turn at the soc for me, and acknowledgment that there are different levels of support that come with permanent supportive housing and that some of our providers that we rely on the most are raising the red flag right now, or raising the alarm that they are at risk of being able to stay in that line of business if we're not far more targeted about it and the type of service that goes in each place, and making sure that that matches appropriate, I thought that was significant. That is not always been the case in that conversation. And so it helped, as the group discussed how to fund more housing and that some housing, when it's poverty based, can go without the other supportive services perhaps, than mental health being highly a very different need. And so I did appreciate that we were going down that. And I think we'll hear the soc do more of that as well. Thanks for that reminder, councilor.
23 All right. Councilor Ryan.
24 Thank you, chair Avalos. Well, clearly what I was going to mention, councilor Zimmerman addressed it, but I want to still stay with that because the inflow, it seems like that's where you're trying to segment the different types of reasons people are homeless. So wouldn't it be in there that we would have the data on who is on our streets that are chronically homeless, that have long term, untreated behavioral health issues?
25 Question are you talking to that? Sorry, clarify for me. Councilor Ryan, are you looking at our our our suggested kpis under inflow? Are you on slide 13? Is that what you're speaking to in that first one.
26 Since it was I think what I heard, it was discussed without cringe. The reality of what the conditions on our streets for some time now, well over a decade and in the inflow document here that I'm looking at, the page has the kpis. It people who become homeless. So if we're talking about it without someone being ostracized, that's a step in the right direction. But are we going to actually put it in the document under the category of inflow? Like when will we have that demographic data exposed to us?
27 Well, that's already reported out on hzds data dashboard every month with updated numbers. If you're talking about number five, what I think councilor Zimmerman was alluding to a moment ago, and councilor Zimmerman come over the top here, is that we got into a discussion about the a new data set that we have where hsd provided two years of data to healthshare they overlaid that with medicaid claims data. And we now have a very because of that data work, we now have a very targeted and data informed way to segment a universe of folks where we can problem solve around. And some of those are housed individuals within some type of permanent housing. And permanent housing in this context includes rapid rehousing, other long term housing with supportive services and then capital, psh, permanent supportive housing. But that number for kpi is our effort to segment out what is referred to. That acronym stands for the high acuity behavioral health cohort and target some solutions there that hopefully will improve some outcomes in housing placement for these slice of folks that are not that are having challenges. Right. The vast majority of folks we place in permanent supportive housing are successful. The two year retention rate is like 84%, but that 16% is what the affordable housing, building owners, property management companies, that's what they're really struggling with. And we have a policy table set up, designing a pilot right now to be very targeted and problem solving around that. But I would say this is not the first step. I would say the first thing that we did was when I was here at the city, we gathered a table in December of 2023, and that is when we came to the decision, the collective decision with Multnomah county to increase the psh subsidy higher, moving from ten k to 15 to $17,500 a year for those who have a high need. So we do have a spectrum of services within psh and including what we call psh lite, so that that customization does currently exist. But we still have some folks who are so ill that we need to we need to pilot something different for them.
28 And I really appreciate this conversation. I want to say that what I hear from providers is that when they move people in, they need those extra resources and they haven't been getting them, and that causes a lot of challenge to all the other residents in the units and to the neighborhood. And it's not fair to them. And so I think that if we can be more clear eyed about this and have that distinguished amount, that is more than someone that isn't experiencing chronic behavioral health issues, that's a step in the right direction. And so I think hearing that it's been daylighted more, and it sounds like it's behavioral health and mental health professionals at the table. Now that's a step in the right direction to remember. There was quite a period of years where that wasn't the case. So the silos are breaking down.
29 Absolutely.
30 All right. I'll take that as good news.
31 Thank you. I don't see any other folks in the queue. Last call for questions. Go ahead.
32 Ryan, we had a bit of a discussion about the domicile. Unknown that I think would be good for the city to be aware of colleagues. It was there was a conversation, right? I reminded the soc. I worked at the county a long time ago, and I remember the time we first went over 80 names on that list. We're into the hundreds now, and there's been some discussion about how best to capture information about people who are homeless, who are dying on the streets, and making sure that that's not lost when the death occurs in the hospital system because they got taken there and not just found on the sidewalk. It's it's not a great part of the job, but it's important because so many city resources are involved in that aspect. And the numbers are things that that I think would have, would have shocked the policymakers of ten years ago when they were reacting to 80 names on the list. That's now hundreds. Ryan, is there anything else you want to share with respect to that part of our conversation at the soc that you think council members should be aware of?
33 Sure. Happy to reflect that back. For the record, my name is Ryan deibert. I use he him pronouns. I'm the deputy director at the homelessness response system. Chair. Thank you for having us today. Councilor to speak to your question. Through these conversations about developing key performance indicators for our system at at several levels, both with our community advisory committee, with our bureaucratic leaders who are part of our implementation committee, and then also with our elected leaders at the steering and oversight committee. They've asked for better information to understand what we're seeing in terms of people who are dying while while experiencing homelessness, helping to think about how we can prevent that and monitor those changes over time. So we looked closely at the at the report that's developed annually by the Multnomah county health department. That's called domicile unknown, that looks at that combination of medical examiner data and then also death certificate data to try to understand causes of death among people experiencing homelessness. Initially, we had hoped to develop a key performance indicator using that data. Those data actually lag by about a year and a half to two years. So in any given report that's produced by the health department, you're generally seeing who died a year and a half to two years ago. So it's really important information to be able to understand the range of causes of death that we're seeing. But it's also not particularly timely. So as a result, we're we're recommending that we continue to look at that data, not as a key performance indicator, because it lags too far from our our actual systemic interventions, but instead be able to address actions that can that can help to meet those, to prevent those causes of death and look for more timely data sources that we can draw on, particularly in partnership with the public safety section here at the city of Portland, as well as our partners at the health department. Thanks.
34 I think that was important just because if one sees that the deaths on the street is no longer a kpi or it's not, it was considered, but it was dropped, right? The messaging around that's really important. And Ryan shared why that data set wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for a kpi, but it still remains important for policymakers, for the health department, for all of us involved. And I wanted to highlight that in case that was ever misconstrued, I think that the answer that the staff has provided made a lot of sense to me for why that would not be a good nomination for a kpi.
35 Thank you. I've got about two more minutes allocated to this line item. I see two hands, so if we can get through those as soon as we can, that'd be great, councilor Dunphy.
36 Yeah. Really quickly. Why is it lagged by two years? And isn't there an opportunity for us to improve that system? It seems like really important information.
37 Yeah, I think there I think there is opportunity and this is going to be part of the ongoing discussion, particularly with our colleagues at the medical examiner's office and with the health department. So the I can give you a longer answer, but the short answer is being able to clean and verify that data and produce the report, as the health department currently does, induces some of that lag. So part of our exploration is to understand whether we could get essentially provisional data on a quicker timeline to be able to inform, actionable, to be actionable.
38 Satisfied. Okay. And last question, councilor Ryan.
39 Thank you. Chair Avalos. First of all, good to see you both, julian and Ryan. I actually have a thought on that. I think you should include it and put an asterisk on it and just say that it's this is the date, but not including that in the kpi to me is a disservice. It has a lot of information. So just put an asterisk on it and say that it's lagged. Thanks.
40 And this might not satisfy you completely, councilor Ryan, but it was sort of not a kpi for now was the discussion. And we are going to develop some action items around it. Whether you're talking about overdoses, traffic fatalities, gun violence, and we don't have any on gun violence, it's a really good example where we have ceasefire that has done some really good work to reduce gun violence among black youth. We are now talking about how to what do we pull over and replicate for the houseless community to. They're now nearly 50% of the gun violence in our city.
41 Everything you said is satisfying because it's real. So I just think that I've done kpi work before, and sometimes you put an asterisk on it because you get that data right to being a data integrity. It might lag others, but to exclude it to me misses the opportunity to continue to be educated about the status of who we're serving and what what's going on.
42 Thank you.
43 Thank you, julian and Ryan, for being here. We appreciate you and we look forward to more updates in the future.
44 Thank you. Thank you.
45 Diego, please read the next item.
46 Item two reappoint bruce broussard, kelly holtz, and tim larson to the river community advisory committee for terms to expire April 12th, 2028.
47 All right, so we've got Portland permitting and development here with a set of reappointments for us to consider for the river community advisory committee. We've got interim director, kuhnhausen and staff here. Welcome, and please feel free to get started, introduce yourself and get started.
