The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-07-22
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Homelessness and Housing Committee convened on Tuesday, July 22, 2025, at 12:03 p.m., with roll call confirming presence of all committee members. After a statement of conduct was read, the session covered two agenda items. The first was a discussion of draft objectives for the Unified Housing Strategy, following a resolution passed in May that has not yet reached full Council. The draft, developed with Housing Bureau staff, included a "Unified Goal and Theory of Change" section and five pillars: producing housing, preserving vulnerable housing, preventing displacement, promoting equity and inclusion, and progressing environmental sustainability. Discussion addressed language around "unregulated" market-rate housing, land trusts, social housing, naturally occurring affordable housing, senior and disability populations, property management capacity, anti-displacement strategy, mental and behavioral health data, homeownership pathways, and sustainability tools including mass timber and transit-oriented development. No votes were taken during this discussion; any votes that did occur elsewhere are recorded in the vote ledger. The second item was public testimony, during which four Portland residents raised concerns about neighborhood safety, drug activity, property values, policing responsiveness, and an upcoming shelter opening downtown. The meeting adjourned at 1:31 p.m.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 All right. Okay.
1 Good afternoon. I'm going to call the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee to order at 12:03 p.m. On Tuesday, July 22nd. Rebecca, can you please call the roll?
2 Morillo here.
3 Zimmerman. Brian.
4 Here.
5 Dunphy. Dunphy. Councilor. Dunphy.
6 Here.
7 Thank you. Avalos.
Procedural episode · turns 8–17
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8 Present. Claire, can you read the statement of conduct?
9 Good afternoon, and welcome to the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at Portland.gov/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. Thanks.
10 Thank you claire. All right. So today we have two meeting two items on our agenda. First, we're going to have a committee discussion on objectives for the unified housing strategy. We didn't get to on the June 24th meeting. This is to complement the resolution that we passed back in may, that will be coming to council in the next few weeks, and then we will have some open time for public testimony on homelessness and housing issues of importance to the community. So we just wanted to create some space for folks to react to the conversation we're having today, and also to put anything else on our radar we should be considering. So with that, let's go ahead and move into the. This is this is different on my thing. The first item is the discussion. It's just looks different on my sheet here. But rebecca can you read the first item please.
11 Item one objectives for unified housing strategy.
12 Okay so thanks. As I said, we passed the unified housing strategy resolution back in may. This is our opportunity as a committee to give some clear direction to the city on what we want this strategy to prioritize and accomplish. One of the things I've heard from this committee many times is the need to set metrics for success in how we're responding to homelessness and housing, and that pairs with something else I hear a lot from the group is that we need to take specific action and not just keep planning to plan. And so now that we've come to an agreement on developing a unified housing strategy, this is the perfect moment for us to provide input on what we want that strategy to deliver the draft objectives that we're going to be looking at today were developed in conversation between my office and housing bureau staff. But this is just a starting point for us to start to shape together. But a note on the approach. So today, you know, there are lots of ways that we could define success. And we could start by locking in specific targets and numbers now. Or we can take an iterative, iterative approach, starting with a high level direction and then letting the city staff come back to us in December with a detailed draft that has the metrics, the timelines, and the resource asks attached. So I have opted for this iterative approach because I think it gives us a chance to push even harder on the numbers later, once we know what's possible. Once we are clear on what additional resources or policy changes might help us to go even further. So today, I'm hoping that we have a robust discussion about whether these draft objectives reflect the outcomes that we want to see, what might be missing, what needs refining so that we can continue to prepare amendments to the resolution if necessary, before they come to the council, and ideally, attach this as an exhibit so that once it passes full council, the city will have a roadmap for what we are expecting to for them to bring back to us in December. Are we on the same page so far? Okay, now, before we dive into the individual objectives of the unified goal and or I'm sorry, of the housing plan objectives, I want to start with a unified goal and theory of change section. That's at the top of the document, by the way, for folks listening, you can take a look on the city website and the document is attached. Right, claire. Okay. And so this is essentially the north star statement that is meant to ground the entire strategy in a clear, shared vision of why we're doing this work, what we're aiming for, and what big principles should be guiding us. So this includes some important themes like serving portlanders at all ages, stages and wages, tackling production, preservation, displacement, equity and sustainability as interconnected goals. Acknowledging both historic harms and present day disparities, and recognizing that this unified housing strategy is a way to unify and reconcile the many existing housing plans into one actionable strategy. As we have been moving into this new form of government and are trying to break through the silos, this is our chance to help the bureaus that all touch different aspects of homelessness and housing, to unite all of their ideas and plans and visions into one goal that will be at the direction of the council. So what I'm asking us to do here today is not wordsmithing, but instead I want to know, does this feel like the right vision to ground unified housing strategy? Are there major ideas, values or priorities that are missing from this? Do we feel that we've given the city staff the right charge and accountability frame to guide their work? No worries. And then the way that I'll lead this first discussion, I'll just preface with the kind of prompts that I will be guiding us through, and we'll just let the conversation flow naturally. But I'm looking for what is resonating most for you in this theory of change. Is there anything big that you think is missing, or that we need to include to reflect this committee's values and priorities, that we want to communicate back to the executive branch and to the bureaus? And then do we feel that this gives the right high level direction to staff as they begin to draft the plan? And then I'll just preview that once we get through this first section, when we go into the more specific goals we'll talk about, are we naming the right goals? Are we clear about why this goal matters, and are we setting the right foundation for everything else? So are we clear on that on those instructions? So far, all right. So point of order. Go ahead. Yeah.
13 Thank you chair I do appreciate everything that we're raising that you're raising today. I just want to point of order of we passed the resolution and then has it. Sorry but we've been through a lot. It didn't go to the full council yet did it.
14 Not yet. Okay. Yeah. It's coming.
15 Soon between those two places. And then after that it will actually then go to the mayor and michael jordan and the, the enterprise. And then they're coming back with a report on December 1st. Correct. So today is what it's to fine tune what we've already passed, or just have dialog about what we've passed before it went to the full council?
16 No. So what we're doing today. So after we so the resolution right was like the charge, but it wasn't super specific on what we were hoping to get out of the final product. And so we worked with the housing bureau to develop some big picture objectives of, you know, so that we say, okay, when you're developing this, we want to see the housing production goals. We want to have a minimum standard for this. Or here are the metrics we want to use. So that draft that I sent out is just our first draft of it because I wanted I didn't want us to come in starting from scratch. And so this is our chance to talk about that draft, react to it, see if that's giving the right direction. And my goal is that this will be become an exhibit that will be attached to the resolution so that once we pass and the resolution says you are now charged to go do these things. And then here's the frame that the committee has said are the goals that we want you to accomplish.
17 Okay, so when we bring the resolution to the full council, there'll be more clarity about what direction we're giving to the bureaus.
