The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-04-08
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Homelessness and Housing Committee met on April 8, 2025, with roll call confirming attendance. The session opened with public testimony on homelessness and housing, covering topics including housing production trends, financing and zoning barriers, personal experiences with homelessness and support for micro villages, family shelter waitlists, and an update on state-level inclusionary zoning legislation. Shelter provider representatives then discussed concerns about proposed shifts away from 24-hour and alternative shelter models toward congregate shelter systems, union job losses at specific shelter sites, staff turnover, and funding structures split between city and county sources; discussion followed regarding differing outcomes and service engagement rates across shelter sites. A presentation outlined plans for a "One Housing Plan" intended to unify housing and homelessness strategies, including a proposed calendar of committee topics through the year and a theory of change centered on housing stability. Finally, staff presented the Housing Production Strategy, covering permitting reforms, zoning capacity studies, large-scale site infrastructure investments, commercial-to-residential conversion pilots, and associated economic and policy risks. Some figures, such as job loss numbers and service enrollment percentages, were stated inconsistently. Committee members asked follow-up questions on funding tools, zoning approaches, and design outcomes. Votes, if any occurred, are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned at 1:54 p.m.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 Good afternoon. I am calling the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee to order at 12:02 p.m. On Tuesday, April 8th. Diego, please call the roll.
1 Good afternoon. Ryan. Here. Morillo. Here. Zimmerman. Here. Dunphy. Here. Avalos.
2 Here. And. Claire, can you please read the statement of conduct for council committee meetings?
3 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 city council. Agenda. 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 and address is not necessary. 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.
4 Thank you claire. Today we have four items on our agenda. First, we're going to hear some community testimony on homelessness and housing related issues. We left it very open ended just to hear what folks have to say. Then we're going to hear perspectives from shelter providers on the reduced funds to shelters. And I'll also be taking a few minutes to share with the committee my goals to create a unified housing plan around a single theory of change that ties together the various agreements, roles, and funding streams into a system that supports individuals through the entire spectrum of housing need. And then lastly, we're going to have a full hour discussion on housing production. So how to build the housing Portland needs? What are the barriers and opportunities to achieving those goals as outlined in the housing production strategy? So we're going to get on in with testimony. Diego, please read the first item.
5 Item one community testimony on homelessness and housing.
6 Like I said, we've opened up time to hear from the community on their ideas, their perspectives and concerns related to homelessness and housing. We've got 20 minutes and five people signed up to testify. Diego, go ahead and call the first person and they will have three minutes each.
7 Brian orndorf.
8 Welcome, welcome.
9 Good afternoon. Councilors. Thank you for your time. My name is brian orndorf. I live and work in district four with over 30 years of development experience. I have delivered over 2000 apartment units here in the city of Portland. So I have extensive expertise in housing policy, financing and the detrimental effect of poorly crafted government regulations. The numbers are in, and they point to a troubling trend. Apartment deliveries are expected to decline in 2025 and remain low through 2026. If this trajectory holds, it will mark the weakest two year stretch for new housing completion since 2012 2013. And frankly, it's going to be even worse this time because we can't get financing for projects in the city of Portland right now, unlike we were able to do back in 2012 2013. Despite this clear sign of deepening supply shortage, some elected officials have shifted to focus on algorithmic rent pricing tools, portraying them as a leading cause of affordability crisis. This is my misdiagnosis and a harmful one. The true driver of rising rents is not technology. It is a chronic, worsening shortage of housing. Like many cities, Portland has consistently failed to build enough homes to meet demand. Addressing this requires serious policy reform. Modernizing. Modernizing zoning laws, streamlining the permitting process, and promoting infill and higher density development instead. And instead, the move to ban algorithms amounts to a political theater, a distraction from the real structural barriers to increase housing supply. Compounding the problem of persistent disconnect among policy makers regarding the impact of their actions and housing legislation that increases operating costs, adds risk, or introduces regulatory complexity makes it harder, and in many cases, financially unfeasible for new projects. Come forward each time local officials enact new constraints for development or property operations, they reinforce this perception that Portland is increasingly a challenging city in which to invest. When innovation is discouraged and regulatory environment is unpredictable, investment will and is flowing elsewhere to cities that support, rather than hinder, new housing development. The solution is to build more housing and focusing on creating an environment for the private sector to create more jobs with compensation that can afford market rate rents. For housing, this means aligning policy with production, reducing barriers and sending a clear message that the city is ready to welcome investments needed to meet its growing housing needs. Portland needs pro-business, pro-development policies and reverse the current trajectory based on the humanitarian crisis on our street, the most important things we need to focus on is first safety. Adequate funding for police, fire and jails to mental health and substance use. Disease system creation with the county, the city and the state housing both market rate and affordable, the social housing is a step in the right direction and I applaud you for that. Fourth economic development. Again, we don't have enough living wage jobs in the city to afford market rate apartments and five. Improving our k through 12 education system. I want to see this city, this committee, succeed drafting legislation that doesn't address the five issues I just mentioned should not be our focus. The future of our city, our region and our state depend on it. Thank you very much.
10 Thank you for your testimony. Next up.
11 Barbara weber.
12 Welcome.
13 Thank you. Commissioners. Hello. My name is barbara weber, and I'm on the shelter now. Board, a member of the associated lived experience council and a villager of hazelnut grove. For the last five years and two months, I've struggled with homelessness and poverty. For most of my life. My journey has been anything but easy, marked by highs of success and depths of illness and unimaginable hardship. I face severe disability and at one point I needed 24 hour care. I've made a remarkable recovery from a brain injury and somehow managed to return to success more than once. And all that by mostly being homeless. My childhood was defined by movement. We followed work wherever it took us. My family did coal mining, oil rigging, road construction and more, and we survived on recycling cans and seasonal jobs and food processing plants. Eventually, I came to live in Portland with my aunt and uncle, and as a teenager, I chose Portland to be my home. Like everyone else, I have the same basic needs food, water, shelter, clean clothes, and sleep. And sleep is the essential one of the greatest challenges people experiencing homelessness face. Before I move to hazelnut grove, I lived in every homeless situation under a tarp, in a doorway, in a tent, on a sidewalk, in a vehicle, in the woods. And as a woman, I had to make survival choices that broke my own moral compass. I had to stay with people that I didn't like because it was safer than being alone. I endured abusive relationships, and I may have been knocked down, but more times than I can count. But I'm still here. What nearly killed me wasn't the violence. It was the inability to get regenerative sleep. I turned to alcohol to shut down and find rest, but that only created more problems. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't hold on to stability or what felt like sanity. And then in 2020, I moved into hazelnut grove, and honestly, I didn't think I would make it another year. I don't know, I had just been punched in the face by my neighbor. And you know, I collect leave from hazelnut grove through their upbringing and their homelessness and deep loss. They're not perfect and they've made hard choices, but they're the most merciful and compassionate and forgiving people. And that's what I needed to survive. And it continues to be one of the reasons I am so successful, because all of my life started over on a sidewalk and then kind of transitioned into the village, and they saved me. And I am in support of micro villages and other alternative shelters, because everyone has a different story. And we have to have some places for people to feel like they can fill their own cup of tea and grow and thrive. Thank you for your time.
14 Thank you barbara. Next up sermon.
15 Yes. Elana.
16 Thank you. Chair. Avalos. Vice chair. Dunphy and council members of the committee. Forgive me. I'm possibly in the middle of an asthma issue. My name is sharmin yoshida. I'm the founder of social architecture and community development. I live and work in Multnomah village. In 2024, I co-led the micro village expansion project, a research and strategic planning project commissioned by Multnomah county. Working closely with our steering team of village representatives and people with lived and living experience in houselessness, we interviewed 120 villagers, over 30 operators, builders, designers, business and neighborhood supporters. From this project, we learned micro villages are a desirable, adaptable, affordable and effective strategy to meet diverse needs in collaboration with our communities, our neighbors and businesses. At a time when the city and county are facing budget constraints. Micro villages are uniquely positioned to create an effective, quality and scalable option within our shelter system and meet multiple priorities for the city. Importantly, also to build community and community support and taxpayer confidence. Micro village investments weave directly into the mayor's 2526 priorities as the city ramps up overnight shelter and daytime services, we propose a modest but meaningful investment in micro villages. This way, when the emergency options ramp down, the city is already positioned to utilize micro villages to serve those who may not be ready or have access yet to permanent housing. We've identified at least nine organizations ready to step forward at various stages of development. We've also identified key supports to maximize efficiency and reduce barriers. We look forward to presenting our proposal to the committee, the mayor's office and Multnomah county in the coming weeks. Thank you.
17 Thank you for your testimony and last up.
18 Tyler. Tyler. Pirtle-guiney. Tyler is joining us virtually.
19 Hey, can you all hear me? Hey, can you hear me?
20 Yes, we can hear you.
21 Okay, great. Good afternoon. Chair Avalos, vice chair Dunphy and other members of the committee. My name is tyler pirtle-guiney, and I'm a registered lobbyist for and serve as the executive director of Portland jobs with justice, a coalition that brings together labor unions, community organizations, faith leaders, and everyday people to stand up for the rights and dignity of all workers. I'm here today to speak in strong support of urgent action needed to increase family shelter in our city and county. There is currently a six month wait list for emergency family shelter in Multnomah county. That means that many. That means that families, many with young children, are being forced to live in tents, in cars, or in dangerous and unstable conditions for months before receiving support for newly arrived, asylum seeking families. This crisis is even more acute. These are families who fled violence and persecution, who have no networks here, limited access to language services, and no legal ability to work. It is unconscionable that they are being left to survive without shelter in a city that claims to value justice at jobs with justice. We know that this isn't just an immigrant justice issue, it's a working class issue. The housing and homelessness crisis we face is being felt most deeply by the people who keep the city running. Retail workers, janitors, bus drivers, teachers, caregivers, our members and partners are people who give everything to the city only to find that they can no longer afford to live in it. Wages in Portland have not kept up with skyrocketing rents, and many working families are one emergency away from losing their home. We hear too many stories of union members who simply cannot afford to live in the city they love. This is not sustainable. This is not just a just. Portland is one where every working family, regardless of immigration status, income level, or background, has a safe, stable place to call home. Shelter is the bare minimum. We need a real investment in housing for all working class families, not more kickbacks to developers and speculative investors. We urge this committee and this new city council to act boldly, expand family shelter, now, protect the dignity of our neighbors, and take meaningful steps towards housing justice for all. Thank you.