48 Thank you.
49 Excuse me. Thank you very much. Let's give us one second to get logged in here.
50 Okay.
51 Sure. Okay.
52 Perfect. All right, all right. Good afternoon. Councilors. Thank you very much for having us today. And thank you, chair Avalos, for creating some space in today's agenda. I'm joined today by dave thibeault. He's pads building inspection division manager. And he's the bureau's liaison to the river community advisory committee, often referred to as the cac. As mentioned in the item introduction, dave and I are here today to request your approval to reappoint three community committee. Committee members for a second term. Those appointees, bruce brassard, kelly holtz, and tim larson. I believe only kelly is here or I'm sorry, only tim is here today. Unfortunately, there were conflicts for the other two appointees. I believe this is the first time that this committee is hearing about the cac. So before dave shares some background on the appointees, I want to share some high level information. This committee has been in existence for next slide for 35 years, and was established to ensure that those with knowledge and experience, and in many cases, living on the floating structures in the rivers, had a committee that advocated for their unique needs. This committee consists of six members who actively review title 28 and advise on policy updates, code changes and other pieces of the development review process that impact portland's river communities. Members are appointed by council for a three year term, with an option for reappointment. Next slide. As mentioned in the introduction, we are here today to reappoint bruce brassard, kelly holtz, and tim larson. All three bring valuable expertise and strong engagement to this committee, and the reappointments will help ensure continuity in our cac work regarding the permitting process, ongoing process improvements, and outreach to the river communities that they represent. I'm now going to pass it over to dave to speak a little bit more about the appointees and their respective backgrounds.
53 Thank you. For the record, my name is david tebow. I'm the division manager for inspections and liaison for the cac committee. First, I'd like to highlight bruce brassard. Bruce resides at the janssen beach moorage this is his second term. If reappointed. He served two terms on the janssen beach moorage board, as well as various non-profits throughout the community. Bruce has been very active in in local politics for a very long time. Bruce is a marine veteran and as in addition, an african American, which is kind of rare on the river. And so his voice is, is particularly poignant for this committee. Next, I'd like to highlight kelly holtz. Kelly resides at the lower Willamette yacht club. Kelly serves on multiple related river community organizations on the waterfront organization of Oregon, which is who they meet regularly. Oaks bottom habitat enhancement project, as well as as well as various other river based nonprofits. Tim larson, currently a resident out at the sauvie island. Sauvie island resident at the at the moorage out there, tim has recently committed a completed a three year appointment on the citizens advisory council, performing a 20 year charter review of Multnomah county charter. He also has spearheaded various. Important issues that that confront the their community as far as like wakes, it's it's things that that affect their community dearly. If reappointed bruce kelly and tim, this will be their second term and will run through April 12th of 2028. With these reappointments, they will all will have all our our seats filled essentially. And I appreciate the time that you guys have given us to outline these individuals.
54 Thank you. Let's see if we have any public testimony.
55 No one has signed up.
56 Okay. Sounds good. Well, then we'll open it up for committee discussion. Not seeing any hands yet. Oh, go ahead, councilor Zimmerman.
57 This is great. So I, I, I appreciate what you said. This is a unique community and I think significantly different than a lot of Portland in the ways. And I know that because as a young property appraiser for Multnomah county, I must have somebody off on some day because I eventually got the floating home assignment. And from a valuation perspective, I find floating homes to be quite difficult. It's great in the summer when you get to go from sauvie island down to marine drive, but to have faith in your numbers is a little challenging. But I also was on assignment at one of the floating homes when I got the call to take a paid, my first paid political job. And so if anybody's mad that I'm in politics, it's really me looking over at the river and saying, do I want to keep doing this? Or do I want to go work in politics? It's it's floating homes fault that I'm here.
58 And so.
59 These are great. I know these candidates. These are great. Thanks for bringing these names. Of course we support them. But it is quite important where so much of our river life, recreation, life intersects. But there are people who live on these rivers who do sometimes pay the price for how Portland relearns how to use its river at different times. And it's really important that they've got a perspective because we want those those options to continue and wake zones and, and, and riparian zones. These things affect these communities in ways that sometimes we don't remember. So thanks for putting them at the forefront. Appreciate it.
60 Thank you.
61 Thank you for that. And a bit of Zimmerman lore.
62 It's all their fault.
63 Yeah. Go ahead. Councilor okay.
64 I'll try not to pile on with that. You said they're here. Some of the people who are serving on this.
65 Is I believe tim is via zoom.
66 Oh, zoom.
67 Okay.
68 Tim larson wanted them to identify themselves so we could see them.
69 No. He's not. I'm sorry. Okay. Unfortunately, he's not on zoom. Sorry.
70 No. Everything that councilor Zimmerman said, I lived on hayden island in the mobile home court above the. So I knew a lot of people lived in them. So I'm. I really understand the whole no wake thing, and I'm glad that always comes up when we have this conversation. Anyway, thank you and thanks to the people who chose to serve.
71 Thank you.
72 All right. Seeing no other hands, are we ready for a vote? So then I would entertain a motion to send the reappointments of bruce broussard, kelly holtz and tim larson to the river community advisory committee to full council with the recommendation that they be approved.
73 So moved second.
74 Moved by councilor Zimmerman, seconded by councilor Dunphy. Please call the roll.
75 Morillo I.
76 Zimmerman I Dunphy.
77 Here I.
78 Ron Ryan. Hi Avalos. I and the motion carries with five ayes. The reappointments of bruce broussard, kelly holtz and tim larson to the river community advisory committee will move to the full council with the recommendation that the appointments be confirmed.
79 Thank you both.
80 Thank you so much.
81 Thank you. And, david, don't go too far because we've got you up next.
82 Sticking around.
83 Thank you. Diego, can you read the next item?
84 Item three amend city code to adopt state of Oregon building codes by reference. Amend code title 24 and sections 25.0, 1.020, 26.0, 1.030 and 27.01 .030.
85 All right. Thank you. So our second Portland permitting and development item is related to changing city code to allow for continuous alignment with state building codes. So director kuhnhausen take it away.
86 All right. Thank you once again for the record, david kuhnhausen, interim director of Portland permitting and development. On this item, I'm joined by jody orrison. She's the building code analyst, as mentioned in the item introduction. Jody and I are here today to propose some changes to where and how state codes are referenced in our city titles. These changes are purely clerical and are intended to significantly save both city staff time and counsel time, which jody will elaborate on shortly. As you may recall presentation in June, where staff presented some changes to the Oregon energy efficiency efficiency specialty code that changed from the 2023 version to the 2025 version. That presentation included some information about state of Oregon requirements that state that local jurisdictions must adopt updated versions of each building code. Those codes are updated every three years, which, because of how Portland city code is written, requires us to bring ordinances to council to update those references in our city titles. Now, before I hand it over to jody, I want to make two points very clear. We are not proposing any changes to any codes or requirements today. We are proposing changes that increase the efficiency for staff and save council time in hearing these items on an ongoing basis. Second, these code additions will not in any way impact any of the temporary system development charge waiver programs that went into effect on August 15th will not have any impact to any permits in the queue, so any new housing permits that are submitted and want to utilize at scc exemption will be reviewed under the code addition, in effect at the time of submittal per standard practice. So once again, just to reiterate, that will not impact any permits that are currently in the queue or moving forward. And with that, I'll pass it over to jody to elaborate on the rest of this.
87 Again, jody and building code analyst with pnd. So today's ordinance for the full dramatic effect. Here's our what we have currently in the titles. Each of these years precedes each of our building codes, and we would like to remove the specific year in front of each one of those in the title. Instead, we want to reference the state statute and the state admin rules that give the details around which code to use and when to start using them. When we brought the ordinance for the energy code this past June, that took approximately 60 hours of staff time to prepare all the pieces and come. That's not counting staff. Time for your staff or the rest of everybody or council time. So we were motivated to find a more efficient amendment package for the next one. So this is an example of how it will play out for one of the building codes. So the commercial building code is the Oregon specialty code where we currently have the 2022 osc that's referenced in title 24. This is on the right hand side with the blue is what the proposed amendment will read. It says the Oregon specialty code, as adopted by ors, which is the statute and the oer 9184 60, which is the admin rule. So the statutes are what define the scope of application and delegate authority to local jurisdictions. And then the admin rules provide details for which code edition to use, when to start using it. Also, just because it is related to the osc this past week, last week, bkd had a rulemaking hearing that adopts the 2025 osc that becomes effective next week. It's not mandatory until April 1st. So with these amendments, we won't have to do the redundant work of coming to you again in April to fix this over to the 2025 osc. Our codes will remain accurate. And then this is our last slide that shows the full scope of all the different titles that we're touching, because the building codes are referenced in multiple titles, there are multiple places we have to adjust these. And then it also shows the admin rules, all the different admin rules that we are referencing. So for another example, the title 25 plumbing regulations. References. The 2023 opsc. That one's going to change next fall. With these amendments. Now with the amendments, it will reference the oer 9187 50. And there. So the state will change that oer our code will remain the same. That will change, will still be accurate. So in summary, we are here today to remove the year from in front of each building code and instead reference the state statutes and admin rules that identify the year effective date mandatory date for each code. This does not change any of the actual building code requirements that are currently mandatory throughout the state. It's just a more direct path to point to the same code requirements, and we're happy to answer any questions you have.