18 Agreed. The resolution says you are.
19 Now having a technical moment.
20 Yeah.
21 Like those echoes on your phone.
22 Yeah. And, you know, I'll. I need to talk to council president about how we might have that discussion at the full council because ideally, you know, the issue of housing, housing and homelessness is not it goes beyond just our interests as this committee. And so it's possible that we could have some more discussion at council, too, on refining those objectives, because what I just want us to do is for us, as the council, to give clear direction to the staff of what we're expecting.
23 Yeah, we're looking at each other right now. I think what we're missing is that work session vibe, which is kind of has where we're not actually at the dais like this formally brought tables, like having conversations. So this feels that's what this meeting is correct. Okay. Got it. Yeah.
24 Yeah.
25 Thanks. So there's no voting today. It's correct. All right. It's thinking out loud about thinking out loud.
26 Yeah. Thinking out loud. And then that's what we also added some public testimony so that people could react to us.
27 As well. Probably the most important part. Yeah. Yeah, it is the most important part. All right. Sounds good. Now I know what we're doing today, okay. It's just a little murky.
28 I get it, I.
29 Get it.
30 Yes. Thank you. Okay. All right. So why don't we go ahead and hop in. And then my committee members, you have the document in front of you? Yes. Yes. Yep, yep. Okay, so. And, councilor Dunphy, are you good on the document? Just want to make sure you're able to follow along.
31 Yep. I got it in front of me.
32 Thank you. Alrighty. So, as I said a few moments ago, let's start with the theory of change. I'm trying to think of. Why don't I just read this? I think just let's just read it into the record and then it'll give everyone a moment to reflect. I'm going to read this out loud, and then we'll head on into discussion. Unified goal and theory of change. Housing insecurity and homelessness can be prevented and addressed successfully when we all have access to long term, stable housing, we can afford to realize that vision and to serve portlanders at all ages, stages and wages. We must produce and preserve more housing across a wide range of affordability, from deeply affordable to unsubsidized, unregulated market rate housing. And we must prevent the involuntary displacement of portlanders from their homes and neighborhoods. We must promote equity and inclusion, recognizing and addressing disparities in historical treatment and present day outcomes, and make progress on the environmental sustainability of portland's housing stock. Recognizing that development of the unified housing strategy is an exercise in coming together as the city to understand, unify and reconcile numerous housing related plans in various stages of development and implementation. The below framework should guide the development of the unified housing strategy. Outcomes. The work of developing the strategy outcomes during the second half of 2025 should include refinement and expansion of outcomes, resulting in an actionable, detailed strategy in alignment to the extent possible with preexisting plans. Outcomes in the unified housing strategy should be expressed on a calendar year basis. 2020 678 with quarterly milestones, and should be provided for the period of January 2026 through December 30th through December 31st, 2028. So that is the theory of change. So I'm going to pause there and let people marinate on that. And then my first prompt is how is this landing. How does this sound. Is it missing something. You want to go ahead and start us off.
33 Yeah I just have a question a language question okay. When you use the language, unregulated market rate housing. Explain that. The term unregulated.
34 Yeah. I think ultimately we're trying to make a distinction that they're a big part of our housing stock is market rate housing. Maybe we could negotiate. You know how we are defining unregulated. But I think ultimately it's just trying to make a distinction between affordable housing, subsidized housing and market rate housing.
35 I would suggest that we take that word out. Here's why. I think if you asked any builder, they would say our market is pretty regulated, like they have a lot of regulations to go through to build housing, which is what we hear their complaints are it's hard to pencil things out because of that. So I think that word would be a trigger that's unnecessary.
36 Okay. I can accept that. Anyone else have thoughts on that?
37 I put my hand in the queue, but are we doing more freestyle? Yes. Okay. We'll just do that today. Thanks, chair. I think that what this is sort of getting at, or at least my read, was that right now, predominantly we have a for profit housing system and that can be really challenging in a time where people are relying. I mean, people naturally rely on housing to survive. And so I think the unregulated aspect of it, while there are developers and builders that go through our city bureaucracy to build new housing, that's a little bit different than having to actually regulate what they produce. So if the unregulated part is the language that's sticking, I think that we could. This committee has discussed and talked about social housing and other alternatives, so we could talk about the for profit housing system and the impacts that that's had for our communities long term, and that that's an alternative that we are seeking to explore as a council.
38 And by the way, colleagues, I will be taking notes and claire is also helping me with notes, so we'll be able to communicate back what we're hearing later. Councilor Dunphy, do you have any reaction to this discussion?
39 And we're only doing the first three paragraphs right now.
40 Currently, yes. We're just on the theory of change.
41 I don't have anything to add at this moment. No.
42 Sounds good. Thank you. Councilor. Okay, so I think what I'm hearing right, and we're trying to make a distinction between how we're defining market rate housing. And I think ultimately, as we've been discussing, we need to create more than market rate housing. Right. That's why we also moved forward with a social housing study resolution to see how that might fit into our bigger housing picture. And then, as we know, housing is unaffordable. And so we need to increase the stock of that. I think, you know, the term unregulated, definitely. It's not something I'm married to personally. I think if we want to just communicate, I wrote down for what your comments were councilor Morillo like maybe saying the for part the for profit market rate housing. Is that what you were suggesting and changing it, or were you suggesting we could just get rid of that word altogether as well? Because it's implied?
43 Yeah, I was saying that if we want to remove unregulated, we can and say, you know, this seems to be part of a problem solution statement. And I think as part of the problem statement, I would propose that we add that the for profit housing system is part of what got to us, part of what got us here in the first place.
44 Okay.
45 And shocking, we don't have we don't agree on that language. That's okay. I'm probably outnumbered here, but I would I would just say take out the word unregulated. It makes sense.
46 We can massage what that looks like. I think we ultimately what we're saying is market rate housing is something that is dependent on on profit. Would you agree to that?
47 I would agree that people in the private sector have to have it pencil out so they can pay their employees and make some profit? Yes. The expense that goes into government subsidized housing is high as well. So I think we're getting into some crunching, some numbers in a way. There's market driven and then there's the builders. And so we're trying to bring in I think the goal here is to bring in more government subsidized housing, have a government control housing more at a time where most of our housing has been built by the private sector. I get that that's what the dialog is about right now. I also think that we need the builders of housing on the market side, on the private sector side, to be included in this journey that we're on, because they have the skill sets to build. And unfortunately, they we haven't built enough over the last 30 years, which is one reason we're in this predicament where cities that have built housing are seeing rents decrease right now. So our supply issue is a big issue, and it's the fact that we haven't built enough housing period, to be the challenge. That wasn't all to be a part of this. I was just trying to bring context to why this conversation is a bit nuanced.