22 Thank you tyler. And apparently, we still have one more. Yes. Great. Go ahead.
23 Michael. Michael anderson. Michael is joining us virtually. Michael, can you hear us online?
24 I don't see him in the zoom. There he is. Michael, if you can hear us, you can go ahead and get started.
25 Thanks a lot. It's a I think I was being promoted to panelist just then. Chair Avalos and members of the committee, michael anderson with sightline institute. Thanks for the time. And I'm here to thank you also for the time. A couple of months ago, when I and my colleague sarah, you gave us some time to talk about a proposal that we were working on at the state level for inclusionary zoning. I wanted to give you a quick update on those changes. At the request of chair Avalos and chair fam in the senate. So the current status of that proposal is that the city, among other cities, was in conversation with chair pham's office, the sponsor of this legislative effort to adjust the inclusionary zoning sideboards at the state level. We were pleased that we could get that conversation open after the hearing, wanted to express gratitude to the housing bureau and you all for that conversation. The senator decided that the there there wasn't enough time to get the conversation done in this current legislative session, but my understanding is plans to bring the bill and the conversation back in the next few months. To reintroduce in the 2026 legislative session. So that is continuing conversation. We are excited to be continuing to work out details with Portland housing bureau and other cities around the state. So thank you for your time on this and your attention.
26 Thank you so much for the update, michael. And that concludes testimony. Yes. Awesome. With that, let's see. Let's get the next item going. Diego, if you could go ahead and read it.
27 Item two perspectives from shelters providers.
28 Counselors I recently had a meeting with some afscme represented shelter staff who expressed some concerns that they have with shelter funding and models. So I asked them today to come and share their concerns with you all as another thing to consider as we're making decisions related to shelter. I've asked them to keep their comments to about ten minutes, giving us ten minutes to have any follow up questions or discussion. So I'd like to introduce our two presenters, which are going to be jay nicholson and misha litvak. Please correct me when you get up to the dais. And then we've got porter clements and madeline bisguier in the audience or coming up to. You can come up as well. Great. Once you get settled, go ahead and get started. Thank you and welcome.
29 Thank you. You got it in one councilor. Litvack is correct.
30 Can you hear me? Okay.
31 Okay.
32 I want to start by thanking chair Avalos and the committee for giving us this opportunity to those we have met before and those we are meeting for the first time. We are deeply grateful for your attention today on this cause. That means so much to us. My name is jay nicholson. I'm a case manager at a culturally specific shelter in a union steward for acm local 1790. With me today and among those who helped us get here are fellow afscme 1790 members who currently work on the front lines of portland's homeless services. Between us, we have decades of experience working, volunteering, and advocating for those experiencing homelessness, ranging from street outreach programs to all varieties of shelters, to health and behavioral health services and supportive housing. We are here to speak from our own experiences, observations and values and are not here to represent the views or speak on behalf of our respective employers. We are here to share our concerns with mayor wilson's blueprint to end unsheltered homelessness. Recent changes surrounding homeless services, and open discussion about what the steps toward a successful future might look like. Among our concerns are the proposed and ongoing deprioritization of 24 hour shelters and alternative shelter programs, the loss of union jobs, and the overall harm that this blueprint stands to cause if we don't intervene on our concerns for 24 hour and alternative shelter programs, we are seeing more and more announced closures of these programs as time goes on, presumably in favor of the overnight congregate storage facility and day center based system proposed in wilson's blueprint, a system that would require people to wait in line for a bed that is not guaranteed, wake up the next morning to bring their belongings to a storage facility, spend the day at a day center, return to the storage facility to gather their things and return to the line once again. Is a system that gives no thought to accessibility or stability. If it was tedious to listen to me break it down that way, imagine how tedious it would be for a person living that exact scenario. A massive percentage of portlanders struggling with homelessness have disabilities and face difficulties getting from place to place, whether they struggle with mobility, cognitive impairments, or other challenges. Many more also depend on the consistency of where they are staying to be able to navigate nearby services, 24 hour shelters and alternative shelters play a key role in maintaining working relationships with those who access these services and provide a reliable place to stay. In the case of alternative shelters, there is an added benefit of the agency safety and relief from trauma that comes with having one's own space. For the moment, we understand that congregate shelters are a necessity, but as we have expressed to several of you before, congregate shelter programs as a whole are generally less effective. While the pivot to overnight congregate is no doubt an attempt to lower costs, congregate shelters are often crowded and unsafe, present additional risks for members of marginalized communities, and are nowhere near staffed enough to provide services optimally. I want to turn to misha.
33 Yeah. Good afternoon, and thank you for hearing us today. My name is misha litvak and I serve as vice president of afscme local 1790, representing behavioral health workers across the city has also been my honor to serve our homeless sisters, brothers and siblings for seven years now and counting. I currently work as a case manager at a culturally specific village shelter. I'm proud to say that has been the high point of my career so far. A lot of concern is being made over the cost per bed of congregate shelters as compared to alternative village and culturally specific shelters like the one I work at. What I feel is being left out of these considerations is how many times the city can expect to pay for the same services year after year. When I first started working in homeless services, I worked in a congregate model shelter, 35 bunk beds for a capacity of 70. We were almost always full and despite a lot of turnover in those bunks, we mostly saw the same people time after time. It's about 5 or 6 years ago. That program has since been discontinued. Now, recently I checked the waitlist for the shelter I work at, and I recognized the names of no fewer than three people who had stayed at that congregate shelter. That suggests to me that utilizing that congregate model, the city and the county paid for the same services for the same people again and again for over half a decade. To put it a different way, it makes me think of my dad when I was a kid. I love my dad, and if he sees this, I don't want him to take it wrong. But my dad liked to be frugal with the household purchases, right? And his efforts to save a little money, he would get the cheapest, for example, can opener he could buy. And there'd always be something not quite right with the can opener. Like bad tooling on the gears. Weak hinge, dull blade, maybe recalled for containing unsafe materials. Whatever it was, none of them were up to the job. And one by one, each cheap can opener gets replaced by another cheap can opener. I'm sure this guy had six can openers between middle school and high school for me, and I'm sitting there thinking he spent more on these cheap can openers than he would have spent on like, a solid gold can opener at this point. And so homeless services is not a can opener, right. And I find it almost crude to reduce the work done by the staff of our programs and the services we provide to our city's most vulnerable to a matter of budget line items. The wealth of experiences from both workers and clients cannot be measured so simply, nor can the value of these connections on all our lives. And it's reflection of the soul of our city. Even so, we cannot house people out of thin air or lift someone out of the streets with a kind word. So it is critical, then, that the city invest in durable, sensible, humane and effective models, not the ones with the lowest price tag. Thank you again.
34 Thank you misha. For many, if not most, experiencing homelessness, congregate shelter is no better and often worse than just remaining outside. There is a huge demand for alternative shelter programs such as safe rest villages and motel shelters. People have their own space with a door that locks and a much higher level of regular engagement and rapport with their caseworkers. There is also an urgent need for more culturally specific programs, as members of marginalized groups run an added risk of being overlooked, profiled, or faced with aggression or distrust just for showing up. Even if one didn't care about cultivating accessible, consistent and effective services and did simply want to end unsheltered homelessness, they would have to provide a better incentive for people to leave the street. Investing in and creating more alternative programs accomplishes that. Engagement is crucial, and this brings us to our next concern. We have seen a pattern in the last few months that shows programs with unionized staff being shut down and excluded from funding projections, and those without expanded. This is coming into play at organizations like sunstone way and do good Multnomah at do good, which employs members of our local and operates some of the largest shelters in the Portland metro area. Sites are being cut, resulting in numerous job losses at the downtown site. Roughly 15 jobs were lost when the site closed on March 31st. More than 20 jobs are in the balance at wy'east, the only veteran specific shelter in Portland, as its closure will likely be announced by the end of the month. Sunstone way's market street shelter has also been left out of the budget so far, with around 20 jobs at stake there. Other sunstone way programs are operating in limbo, with only occasional news every once in a while as to which programs made it through to suspend their concerns. These are all union jobs that are lost or now in jeopardy, when access to a union is one of the few things that helps us stay in our jobs. As members of a workforce that is rife with burnout and turnover. A recent study in the social services sector, conducted by the nonprofit association of Oregon, found that turnover averaged 33.6% over 18 months at nonprofits, which is three times the rate of the public sector and over six times that of the private sector. As nonprofit social services workers unions help us address the workplace issues like safety and low wages that drive turnover. Without a unionized labor force, we are looking at a reduction in retention. Retention is important because the quality of our services kind of hinges on it to a degree. All positions and shelter programs involve building strong working relationships with clients so the clients know they have someone they can depend on. With higher turnover, we are looking at a reduction in the quality of services. A reduction in the quality of services comes with a continued loss of trust in support systems. With that loss of trust comes a reduction in the willingness to engage with services, and therefore a reduction in the willingness to relocate to shelter again, even if the goal is simply to end unsheltered homelessness. The decision to reduce programs with union labor is counterproductive. These are just a handful of the concerns. We have spent so much of our time and energy trying to raise over the last few months. As we mentioned before, burnout is a well-known issue in social services, and we have reason to believe that there could be a similar phenomenon happening among the general populace and leaders in the city of Portland. However, as we also mentioned before, even if it were true that the city of Portland no longer cares about providing services to help people move on with their lives, which I don't want to believe the mayor's approach would still be ineffective. It's never been more clear that the city of Portland is ready for something different, but we believe that the path forward lies with us in our experience. We believe that continuing to improve existing services, maintaining existing 24 hour congregate shelters, and expanding on new and innovative models that preserve and cultivate a sense of dignity, security and empowerment is the key. We believe that continuing to support union labor to ensure the stability and consistency of our services with workers who can support the people they serve without burying themselves is the key. We believe that improving on and developing more accessible systems and culturally specific programs for those with disabilities and those belonging to marginalized communities who so often get overlooked in homeless services, is the key. I would like to end on an excerpt from a statement we have presented to a few of you before. The struggling timeliness of transition to housing is largely due to services that are insufficient for, and overwhelmed by, the current need. If you asked any shelter resident, regardless of if it is a congregate facility, village or motel, they would tell you themselves they don't want to be there. They want to be home. Thank you for your time.