88 Thank you for the presentation. We'll start with councilor Dunphy.
89 Thank you. So we received some pretty compelling testimony from frequent flier of our city council meetings. Terry harris, who is a nerd in the in the weeds in ways that I can only aspire to be. He had some specific concerns and some general concerns about this that I share that adopting by reference is really only as good as the stability of the reference, and as the accuracy of the reference that we are still opening ourselves to. Some inaccuracies on the state level if things change there, and additionally that there are some specific things that are being omitted in the way that we are moving in this direction. Terry actually went through exhibit by exhibit and called out that there is, for example, section in 24 .10.040/a1. It makes reference to adopting ors 455.010 through 455895, but it omits 897, which is criminal prosecution. Criminal penalties. I don't know if you have seen this piece of testimony yet. I'd be interested to see your response to some of these specifics, because this is a bit over my head. But terry is seldom outright wrong. Maybe he's has stronger views on how things should be done, but he's very seldom wrong. So I would really like to see your response to this piece of testimony before I'd be feel comfortable moving it forward.
90 That makes a lot of sense. I have not seen the testimony. I do want to say that we had our legal group look at it, and this is specific to code references. It's not all of our building code program. So that is one piece that we were. Really focused on the code addition and then the effective dates. That was really the extent of where this particular code change is coming from. But we're happy to look through the concerns and go over that with our legal group.
91 Yeah, I've not seen that testimony either, but be happy to take a look at that and provide a response.
92 Great. I will make sure that you have a copy in your email inboxes. And thank.
93 You, thank you.
94 Okay. Thank you. I have a question. So how do you see this impacting which items come to council in the future? And specifically, I'm thinking of updates that we've been expecting to the state code changes on single stair reform. For example. How would you see this change impacting those kinds of updates?
95 So the the state this is the model. Well there's a model code and then the state has the full edition. So if the single stair for example was part of the building code, we would have to adopt it whether we wanted to or not. That is the way that goes. It turns out that the single stair is an optional appendix. So that's something we would have to bring to you no matter how we are referencing the state code. And in fact, we are working on an ordinance to bring to you that adds that specifically adopts that optional appendix, that the way that we're referencing this doesn't affect the fact that we would have to adopt that anyway.
96 Thank you. That's helpful. Other comments.
97 Sure.
98 Yeah. Councilor Ryan.
99 Thank you. Chair, I just want to thank you both for doing this. Very tedious but necessary work, I believe you, thanks.
100 Any further discussion from the committee? All right. Well, then, let's see. I would like to entertain a motion to send the ordinance document number 2025 374 to the full council with a recommendation to pass.
101 So moved.
102 Moved by councilor Ryan, do I have a second?
103 Second?
104 Seconded by councilor Zimmermann. Please call the roll. Diego.
105 Morillo I.
106 Zimmerman. I Dunphy.
107 I'm going to support this now, but I just want to know that my support in the full council will respond. So I.
108 Ryan I, I.
109 Motion carries with five ayes. The ordinance document number 2025 374 will move to the full council with a recommendation to pass.
110 Great. Thank you so much for your time. We'll be chatting shortly.
111 Thank you very much.
112 Have a good day. Okay, diego, go ahead and call our last item.
113 Item four report back and takeaways from the vienna trip to study alternative housing models.
114 All right, folks, so we are going to give a report out on vienna. Let's get everybody here. Do you want to come on up? Councilor Green to the table. Let's get the powerpoint going and then we'll get started.
115 Okay, great.
116 All right. Thank you. So good afternoon, folks, and everyone listening in. I know we've got some eager folks online to hear what we have to report out. We are going to be talking about our fact finding trip to vienna, a city that has done what Portland has so far struggled to do make housing stable, affordable and dignified for the majority of their residents. We all know what failure looks like. We're seeing it in our streets, in tents and rvs. We see it in eviction court where families are losing their homes every day. We see it in the data. With more than half of Portland renters are cost burdened and 1 in 4 pay over half of their income just to keep a roof over their heads. When I was door knocking recently, I met a young father who had just lost his job and was facing eviction, and with it, the possibility that he and his four kids would become homeless. My staff was able to go with him to eviction court, connect him to resources, and prevent his immediate eviction. But that is just one family out of hundreds that are showing up at eviction court every single month. With their futures hanging in the balance and portland's past efforts to solve housing and homelessness simply haven't been enough, and portlanders are paying the price. Vienna reminded us that it doesn't have to be this way, and we saw a city that treats housing as a public good, just like water, roads or schools, and builds it at the scale needed to keep people stably housed. We also saw a city that plans for the future instead of scrambling to respond to every crisis. And we saw the results lower rents, less displacement, and healthier, more livable communities. So our task now is clear to bring these lessons home, adapt them to portland's context, and make bold choices that match the scale of the crisis. Because the alternative is doing what we've been doing, and we all know where that path leads. Next slide. All right. So I'm going to give you a quick overview of the vienna model. So vienna's housing model has created ample permanently affordable housing for the large majority of residents. It is not a small and marginalized program. It is the core of their housing market, shaping how their city grows and thrives. So I'm going to talk through a couple of the key features. First, a development process that ensures quality. So vienna prioritizes world class design, architecture, competitions and long term maintenance, rather than cutting corners and building for the lowest upfront costs. They treat housing like civic infrastructure like parks, schools or transit, and they maintain it to a high standard over decades. Next is social mixing and inclusion. Vienna intentionally integrates income levels within developments, and people from a wide range of incomes live in the same buildings and neighborhoods, which prevents segregation. It strengthens community and it reduces stigma. Next, they have world leading renter protections and services, so tenancy laws guarantee fair rents, protect against eviction and require that landlords maintain their properties. In addition, they have a three pillar tenant support system, which I'll talk about in the next slide that ensures that renters have legal aid, housing allocation, transparency, and access to community building services that prevent conflict and prevent displacement. They have deep integration of amenities and transit, so housing is built near public transit, schools, childcare, shops, parks. These are creating complete neighborhoods where daily needs are within walking distance. Land banking for affordability. We've started to talk about that at our last council meeting. And vienna began strategically acquiring land decades ago so that the city could control land prices and reserve property for public benefit rather than speculative profit. The kind of profit made by investors who sit on land or housing to sell it at a higher price. By taking speculation out of the equation, vienna keeps housing affordable for the long term. Speaking of long term affordability through limited profit housing associations. So these nonprofit developers are legally restricted from extracting profits beyond a modest margin, keeping costs low for tenants, and reinvesting surpluses back into housing. As it relates to community engagement, it is a standard practice, and vienna meaningfully involves residents in planning new housing and public spaces and helping to build buy in and a shared sense of ownership over city development. And lastly, political commitment. Across generations. This system has survived more than a century through economic crises, wars, shifting governments because it remains popular and it benefits the majority of residents. Leaders have consistently reaffirmed that housing is a public good and not a commodity, and this model is so effective and popular that it continues to be protected and expanded after more than 100 years, and is one of the main reasons that vienna is widely considered as the most livable city in the world, because it shows us that stable, affordable housing at scale is not just possible, but it's sustainable when a city is making it a priority. Next slide. So what we saw in vienna was true what true renter stability looks like and how it can be a pathway to community wealth, not just individual survival. Vienna has what they call a three pillar tenant support system. So the first pillar is housing allocation. It is a transparent system that's rules based and equitable. They use a point system that prioritizes people most in need. So folks experiencing homelessness, survivors of domestic violence, single parents. There's no mystery waitlist. There's no insider connections. It is just clear rules for everyone to see and understand. Second is legal aid. They provide free tenant legal services that help people fight eviction, enforce renter protections, and hold landlords accountable. And third is community building. So programs like von partner, which is a city funded service that mediates disputes, prevents eviction, and literally creates social peace by hosting activities, building resident networks, and empowering tenants to solve problems together. And that was definitely the thing that stuck with me the most. I was also really struck by how vienna officials see labor and housing as deeply