48 Absolutely. And apologies for my delay as I take notes. Okay, okay. I think I've captured some good notes on there. We can massage the language to explain the intent. Sounds like we agree in general that there's market rate is as a bucket and that there are these other buckets. So maybe we could be more specific about how what we're I think ultimately and we'll see it in the rest of them, especially when we start talking about producing housing and all that. I think we are saying, right, that there's there is market rate. Housing needs a space. It will always have some kind of role in our larger field. I think ultimately, you know, as we're discussing as a council and we're leading this vision for the city, and we hear from our constituents that housing is just unaffordable. So we're trying to figure out, okay, where does the market meet some of that need. But it's clear that we need to have other options. Sounds like we generally agree on that. Yeah okay.
49 And we already have those like we've been doing that.
50 Correct. Yeah okay. All right. We let's take a step back back to the big picture here of the theory of change. What other reactions are we having to this. In this year. Is your hand up from before or did you want to jump.
51 In.
52 Okay okay.
53 You're going to now read on from produce housing.
54 Well I was just pausing to see if there's anything else in this. If we're good on this, we can keep moving. But any other thoughts that we want to check in on the theory of change that we've stated? And I think one thing I'll note from your comments, councilor Morillo, you said that this is about talking about what the problem statement is. So maybe we could also I could refine that a little bit to be clear that this includes some of that.
55 I think the only other thing that I would like to see added in the theory of change would be it could even be just a sentence that talks about us having to convene different stakeholders on these issues. And, you know, we don't have to outline all the stakeholders, but we could it could be developers, it could be houseless advocates, it could be people who are experts in a variety of spheres, who know what some of the roadblocks are. And I know that this document itself is bringing together all of the housing strategies that already exist that the city has put together, and all of the community engagement that they've done. So not trying to reinvent the wheel, but I just think it's important to name that, that that's a focus here as well. But that's it.
56 Okay. So I'm hearing let's just name the partners that we expect the city to be engaged with, not only because some of them they've already been engaged with. So maybe identifying in those plans, the ways that they've engaged community and identify who the partners were so we could find the gaps. Okay, cool. Okay. Last call on theory of change. And this, you know, just this conversation is the beginning. So I also don't feel like if you think of something later, we can't come back. All right, well then let's go ahead and move into the next section here. And I will read it out loud. And so these next couple of parts are these five pillars are the pillars that the housing bureau has essentially framed their work. So we kept within those because it just to align with the strategy that we are already doing. And so the first one is producing housing. So the difference and like I said, this document was done in collaboration with the housing bureau to give us a sense for what they feel are some metrics and things that we could be expecting. But our goal here is to check those and make sure we feel good, feel good about them, and add and change. So under produce housing, we've got increased development of regulated affordable housing, increased development of unsubsidized unregulated market rate housing. We'll talk about it since we've had this discussion around unregulated already. Pursue additional funding for housing development, study innovative innovative housing financing, ownership and governance strategies. And the city of Portland will improve its permitting times. How are we reacting to these initial goals? Do we feel that this captures what we want to signal around production? This is kind of the place where we want to talk about what we're expecting the plan to show around production, so I'm curious if you feel that captures it or if there are other housing types or populations we want to make sure are reflected in this section.
57 I guess I don't I'm not sure how specific we want to be. I think the line study innovative housing, financing, ownership and governance strategies maybe covers it. I was thinking of land trusts being explicitly named here. Maybe. I know we've talked about social housing exploring more. I think it'd be good to have that explicitly named, since we've passed some of those policies already to be explored in the housing studies. But if that's covered under that bullet point, and we don't want it to be too granular, I'm completely fine with that.
58 No, I think that's helpful. I would agree with adding a little bit more, especially because we already passed the social housing one, so why not name it so I could? I'm supportive of that update.
59 You. You already called it the increased development of unsubsidized. And again you could take out unregulated unsubsidized market rate housin. Okay. So we're saying that we want we still we want to work with our partners that build okay.
60 Absolutely. Yes. I know permitting is a big one right. That that kind of dot is pretty all encompassing.
61 That was when I had the housing bureau that was listening to what were the primary reasons why there wasn't a lot of building. And one of the biggest complaints for decades has been our cumbersome permitting process. That's well in motion. It's in I think what we need to do is not mess with that, but support it, support the leaders in that world. With led by danny oliveira and his team and not futz with it like let the people on the ground that are doing this hard work come and share with us how the progress is going, and not mandate yet another disruption on top of that. Like we have to play things out to see if they actually work.
62 Yeah.
63 And there are metrics tied into that one. So it's one of the few theories of action at the city that actually has accountability with metrics. So take advantage of that okay. And then more on that later with this document.
64 Yeah for sure okay. How are we feeling in general. We're going to have also permitting and development come to the next meeting to talk to us a little bit more. But I feel like the dashboard that they've been rolling out has been helpful. Like, is that what you're saying? You know, they've kind of got a plan, right? We worked on creating this new bureau. They've they're set in motion. They're what, only a year old. So we just want to communicate that we want them on that same path.
65 Yeah. Three years went into making them who they are and now they're in the implementation phase. So in the check ins that you talk about in here and that you mentioned at the start of this meeting, that should be included in some quarterly or, or at least twice a year updates. Okay. One reason, because this is the transparent place where that information can be shared about the updates.
66 For sure. Okay. So I'll just I'm noting that we want to have really specific permitting implementation updates in this plan that go into the quarterly, like calling that out specifically. Okay.
67 And then with metrics around that produce housing. I mean, I would say the short term thing that just happened was that we voted on last week. The mayor led the effort about not having any sdc fees. We need to obviously track the impact of that decision. And so I think the metrics should also directly tie into that, that we just passed last week to connect that dot. That's what I'm trying to get to, okay.
68 The amendment that I produced for the sdc has that included. So I'm not sure that that level of detail is needed for this plan. But my amendment did track that.
69 This is exactly I'm glad you brought that up because we passed these things and then you're like, that's how it starts to look like there's not one unified action. It's, I think no fault to most this is all there. And I appreciate the effort to bring it all together. But just how quickly it can start to go into different segments. And so thank you. Councilor Morillo. Like we have to make sure this is tied into this with metrics.
70 So what I'm noting then is, you know, tracking the impact of this new policy on waiving sdcs. But in particular, let's make sure that morelos amendment gets folded into that since, you know, so that it's just part of it. Does that sound right?
71 Yeah. And I think my amendment specifically had requested reports that will be written and sent to us, but we could have people present it at the housing committee. I think I was trying to save us some time by having it be a written report, but we can, you know, do summaries of that on the public.
72 Record and like we get the details, but do the digestible version so the public knows that action that we took last week is having an impact or not. We don't know until we see the data. So yeah okay.
73 Sounds good. Definitely will add some of that. And I think in general, you know, when we drafted this we hadn't passed that policy. So we want to make sure that that's.