35 Thank you very much for being here. Like I mentioned, colleagues, I met with these wonderful folks and they rose some concerns that I just wanted to elevate to y'all's consciousness and give you an opportunity to ask any follow ups. We've also got brandy and brandy westerman and hank Smith are in the audience too. If there are staff related questions, they can be available. But colleagues, reflections, thoughts councilor Zimmerman.
36 Thanks.
37 I appreciate you all coming today. Some of the shelters that you named, I just I know that we're funding shelters from both the county and the city perspective. And so forgive me if I don't remember each name in each location, which one is which, but I, I think most of the ones that you named, sir, were a lot of the Multnomah county shelters. And I want to make sure that I'm understanding the message here. The city's funding some, but a lot of that you named were the county ones. Am I correct in that?
38 We were informed by our employers that we are now receiving a mixture of city and county funding for our programs. At least that's it. I work at sunstone way.
39 Got it. And sunstone is the one in Multnomah village.
40 There is a Multnomah safe rest village. There is a village on nato. There is a village on weidler. There is the kongregate site on market street. There is the motel shelter in rockwood. Yeah, it's a spanning many sites.
41 Okay. Got it. Multnomah village is in my district. A few of those that you named are in my district, and I just, I, I agree with you when it comes to if we can keep these shelters funded and ensuring that we're not closing, just labor represented sites is important, I want to highlight just a huge difference in the way that the Multnomah village test site is, is performing comparatively to some of the others. And I'm curious what your take might be in terms of how we can increase some of the or if the if the staff of that village. I'm struggling to understand if it's a staff or a leadership perspective at that village, that test site, when it comes to some of the outcomes, their their numbers of enrolled folks in in substance treatment is lower than some of our other test sites. And it's also a village where the city's had to fund the external services to take care of the neighborhood. Because sunstone leadership refused to engage in that. And what's hard to tell from my seat is if that is a leadership perspective, or if those types of services are something that the workforce would be able to support and to be able to help us improve those numbers at the at the Multnomah village. Because I was I was alarmed when I heard that the city had to fund the support services around the neighborhood because of a refusal by that provider, which gave me a lot of concern, because that wasn't the case at some of the other test sites. And I'm just curious, is that something that makes it down to the employee level, or is that a leadership level? In your experience.
42 The refusal, you mean.
43 The I'll put it this way, the perspective that their job stops at the at the curb rather than some of the other shelters take a perspective that their job involves the neighborhoods and kind of the impacts, which for me is important. And I think it's one of the reasons that some of the test sites are have been very successful. It's why I support the test sites and those pod villages. But that was an alarming perspective to hear from, from that, that team. And I'm just curious how that lands on you.
44 I can speak to that. I'm madeleine bisguier and I'm a council representative with afscme. So I work with folks who are represented at sunstone way, and we that was something that we actually brought to the table and wanted to negotiate over job duties with sunstone way management, and they moved forward and didn't offer that opportunity for us to sort of include that in job duties, but make sure that additional duties that weren't originally agreed to were also compensated.
45 Thanks. And I, I'm always very respectful of when employees come and speak. I know that can be some tough positions. I think you're highlighting, and I appreciate the testimony you're highlighting. One of the challenges in this is that we my perspective here is if we're going to stand up enough shelters to be able to take care of everybody in Portland who's sleeping outside, that there's a rapidness that has to happen. And one of the things I've talked a lot about is that we have to be not just good neighbors, but great neighbors in any community that we go to. And so wherever employees are able to rally their their decision makers at the boss level of these shelters, I hope that we can all do that together, because I think that the skills you have all highlighted and experiences is obviously very valuable and has a lot of experience in a variety of shelters. You've also. Explained and the flexibility of those providers who use unionized workforce is something that I think we should all put pressure on there. So they remain as flexible as the non the non-unionized shops of the outcomes can be on par and not and not seen as a, as a more difficult option or one that isn't achieving the needs for that neighborhood. So really appreciate you all being here and thank you. And you know, I sit on the steering and oversight committee with the county for our partnership with the joint office. And I'll keep this in mind as we as we have those conversations, given that most of these that we talked about were county funded. But thank you.
46 Thank you, councilor Ryan.
47 Yes. Thank you, chair Avalos. I was wondering if we could have brandi let her come up and join the panel. I would love you all to stay. Just it helps give some perspective to what councilor Zimmerman was getting to. So some of this is obviously the joint office. The whole idea was the city and county would come together to get results and really get to the bottom of chronic homelessness and provide services that would allow people to move to stability. And as the commissioner That led the effort, the vision and the policy to get the safe rest villages built, I have a lot of understanding on what people who are chronically homeless would like in terms of shelters and which ones they would say yes to. So a lot of your words resonated with me from lived experience, both in the field and also in policy. Brandi, can you just give us a little bit of a over? Let's see. Could you define the different shelters we're talking about and which ones the city directly is providing operations for, and which one the county is?
48 Yeah. For the record, my name is brandi westerman. I'm the humanitarian operations director with the city of Portland. I sit within Portland solutions. We oversee a number of alternative shelters. We have four that are directly contracted by the city and operated by our partner, urban alchemy. That includes the clinton triangle, the redway, the peninsula crossing and the north Portland road safe rest villages in the case of north Portland road, in addition to the tiny home pods that were described by our visitors today, there's also accommodations for people who are living in in rvs. All of those sites include robust services, kitchens, food on site bathrooms, laundry case management support. In addition, we partner closely with Multnomah county on a number of safe rest villages. In these cases, the city maintains connections with the neighborhood and maintenance of the site and facilities. While the county is the direct contractor for the nonprofit organizations that operate those sites, so those include the Multnomah safe rest village, the wheeler safe rest village, the southwest nato safe rest village, menlo park and sunderland, and the last one is one that is operated for folks living in rvs as well.
49 I think that was helpful to just have the record. So I appreciate that. I just encourage you to also do this. Have you already done this presentation to the Multnomah county board?
50 Not as of yet. No, no.
51 I encourage you to get on their calendar as well on their agenda. I think it's important for both sides of the river to hear your presentation. It was very thoughtfully prepared, and I appreciate it. I appreciate what councilor Zimmerman was talking about in terms of the different types of services at different types of villages and test sites. And I think what stuck out for me, too, in that field trip that we did that day was the different levels of what success looks like in terms of results. One of the reasons we wanted the safe rest villages and the test sites built is to get to the bottom of the lack of response to the behavioral health crisis on our streets, and to offer those services at the villages. And what we saw was a real difference in the participation rate at sites. And that day it was told to me by a good source person that provides those services at now it's called sunstone management. They used to be called what? What's that? All good? Not too good. I always got it mixed up. I'm glad they changed their name. So we 15% of the residents at the one in the in Multnomah village were saying yes to services. Whereas at peninsula crossing 50% were saying yes to those services. And that's that's a big gap. And so I just hope that someday we can also have dialog about results. And the results are that we need to get that closer to that rate. We it's great to meet people where they are, but we don't want to keep people where they are. We want to help build resilience and agency. So when they move into housing, it will be a stable and get into the workforce. You know where I'm going. So they'd have jobs such as your members to hopefully get paid well to do that type of service going forward. And so I just wanted to give that type of insight and vision on what we were hoping for from these sites. And it does stick out when you're a policymaker and you're managing oversight of budgets. When you see that type of disparity, you want to get to the bottom of how we can improve that. So I just wanted to share that it's not on you. I hope that you're all involved in those decisions as well.
52 On to your to your point about engagement. I do want to also highlight that with, you know, the cuts that have been made. I mean, we've been facing layoffs. Plenty of other organizations have been facing layoffs. And staffing has always been an issue in these sites, as well as just resources that we have access to. You know, there was once upon a time this was when I worked, you know, for a different shelter provider years ago where, you know, there were there was funding available to cover someone for like their first three months of rent, their first six months of rent, you know, there was there was a lot more support available compared to today. And, you know, people even though, you know, they may not be directly accessing the services on site, you know, maybe trying to access resources elsewhere and just staying at the site. That is something that I've seen happen a lot as well, where, you know, you will have someone, you know, living at a village, you know, staff are like, I don't know what they do. They're not doing anything. But it's like, no, they actually are, you know, going to various other providers in town just to kind of make up for the fact that the resources available to us at each respective site have diminished. So critically, you know, so that that can definitely give the appearance that there is a lack of motivation. I promise you, I work with my clients on my caseload every single day. They are they are nothing if not motivated to move on with their lives. You know, a village might seem like it's a relatively comfortable spot. And, you know, compared to places like.
53 Feel comfortable.
54 Yeah. It should it should feel comfortable. What I'm what I'm getting at is, is, you know, that is in comparison to congregate shelters. Do not underestimate the fact that this is still a structure the size of a garden shed that someone is living in. They are not getting complacent. They are not unmotivated. They want to move on.
55 So thank you.
56 I do appreciate that perspective. I think what I was just trying to lift is when we have consistencies, if we could just get those results, the vision at one time is that one would be promoted, if you will, to stable long term housing when they're connected to the workforce. And they also are in behavioral health resources. And then we'll see better results for the long term housing. So I think it's just important that we continue to have this type of dialog so that we can build a system that has some standards. One of the challenges is, and what was noted here is that the county oversees and operates the village. We're talking about Multnomah village, where the city oversees the operations of the site out at peninsula crossing. And you might say, therefore, that the city has higher standards of what we expect from that site than what we what the county does. That's always been part of my indigestion in this partnership is that we could get to some more consistency in services and expectations and measure those results. But thanks for being here and brandy, I really appreciate you. Any more context you want to provide.