connected. So nearly 98% of austrian workers are covered by collective bargaining, and housing is treated as a part of labor and economic rights. So this is a powerful reminder for us that housing justice is economic justice. And in the us, renting is often seen as something you're supposed to graduate from. Because we've made homeownership the only path to building wealth. And in Portland, too often renting is precarious and predatory. Like the story that I shared earlier about an east Portland dad facing eviction. But in vienna, renting is stable, it's dignified, and it's designed to build long term security. Families can stay as long as they want because there are no lease term limits, and apartments can even be passed down to children, meaning that families can actually build intergenerational wealth through stable renting, not just through buying a home. And the scale of this is huge, because 75% of all tenants qualify for social housing, and 76% of all vienna residents are renters. And yet, vienna is consistently ranked one of the most livable cities. And it's proof that housing stability, not necessarily homeownership, is the real foundation of thriving communities. I thought a lot about what this would mean for east Portland, where so many people have been priced out of other neighborhoods, and for generations, housing policy here has displaced black portlanders and other marginalized groups through exclusionary zoning, racially restrictive covenants, and redlining. And those were political choices that transferred wealth to white property owners and stripped it away from everyone else. Vienna's policymakers made a different choice. They treat housing as a public good, not as a profit machine, and that choice is popular. Their residents defend the system because they experience its benefits every day. So as we work to craft housing policy that advances equity here in Portland, vienna gave me a hopeful, hopeful vision of what's possible a city where renting is safe, affordable and generationally stable, and a city where we stop the cycle of displacement and give families a real chance to put down roots. Final slide. Lastly, I just want to close with a powerful conversation that we had with a member of parliament, elki tausch. I cannot speak german. I cannot get these names right. And she is both the chair of austria's national committee on housing and construction and the head of vienna's tenant association. And throughout our trip, we talked with the bureaucrats who implement social housing, the developers who build it and the residents who live in it. But for me, it was the conversations with political leaders like elki that hit closest to home, because they remind us that none of this happens by accident. She made it clear that vienna's system is the result of deliberate political choices, choices made over and over again for more than 100 years to defend housing as a public good. She was also really candid with us about the challenges that they face today rising land prices that are threatening affordability, a far right movement working to dismantle their social programs, and the constant pressure to justify these investments to the public. But here's what stuck with me. Vienna's message resonates with its residents because the benefits are visible and they're tangible. People see the clean courtyards where their kids can play the parks and the transit that they rely on, and the security of knowing that they can't be unfairly evicted. Housing is a public good isn't just an abstract idea, it is a lived experience that builds trust in government. And that's exactly the challenge and opportunity that we face here in Portland. We cannot keep just managing crisis after crisis. We need to create a vision that people can see, feel and believe in, and then we need to deliver it. If we do that, we're not just going to reduce homelessness, we're going to rebuild trust. We're going to make Portland a place where people want to stay and put down their roots and raise their families, and this is the work ahead of us. And if vienna has shown us anything, it's that cities willing to be bold enough to treat housing as a public good are the ones that win not just for a year, not just for a budget cycle, but for generations. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to vice chair Dunphy, who's going to share more about vienna's design principles and livability strategies that can inspire us here in Portland.
117 Thank you. Chair Avalos.
118 Yeah, you know, it's impressive to hear about this on paper. And it's one thing to see on a powerpoint presentation, the conversations around centering good transit and community building. It's another one to actually experience it and be there. We throughout our week, we spent a ton of time walking and riding public transit to be able to go and experience these different intentional communities. I want to focus a little bit on the the neighborhood of san berto, which again, not a german speaker, but this was the area where we were largely based. Our hosts met us in the community center of their their co-op housing called bikes and rails. They where all of these co-op housing, public housing, limited term or limited profit housing models, all centered community and really intentional ways with the built environment. In this area where we were visiting, it was built around an old railway line that was abandoned and turned into a public park. And the city then did an intentional process of development with a mixture of public housing, limited profit housing, co-op housing and true private market housing. Two thirds of those that housing is in the first three categories of municipal housing limited profit housing and co-op housing, and the last third is a mix of the private properties. All of the proposals were awarded through a contest in which they make sure that the entire neighborhood is served by the current interests of the public. They have specific requirements around architectural design and making sure things are interesting around environmentally friendly policies and the way that it is used to reduce the carbon impact around community building and around Green space. When developers compete in that section in that process, we get they end up with really interesting, neighbor focused, community scaled housing that people feel a part of and feel proud to live in. They really, intentionally are intentional about the holistic planning, not just the four walls of the apartment, not just the four walls of the apartment building, but also transit integration and amenities on the ground floor, like neighborhood scale grocery stores, small businesses, kindergartens, pharmacies, health care clinics, cafes everywhere. They also really intentionally center Green space. And some of it is very prescribed and very intentional and very designed the way that some of our city parks are. Some of it was just grass, allowing kids to go out and make their own soccer fields or make their own opportunities for it. There were playgrounds everywhere. There were communal court houses, court yards in every single apartment space that we saw. And they had smart units that were focused on smart. It was a smart. Units are an acronym in there that they were specifically focused on single mothers, youth people, young professionals, you know, leaving the house and having their first home for the first time and older adults in order to. And it was intentionally kept at a lower price point than the other housing units in the same limited profit housing. They had a motto that there was no bad neighborhood, and that you can't tell someone's income simply by where what their address is. All of the housing was intentionally mixed with higher income earners and lower income earners. People who qualify for public housing and and the the private market as, as councilor Avalos said specifically means testing only happens on intake if somebody is able to qualify for affordable housing and then they get a good job, they're not suddenly facing homelessness. And folks of all levels live across this, lived near each other and integrate and are forced into community, communal spaces and thrive in that regard. By having a competitive process for what those projects look like, they end up with higher quality, more interesting and more sustainable developments than in the private market. Some of the most boring looking properties were the private sector housing, because they built it to maximize profit, but the use of balcony spaces and Green spaces and building materials and cross-laminated, timber and wooden facades and other types of design elements really proved that there. It's not a choice between affordability and design. Walking around in the city of vienna, you could really feel that integration of of class. The result? It wasn't just housing that was being built, it was community. You could see people of all ages, wages and stages of their lives integrating. You could see young kids playing, you could see older adults monitoring. You could see grandparents sort of grumbling about how loud kids were. But there was a sense there was a palpable sense of calm and security and safety throughout, because the spaces were active, they didn't rely on. I mean, you know, there was there were obvious signs of of graffiti. There were some trash on the ground. There were still some folks sleeping outside, but it felt safe. And it really was about what livability means. Beyond the they've actually extended beyond the 15 minute city. You know, we have Portland has at different times said we're going to experience a 15 minute city or a 20 minute city. They've moved beyond that and now refer to themselves as a city of small distances. Every neighborhood had everything that anyone would need in order to be able to go and facilitate their life. And it was really thoughtful and intentional and at a community scale that I think is absolutely something that we can use policy here to try and create those kinds of opportunities. I heard specifically from a neighbor very recently who was saying that she's looking for volunteer opportunities in the community because the 200 unit apartment building that she lives in is really hard to meet friends. And that's horrible. The missed opportunity, because we've seen very clearly that vienna has been able to embody that, that intentional community building in the fabric of how these buildings are built. And with a little bit of effort and intentionality, our we can use our precious public dollars to do something similar. And councilor Green, I'll turn it over.