74 That's why I wanted to squeeze it in.
75 Yeah. No that's smart. Thank you. Okay. Anything else on this front of producing housing?
76 I feel like there should be something in here about striving for continual system improvement or something like that. Like, a lot of the situations is permitting times, but a lot of it also is conflicting permits or conflicting regulations. And some of our timelines are based off of just bad systems. And for example, you know, a permit in the city of Portland requires eight different people to touch it at least. And a permit in the city of Gresham requires two people to touch it. So I think being a little more explicit about striving for system improvement might be might be helpful just as a growth goal.
77 Well, of course, but that will come across in the data, the metrics that we have. And also the whole idea was to go from the eight handoffs to much fewer. And that's why the bureaus were condensed and unified. So if we see councilor Dunphy that there's still eight handoffs, then that's our opportunity to say the implementation of this system isn't what we thought, because it was supposed to not have as many handoffs. I was a whole reason why we took out of the eight bureau silos and put it into the unified system of permitting.
78 My point was, was less about the bureaucracy of the city and more about the fact that we are talking about under producing housing, we're talking about permitting times. Whereas I think that talking about the actual conflicting codes and regulations are not necessarily they're time bound, and they are they lead to long times. But I think that it's a separate conversation to talk about questioning our systems and questioning our regulations and thinking about those things.
79 Well, you can stop me when you want because I know way too many details on this. I don't want to go down a rabbit hole. It's actually the code clutter that has caused a lot of these challenges. The city council for decades has passed more and more codes, but we haven't looked at what codes probably could be replaced because of those passage. So we put it on the customer, if you will, to become skilled at at navigating all those codes. And then we don't always have unified practices amongst those doing permitting on how they read the different codes. So you could be working with one person guiding you and then say they have something happen and they're gone, and the new person reads it a whole different way. So we're trying to take all of that out and make it a lot more clear to the customer with less clutter. So all those things have to be worked on simultaneously, which is why I think we really benefit from an update from that team.
80 Okay. Thank you. I think I captured all of that. Anything else under the section of housing production that we feel we need to call out? Okay, let's move on to the next one, which is preserving vulnerable, vulnerable housing. So under here we have increased funding for vulnerable housing, improved facilitation of unit lease up, enhanced asset management and property management capacity and proficiency in Portland and increased home repair opportunities. Thoughts.
81 I know what the word preserve means and what the word vulnerable means, but when you put those together, can you please define it for me?
82 You know, this was some of the things that I was talking about back in the budget season when I was concerned that we were going to lose housing in the north and northeast preference policy. And some of these dots here are referencing that just the issues with leasing up, issues with property management and the ability to keep those units filled, and ultimately so this is just talking about how we're protecting housing that is, you know, designated affordable. So I think that's what I'm speaking to.
83 So it's preserving affordable housing okay.
84 And I guess what I'm when I say vulnerable I mean like the affordable housing that can go offline. So that's what so vulnerable is like. It's vulnerable because it's we're not able to keep it affordable.
85 If it helps councilor Ryan, we can just make it say preserve vulnerable affordable housing. I think this is just talking about some of the things that happened during the budget session. When we're talking about northeast housing, that was about to basically take hundreds of units off the market, because during the pandemic, they didn't have funding coming in. A lot of issues happened, and we were about to lose hundreds of affordable housing units. So I think that's the type of thing that this is getting at. And I'm sure we will inevitably see more of that coming down in the years to come, especially with the federal government cutting a lot of dollars to our housing bureau with regards to affordable housing. And if we lose that affordable housing, we will absolutely see a spike in homelessness again. So yeah, I'm down to change the language to say preserve vulnerable affordable housing.
86 Thank you. Noted. And I'll put that in the top and in the first dot. Other thoughts.
87 Go ahead. Do we want to make a call out to what's what the city refers to as naturally occurring affordable housing, meaning some of the houses that you know, especially older adults are able to live in, but are not specifically subsidized. But put something a little bit more explicit about identifying where naturally occurring affordable housing stock exists or something along those lines.
88 Okay. Any reactions to that suggestion from councilor Murphy?
89 So, councilor Dunphy, you identified a vulnerable population. And one way I look at aging in place, and I hear it from all my neighbors, which is why I probably tend to be a person on council. That is sometimes a no vote when it comes to fee increases and even property tax increases. So we have a population who suddenly you go from working your entire life to being on fixed income because you retire. And I don't think we have appropriate policies that looks at that population and how to keep them housed. And since the topic here is preserving affordable housing for those who are vulnerable, I think that this is the right place to lift senior housing, especially those on fixed incomes. And so we talk a lot about this. Yet we also keep adding more expenses to their to their fixed to their fixed expenses, which makes it difficult for them to remain in their housing. So there's compassionate elders who want to support levies for schools and parks and such, but they literally can't because their property taxes keep going up and their income level has stopped rising at the rate of what Portland and oregon's fees have done to them. So I don't think my party has done a good job of focusing on those elders to help them stay in place.
90 Yeah. You know, and that.
91 Always bothered me. So it's fun to say that.
92 Well, this is the place to say it. I think, you know, as we know, the fastest growing population of homeless folks are elders, folks that are over age 65 for this exact reason. So I definitely think that's a newer conversation that is coming more to light, as you're saying, and how people are struggling on those fixed incomes. Maybe it's not newer, but no, I.
93 Mean, it's, you know, of all of us up here, I'm pretty close to this. I understand the issue. Sure, sure, sure. And like there was a nuance at the pride parade. I'm with cascade aids project. I'll just tell a little story on this. So I'm a part of a long term survivor group. People that have had hiv for 40 plus years, and we thought we would be dead like everyone thought we'd be dead. So you didn't save from the ages of 20 to 40? Even if you're pretty fiscally responsible, like I tend to be, because why do that when you know you're not going to use it? And this story is a true story, and it's thousands and thousands of people nationally and even locally. And so are we going to have some targeted campaigns to help those audiences. And they tend to be white gay men, predominantly over 60, that experienced the, you know, our vietnam war was in the especially in the 80s. You know, I went to funerals every week. And so that so we just thought we'd be one of them. And now we're still here. And we didn't do a very good job of preserving our retirement. So, so there's targeted audiences like that that I hope that we take time to study and then partner with groups like cascade aids project to help lift them. When we do go back to the voters for some special vulnerable groups that sometimes go hidden when we have these conversations.
94 I really like that, and I feel like we could add that into the equity and inclusion portion of this.
95 Did I get off too soon here? No.
96 No, you were just thinking ahead. It's good. Yeah.
97 I think the word vulnerable in this category. But yes, I wasn't sure when I started. I just want to give a story that illustrates the where we have to go deep and understand from community what that looks like, and not assume that we know.