57 I just want to say how much we appreciate the workers who are doing this work every day, because it is hard work and it it really is a special person who steps into this line of work.
58 Absolutely. And I really appreciate the testimony today and especially the can opener example. That was something I'll never get out of my head for a good reason. Thank you.
59 Thank you, thank.
60 You so much. We are out of time for this item, but I want to give you some space here. Councilor Zimmerman, if you want to ask a final question, I.
61 Thank you, chair. I just want to make a note. You know, last year, and some of you may know, I worked at the county and the county chair made a very big push last year in the county board funded, I would say the I'm going to forget the terminology, but a, a reevaluation of all of their provider contracts for wages and services. And so it is somewhat alarming to hear you in the current year, where they spent more on shelters than they've ever spent, to tell me that there are now service reductions happening. And so my moment here is just to say, I will I will take that as a note and raise it at that oversight committee with them to understand if they told the community they were funding more of the wraparound services at the shelters, why are we hearing from staff that that's actually been the opposite. So just wanted to flag that for you. Thank you.
62 Appreciate it. Thank you so much to our guests from me. And thank you for coming up and we will be in touch. We appreciate your testimony. All right. I'm going to move us into our next item. Diego, if you could please read it.
63 Item three councilor Avalos one housing plan.
64 So I'm going to take the next ten minutes to update you all on the one housing plan and talk through the yearly calendar, since I also didn't get a chance to do that now a few months ago. But it has been an evolving and I want to talk through that. And so Jamie, you want to go ahead and pop the slides up, please. Okay. Second, let me get my ish together. Here we go. All right. Let's keep it going. Next slide. So I'm going to have us I'm going to talk about the one housing plan. Talk through the committee calendar and then some next steps. So what is the one housing plan before I even say what it is I want to talk about why now? So as we know the housing housing instability touches every part of life in our city, from safety to climate to economic opportunity. And we also know that our past approach has been fragmented. So this is our chance, especially under our new form of government structure, to break down these silos and deliver real results. So that is the why of why we're approaching it this way. But as far as what the one housing plan is. Next slide. Thank you. So the one housing plan is about alignment. It is a plan that unites our work from emergency shelter to affordable housing to middle income development under one shared vision. Let me be clear, though, that we are not starting from scratch. We are pulling together what is already in motion and just making it cohesive and actionable. And what's important about the outcome here is that we want to have a comprehensive, implementation focused roadmap that's going to guide the city's efforts. Now, part of this process is developing a theory of change for what is the city's goals. As we are approaching housing and homelessness. So I just want to share a little bit about what my personal theory of change is to start the conversation. But this is going to be the dialog that I'll be having with committee in the coming weeks. But as far as my theory of change, first and foremost, I believe that housing is a human right, and I believe that the continuum of housing is actually a continuum of stability. So wherever somebody is entering the system, they should be supported toward long term, stable housing, whatever point they are entering it, and that they're getting to that larger end goal. And we're trying to center housing as essential infrastructure. So something that supports strong communities, economic resilience and climate justice. Next slide. Before I get to the key goals and concepts, I want to say what the plan is going to include. So I want you to think of this plan as both a vision and a toolbox. So it's going to include, like I mentioned, a shared theory of change, an inventory of all of our current housing plans, a gap analysis and opportunities for innovation, creating clear benchmarks and metrics, reviewing case studies and success stories, and most critically, finding funding and implementation pathways. As far as the key goals and concepts here, the plan ties together these goals like producing new housing, preventing displacement, preserving existing vulnerable housing, promoting equity and inclusion, and progressing environmental sustainability. And more specifically, I'll just kind of briefly read through these. So we want to unite our homelessness response and broader housing affordability into a single framework. We want to align with the five ps of the Portland housing bureau, which is to produce, prevent, preserve, promote and progress which we'll get into in a later time. But just want to note that that is the framework that the housing bureau is using. And I think it's important for us to adapt to we want to center housing with economic and climate goals, including creating 15 minute neighborhoods. We want a shared accountability tool for the public, for partners and staff, ensuring that we have a people centered approach that is reflecting existing community input and uplifts the lived experience of our community members. We want to take an inventory and align existing city, county, and state plans and assess these gaps and innovations, and then build in these metrics, benchmarks and timelines to drive action across these cycles. Next slide. As far as timeline and deliverables goes, we are working towards a published plan in December with some milestones along the way. So in spring right now, the goal is these next couple of meetings the committee will help shape plan elements, goals, metrics, inventory of current work and just get you in the intro stages of setting up this plan. And then the summer, I'm going to have the committee focus on doing some deep dives into things like anti-displacement, land use, housing, climate and economy connections to give us broader perspective as we are creating this vision by the fall, I would like us to start finalizing this plan and incorporating public feedback and cross jurisdictional collaboration. And why are my slides out of date? That should say, and potentially cross collaboration. And what that means for me is I think what's important about this plan is this is the city's perspective, right? I think that we need to get the city's house in order before we are able to then look at our partners and be able to describe what what we feel we're capable of, what resources we have, what's our capacity, what we feel our responsibility is. And then lastly, you know, what is the larger vision for this, that the city, the way the city is approaching it. So then we can align it with the county, with metro, with the state, and create a plan that is responsive to what we believe the city is capable and willing to produce on this area. And notably, it's important that the city, out of all of those entities, is responsible for housing production. So it's really leaning heavy on that. But it is about the entire continuum. Next slide as far as where this goes from here. So right now we've got a core meeting group. I've invited my vice chair, councilor Dunphy, to join me in these efforts. And then we are planning to launch a resolution in late may, which is just to set the framework for what we're trying to accomplish. And then we'll be engaging with the committee and not just this committee, because as you heard from my description, it's going to touch various areas of other committees as well. So engaging committee staff and the public through this year, and then branding these key milestones to build public awareness around this plan. I think ultimately we are trying to show the public that we are in this new form of government, doing exactly what we want this form of government to do, aligning our bureaus, having a clear vision and plan, and showing how we're actually creating the implementation steps of that plan. So we've got a lot of, you know, pdfs sitting around that have ideas, but we want to turn those pdfs into action. Lastly, I'll just say that this is not just a strategy document. It's a co-governance tool. So this is to help keep Portland, help Portland stay accountable, act boldly, and ensure that every resident can access stable and dignified housing. So oops, I'm going to go into the calendar updates and then I'll open it up for questions. So just hang on to those for a few more minutes. So next slide thank you. So as far as the committee calendar. So again at the second meeting I guess it was I had mentioned that we put together all of the ideas from the first meeting into a rough calendar of events, and this calendar that I'm about to show you is still rough. It is a living document. So I don't want you to look at this. As you know, this is exactly what's going to happen, but it is just trying to set up a flow of when we need to talk about certain ideas throughout the year so that it aligns not only with the one housing plan, but it also aligns with the goals that you all set out to accomplish as committee members. And then it will be responsive as new new policies arise. So again, I don't know. I guess you have the right one. Okay. As long as that one is correct. I don't know why mine's wrong. Okay. So quickly around the agenda format. So we've structured it as these three areas a report, a briefing or topic and policy. So the reports are 15 to 30 minutes. They include things like when we have councilor Zimmerman do the soc report, for example, we're going to have the mayor come in to give a report update on the shelter plan. So that's kind of the genre of the report section. Briefings or topic discussions are, you know, like today we have the housing supply and production plan. We're going to do some affordable housing and tenant protections briefing, next meeting. And then the policy area is, as you know, some of it is, and we're all kind of still figuring out how we want to develop certain policies. It is my vision as of right now to be able to put forth probably a committee policy or committee resolutions or ordinances. So I'm still working through what that looks like. But I want us to craft this. If we're crafting this strategy together, I want us to bring policy forward together. And also I know that every you know, councilor, as I said at the very beginning, I want you all to feel empowered to bring your ideas to the table. If you've got ordinances or resolutions that are relevant, I'm going to be delicately balancing how to fit those into the timeline make it all make sense. But allowing for space for councilors to bring those to the table. Next slide. This is a look at may through August. So as you can see we've got a couple of things around the budget in particular we'll be focusing in on in may. In June we're going to talk through possibly some success metrics. And then just continuing the conversation on the components, a review of the components of the housing plan, as we're working on that in July, I'm going to be bringing some anti-displacement and building belonging framework work to you all in via like a work session likely. And then in August I want to get into some climate planning and housing development and reuse. Next slide in September, I we're going to get into some supportive workforce conversations. And then you'll see as we keep going October, November, December it starts to get a little light because you know, we're still building in what those months will look like. But we'll have a rough idea. So like for example, in October, you know, we want to hear a little bit about the 2026 state legislative agenda in November. You know, having some follow ups on budgets and any other things we've been working on in the previous months. And then, as we know, the mayor is working towards a December 1st goal and of his shelter for his shelter plan. And so I want to make sure that in December, we're getting him in here to talk to us as well. And considering December is a holiday month, I have it as maybe 1 or 2 meetings, so I'm not sure. And then let me wrap up by just saying, you know, our roadmap reflects your priorities and lays the groundwork for thoughtful and strategic action through 2025. Next slide please, Jamie. We will be staying flexible and responsive to new developments and public input and ideas from councilors and community partners and keeping. You know, I want us to keep building alignment and moving good policy forward together. I appreciate you all taking the time to work through this with me. I know there's a lot of information, but I hope that it gives you a clear sense of how we're structuring our work for the rest of the year, and how your priorities have been shaping this roadmap. This committee is where we'll just continue digging in, building alignment, moving policy, and whether it's finalizing our one housing plan or responding to budget impacts. Introducing new policy proposals. We are setting ourselves up for a year of focused and strategic work. I also want to emphasize that while the calendar reflects what we know now, it is a living document, as I said. So we're going to continue to be flexible as ideas emerge and we continue to hear from the public and our colleagues. And with that, with a couple of minutes to spare, I want to open it up. Any questions, reactions, thoughts? This was obviously just very high level, but we welcome your input and I'll start it off with councilor Dunphy.