119 To you.
120 Thank you so much. If I start yammering on for a long period of time, cut me off. Pull out the old hook. For the record, my name is councilor Mitch Green. I am not on the committee, but I am honored to be before the committee once again. Before I get into that, I just. I need to acknowledge councilor Zimmerman, your origin story. You know, sort of if anyone has a blame, is worried about your presence on this, like blame your tour of duty with the floating homes. I would say the same thing for my inability to get a hot dog permit. 20 years ago. We had a good discussion earlier today, so the trip wasn't just about looking at the built environment and just about sort of seeing what the kind of the, the broader set of social benefits are to residents in vienna because of social housing. A big part of this, for not only this body, but also this community that we serve, is the cost. And the big question that folks are going to ask as we move toward a potential policy proposal is, how do you pay for it? And so when I went on that trip, I kept in my mind that recent report from econorthwest that was kind of moving through the press that had sort of said, look, we've spent nearly three quarters of $1 billion on homeless services with, you know, the array of public money, whether that's philanthropic, federal, state, county, metro, you name it. So we were spending a lot of money in the city of Portland to just deal with the sort of after effects of a shortage of affordable housing. There's a shortage of market rate housing. There's just our housing system is broken. And so I wanted to kind of really address how do you pay for it? Question. First, from the standpoint of our existing cost structure, because, you know, it may be the case somehow some way down the road, we would need to raise a fee or levy a tax and put that to voters for social housing. But but before we get there, we really need to be thinking about retooling what we're currently spending to do something different. So, you know, speaking for councilor Green, I don't see social housing as something that you layer on top of the suite of broad public, you know, support dollars for housing and homelessness. I see it as a reimagining of our delivery system, because what vienna has done, and this chart is an effort to sort of describe that is they've figured out how to control their costs. So I've got some figures here based upon that report. The tri county region, you know, $724 million for fy 24, that's a staggering number. But in Multnomah county, from that same report, identifies that $500 million was spent in fy 24 just dealing with homelessness, okay, that's not production of new housing. That's that's just dealing with homelessness. And so if you scale that by per capita, because we're talking about two jurisdictions that have wildly different densities and populations, that on a per capita basis, in Multnomah county, we're spending $628 on a per capita basis for fy 24. But in the city of vienna, they spend $266, the equivalent of dollars per capita for not only their entire social housing program, but all those other services that councilor Avalos. Avalos alluded to the sort of broad wraparound services, not just for the deeply impoverished, but also, you know, to make sure folks aging in place aren't lonely, to make sure that folks who have a mobility challenge on a second or third floor of a building and the elevator goes out, they can dispatch a crew of two burly dudes to go and lift them downstairs so they can live a full life. That's what they're getting for their dollars there. And I think that if we're going to have a conversation around social housing in Portland, we need to confront our current cost structure, which isn't working for us. Please go to the next slide. So I just I thought this chart was really good. From director hinrich's presentation. When we brought forward the resolution for social housing before this committee, it just really puts in a picture that the city of vienna is that red space, and it has roughly 2 million people. The Green space is the city of Portland, way less population density. But the critical piece of information is that half of our residents are rent burdened. Half. But in vienna, it's 16%. And it's because they've taken a different model delivery, service delivery approach that we just do not do. And they've got far fewer homeless people. So the cost to us in the region is not just the dollars out the door, it's also the human cost that we have to live with. For folks who are experiencing homelessness and the broader implications for our local community. Next slide. This is a graph that was presented to us by the staff economist for an entity called comer, which is their council of labor. It's like their chamber. Chamber of labor. It's like their chamber of commerce. But for for the 98% of workers that are covered by collective bargaining agreement. And this was a sort of analysis of what we call warm rents as a as a proportion of disposable income in europe. And that means your rents on average, plus your utilities. Right. So and that's net of disposable not gross. So what they show is that in cities like london, berlin, hamburg you've got pretty high burdens, rent burdens inclusive of utilities london is is the standout there. They disposed of all their social housing that they had built after world war two through the first wave of privatization. And so that decommodified housing went back into the market and then was bid up during the process of financialization in the last 20 years. And so the consequence is that folks are paying, on average, 50% of their income. We did some calculations in my office looking at local data. You know, what is what is the average rent burden to a portlander putting an average utilities. And we're right there at 50%. And so I just think it's important for us to yes, vienna is a very different place than Portland. But the cost to the resident is quite, quite different. And we're on par with some of the most unaffordable places in london or in europe. So that's what we have to reckon with here, folks. And when you, when, when tenants are paying that much out of pocket, that's less money that can go out into the local economy. That's less money for folks to go out and support our support our storefronts, which is something I know that matters a lot to councilor Ryan as well as myself. And so we have an obligation to think about doing better on a value proposition for our for our residents. And so the vienna model was quite instructive here. So let's go to the next slide. So, you know, one of the questions I asked during the presentation is like, give me a straight answer on how much money vienna is spending on this program. And they're spending ■k7435 million per year. That's a lot. But they have 2 million people and they're able to get for that expenditure a very low proportion of their population that is homeless, a a very low disposable rent is a share of your disposable income. So there's a very vibrant public spaces, very vibrant restaurants you've got the private sector is booming because you've got that local multiplier effect with disposable income. And you know, but the thing is, is a key difference with Portland and vienna is we do not have cost control built into our models, whether we're talking about homeless services or we're talking about housing development. We have we have no I think we have an inadequate set of institutions devoted towards cost control. And so I was really appreciating the land banking discussion from last week, because that's what they have done. That's a big part of how they've controlled their costs. One of the things that we talked about on the trip was like, yes, well, they've had 100 years of a head start. They were able to get land when it was much less expensive than it is today. But then, you know, side conversation with the developer that does business in Portland said, look, yes, that's true. But think about 30 years from now, 40 years from now, 50 years from now, if we're not land banking today, we're another 50 years behind. So that's always the consideration we need to be thinking about. The other thing is that they have very direct public sector support to both the subsidy size, but also encouraging development of new, new production. So it's it's a very it's not rather than using indirect kind of carrot approach, they have sort of like if you want access to this land and if you want to get access to our like basically less than the rate of inflation, cost of capital, you're going to do the you're going to participate in the limited profit housing that councilor Dunphy had described, which puts a dampening effect on the long run cost to renters. And once the I think, I think our next presenter is going to talk more about the capital stack and the finance aspect of this, but that is kind of the secret sauce in in getting to a place where we are much more affordable is changing our reliance on certain capital markets and then using our public money to support local public development. Let's go to the next slide here. I'm probably running out of time here. I just want to wrap with some lessons for Portland. As I was thinking through all of this, it occurs to me that Portland exists right now as a price taker. Okay? When we spend public money or philanthropic dollars on trying to keep people housed or get them back into house, we're basically at the same position that everyone else is when purchasing housing services. And so you don't have any influence over price if you're a price taker, particularly if you are purchasing in large volumes, you actually can cut the other way and increase the cost. Like vienna, Portland must reorient to being a price maker, which means in more of an ownership stance, we need to have a direct stake in the portfolio of what we would call social housing to to help control the costs and dampen that that effect on the market. Rather than deal with the consequences of high housing costs on the back end with, you know, you know, getting people into shelters, let's let's keep them housed in the front, up front, and let's build ahead of demand, because that's also what they did. I also want to note here I put on the slide is if we're going to be successful in Portland and bring this model back home, we we must be committed to near universalism. Okay. We cannot just say this is only for a small subset of the population. We're going to spend a large, large volume of money on a small subset of the population. We want to say no, let's let's follow what they did, which is one of the best things I've seen is this is available for folks who make up to 150% of the median income. All right. That's in Portland. That's $120,000 per year. Okay. There's a sliding scale they have in vienna based upon that prioritization scheme that councilor Avalos had had talked about. So you're getting some ability to pay built into that. But it brings folks along. They can say, okay, all right. For the dollars, for the sort of taxes I'm paying. I also get access to this service, and I also get to experience the benefits of my rent going down. And I think if we don't do that, we're missing a huge opportunity here. And that picks up that big missing section of housing production in this in this city, we've got affordable housing over here with light tech dollars. We've got the market over here. Social housing is right in the middle. And it should it should serve most people. And then finally there were there were tower cranes in the sky. Everywhere I looked, tower cranes in the sky. Despite having really strong renter protections, really strong regulatory frameworks and a lot of public involvement. And so I see an opportunity for us to use our public dollars to do direct investment in social housing as a spur to the broader construction industry. And, you know, as we're thinking about our economic development strategy at the state, metro county, city level, we really need to be developing a home grown, prefabricated construction materials industry, right? So we can we can build at scale at a much lower cost and then also create other jobs. And that was some of the conversation we had as well. So, you know, I'll just close by saying I, we, we like no matter who you are in the city, like I think everyone agrees that the current approach is too expensive and it cannot be sustained. Fortunately, I have seen with my own eyes a city that is is doing so much more, with much, with much less public dollars. So thank you.