98 Yeah. And I think it's important to tell those stories, because ultimately, what I feel is that we need to be whatever our plan is for the kinds of housing that we build, they need to actually be responsive to what people really need, right? If we're just saying just build and just, you know, have no parameters for who we're building it for, what they might specifically need, then that's that's what I'm hoping we're trying to address by giving these specific targets and making sure that we're calling out populations that we're doing, we're taking the time to assess what their unique needs might be in our housing crisis. So yeah, I think that definitely falls under it could fall under that category as well as councilor Morillo said. So I'll make a note of that. Anything else on this front for preserving affordable housing?
99 I have maybe this is a broader question, because I know that this document is primarily focused on building and producing housing. I do wonder if there's a place here or if we're going to do that separately, to talk about a shelter to housing continuum. That might be too much for this space. I want to acknowledge that, but I think also I'm thinking about, you know, some of our shelter spaces that are closing as we're trying to open new ones. I don't know where all of that fits into this, and maybe it doesn't, but I just wanted to flag that. That's something I'm thinking of as I'm going through the document.
100 No, that's helpful. And I agree with you. And I don't know where it exactly fits, but that's okay because I think it should be in here. So let me add a note. Maybe it could be under preventing displacement. Or maybe that could be I could even see that honestly, being a part of the theory of change, that the goal of this is to be able to give us a plan that helps us unpack what the full spectrum of sheltered housing is. So maybe we could add it in the theory a bit, but I could also see it being under preventing displacement. I think in general though, agree that it needs to be in here somewhere. Do folks have reactions to that? Why don't we go ahead and pop in to prevent displacement? Because that's.
101 I'll wait.
102 If I could.
103 Preserve I still have one.
104 You have one more. Okay, okay.
105 Go ahead and bear with me. So. On the profit or market rate side, you see constant upgrades of the asset. You know, routine maintenance. It's built into their business model, if you will, over the years, over the decades, you've seen countless examples across the country where affordable housing does has a tendency not to preserve and take care of the routine maintenance on properties. So they become blighted at a much faster rate. And I don't think we in government have spent enough time figuring out what that looks like and how expensive that is to implement. But if you truly want to keep it affordable, it won't pencil out unless you have long term investments into the assets so that they remain a livable space that people would want to live in and have dignity to live in. And so I worry about the how quick affordable housing starts to just look bad and unsafe after a while. And so I want to make sure that we don't have our blinders on there, but we see that at the front end, because I've now been around long enough to see countless, countless examples of that across the country. I mean, there's the famous ones, cabrini-green, the one in san francisco that was uprooted. So we don't need what we're building today to be those stories 30 years from now. Like, how do we preserve literally the capital assets of those spaces?
106 You know, councilor, I think that there may be there may be a need to have a conversation about how the city does our our RFP for affordable housing. I specifically, I know that there are a number of cdcs, community development corporations within our community that are building permanently affordable housing, but they are so small as an organization that they don't have the capacity to manage their own properties. And so a lot of that management of those properties is outsourced to functionally to basically two companies. And neither of those companies are doing a great job of doing maintenance and responding to service needs. And I wonder if that might partially be the city of portland's fault, that that we are maybe not worrying about or not envisioning those ongoing capital needs that are sometimes not just simply not possible for such small housing developers. I'm not saying we exclusively invest in only the big guys, but I think that there may be some nuanced conversation that we had.
107 Agreed. And so my experience on this is calling a nonprofit to say, here's your award from the bond. And then hearing that they're not getting enough money to do even the first year preservation of the space, they don't feel like their staff properly to deal with the population. That in some that is more complex. And we'll get into this later about what's the county's role of actually really providing in that the shelter to housing continuum, those mental health behavioral health services in those buildings, and how can we improve that? So this is obviously a really complicated conversation. But my point is I've heard but they always kind of whisper it because of course they want the award, but they want me to know they wanted me to know that it's really not enough in terms of what conditions they're dealing with on site, and that we're not providing enough investment to be, in reality, of who's moving into those buildings. And this just ends up leading to some unnecessary, in my opinion, higher eviction rates because it starts to cascade. And then so the reactions are always really quick, more like, okay, you just have to move out. You're kicked out, but we're not in the preventative eyes wide open stance like we need to be for the reality of who's who is currently moving into a lot of the spaces.
108 Yeah, I definitely hear a lot from folks that they in general just get the minimum resource to start something, but not enough to maintain. And I think it's our our responsibility to assess the true value and cost of.
109 Yeah, I don't think we're providing enough training for what they really have to deal with, enough accountability about how to then manage that. I think that build it and put people in is the easy part. It's just so much more complicated than that. And in the profit market side, you usually don't have people with as many needs as you would in those that are subsidized for various reasons. There's no shame here, but we have to acknowledge it, know who it is, know your population is, and then provide services so that they can be restored and the buildings can be restored. Like it's just it's more expensive than government leads on, like the capital is just some of it, but it's the operational expenses to run these facilities that I don't think we are providing enough support for.
110 Agree. Yeah. And this dot here and enhance asset management and property management capacity and proficiency in Portland. I think that's definitely why, you know housing bureau staff called that out specifically because I know I've heard these same things in particular around property management. That's just such a like we say, the groups don't have the capacity to do their own. And the lack of good property management is leading to, you know, the buildings getting into disrepair and dealing with eviction issues. And I think I've heard a call from some nonprofit builders for some help in assessing how we could, you know, do is there a solution that the city should do on that. Do we need to just do more, you know, training and have more ability to train a larger body of property managers? I don't know what the answer is, but and I've heard also from some nonprofits who are trying to start their own property management businesses to go alongside their affordable housing. So definitely think it's a conversation we need to keep having as it relates to once we start, hopefully, you know, building some social housing, taking more, taking on more assets, that this is an important need.
111 So yeah, and this will definitely, in my opinion will will require us to have some pretty detailed meetings with the county on role clarity. Okay.
112 Thank you.
113 Want to move on to preventing displacement. All right. Let me read these dots out. The city of Portland will adopt a citywide anti-displacement strategy that minimizes the market impact of city of Portland asset developments and community investments by the end of 2026. And then these next couple have some unidentified metrics that will want to work with the city on. But we want to increase the homelessness focused outcomes. We want to have some high level dev and homelessness outcomes, increasing the number of households served by eviction. Legal defense evaluate gaps in landlord tenant policy in Portland making recommendations. So as you see, this section includes a lot of like the tenant related things. So I'd love to see if there's other areas that we want to talk about, especially as we're talking about this shelter to housing continuum. But yeah, that's kind of the that's the beginning of this section. So initial reactions and thoughts.
114 Well do we want to make a specific reference to the anti-displacement action plan? I think that's what it's called. The I know the city past city councils have done a lot of explicit work on improving a framework for anti-displacement. So do we want to make that as a specific call out in this?
115 Yeah, I mean, definitely we can name out the building belonging. That's kind of the umbrella one that we're using. And different bureaus have taken it on in different ways. But I think the city is trying to all kind of unite around that strategy. So I can name that specifically for sure.