65 Thank you, madam chair. Colleagues, I just want to start by expressing my full support for councilor Avalos one housing plan. And I'm really thankful to have been brought into the process at the early stages. It's the exact kind of bold, visionary, and comprehensive approach that we need. If we're going to be serious about ending our homelessness and housing crisis, not just managing it. I'm proud to be involved in bringing this plan to life. The one housing plan is rooted in shared values. Housing is a human right. Government is a force for equity and dignity and public policy that meets the scale of the moment. This plan isn't just a response to the crisis, it's a roadmap to a different future. And it's also grounded in the idea of abundance. That that's the value that I want to lift up today. I've said this a couple of times, but I recently just read the book abundance by ezra klein and derek thompson, and I've been struck by their thesis about how some of our biggest challenges today aren't due to a lack of ideas or innovation, but they're due to the politics of scarcity. We've been convinced that we can't build, we can't invest, we can't solve. But it's also built on well-intentioned and outdated systems that are so onerous that perfection has become the enemy of progress. And abundance is a policy choice. And this plan puts us on a path to choose abundance. With a one housing plan, we are declaring we can build enough housing. We can house everyone. We can invest in deeply affordable social housing, we can protect tenants, and we can make permanent affordability real. And it reminds us that the role of government is not to manage decline, but to build a thriving, inclusive, sustainable city where everyone belongs. I believe in a in a Portland where housing is not a privilege, it's a guarantee. I believe our policies should reflect the dignity and the potential of every person in this city, and I believe that this plan will get us closer to that vision. So I want to thank councilor Avalos for her leadership, and I look forward to working alongside all of you to make this plan a reality.
66 Thank you so much, councilor Dunphy. Other thoughts or reactions? Sure. Go ahead.
67 Yeah. First of all, I just want to say this is, you know, now that I know what it is, it was a good conversation. I just want you to know that there's been you're building on something, too. So when we passed, actually the safe rest villages of 2021, that was called the streets to stability continuum. And it was going from chronic homelessness all the way to homeownership and everything in between. We then passed the legislation to get what was the biggest missing link on that continuum, from chronic homelessness to homeownership. And that was something in between people being chronically homeless and having enough stability to actually do well in stable housing. We had a lot of data that was suggesting that people were not doing well once they got into our affordable housing units, and so we needed to provide more services. Why they were actually chronically on the streets. And it was a move away from only doing the congregate shelter model. So I just would suggest that we make sure we build upon those models that are out there. I love that you're talking about the other government entities that are involved in this plan. I think that's really noble. So I appreciate this. I just want to make sure we don't recreate every wheel when we have some work that's already been done, and a lot of money spent and a lot of capital gained from the experiences we've learned from these efforts.
68 Thank you for that feedback. Completely agree. And that is certainly the goal. And I will be looking especially to you as somebody who's been working in this over the last few years, to help provide that context.
69 And who's the did you define the core group? The core working group?
70 I didn't the core working group right now are. Sorry, my brain. I'm like, I have it written down, hold on. So I brought together councilor Dunphy's office along with Eric engstrom, from lisa from prosper, david kuhnhausen sorry, from paddy helm, historic from fb, and then donnie, who is the danny oliveira, who is the dca. So that's just the that was just the very, very intro group. That is not necessarily the end all group, but I brought together that group of folks because like you say, there's a lot of work we've already done. So we just started to think through, okay, what what things can we build on. You know, what is our goal. Right. So it was just very much introductory. But using those folks is knowledge and their bureau, you know, information to start the foundations of the plan.
71 And then the vision is to get the city bureaucracy and enterprise all on the same page, aligning those arrows so that we're actually going the same direction. Absolutely. And then and then start workshopping that with other government entities. And then how about the inclusion of, for example, we have albina vision trust in district two, and there have a lot of momentum in terms of housing in my district. When will a partner like albina vision trust be brought into this process?
72 I can't tell you exactly when, but I will tell you they will be brought in. So we have right now, part of the intro part is like figuring out what are the different areas in groups, right? Like there's a whole area that I want to bring in affordable housing providers and talk about their experience. Right. We heard from shelter providers today to hear a little bit about that on the ground. So there's definitely different categories of groups of people that I want to hear from. And albina vision trust definitely falls in a category of community partners that are working with us. So as we're working on the timeline we'll build in where those folks start to chime in.
73 And I think I'd just add offer this as my last statement on this topic is, make sure that you build with those metrics and accountability tools. So like we heard from the earlier providers that were here, that the workers on the ground are just doing amazing work on a day to day basis. But in terms of the contracts that go out, I've been asking for this from the county for a long time, and that is just some basic metrics that we're measuring, so we know what success looks like. It's not about shaming, it's about having relevant baseline information. And then the goal is improvement. That's always everyone knows we're failing. So it's like it's out. Everyone sees it. So how can we improve. And that should be the focus of all of our accountability systems. And for some reason, governments very shy in working with our providers on providing that type of accountability. And portland's not going to move forward without it.
74 I completely agree. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman.
75 Thanks. I was also going to ask about that core group. And you know this the second slide is, you know, the one housing plan is Candace councilor Avalos initiative. So I think there's some groundwork here that you're laying out. But I'm trying to understand, you know, we have not this committee nor the council, we haven't adopted this initiative. Right. So with respect to directing the executive branch work that would normally happen after we adopt a resolution by council. So are you bringing because you said you said we a lot in the presentation, but like I wasn't a part of this at all. This is the first time I'm seeing these pink slides and seeing where the direction is going. But it it seems very much like an internal document now. And I am not it's not really clear to me how this committee is being brought in. Aside from the schedule has been developed to pursue your initiative. So what are the asks? The documents will be asked to approve, to get buy in and to get authorization for this executive staff to actually participate in this. And I say that knowing that the very next document we're going to is the housing needs analysis, the housing production strategy, which are like things baked in the bureaus who do that work.
76 Absolutely, I think. Where to begin. When I say we and well, no, let me start here. Part of what I feel is my responsibility as the chair is to kind of do some vetting. Right. So we all know and what we heard, what I heard from you all on that first day of like, what are what is the direction you want to go, what are the areas that you want to explore. So those are the things that are reflected in the schedule that I showed. But then the goal is to, as we go in the next couple of committee meetings, start to, you know, loop in your voices in this process. I mean, honestly, some of it councilor Zimmerman, I'm not sure quite yet. We're kind of building the plane as we fly. I'm just trying to figure out what's the best way to involve all of all of our partners, all of you. So some of that is a little bit undefined. But the intention here is that this is kind of just going alongside all of the other efforts that we're doing, and it's all relevant. Right? The one housing plan, you know, because it's not recreating new things. It it already jives with what we've set forth, where the priorities that the committee members mentioned in the first meeting. So that's the intention. But I definitely am welcoming your feedback, and we'll be talking to you all individually to talk through what's the best way for folks to feel involved in the process? Yeah.
77 My greatest feedback then, to be perfectly blunt, is that in the schedule that was laid out, I don't see very many action steps, and I see a lot of steady steps. And I think if I could convey anything to the community, to the staff, to this body, is that if we can stop talking about what we think we need and start changing policy that brings the need sooner. So a permitting reform, a zoning reform, a funding reform, I think I'm going to be much more in the body of. Yes, because I don't need to be told that we need more housing. I already got that one figured out, but I do need the staff, this body, others to adopt a perspective that we are going to make it make Portland the easiest town in the united states to build housing. And we are not going to kowtow to the various things that stop that. Right. But I'm not seeing that come off this page. If that starts to become the action oriented document, this is I think this has strong legs. But if it is purely about. Repackaging value statements that I think for a long time the city has established, we've got that. They just may not have been stapled together yet, but I'm really looking for a an action, an action focused work plan. And I'll be I'll be supportive if I see that. So that's my feedback and I and I look forward to it. So thank you.
78 Absolutely. And I think that's why in the section in the policy column you see a lot of tbds. And that is where those will go. So part of those briefings are to kind of give us context as we are talking through. What are some of the resolutions or ordinances, you know, reforms that we need to do. So that is why those are left open, because I'm hoping that we'll fill those with exactly those actions that you're talking about. So we'll we'll work on developing those together. So I'm good. We are a little over time on this item. Unless you want to give a final comment. Go ahead.
79 We look into home ownership as well in this continuum.
80 Absolutely. Thank you. Yes. Thank you so much everybody. So why don't we get right into it and bring on our speakers. We've got a presentation on housing production diego if you want to read the item for us.
81 Item four housing production strategy overview and discussion.
82 Okay. So thank you. We have got I'm going to let them introduce themselves. You're going to you're going to do it anyway. So I'm not going to do it twice. Once everybody sits down. Go ahead and introduce yourselves maybe donna you want to kick us off. Yes. And we'll go from there.
83 Thank you. All right.
84 Thank you. Chair Avalos. Donna olivera, for the record, dca for community and economic development. This is a nice bridge moment to pick up from the conversation you all just had about the one housing plan and start the conversation and the update on where we're at with our housing production strategy. And Eric and team are going to go through some of the details, but I just want to flag this as an opportunity for this committee to think about to chambliss's point, how we use existing plans, build on them, and provide a more cohesive framework for how we go forward making policies. Councilor I think what we want to talk about here is we have a lot of really important plans that a lot of staff and community put a lot of time into, and now we need to get into implementation. And I think this presentation is sort of the beginning of that framework. The housing production strategy is one of those plans, but it's pretty high level. It was originally a state requirement, but and our, our partners at prosper, I say at the time I was the director of eps when this was produced and, and housing really went beyond what the state had required to put together the 35 strategies that are in there some short, medium and long term. What I'll offer is this is the opportunity we have here to work collectively with the legislative and the executive branch is to define where we're going. It's so that we're all working in the same direction, not just my service area, but with with our colleagues across the city, because we need all the bureaus to be working together on these, these interventions and these these implementation tools. The last thing I want to share about this is we've been begun work on the production strategy requirements, and there's going to be a lot of work that we're going to have to do collectively to implement some of the recommendations and suggestions in this, in this strategy, require resources. It's going to require time and, frankly, political will to do the tough things to advance our housing production agenda. If we're truly going to meet the needs that the housing needs analysis outlines, I think it's not lost on anybody that we're far below our existing targets annually. And so not only do we have to catch up to where we're supposed to be, but we have to exceed that to make up for lost time. Before I hand it over to director engstrom, the point that chair Avalos made about building on what exists, it's not just building on what exists. It's starting to narrow down our priorities. We have a lot of objectives. We have a lot of plans. We have a lot of great ideas out there. And at some point, we have to start selecting what we're going to prioritize with resources and staff time. And once we're done with our budget process, I look forward to working with my colleagues in the service area, with you all, to define what we're going to be targeting in year one, two, three, etc. So that we're all aware of what we're doing and that we're not just catching random ideas that distract us from our priorities. So I look forward to doing that with you all. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to director engstrom to kick off the presentation. Thank you.