121 Thank you. And lastly, we've got carly from albina vision trust. Take it away.
122 Thank you. Thank you, councilor Green. Can everyone hear me? Okay.
123 We can hear you.
124 Great. Thank you. So I had the pleasure of joining everybody and many other professionals in vienna. I am carly harrison. I lead the real estate for albina vision trust and nonprofit here and in both personally and professionally, interested in figuring out how to make our housing development both affordable and conventional, just better in every way for communities. And so I think big picture, the best way to differentiate, really, the capital stack and what makes vienna unique and maybe other places unique outside of the united states and Portland is is two main points. One is is the cost of capital. We primarily rely on private capital here, not just in Portland but in united states. And it has a high cost of capital and requires high rents to pencil to attract that investment. And then the second one is because of this capital and then other affordable housing financing sources, we primarily concentrate either high income or low income renters together in separate buildings, really. And so the way that the vienna model really changes, this is where I want to focus this. So as you can see here, we have a Portland capital stack and a vienna capital stack. And this is for Portland and united states in general, what I would call a conventionally financed building. So market rate development, you'll have about 60% of your costs funded by a bank loan of some sort. And then the remaining is really funded by private equity and private equity. Really. It's what you need to attract to to make a development pencil and make a development work. I will say, you know, despite what I'm trying to highlight here, with the needs of private equity and private capital right now, this is what finance is. A majority of the housing production in the whole of the united states and in Portland. So until, until and unless we look at different sources, this is really important to keep. And certainly it works. It works well in conjunction with other models. However, this private capital and the returns they need don't deliver private public benefits. And that is lower rents and lower rents for kind of everybody and everybody living together. And so when you look at this capital stack on the left, their average project return kind of on a year, one stabilized might be, you know, about 6%, six and a half to 7% really depends on interest rates. But when you look at the vienna capital stack, right here on the right, you have a bank loan, some public subsidy, in this case in vienna, the tenant equity and developer equity, which may not translate as well here. And that'll be subject to further discussion and investigation. But their capital stack altogether, as is in vienna, is about half of the the project return. So instead of 6% like it is on the left, it's maybe more like 3%. This allows two things. One, that means you can drastically reduce rents for residents, and two, you can spread that out across a mixed income building, mixed income community where there's almost like a cross-subsidization that's happening between higher income renters and lower income renters who are all paying much less as a percentage of their income than most people pay here, especially low income renters. We can go to the next slide. Great. Perfect. So actually I'll go go back to the last one real quick. Thank you. So what I want to highlight about the if we look at the capital stack and you can go back to the pie chart. Thank you. What I want to talk about is, is a little more of how they actually back into these costs. They use what's called a rent cost model. And essentially they take the cost of capital, which which we're saying is about 3%. And they, they more or less charge that plus the operating expenses to operate your property back to tenants in the form of rent. And so they're really backing into a rent that tenants will pay. And so they're really instead of covering their rent covering profit really, which is currently what our system requires. It's covering general maintenance and keeping this project going. It's it's covering paying down the debt, which actually varies in its requirements and timing. So an example of that the bank loan might have typical terms. Maybe it's 4% interest rate because they also have credit enhancement there that we could look at here might be a 25 to 30 year amortization. And maybe it's at 4%. And that's where the the first payments will be made. The public subsidy might be 0 to 1%. And that would be graduated payments and interest only during until the permanent loan and the bank loan is fully repaid. And then the rest is paid out of cash flow. Total term about 40 years. And then with developer equity and tenant equity again, these may not translate as well here, but the developer equity is put in by the developer. And this is a limited profit model. And it's a capped return at about 3.5%. It often actually resembles the developer deferred fees that nonprofit developers use with tech development. And then the tenant equity is basically like a small down payment relative to condo down payments, but certainly much bigger than most renters can support. And again, may have to look at different different sources for this. But ultimately, what it means is that you are paying so much less in the form of rent, really. And that translates directly to to tenants and their affordability. And go to the next slide. And so what does this vienna model mean for Portland? And how can we look to this in other places that are doing things differently? Because I think we all agree that we should do things differently. One is, you know, this means lower rents citywide. One thing we heard over and over was that there was just no bad neighborhood and buildings, instead of concentrating poverty, are just so interspersed with people of different backgrounds, with doctors, family living next to a waiter's family. It means there's long term affordability. With that rent cost model, you the the rents are also capped so that you can't exceed your really cost of of ownership and cost of loan repayment. So this means tenants are protected. There are many tenants, many families that would be in the same building for 10 to 25 years. That's unheard of here. And they'd be doing so happily and not forced to relocate. It's also lower risk. And this also translates to a lower interest rate for the bank loan, because you are not pushing the market so aggressively as as our current conventional housing does. You can support a low, you can support lower interest or sorry, you can support. Your lender's goals. And I think out of all all 100 years of their development, they haven't had a single default, which is just pretty miraculous. I'm sure we can count just singular neighborhoods here that would have had that. And then lastly, you know, it really creates livability and a really good blueprint for that livability across buildings and neighborhoods where you're not concentrating poverty, families and incomes can live together. And we're really building healthier and more resilient communities. As councilor Green mentioned, the private sector continues to play a role there with private investment. So this is a very complimentary way to look at building. But it certainly is a is a way that can work with existing frameworks but changes it quite a bit and I think produces really good social returns. And we're really excited to, to to dig into it further.
125 Thank you carly. That is the conclusion of the formal presentation. So let's open it up for some committee discussion and questions. All right. Let's hear it.
126 Yep.
127 Thank you councilor Avalos. And I really did enjoy listening to the report from my colleagues Avalos, Dunphy and Green. Vienna has it sounds like 100 years history on this, right. And so I assume they had to spend a lot of money to get to an operational maintenance that reached that 266 number that I heard per per capita. So what is what is the cost that would take to build that infrastructure in Portland to get to that same leveling point? I was hearing operational cost on how to operate this, but I assume there was a lot of investment that went into building that infrastructure. Did you learn about that?
128 I mean, that's that's a good question. And that's something that we're going to have to grapple with when we when the resolution that spurred this trip called for a report. And in the report, we want to know things like that. We want to understand implementation details that could translate to Portland. And that's precisely the kind of question we want to know. I think, you know, my my takeaway from that was that, yes, they've had a head start. They've definitely had a different set of public priorities. They've invested in building the public sector capacity that that uses their dollars wisely and can support that on a on an ongoing basis. We would face some startup costs. I'm sure we would have some switching away from one set of activities to another. And so I don't have a precise number for you. Councilor Ryan, but I think it's a question worth pondering.
129 That you would agree. It's a it's a big investment, and that we'd have to have a really clear plan on how to build that capital infrastructure to get to this maintenance place.
130 I mean, I would agree, but I would also say that we currently are spending $724 million per year in our region on a system that is, you know, not working for us.
131 I would I would just say that.
132 Yeah, Portland would not look like vienna in our lifetimes. You're right. They have 100 year head start, but they really built it intentionally for that 100 years, which we don't do right now. We also are four years out now from six new tif districts, which will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in affordable housing into our community. And coming on the heels of decades of other tif districts, we have very little to show for that in terms of our assets compared to what vienna, how vienna approaches those dollars going out the door. We know we're going to be spending these dollars. We have some work that we can put in place right now to to start that 100 year view, rather than sort of cutting a check and hoping for the best. And additionally, I asked, I think I mentioned this at city council a couple of days ago, but when we had our opportunity to speak with the member of parliament, I explicitly said, you have a 100 year head start. What should we be doing now? And she said, establish your tenants rights. Establish what the, the, the responsibilities of a landlord are and land bank. And those are things that we can absolutely start, combined with some of the intentional design choices and some of the different financing mechanisms, I think we can get a lot more for the dollars we're already going to spend over the next 30 years. But you're absolutely right. We're not going to look like vienna in our lifetime. They have 220,000 municipal units of housing. They didn't build that all in one year. They also did build a lot of that as a empire was crumbling following world war one. And but they were also responding to a crisis that in many ways does reflect the crisis we are facing now, where not only is it people unable to afford to live in the housing that they have, but people losing housing and living in truly deplorable, inhumane situations, they haven't solved it. They didn't solve it immediately. They recognized that this is a generational problem. It took us generations to get into the situation, and I think that we can start being just more thoughtful in the dollars we're already going to spend.
133 That's helpful.
134 To you. Okay. And it was great to be reminded that this really took off after a big deal event called world war. And they were pretty decimated because vienna is in austria. So I'm glad you mentioned the parliament. What's the vision that you all have on how we connect with our our partners in Salem and our partners in Washington, dc, since much of that is the revenue stream for public housing currently.
135 Well, speaking for me, I mean, this is a whole panel here, but I think that we must have some conversations at these tables that we're at. So that way the city of Portland is not just trying to do this on its own, but on the federal dollars side. That to me, that's that's mostly for the low income housing tax credit work. And I wouldn't want to divert those monies. It's the it's the big it's the next housing bond. It's the supportive housing services. And that's controversial. But I think we should have that conversation. It's the, the money that the the county spends on rental assistance. It's all of that. We need to have that as a, as a table because this is a regional problem that affect many jurisdictions. The state of Oregon senator con pham's bill 684 that passed the framework for a revolving loan fund for construction for new housing construction was not capitalized, but the state could support the city of Portland on something like this by capitalizing it. But that needs to not be divorced from what we would do here. I talked to another representative that wants to build an industry supported by the state of Oregon for that modular construction, not the not the crappy stuff that we used to do, but the real high quality stuff that can lower unit cost of production. So we need to have integrated conversations. No question in my vision is that the city of Portland takes a leadership role in that, because we bear, I think, the brunt of of the cost of this in our region.