116 I like anytime we can name something that we've already we being the collective, we have already done a lot of work on. And I think that's sort of ultimately your point of this whole endeavor is to say that a lot of good work has already been done. Let's, let's call it out and not reinvent the wheel.
117 I agree, good flag noted.
118 One thing that I would add here is, or at least call out right at this moment and offer is that it's fine to get the initial baselines of data or that they moved in, but the data that makes me know if we're on the right track or gives me more information is who's there three years later, who's still in stabilized housing three years later? It was like back when I was in the education space, I didn't really care. Well, I shouldn't say like that. It was great that higher ed was enrolling more people of color and more first generation students. But six years later, if those students, the number of students who didn't graduate and just spent a lot of money on loans to go further into debt the first two years, that wasn't helpful. What would have been helpful is that they graduated. So I want to see that when we're doing this type of investment that three years later, they're stable in housing. So if we don't have longitudinal data on these metrics, then we're not going to we're not going to gain any knowledge on how we can keep improving. Because if you really get down to it, you then could see what practices have allowed this group to be stabilized and not this group.
119 I think that's a good call out for just longitudinal data in general. So I'll add that into this. Thank you. I think throughout honestly. Yeah.
120 And this one also calls out the partnership with the county quite a bit. All of this especially the first one like there it really involves. So how is our partnership for displacement. How do we assist the county in this need. So it's one thing that the city might have more than one group working on something. And I again am happy that we're this is a reset of something we did in 2021. It always kind of would stop when we try to then bring this to the county. So we have to figure out this time how it's a local government, since no one out there needs to know which government is doing it. They just want local government to coordinate and work together.
121 Absolutely. Councilor Morillo.
122 Yeah, I just wanted to add, I think for the displacement portion, and I'm trying to figure out what the right section is for some of these things that I want to say, but. I think that I would like to see the city explore more housing enforcement and kind of beef up our enforcement arm within the city of Portland, whether that be for housing, for predatory loans, for illegal evictions, all of the things that lead to people being displaced or taken advantage of and removed from their neighborhoods or places that they grew up. I think that's something that the city of Portland needs to try to tackle and take on, if possible. And obviously that's happening within a terrible budget shortage. But I think in our system, I see that we try to do a lot of piecemeal, small people are taking different bites at the apple, and it concerns me a little bit as far as the scale of our response is not proportionate to the desperation and displacement that we're seeing on the streets. So I'm very interested in what the city can do to beef up our enforcement arm. And I think that that could live within the displacement aspect of this, because that's such a large part of why people get moved out of their neighborhoods. Thank you.
123 Yeah. Love that. I think that is a very important section or part of the displacement strategy that we're seeing. What are the we're analyzing? What are the things that displace people, and where is our role in preventing those things. And definitely I think we have and this is part of it too. Right. Like, what are all the strategies we're already using? Let's make sure that there's a one stop shop. I think that would be cool in general. All right. Noted. Councilor Dunphy, do you have anything to weigh in here?
124 Nothing new at this point.
125 All righty. Go for it.
126 I'm. I think there's. There's factors on why people struggle with life and housing, and they're usually in the categories of mental health and behavioral health. And shockingly, I'm bringing this up yet again. But we're not if we don't track that type of data and show like how we're working with that population, this is where the county's are are is the mental health and behavioral health leader in local government. And clearly we're failing miserably for some time. And so if we don't call out some parameters, some data, some metrics on that in light of this, because we're not doing a good job of treating people with mental health, behavioral health issues, you know, you could look around and just say, that's a fact. So what are we doing? And when you actually have those services back to the earlier point of longitudinal data, you'll probably see those that are being treated and are accepting. Those services are most likely going to be housed three years later over those that do not. So if we don't start to put teeth into that type of transparency in how we work with the county, I don't see how we're ever going to move forward with success. So we can't keep denying that factor.
127 All right. Thank you, councilor. I got that down.
128 As I speak for my three siblings who died young deaths because they had mental health issues that were untreated. So when you look at why people die young, it's often connected to that in our society is very shy for some reason, because of the stigma of mental health, to just call it out and do something about it.
129 Absolutely.
130 I still have four other siblings for those who are watching.
131 A lot of siblings.
132 Yeah, we're all in 12 step programs.
133 Life hard to pivot from that, but it's.
134 Called reality.
135 Yeah. Anything else on displacement or can we move on to equity and inclusion? Let me go ahead and read these and I have some thoughts. So under promote equity and inclusion the city of Portland will improve housing stability and access outcomes for black, brown, latina seniors and single mothers. Support lease up in the north and northeast preference policy properties. Assess viability of preference policy for other geographies. I think the elephant in the room, right is that we're having a struggle right now with our federal government and being able to provide these, you know, equity minded outcomes. And I think. We should I think that's an ongoing conversation we'll have about how we continue to draft, like, our strategy as a city and combat that. But I think either way, we should definitely try to be specific about what that looks like for us. But I'm just noting that it's a complicated time for equity issues, so we'll have to see how that shakes out in the coming months. But I don't think that should stop us from giving direction to the city to use those specific kinds of metrics and outcomes. Thoughts on this one? Councilor Morillo. Is that still lingering?
136 That was part of what I was going to say. So this is going to be an attachment, not an official resolution. You know, it'll be an attachment to the resolution. Correct? I think for now, let's continue having the discussion and then we can consult with city attorneys on any necessary changes that need to be made. I would say that while we are discussing the different groups that have been displaced, I really appreciate that councilor Ryan highlighted some other groups that are not listed here. Our aging or seniors are listed here, but we could expand these groups if necessary, I think having a focus on geographic areas is good. The north and northeast plan is one example, but I think we should broaden it to talk about other possibilities as well, as well as maybe some economic aspects of equity and inclusion as well.
137 I appreciate that you brought up the elephant in the room, and what we're really trying to do is build generational wealth for those to buy homes, and then we're trying to provide stability for vulnerable populations. So when I think of what we're promoting here, it's that. So just giving some other language that doesn't sugarcoat but actually gets pretty darn direct about what we're doing. Yeah. And in this era, I think the more we can figure out that puzzle, the better.
138 Yeah I agree. Other thoughts. Oops. Unmute. Any other thoughts on this one?
139 So when you wrote down geographies were you thinking like east Portland? When I had when I was overseeing north to northeast, that's all I could think about. And that was four years ago.
140 So yeah, I mean, I think definitely east Portland is a geography that would need special attention. I think this section here speaks to what we've already been talking about as we've been, you know, dealing with all the discussions around equity of if we can do like we did with the north and northeast preference policy and be geographically specific, that helps us avoid the legal complications, but it still is targeted to the outcomes we're seeking. So I think this point here is just about seeing if we can replicate that policy. I think east Portland is a obvious place, but not the only place for sure.