85 Thank you. Donnie, we're going to go through a couple elements of this presentation. The first few slides are just some background context for where we are in this moment, and how the city influences housing production. We're going to walk you through the housing production strategy in a very abridged version. We're going to spotlight in the third part, a few key actions that are going to be in play over the next year that may come to you. And then we're going to talk briefly at the end about some of the risks and barriers that we're facing. So I'll jump right into it with the next slide. Next slide please. So this slide is just intended to remind us all how the city affects housing production, housing development. We don't have a bureau of housing construction. So we cause housing to be built by the private and nonprofit sector by a couple different mechanisms. We, of course, manage regulations that that govern housing production, like the zoning code or building codes or infrastructure codes. We offer incentives to build housing or particular types of housing, and then we provide direct funding in some cases, for example, through the housing bond or the tif, those different mechanisms affect are aimed at different levels of housing affordability. The regulations, of course, affect all of it. Our incentive programs tend to be aimed at the 120% of ami and lower, and then direct funding historically has been aimed at the 60 to 80 or lower. Next slide. This is just a reminder about some of the economic and financial context of housing construction. Of course, when we're building housing, there's cost. And we've talked a lot about how to reduce cost of housing production. There's also funding. Where do we get the money to pay those costs, whether it's loans or investment? The other part on the right side of the diagram is just to remind us that in order for housing to be built, the, the, the thing that comes out the other side has to be attractive for those who invest in it. So that means that the value of the product that's being produced has to be more than the cost. So that that manifests in, you know, what are the market expectations on the rate of return for developers, what the rents are, the achievable rents. And then all that boils down to whether housing can be produced or not. The this is macroeconomics is the kind of the, the, the word for that kind of thing. And I want to emphasize that these are different people involved in the different phases of housing construction. The investor, the person building the housing and the operator. The end result are often different firms or entities along the way. And so they interact to create housing. And when housing isn't happening, it means that there's often something not working in that mechanism. For example, right now I think you can buy an existing apartment building for less money than it costs to build a new apartment building. And if that's true, no one's going to build the new apartment building. So there's some basic facts of economics that we're that are playing out right now. Next slide. This is just, you know, what would cause housing to be produced right now. And we've looked at this through the market construction costs. If they were 15 to 40% lower, would help investment. Interest rates right now obviously are too high. And so we need that perception of risk to decrease and rates to come down, and then rents. This is maybe counterintuitive, but rents would need to increase in order to stimulate private housing production right now. And the prevailing rents in Portland are below what it would cost to justify that production. Again, we can take key actions to affect these these things. One is to offer more financial incentives. Another is to reduce permitting, approval timing because time is money in this process in terms of interest rates and carrying costs. And we can affect our code and development code requirements. So these are all things that are part of the housing production strategy. Next slide. So I also want to just very briefly note that we didn't just start this work yesterday. We've been working on this for a long time. There have been a lot of actions taken that are in the spirit of the housing production strategy over the last decade. Some of those came before the housing production strategy. So they're not in the housing production strategy because we started the work before that. But the slide lists, some of those things, including a major one is the residential infill project, which which expanded the opportunities for what we call middle housing, for example. And then obviously some of the housing bond work as well. Next slide. So the housing production strategy, this is a state required document that the city produced. Historically, one of the roles of those of us in the zoning business is to make sure that there's an adequate supply of land for the kind of housing that we expect to need over the next 20 years, and that was the housing needs analysis. But in the last few years, the state expanded that requirement beyond just counting the number of acres we might need. It used to be that as long as we had the right acreage, it was kind of the market problem. If the housing did or didn't occur, it was our job to just make sure the land was there. The housing production strategy requirement goes beyond that and says, no, no. Cities need to actually take steps to cause housing to occur if it's not occurring. Because oftentimes, even though we supplied enough land, nothing was happening. So that's what the house is designed to solve for. Next slide. So this is an outline of the different elements of the adopted housing production strategy, which as it said in the last slide, was adopted by the city in August 2024 and acknowledged by the state in January. We're now working on follow up clarifications with the state on some of the details. The actual production strategy on page 16 has a handout that looks like this. That's just a rundown of all the subparts of each of those letters that are on the slide right now. So when you have time, it's worth just going through what all those are. But I'm going to talk them through in a time sequence. So we're going to we're going to start by some of the things that we've already done. And we're we're going to focus most of the presentation on the things that are coming in the next two years. We'll briefly mention some things that are a little bit farther out in time, and then we'll do a deeper dive on a few of the key strategies that we wanted to go deeper on. Next slide. All right. So in 2024, the previous council did. And bureau work obviously complete a couple of the named actions that were in development in parallel with the actual production strategy. So we adopted new tax increment financing districts. We, the housing bureau, calibrated its inclusionary housing program. We the prosper adopted new middle income financing programs. Bts led an update to our land division code, which is the regulations that govern the division of land into partitions and subdivisions. And then pnd focused on reforming the way that we coordinate with each other when new development regulations are in the pipeline. So we we've got an enhanced process now for making sure that new regulations going forward are actually lining lined up, and that all the different bureaus have looked at them to, to ensure that's the case before they go to council. Next step. All right. So I'm going to focus now on some short term actions that are coming to council or going through the bureau process over the next few years. These are things that are generally within the city's authority to work through. The. I want to note that at the bottom of the slide, we're not going to talk about a couple of the actions, because we're going to go deeper on them with a future affordable, housing focused discussion with you at a future date. So we're focused more on the non affordable housing action items in today's presentation. So at the bottom of a couple of these slides you'll see those that short list of other actions that are in the production strategy that we're we're noting for you. But we're not going to talk too much about today. I want to just briefly go over what's on the slide. The first item is action c5 in the production strategy. That's to look at housing capacity in the central city. The bureau of planning and sustainability will lead a process to update the city's central city plan and the associated zoning map and code. We're going to look at ways to, as we do that, to explore ways to improve housing capacity in the central city, and that that process is underway now. And that would come to council by 2026 sometime. The second item is where prosper is in the lead, which is to promote commercial to residential conversion. And we're going to go a little deeper into that in one of the deep dive slides coming up. The third item is to look at housing capacity along 82nd avenue. In tandem with the effort to expand transit service there. That's not so much zoning reform as it is opportunity sites, potentially technical assistance and potentially financing and funding strategies for opportunity sites that that play out the next item. There is an ongoing effort to improve the permitting system. Paddy is leading that effort. We'll talk a little bit more in depth about that one as well. We are also another one of the action items is to is in your court with the budget, which is to explore development services, funding model reform. Just noting that the dialog you've already had about the dilemma that paddy faces around being a fee supported agency, but potentially not having as they as their staff numbers get whittled down by budget cuts, potentially not having an adequate staff to take on the permitting once the economy does pick up. So that was acknowledging that that dilemma. So these are some near-term actions that are going to be going through the process in the next year and a half that are fairly bureau specific. Next slide. This list is a list of some of the actions that require deeper partnerships. And by that I mean both both that there are multiple bureau city efforts, but also that there are external partners in all of these things. So it's two dimensions of partnership really. First one is just continued need for resources advocating at the federal and state level. Ogre being the lead. The second leveraging other state and federal sources. Again ogre. Third, implement and support catalytic investments. And we're going to go deeper into this in a later slide. Has to do with large strategic sites across the city. The fourth one there is to kickstart housing demand in the central city. This is really the livability element of the central city and creating the conditions that would be conducive for developers to want to invest in the central city, where the other central city item I mentioned was more about zoning reform and codes and maps. The last one promote increased transit service where PBOT is in the lead. This is. Portland has long invested in transit oriented development as a key part of its housing strategy. And this is just recognizing that housing development historically in Portland has been attracted to transit investment. Next slide. A couple other things that are kicking off soon but aren't quite started yet. The first one we're going to talk about in depth in a minute, increased housing capacity in the inner centers and corridors. Bts is leading that project. The second is revived zoning bonuses and incentives. So this is when we when we talk about bonus heights or bonus density, all of those kind of zoning standards have to be calibrated to current economic reality, because we're in order to for someone to want to use one of the bonuses, the benefit of that has to exceed the cost of doing those things. And so we periodically have to recalibrate them. And we're going to be doing that over the next year. Third one there is to look at system development charges. I know that a couple different council committees have already been talking about this one, but this is part of the housing production strategy as well. And then again, there's some items at the bottom of the slide that are more about affordable housing that we'll talk about at a future meeting. Next slide. Going out a little bit further to 2027 through 28. We know that we're seeing good results from the middle housing strategy residential infill project that was adopted a few years back. We've been monitoring those results, and there are going to be further improvements to both the codes and the processes that we can make that more effective. So that's part of the strategy. And then integrating investment in infrastructure with housing production is key. A lot of the in some cases housing production is hindered by the lack of critical infrastructure like sidewalks on streets or access to adequately sized stormwater or sewer pipes and things like that. And so as we develop the public works service area and integrating their their kind of update of how they're structured, that's going to play into the housing production strategy as well. Next slide. All right. So this is just a glance of a few of the items that are going to be potentially coming back to you. And we've we've the ones that I just mentioned, some of those things require council legislation in the sense that there are changes to zoning or development regulations. And this just lists when some of those may hit. The story here is that you are going to get a couple of these production strategy projects coming back to council by next year, with a particular legislative decision that you're going to have to make. Next slide. All right. We're going to shift to talking about a couple of the key projects. And I'm going to pass it over to lisa with prosper Portland to talk about the large scale sites housing production.