136 To follow up on that. Thank you. That was helpful. I feel like someone needs to just get these answers, these questions out into the the dais right now because this is fast. It's interesting. And I think a lot of us would like to lean into it. I just want to make sure that I understand some of the reality. So you're in vienna and you talked parliament members were there. So is vienna an island, a unique island, or is the rest of the country also in a similar structure?
137 You want to duck.
138 That one?
139 Yeah. So the city of vienna is also the state of vienna. Vienna consists of is it 9 or 10 states total? And there. But the member of parliament we spoke to was on the national parliament. So they have their own city parliament, city council, which has 100 members of their own, but then the national parliament. Additionally, like us, they have layers and layers of government. The policy there, there is social housing countrywide nation nationally, in, in austria, vienna accounts for a huge amount. I mean, similar to Portland versus the rest of Oregon. It is the population center. It is the economic center. And the needs are different and the politics are different. It is certainly it is absolutely correct to say that the politics outside of vienna are more conservative and are less enthusiastic about this, and it is clear that there are also some political realities to this system where they really do rely on a 100 year or largely 100 year history of political support on this level, similar to how I think it was mentioned that london at one point had enormous amounts of social housing and they sold it to the private sector. Berlin had enormous amounts of social housing, and they sold it to the public sector. The united states at one point had enormous amounts of public housing, and we bulldozed it. They just retained it. And honestly, the way I have been thinking about it in a lot of ways is that their great grandparents made some really great decisions the way that in a lot of ways, we have. Our great grandparents made some good decisions around the national forest system and there and now, it's our incumbent on us to maintain that system and ensure that it's not all bulldozed. They have a better option. You know, they're they are maintaining an inventory of housing that we are envious of, but we can start building towards. But it is politically very I think that there is a vulnerability there that that we should be open eyed about that.
140 Yeah. And I'd like to add to that because it's we need to have this conversation with clear eyes and honest honesty about what we're facing is, you know, vienna is a city of tenants. That's the kind of tagline. There's 80% are tenants. But there is disagreement in austria on whether or not austria should be a country of tenants. I think there's a lot of folks who are like, well, I think ownership is the root. So that is, I think, a political tension there. The reason for showing the slide with the wet rents was to say in those municipalities that used to have a really high density of what we would call social housing, privatized that housing stock, because to meet that ownership society rhetoric that came out of the thatcher years, and the consequence of it has been displacement and a rise in unaffordability. And so they're having that discussion now. They're grappling with that in in vienna and austria as a whole. We are too. And I think the trip also had, you know, folks who are developers, who are interested in the ownership side of things. So we had a range of discussions there. And it's, you know, this limited profit housing model with the co-ops. There's an equity piece to that. And so I think that there's a conversation we can have about what is paying rent gets you down the road. And, you know, it gets you an equity stake, at least in the vienna model. And we would want to be serious about building something like that in if we wanted to be flexible for our institutions. But also, you know, I'll just tell you right now, speculating on housing is not the best way for the next generation to build wealth. It's to invest in the s&p 500 on a dollar cost average basis. And if you pay less in rent every month, you're going to be able to do that. So but good questions.
141 And then I'll just this is my third and final question for now. And I'll send the rest of my questions to those of you that went on this trip. Councilor Avalos, this is for you. You mentioned that social housing works for most in vienna. What people does it not work for and why?
142 Yeah, that's a good question. And I definitely asked of the political leaders. Right. Because of course we're on this trip and they're going to tell us the best of the best. Right. And so we were asking them, what are where are the things, where are the areas that it fails? Right? I think there are a couple of complications. There was a large discussion around who has access to it, especially as they are experiencing larger populations of immigrants. And immigrants don't necessarily have immediate access to all of those amenities. So there's a big gap in how they're meeting the needs of the growing population. So we talked about that. And just like there was a whole layer of immigrant access, and I think that was important, I asked them, you know, what are the threats, the political threats that you're experiencing? And the biggest thing that they shared was that, like berlin and all those other cities, they sold all of their social housing. And so they talked about how they're like the rest of the world. We're seeing creeping fascism across the across the world, and they're experiencing that same political push and a narrative that our is trying to convince, you know, the viennese and austrians of, like, you should have private ownership and you should have and we don't want these social goods, and people are just lazy, right. It was funny to kind of hear some of the political realities and just it was almost a little comforting to be like, oh, everyone's going through this, or everyone's experiencing these narratives and this struggle that government has to show the the public good and how it's important for for how the government serves its people. So I think those were the high level things. I'm trying to recall some more examples. Do you guys have any. Other examples?
143 I would also add that if you make above 150% of the median income, you're not going to be prioritized for social housing. You may not be eligible. And so it's going to exclude your higher earners, no question. But it gets like 80% of the income distribution. The piece that I think was the biggest sticking point is you have to be a two year resident of vienna. So that's going to exclude.
144 How many years?
145 Two.
146 Two year. Yeah. So that's going to exclude some folks who are immigrants. And that's going to exclude some folks who have recently landed and would have to go out to the private market.
147 I'll also say that the, the, the, the system was not designed and does not well serve well people who are currently homeless. They have a separate system for that, for shelters and permanent supportive housing and transitional housing that is a separate and apart from the social housing. This social housing system really was designed to focus on low income members of our of the economy through to older adults and folks who have some level of stability. And they have separate targeted tools for for dealing with getting folks off the streets.
148 I think there's a quick answer, but you mentioned the 150%. So when you go over that 150% and you're in social housing, are you kicked out?
149 No. They when you get into social housing, they do an income check once, but then they don't check again.
150 Oh okay.
151 Yeah that was the cool thing. And and they don't have it's unlimited leases. So they also don't have to get forced out. So that's why a lot of people end up staying in their housing for 20 years. We met a couple of folks who their parents, they grew up in the social housing, and their parents still live there because they didn't have to. They weren't, you know, pushed out.
152 I know we'll have more conversations on this and I have more questions. Again, put those into the public record to all of you. Thanks.
153 Thank you. Go ahead. Councilor Morillo.
154 Thank you, chair.
155 Avalos, thank you all so much for this presentation. And thank you to our community partners as well. Cali who's online, that was so informative. And I think, you know, we've done the same thing over and over again. And we keep expecting a different result. And it's time for us to imagine what a different framework looks like. And I think that you guys have really broadened our political imagination. And it's going to be our job in the bureau's job to research this, bring us a study that really shows the good things, the hard things, and what it's going to take to get us there. But I think that this is a really great start. And as someone who worked on snap policy and other public social goods before coming into this office, I was curious. And maybe this is a question for you, councilor Green, as our resident economist, if you could describe the investments in municipal housing and how that regenerates into public dollars, like, I know when I did snap policy work, that every dollar that we gave out in snap ended up being $1.50 back into the economy. And so I just see this as something that could also revitalize our local community. So that's my question. And then my quick comment that I'll say as well is that we have a responsibility now to maybe plant the seeds for trees that we are not going to get to stand in the shade in, and our future generations are going to benefit from this. And I think it's a little daunting to hear, okay, 100 years of precedent has been set for this to flourish, but that 100 years started somewhere, and it has to start with us. And I feel very much that responsibility, seeing what my generation is going through with a lack of home ownership, a lack of ability to have a family, all because of affordability. So that's just my comment, and I'll give it back to you to answer my question on regenerating our public dollars.
156 Yeah, it's a great question. Unfortunately, I don't have an economic multiplier analysis for you, so I can't get to that level of precision. So I'll talk in broad strokes. The thing that was compelling to me is that, you know, whether you're looking at the municipal housing sector, which is about 20%, and that's the that's the sector that prioritizes those who are really at the most need, or single mothers, you know, victims of abuse and so on and so forth, or you're in the sector that's limited profit housing, right? It's all cost based. And so your rent doesn't go up just because a landlord can get more. The rent doesn't go up just because the cpi goes up or they've, you know, have an incentive to hit the 10% per year cap in the state. The state allows. It just stays at what it is and it escalates when cost of maintenance escalates. Right. And so that means that if you enter that situation, by the way, we have to talk about how vienna provides a reasonable social safety net that we don't have. So that's part of the reason why they don't fall through the cracks. But but when you get those benefits and you get that job because you're now stabilized, your rent doesn't go up to match your new income, right? You're not at risk of losing benefits because you've got this other benefit. And so that allows people to say, well, I'm going to save a little bit of money that I wouldn't be able to save before. It allows people to build some resiliency in their lives, and it also allows people to save for, you know, to to invest in the local economy when they go out and buy. I mean, literally every train stop has a hot dog stand. I just have to say that. So I saw a lot of benefits to that.