141 Back when I was in the equity space daily, it was always focused on how to get people by age 24 to be economically and socially, socially mobile by age 2425. And it was always connected to having job skills, credentials, and then on a financial literacy to help encourage investments into being a home buyer homeowner, because all data suggests then you'll have a very financially stable life. And so that was the way to build generational wealth. And we tracked it with data. So I think the cities side of doing that for generational wealth is definitely around homeownership. And that's why the north northeast strategy was something that a lot of us supported for years now.
142 Maybe we just be real specific then about homeownership because as I'm looking back, I don't know that we've been as specific as we could be. I think it speaks to the continuum, the sheltered housing continuum. But I do think that that could this could be a place where we.
143 Yeah, when we had the continuum, when we had the streets to stability, to housing continuum. It started with people who are chronically homeless. And it ended with stable homeowner three years into it. So that's the continuum, okay. And like everything in life, it's not linear. But there's this. But eventually you try to trend towards that.
144 Yeah, absolutely.
145 And big success of government is assisting people to get towards that. And you have more revenue coming in and you're not providing as much.
146 Sure. Yeah. Okay.
147 I'll definitely be more specific about that. Let's go ahead and get into the last one here, which is progress environmental sustainability. So we have explore mass timber as a housing and economic development tool for Portland, increase energy efficiency and renewables in new and existing housing.
148 As the climate committee co-chair, you know I got to speak up. Yeah. Thank you for adding this section. This is a great I'm glad that we're thinking about this as we're thinking about expanding housing in the city. I have questions about why mass timber was specifically named. I've heard it seems like a kind of controversial thing that's I haven't seen I haven't been super convinced by the data I've seen thus far about how environmentally sustainable it actually is. So I would like to see that explored within the climate committee. First, I'm not saying hard no to it. I would just like to see it explored. If it's going to be listed here, I would also like to add that, you know, we know that carbon emissions are one of the top reasons why we're facing this environmental crisis. And I would like to see us explore transit oriented housing developments. So I know that TriMet and other agencies have talked about building housing along transit corridors and increasing proximity to those resources so that people transition into using transit more than driving individual vehicles. I'd like to see that explored in this as well.
149 Absolutely. And noted about mass timber, maybe let's get some more information about that because, you know, this was developed with the housing team. So I assume that they've been talking about that, but I too don't know the full benefits of that. So, yeah, maybe we could do a briefing on that too. I'd be curious.
150 Yeah, I appreciate that you called that out. I've been around long enough to remember spotted owl controversy. So it's like I had a reaction like, can we spend more time on what this really means? I know that new airport has us all excited, but, yeah.
151 You know that. What would you say?
152 Our airport is beautiful. Everyone knows that. And right, like it wins awards and they used mass timber. So I, I wonder if we're just all saying that because, like, I just need to know more on what that means.
153 Yeah. Councilor Dunphy, wasn't that new housing development that we went to? The opening. Wasn't that mass timber as well?
154 Yeah, absolutely. It's at the corner of 90th and stark. I think it was a fully affordable housing with radiant heat installed. And the whole building was made out of mass cross-laminated timber, which my understanding is specifically that while I, you know, I don't personally, I mean, I, you know, I like to preserve as many trees as we can. My understanding is that the amount of emissions that go into steel and concrete production is why mass timber is the better environmentally sound option there. But I'm not a scientist, so I don't know details.
155 I think we're getting a bigger picture topic, and maybe that's where we could explore that. Adopting preferred building materials and construction methods, and adopting subsidies to promote net zero sustainable building. So trying to get to the net zero goal. And then what does that look like? And I think we need to listen to the experts dig into that.
156 Yeah.
157 Agree okay I like that.
158 And maybe the mass timber was an example as opposed to like the thing.
159 The only thing. Yeah.
160 Yeah I like that of adapt adopting preferred building materials. I think that's.
161 A yeah I would just like to have that conversation.
162 Yeah.
163 Agree okay. And you know transportation and buildings are the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. So we definitely want to have a good understanding of what are we when we're building that we're mitigating those those issues. All right. Any other thoughts on sustainability section?
164 I just want to thank the public for allowing us to think out loud. Don't hold it against us. We're just trying to get to the right place. And with that you have to think out loud. So thank.
165 You know, this is a great exercise. And I took some good notes. And my plan is to update this and reflect it, send it back out. And then like I said, by the time it comes to the council meeting that we can add it as an exhibit and I'll talk to council president about maybe we can have a little bit of this discussion there that could be useful.
166 You know, we will.
167 Well, okay.
168 Sure.
169 Maybe.
170 No choice. Stop it.
171 We can have an intentional discussion, is what I mean. All right. Well, that is the whole section, I guess. Last call on. Any other final thoughts on this document?
172 Chair, I just want to thank you for your leadership on this and pushing this forward. This is great.
173 Absolutely.
174 Thank you councilor. All right friends. Well then let's go ahead and jump into our last agenda item, which is public testimony. Let me get my script back up here. All right. Rebecca, can you please read that next item.
175 Item two homelessness and housing. Community feedback.
176 All righty. So we are wanting to get some feedback about definitely. I'm curious if folks have responses to the conversation we just had, but we just want to encourage folks to continue to share their ideas and their concerns and priorities with us as we move this work forward. And I am trying to help us create spaces like this in committees so that people can see how we're thinking and that we're thinking out loud so that folks can respond to that. So, rebecca, could we how many people do we have signed up for?
177 People signed up.
178 All right. Let's go ahead and we'll do three minutes for each testifier. Go ahead and call up the first person.
179 Ray bodwell.
180 Anyone in particular? Yep.
181 Is it anywhere?
182 Okay.
183 Welcome. Introduce yourself and go on ahead.
184 Thank you.
185 My name is ray bodwell, and I'll start by saying I am in favor of affordable housing. And I do support housing and shelter for the homeless. But I want to provide a financial perspective for someone who lives downtown. Two years ago, my wife and I realized that we missed living downtown, and in June of 2023, we bought a condo in the benson tower on the corner of southwest 11th and clay, about ten blocks from here. We had lived in the benson prior to the pandemic, and we wanted to be able to go back to walking to museums, theaters, restaurants and the grocery store. So we rationalized that it was worth the higher cost of living downtown. We paid $700,000 for 1300 square foot, two bedroom apartment. In the first year, our property taxes went up 7% to just under $12,000. And. But in the two years since we've owned it, the value has gone down by at least $200,000. I know this because there is an identical unit in my building, nine floors above mine, that is on the market now and has been reduced to $499,000, and they still can't get people to come look at it. I'm sure it's because when buyers come downtown, the neighborhood, they see people with serious substance abuse disorders staggering aimlessly or passed out on the sidewalk near the abandoned meals on wheels storefront or the plaid pantry or the safeway. Or they see the mast on a corner waiting for their dealer, and the prospective buyers decide that the downtown is not the place for them. I'm 73 years old. My wife and I are not real estate investors, nor are we wealthy. We are middle class homeowners with a mortgage, so the loss and value of our house is painful and concerning. I have no doubt that the city's plan to provide shelter beds is well intentioned, but if you live downtown or you're running a small business downtown, you know that shelter beds won't solve the problem. Many of the people living on the street near us are driven by their addiction and the need to continually get more drugs. For them, shelter beds are a secondary concern, if at all. So until the drug problem is dealt with, those of us who live there will be very cautious about where and when we walk, or we'll carry our pepper spray and will continue to step around. Folks that are prone on the sidewalk. For now, my wife and I plan to stay downtown in hopes that we can turn this around. But when the new tax bills come out, you can bet we'll be asking for major property tax reduction. And the city depends on property taxes for your homeless and housing plan. We won't be the only ones looking for a property tax reduction, I can guarantee you. Thank you. I appreciate the time.