86 Thanks, Eric. For the record, I'm lisa, I'm the director of development and investment with prosper Portland and the interim deputy director. Thank you for your time today. As Eric mentioned, we are going to talk a little bit about a couple of projects and areas where we're taking more immediate action. As Eric mentioned, for large scale multi-block mixed use projects, think broadway corridor, think omsi think the work that albina vision trust is doing around the profit center or the lloyd mall. Infrastructure costs actually become the key consideration to get a property ready for development, including housing. And this starts to address some of the actions called out in c, one of the housing production strategy, new market rate and mixed income housing at these sites cannot happen before you have streets for folks to walk out to, or utilities for them to tap into. Energy utilities and stormwater systems from the city's infrastructure. Investments often occur via system development charges or tax increment finance, and those are used to leverage other public and private dollars. And we wanted to flag two particular projects. Immediate implementation is moving forward on a couple of these sites, in part due to a state infrastructure award of $12 million that we received last year that is going to help construct new johnson kearney streets up at the broadway corridor site, which will connect union station and old town into the pearl, and then also for a realigned new water avenue at omsi, which will which will create new developable parcels for future housing development. These resources are being combined with tiff and sdcs to fund the construction of those infrastructure projects. And what is resulting, and I will call out for broadway corridor, is the Portland housing bureau is leading a project with home, forward and urban league for about 230 units of affordable housing. And then just across the street north of johnson, there will be a 230 unit middle income housing project that we're working on with related constructing hope and Oregon tradeswomen that will introduce 460 new units. The infrastructure is set to complete in 2026, and the housing would deliver in 2028. Next slide please. And then we're also moving forward with pilot conversions in old town and in the central eastside, working closely with PCEF and the bureau of planning and sustainability. Just as a bit of background, in 2023, prosper Portland hired a team of architects, engineers and analysts to take a look at what the major obstacles were to conversion. They kind of picked prototypes that we then examined for feasibility to understand what kind of buildings, what kind of floorplates, what kind of footprints would make the most sense for conversions. And based on that study, we're actually moving forward with 2 to 3 pilots that we are funding, both with prosper Portland support as well as with PCEF dollars in those pilots. We're offering up to 85,000 as a per unit funding mechanism through PCEF, which would result in addressing financial gaps, capturing ghg reduction, benefits of not pursuing new construction, but instead rehabbing vacant commercial buildings into new housing and delivering important middle income housing. So we're talking about housing that goes up to 120%. Ami we we're also working clearly, it takes close relationships and coordination with paddy, who's also tracking these projects just to understand seismic considerations, code considerations, etc. And then bts is continuing to study. Are there other code or financial elements we should be thinking about as a city that we control, that we could contribute into those projects, knowing that they are particularly challenging? So we're excited to be at the pilot phase. I'd expect we'll come back to you with lessons learned coming off of that pilot phase as we look to scale the project. And with that, I think I'm handing it back to Eric.
87 Thank you.
88 All right. The next one is item c2, which is increasing housing capacity in inner neighborhood centers and corridors. And on the map you can see an area of the city highlighted in yellow, which is really centrally located in Portland. This part of town is potentially under zoned relative to its central location. Access to jobs, access to other opportunities. So bts is leading a project right now to examine infrastructure capacity in partnership with the public works bureaus and really daylight, where the opportunities are within that area, to consider further upzoning to increase housing opportunity. We are again working on the infrastructure analysis right now, but that will lead directly into a project to consider legislative changes to the zoning maps and codes in that area, which would come back to council. Next slide. I think this one is back to david.
89 Good afternoon. Councilors. David kuhnhausen, for the record, interim director of Portland permitting and development. So as we know, macroeconomic factors are impacting the development in the city of Portland right now. And we've made a lot of improvements to the permitting system to date, but we are not done by any means. There are more improvements that can be made. We definitely have all the intention to streamline and simplify this process to eric's previous point when it comes to permitting, time is money, and we recognize that we want to continue to make improvements to this process for our customers. There's a couple of different aspects that we can move forward with, one of which is stabilizing the permitting authority. P and d, Portland permitting and development is nine months old. This has been talked about for decades, but not implemented until July 1st of 2024. It's going to take time to stabilize this bureau, both from a funding aspect and from a cultural aspect, in terms of how staff interact with each other and interact with with customers that we serve. We also need to standardize data and reporting on timelines. This is something that, quite frankly, the former bureau of development services never really prioritized until we moved to a completely electronic system. In the past, we operated in the development services center. There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of nuance to that. It didn't give us the best opportunity to develop accurate metrics. And because of that, that was never prioritized. We are making changes to do that right now. And as some of you have already seen, dashboards, both external and internal, have been developed that really allow us to better tell the story from a metric standpoint. We need to streamline the public works process. Those development review teams that joined pnd from bts water PBOT and parks urban forestry had four different ways of navigating their individual work, all related to one public works process. There was no transparency. There was very little interaction among each other, and there was no transparency for customers either. We have stood up the project doc software to create one tool for both the public works process and the building permit process. This creates consistency for our customers and for staff, and that additional transparency to help customers understand where they are and what next steps need to be taken to get to approvals for either public works or or building permits, we need to expand the use of conditional logic. So last year we implemented a conditional logic survey for new single family residential projects that helps customers at the intake phase walk through what they need to have a complete submittal that cuts down on the number of check sheets, that cuts down on the number of items per check sheet from those technical reviewers. It allows customers to know that their submittal is more accurate and more complete, and that cuts down on the overall timelines associated with that. At this point, we've only done that with the new single family residential projects, but we have every intention of moving that forward with all residential projects on the on the residential side and on the commercial side, we need to improve performance metrics to assist the management and resolution of permitting delays and specifically internally. Again, because people were doing work in office with paper plans, it was it has been difficult to track the effectiveness of how they're working and where there are where there is room for improvement related to scopes of work, or quite frankly, when individual reviewers need additional assistance to be trained or to be more efficient with the jobs that they do, we have stood up that internal dashboard to allow managers to understand the metrics associated with the timelines for their respective staffs. We need to implement staff and customer identified process improvements. Some of you have heard from terry tyson, the project, the strategy manager for the permit improvement team, on some of the work that she has done. That is a project that we're taking both customer input and staff input. Staff who see this process play out day to day, staff who want to make changes to this process, and staff who have the best ideas to at least propose to move forward with, to make improvements to the overall permitting process. It's iterative, but it is collaborative in the sense that everyone is brought to the table to provide input. There is no bad ideas, and whatever we have the ability to move forward, we will. We need to expand, continue to expand the single point of contact. Right now, a single point of contact is available for all, any permit that is associated with a housing unit. So any single family, any adus, any multifamily projects that that have a housing component are assigned a single point of contact. There's a direct correlation between our implementation of the single point of contact and a decline in the complaints that we received as from the from customers about delays in the permitting process. That single point of contact is available for customers to reach out to when they have questions about next steps, status, getting in touch with the specific reviewer, bringing together a meeting of technical reviewers and outside stakeholders to understand what the next steps are. There is a direct correlation there, and the single point of contact has already proven to be a very efficient tool that we again want to expand upon. And lastly, we need to and certainly not least, we need to redesign our website. The website was utilized by customers. The feedback was it is not effective. And quite frankly, internally staff use it regularly to not an effective tool, impossible to find anything. We have made some vast improvements to that that that work continues again. Terry tyson and her team are leading that effort, but that's going to make some that's going to be extremely beneficial to not only our customers, but the staff that need a resource that they can rely upon to provide accurate information. So there's multiple facets here, both external and internal, that we're all that we're working on to improve this process and to be there for our customers. As the economy picks back up and we see developments start to occur more frequently.
90 Next slide please. All right. Next. All right. This is the last slide. We just want to close noting some risks that go along with what we just talked about. Of course some of this requires council support and city leadership support. We'll be bringing back some of these tasks for your consideration and approval in the next year. We already noted some of the challenges around the economy and the bigger picture economic conditions. We could do all these things. And if investors still don't see Portland as a place they want to invest, it won't make much difference in terms of housing production. So we don't want to leave that element out. Some of these policy solutions, especially when we talk about streamlining codes or trade offs with funding structures, have trade offs. You'll get into that as you talk about sdcs. Or if you get into streamlining codes, there'll be folks that show up that care about the things that we're streamlining staff capacity. Some of that david talked about in terms of the capacity in the permitting agency, but also the capacity of the bureaus to continue to advance the other items, like those strategic sites that that prosper's talked about. So that's another risk here. And then alignment with partnerships. A lot of these things that we talked about require alignment with partner agencies like TriMet and the county and the state on funding arrangements. And so that's going to be critical going forward as well.
91 You know what else? Thanks, Eric. One one last thing that's not listed, but it was actually indicative based on two of the slides about some of our strategic priorities is infrastructure. So both for our large developments and that central east side investment strategy, it's all about our capacity to build not just the vertical but also with water, wastewater, our utilities, transit, transportation infrastructure. So as we're contemplating housing density, we also need to make sure that our city can catch where we want to build. And that will continue to be a challenge as we work with our public works bureaus, who are obviously have their own financial challenges. And I think that's the presentation chair.
92 Thank you so much for this presentation. We've got all the councilors want to make some comments and questions. And before we do that, I just want to say this is a perfect example of what we're trying to accomplish with this one housing plan. What you have outlined is the work that has already been done. There's some clear, low hanging fruit that we can accomplish. There's some other complex decisions we need to decide as a group. So these are the kinds of conversations I'm having with these bureau leaders in these meetings to try to align everything and ideally be able to bring possibly some committee bills forward where we say, okay, we need to make these changes on permitting, and we've already got that work lined out. So just to help put into context what we just talked about and show this is the intention is unifying all of our ideas, putting things into action. And with that, councilor Ryan, kick us off.