157 Very one. Track minded I see. I also want the hot dog stands. Don't worry. Yeah, that's that's really great to hear. And I think also something that stood out to me from the presentation was when you guys were talking about how they're not kicking people off social benefits just because they have better their lives. And part of what we went through with when I worked on snap policy was so many people, the cost of the bureaucracy, of having to constantly means test constantly re enroll people because their situation changed and then they had to go back through that. All of that costs so much infrastructure, time, money. And so that's kind of the silent thing that we never account for. And the amount of savings that we probably have when we let people's lives flourish and have stability. And I know for renters, this would be just life changing. To be able to have a stable community that you can live in long term and build relationships with your neighbors. So really appreciate learning all about this. Thank you so much.
158 Thank you. Councilor, councilor Zimmerman.
159 Thanks, councilor Green, you used a lot of specific numbers I just wanted I appreciate that because that's kind of where my mind is going, is that the specifics are actually going to help me understand what future steps would look like. A lot of what you described, councilor Dunphy, made me feel good, because I think some of the community based the courtyards parks, we we have adopted that as a Portland goal, I think. And now what we're talking about is other infrastructure to adopt that goal. We often get, or at least we used to get compared to some european cities. So that part was interesting. And now the money, the ownership, the steps, the details, that's really next step. You mentioned something just now and I want to make sure I caught it the right way. Did you say, councilor Green, that once a person is in their rent doesn't change unless the costs of the maintenance of the building changes? So if I get in in 2025 and my rent is $1,000 or even $2,000, I can expect what will call just very incremental increases and not the large percentage increases that the rental market experiences here. Am I getting that right?
160 Yes. It's a function of cost of production. It's a function of cost of maintenance.
161 What that really made me think about is one of the great benefits for those people who have been able to purchase a home, is that you lock in a mortgage. And the only thing for my own situation, right. The only thing that changes are my taxes go up a few percentage points, but I'm able to own a home at essentially a locked in rate for 30 years on that, on that mortgage. And that sounded very similar to me. And the reason I bring it up is it's incredibly important in terms of any family or any individual's long term financial planning is something that's not changing by hundreds of dollars every, every year and then every month. But, but but a few dollars. That was interesting. That was notable for me. There remains some questions that I've got in terms of how. The differences. Unfortunately, they weren't on the slide, but councilor Dunphy mentioned them. I think it was limited profit, municipal housing and co-op housing. And just what those all mean will be something I hope to learn more about. I'm struggling with our Portland situation in if we were to magic wand it, for instance, with because I believe in a mixed income buildings and mixed income neighborhoods as probably one of the poorest people who bought in a property in a mixed in a building in a mixed income neighborhood, like I benefited a lot from that. And it really has. It's foundational to what I think about neighborhoods. If we were to implement this, I or and I don't mean like tomorrow, what's our first step? But if we're down the way. So how do we incentivize you participation and acknowledge that? Because I look at this more of a housing. Tactic and strategy. But sometimes this conversation gets confused with our homelessness response conversation. And I am leaning into some of our conversations earlier that a lot of our homeless response conversation is related to untreated mental illness on the street, who we're hearing from the housing providers we have in Portland that they're not going to be successful by just putting them into an apartment. They need other stuff with it. So does vienna have a strong me or does austria? Maybe. Maybe that's better. Have a strong mental health hospital network or are they doing this through? So does every building have? People who are being supported by style services, or is that a different segment? Because the reason, I wonder, is for a portlander who is living here but wants to I don't think it is offensive to say, like, I'm not ready to live in the building where where, you know, I'm having to deal with mental health breakdowns every single day. I think that's a pretty fair thing. But in Portland, we continually we are continuing to deal with this struggle, which is how do we incorporate people to have fulfilling lives, live, live safely, and not be overly disruptive to their neighbors? And this is such a communal discussion. I'm curious what you all saw from this.
162 Yeah, I'll start to answer that, but let me first go back and just correct the record on something that actually rents go down, as we recall, as the building ages and debt is paid off. So and the rents in municipal housing actually helps build new units because they reinvest it back into new units. So I just wanted to correct that because we we misspoke a little bit on that. To your broader question, like councilor Dunphy also said, you know, we didn't the focus was on social housing. There's a whole other kind of ecosystem around homelessness specifically. Obviously, their scale is much different than ours, but I feel like one, you know, they had they talked about kind of their version of psh and all of that. But I think von partner is a really good example of addressing the kind of societal work that needs to happen to create peace among people that are living amongst each other, especially when you've got people from all kinds of walks of life interacting. And that is why, you know, those three components I mentioned. It's like that first one is housing navigation, the second one is the legal aid. The third one is the community work that they do. So what they do, and I asked them this specifically because I said to the person who runs that program, I was like, you know, here in America, we are very quick to call the police on people for anything, right? Like someone's being loud or there's a baby crying or we suspect something and it creates a lot of tension in neighborhoods. And I asked them like, what is their relationship with police in particular? And these systems that they have? And essentially, you know, she was like, well, first of all, anything involving violence, obviously that's a police matter, but they really do a lot of intentionality because they offer the service. Right. It's all connected. You've got your legal aid, you've got your housing navigation, and you've got this whole other service that works on building community works on doing programing. They actually do neighborhood dispute work. And of course, they're encouraging and empowering people to, you know, take it on their own, not being like, we're going to solve the problems for you. And they talked jokingly about how, you know, and actually, I think beautifully it was interesting to hear how younger people and older people often are in a stage in their life where they're in these social housing together because of what they need from their housing. And, you know, like the older people will be griping about the kids in the playground or whatever. But at the end of the day, like they understand that it's part of being in community with each other. So I think that was the really important key. And we talked. We had brian on the trip from from rental services, and we talked a lot about like, what does it look like to develop a portfolio around creating more services that help mitigate these relationships? And what they said to as it relates to some things, they'll defer to police, but also some things they'll have other services that they connect. So they're doing the work as government to connect to all of the different components of their government to make sure that those issues get resolved. And that helps lower the evictions, lowers the conflict, creates community. So that's my take. Yeah.
163 Anyone I'll.
164 Add that they they are a housing first model as a as a country. That is their goal of getting folks into housing. They do have some degree of concentration of, of psh within a, a specific building, but that is still integrated into the broader neighborhood. And then they have community level services built into that commercial space, like, you know, doctor's offices, emergency care. I do think it is worth noting, though, they do not have a fentanyl epidemic the way that we do. You know, and I have said this before, and I maintain that the fentanyl fentanyl epidemic that is happening in our community is not an organic thing that is happening to our community. It's not, you know, breaking bad style meth where people are making it in trailers. This is international chemical warfare that is happening to undermine our social safety net. And it is being quite successful at that. So we as a country have set public policy about a lot of things, and that we are dealing with those repercussions. I don't know how this system would deal with fentanyl, where you can get enough fentanyl to kill a human being for the equivalent of returning ten cans, right? I don't know how that this system would work. And and we do not have universal health care here. And so those are real glaring gaps for me in, in trying to tie it to the conversation around homelessness. But again, this really is not a tool to respond to homelessness. This is a tool to respond to the broader housing economy as well. So again, not not an apples to apples comparison by any stretch and some serious gaps that we need to consider, but still some really good guiding principles that will set us up for success.
165 Yeah. The only thing I would add is my takeaway was not that social housing can solve that acute segment of the of the issue where you need you need some very constant and deeply supportive services to make sure someone's okay. And then the people around them are also okay. We still need to do that work here. This is really sort of making sure you catch people before they're evicted, and it's also making sure you catch that, that household that is making the decision whether they're going to stay in Multnomah county, stay in Portland, or move somewhere else where it's more affordable to to buy a house to get that the equivalent of rent stability. So that's that was my takeaway on that piece.
166 Thanks, I appreciate it. I know it has been the so I supported this resolution when it came forward. I, I think that learning and leaning into the academics of what is possible is something that that I value. What I hope that people are hearing from this presentation is that this is a housing model, that the three of you have looked at. That is not just a housing model for our most vulnerable. It is a housing model for a much broader scope of of community members of people, those who choose to. Participate are taking on a different way of building wealth. And and I think that it's helpful for us in the academic sense and thinking about next steps in that because we are, we are. We have in a sense of we can hardly talk about housing without always bringing it back to the tent we just saw. And I think the journey from the tent to a stable housing situation is many interstates long, and that they are not the same conversation. So I do appreciate how the three of you have approached this and everybody who traveled with you. Thanks for bringing your learning back. I know we have a lot of questions left.
167 Yes, and definitely more discussion to be had. Please know that we expect to get our first progress update on the social housing resolution study by December. At our December 9th meeting. With that, our next meeting is Tuesday, October 7th, and we are done for the day. So I will adjourn the meeting of homelessness and housing at 1:59 p.m.