93 Sure. Thank you chair, thank you for the concise summary. I realize that the full document was very dense. It was very well done. Helpful edit to slide seven, which reminds me why many are stuck in 2021 thinking about our permit reforms. If you could simply add permit reforms from 2021 to current as recent actions prior to the adoption, that would be really helpful. That makes sense. Yeah. And in the earlier committee meeting we spent two hours on this topic. So I won't acknowledge the staff capacity literally today on how often you've been in council meetings. So thank you very much. I'm looking at you, donnie oliveira. A cap, the cap rate, the capitalization rate is of 4 to 6%. Let's go up here. So we have districts like broadway corridors helpful to have you hear from prosper Portland and omsi. We are providing incentives to help build our infrastructure. What are some other incentives that we could implement quickly to help draw in more housing developers in Portland?
94 Donnie, you want me to you want me to take. I'll take a stab at it. So we have we have pretty limited but in particular areas thinking old town. We also have direct kind of resources from the tif district that continue to be available via the old town action plan. So that's what we are investing in conversions. We do have land. I think at this point in time, land is not sufficient to address the gaps that are happening. But we do have land that we also have the ability to put in, kind of at its value. We are actively pursuing additional state funding specifically for broadway corridor, but also for additional infrastructure, just knowing that there are other projects being held up because they don't have infrastructure dollars. So just partnering with the state and leveraging the investments that the city has already made, whether it's in sites like broadway corridor or in particular projects to pursue state funding, I think we are very curious to see what happens with the middle income revolving loan fund that is at the state and potential amendments that are underway with that revolving loan fund, and whether it's a tool that can be applicable in the Portland market.
95 And councilor, if I may just offer. Thanks. Thanks, lisa. One of the data points we shared with you earlier in your in your committee is that we're sitting on about 3000 ready to issue permits for housing at rp. And so this was an a permitting challenge. This is literally a financing challenge. So to your question is what are we going to take to get those projects from red to Green? We're evaluating sdcs. We're working with the state to look to, to nudge some of those infrastructure dollars that help these projects pencil out. So that's a partnership with the governor's office, obviously with the state legislature. But also we're actually trying to go into projects with a scalpel and try to work with the developers. And our building partners is how do we get you from from a red light to a Green light for this project? And that's what's going to be happening over the next few months as we work with this. The governor and the mayor's multifamily workforce is to target specific projects, not this armchair quarterbacking, like what's possible code changes in the future. That's great. Not minimizing that, but what do we have to do today to intervene to get these the cranes back in the air, so to speak, downtown, but also to build that confidence that Portland can build housing again, because we're kind of in a lull. We've been largely dependent on publicly financed housing. And we got to kind of pivot, and we're in this kind of middle time between bonds and tiff.
96 One of the reasons we think the strategic sites that lisa talked about are so important is because investors follow other successful investors, and if we can get a number of projects out of the ground in Portland to show the path that other people will follow. And so those those projects where there's already been significant public investment in, in planning or infrastructure are leading that way, and that includes things like av or broadway corridor or omsi.
97 I'll just I'll skip this one. I'd like offline to talk about cap rate and how we can make it more of an incentive for developers to build here under the potential barriers. I'm not seeing past or possible future housing regulations as a barrier to building housing. Why is that?
98 I think we just already acknowledged that in our action plan itself. So we agree that that that is a barrier. And that's those are some of the actions in the plan are directly addressing that.
99 Those are the kind of messages I'm getting from many architects and providers and builders is about the regulations. So I just found it to be a miss, that it wasn't one of the barriers spelled out.
100 Councilor I think maybe just for the barriers I think that were listed are the barriers to us implementing the plan, maybe not necessarily barriers to housing, because you're right, the barriers to housing production include we have code misalignment. We. This is a funny we had this conversation earlier right? Councilor. That's why the permit improvement team is doing a code alignment project. Bts is doing recap 11. So we're going to be tackling our code as a part of that. But you're right. We know that our code needs, you know, a thorough evaluation and in some cases.
101 Current right now with messages coming in about price fixing and vacancy tax.
102 So yeah, the slide six acknowledges that reducing code requirements is one of our key levers.
103 All right. Thank you.
104 Council member. When you're talking about the commercial conversions, you mentioned that PCEF is kicking in some money. You also cited about 85,000 a unit. That is helpful with that. I guess just in terms of what is PCEF getting relative to their mission in, in that type of funding mechanism.
105 Embodied carbon essentially when you when you've got an existing building that's been around a while and you're, you're avoiding taking it down, you're, you're keeping that carbon in the building instead of kind of releasing it. So that's really there's a there's math there to back.
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106 That's really helpful to understand. Thank you for that. I'm going to just list the next questions just for the sake of time. But my second question, just in terms of particularly the two big projects that that lisa highlighted, just thinking through, how are we going to engage with the district councilors now that we're in this model? I'm very interested in what we do on broadway, and I'm sure that there are some others that are very interested in omsi, but that's on front of mind for me. I am also curious in future, Eric, what revising zoning bonuses incentives mean in the central city? It's just not landing with me. Exactly. I think of the central city as the place where the only word we should say is yes, meaning go as high as you want, get as much as you want because we're the, we're the part of district or towers. So let's offline. I'd love to understand that better. And then. You highlighted a map that shows the inner southeast and inner northeast as that yellow piece, as the next area to up zone. And just from a philosophy of urban planning, I could use an offline conversation with why do we gradually go from the central city with that up zoning versus plunking it down in Lents, for instance, and growing toward the river versus continuing to grow away from the river, as I think through some of that. And then the thing I didn't hear, and maybe it was because I was just kind of zoning. But when I see those, this is related to my broadway corridor question. When I see these projects, I think about slabtown development that occurred, and I think about a lot of the conversations that I have, and I hear from folks of we got through what we knew we could get past design review, which hurts me because that tells me a couple of things. That's why there's a whole lot of pale brick going up, some really boring designs. And I think we're leaving. We're leaving flaws on the table, so to speak. We know we can get seven stories past, but we probably could have built ten. And if we end even looking at that graphic and I know it's just a sketch for what's possible in broadway corridor, it hurts my heart a little bit, because some of those look a little too darn low for the pearl district, where I've got towers. So how do we maximize and not kneecap plans? Because we're going to put people through hoops will be a very important thing for me to understand, to be very supportive of this, because one of the beauties of the pearl district has been in its original ten years of creation, the types of buildings that were going up were quite a variety. And today everything's about 1 or 2 degrees from the building right next to it. And that that is concerning for me, that we're not we're not enabling creativity. We're actually kneecapping good ideas. So I wanted to learn through that. And that's but I appreciate this is great. Thank you for spending the time on it.
107 Councilor Morillo.
108 Thank you chair. Avalos. Thank you all so much for this presentation. I feel like it really affirmed a lot of the stuff that I heard when I was doing constituent services in city hall before, about how difficult permitting is for people and what a barrier that is to developers in our city. So I am definitely pro addressing all of those things and making sure that we are, you know, going through the bureau process and what it is that we need to change to make it easier for people to build in the city. I don't even think that those things are in conflict with doing things that also protect tenants and working class people in the city. I think that when we have these conversations, we have to discuss the fact that the things that make Portland beautiful are the working class people, are the local artists, is the barista that is going to make a little cat out of the foam in my coffee. Those are the things that make our city special and make it somewhere people want to live. So if we only construct things where you're going to have, I don't know. As an elected official, I can say I'm pretty boring. You know, only software engineers or something like that can afford to live in our city. We're going to take away the culture that makes our city really special. And I don't think that these ideas are in conflict with one another. I actually think that they need to be done in tandem, and I'm eager to hear some of the folks on this committee who have talked about very passionately about permitting development and stuff to maybe bring those policies forward for us to take a look at them and to actually be champions in that area, rather than tearing down other policies that are there to help working class people. So I'm ready to be supportive of anyone who's willing to bring those things forward. Hell, maybe it will be my next policy. Oops. I apologize for saying the h word. I think we might get in trouble in our streaming service for that. But yeah, I'm I'm excited to have this discussion further with you all on what we can do about that. And thank you for the presentation. Your time.
109 Councilor Dunphy.
110 Thank you, madam chair. First, donnie and david, you know, Dan and I, we all should have carpooled here today, apparently just to hang out all day. So thank you guys all for spending so much time. I repeat some of what I had said in a previous committee, but it's fresh audience here. There are a number of really amazing things that are happening here right now. To david specifically, you know, as we're thinking about, you know, redoing this website and thinking about a customer service approach to the permitting process, I want to make sure that we are centering that customer service approach, but also thinking about tools that the industry has asked for, things like a fee estimator. We know that sometimes those fees can be surprising. And so giving people, you know, as much information as we can up front, things like that are really helpful. As my colleagues councilor, Zimmerman and Ryan both alluded to, that a lot of work has been done in this area, and we're looking at code updates and actual obstacles in our code and our programs right now. I ask that you hold nothing sacred, that you really look at what is happening in other cities that has worked, or what some folks are saying will work and could be different if we take a different approach. I hold nothing sacred with regard to the process. I care about the outcomes, and I think we all really agree that we want to just see more housing built. We don't want to sacrifice our values for how we get there. But if there's a different way of doing things, we should look at that. And maybe sometimes it's not as simple as saying, let's waive this requirement, let's waive this fee. Let's call the question. And then lastly to the audience, if there are, you know, as I said, there has been a lot of work done. There's a lot of development capacity in our city right now. If anybody who's watching this wants to build a 20 story tower in gateway, give me a call. I will help you figure out how to make that happen. Thank you.
111 Councilor Zimmerman, are you still in the queue? Okay. Any other thoughts from the committee? Great. Thank you so much to our presenters. And we're going to be seeing a lot of you. So see you next time. Appreciate you.
112 Thank you.
113 All right. We're going to go.
114 Ahead and wrap up our meeting a quick preview of what's coming up next. So at our April 22nd meeting we're going to be focused on affordable housing including tenant protections, preservation of existing affordable housing units and more. Plus, we are going to have a fair housing presentation from community members. As April is fair housing month, I would encourage folks to check out the display in the atrium. And with that, I will adjourn the meeting of homelessness and housing committee at 1:54 p.m. Thank you.