186 Thank you for your time.
187 Christie stoffer.
188 Good afternoon. My name is christie stoffer. I live at 7075 northeast haslett with my husband, son, and my stepson. I'm a high school teacher for students with learning differences, and I also teach night classes at pcc. I've lived in Portland for 18 years and in the city for 11, and my current home for five, and our neighborhood is about halfway between halsey and glisan in district three. It's in the Montavilla area. I'd like to share three experiences from this summer. At 2:30 a.m. On June 2nd, my husband heard noises outside our house. A drug influenced person was on our front porch. My husband told the person to leave, the person argued, but eventually left, leaving behind trash, food items and drug paraphernalia. It was foil like foil. Then on Wednesday, July 16th, I found an abandoned tent and drug paraphernalia beside my home on the on the 71st side, again with the foil. This Sunday, around 7 p.m. July 20th, my husband encountered a person sleeping on our elderly neighbor's property at 1025 northeast 71st. The man got up periodically and called out to anyone nearby, and then those people would change their trajectory to avoid him. I did not feel safe to approach this person, so I called the non-emergency police number and waited on hold for 30 minutes. I reported the trespass but told was told my neighbor would have to make the call since it was occurring on his property. We determined the neighbor wasn't home and the person was still there as it was getting dark. So we locked our doors but didn't know what else to do. I didn't see the person in the morning, our neighborhood is buzzing with activity in the summer. It's a middle class neighborhood. Lots of people and kids with their bikes. They walk their dogs, they push their strollers. And the best part of living here has been how safe it feels. And being able to walk to local businesses on halsey or on glisan. But now our neighborhood is starting to feel unsafe. My husband, who's an avid walker, used to brag to all people outside of Portland about how great and safe northeast Portland was, and now he compares walking in the neighborhood to being on patrol. He feels he has to patrol for safety, and he's lived in northeast for 15 years. So a home should be a sanctuary and a neighborhood, a place where people can interact safely. I thank you for sharing everything that you're doing and things looking further forward, but I agree with our previous speaker that the drug issue is a huge issue and needs to be addressed for people to feel safe. Thank you.
189 Thank you for sharing.
190 Amanda rose prezioso amanda rose is online.
191 Hi, I'm amanda rose prezioso. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I've worked as a title 19 medicaid case manager. I've worked as a therapist in-home. I have done outreach on the streets for people, and I'm going to echo what councilor Ryan was saying. Thank you, councilor Ryan. For seniors and people with disabilities, I want to really emphasize that because and I've been working in this field for the last ten years, and I'm here today and I'm a full time mom, so I apologize if my child's in the background. I might have to go early, but it's they are unable to pay the cost of living as we know. So one home share. I know you all brought this up in the budget season. Mayor has brought it up. I have been working with it, talking about it. Home share the barrier with home share is people have a lot of stuff. They need help with organization. But I really want to emphasize like a matchmaking. And I know councilor Ryan, you had mentioned it in one of the meetings with your mother and it's like, yes, I know. And churches, we got to lean on churches and other nonprofits thinking about ways to better match people together. So when we talk about producing housing, I'm like opening up more rooms in people's houses, maybe helping what needs to happen with aging people in aging place is wheelchair accessibility handrails. Right. We think of developers. I think about bathroom design. We have to think about the design between the toilet and the shower right when they get up and they need help. We have to think about caregivers. We want to age in place. It's about caregiving services. And I don't know if you're all familiar with the caregiving services available. It is a nightmare, and we are in a huge shortage of caregivers. And I want to think about home repairs right when we talk about home repairs, also accommodations. Accommodations, right. Wheelchair. If you're going to have people open up their houses and specifically with older adults, we have to make it accessible and making it so homeowners can feel safe and secure with opening up there, because there's a high risk with bringing in someone who's older or someone with a disability. So we really want to make it clear and help homeowners with those accommodations. I also want to include that something we don't emphasize is adult care homes, adult foster homes, depending on what county you're in, they offer 24 over seven round the clock caregivers, but a home and people. And they can offer the appropriate level of care. So in Oregon, we really got to talk to our state representatives, because in Oregon the bed occupancy is five. And we can change that like Washington to six. So and that could increase more beds in our home. So and I want to conclude on the displacement part, which is we talk about seniors include people with disabilities. It's not just seniors, it's people with disabilities who are on a fixed income that are going to be displaced and they're displaced from their housing. Maybe it's not appropriate and they're getting pushed to maybe a senior living that's not necessarily for them, right? They're not a senior, but they're a person with disabilities. So I have so much more to say on this, and especially to the people who have just talked before me about working with others on the street. Thank you so much for your time and working on this.
192 Thank you. Amanda.
193 Sandeep divakar.
194 Good afternoon. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you folks. I'm a resident of downtown, and I'd like to remind the council once again, which I did last week, that there's a lot of people living in high density housing in downtown. Many of these people are low income seniors living in section eight housing. The reason why I'm here today is also to ask about the what the city plans to do about the homeless issues and the drug dealer issues, and the drug addict issues in downtown. In in the immediate neighborhood of the safeway downtown. In the last six weeks, there's been two stabbings at the corner of jefferson and 11th. There's there was a shooting two weeks ago at the library. There was a shooting seven weeks ago at 12th and jefferson. There's been multiple arrests for drug dealing, guns and outstanding warrants. When we called nine one 1 or 3 one one, the people on the phone have no empathy. When I called last week to report a large group of people that was on the corner of 11th and market, throwing things onto the streetcar tracks, running out into traffic very high. And the I was describing this group and I said they were young and tattooed and looked aggressive because they were throwing things, you know, at traffic. The 911 person basically told me just because they're young and aggressive, young and tattooed, doesn't mean they're aggressive. It's not her place to tell me her opinion. Her place is to take the report for which the taxpayers are paying her to do the job anyway. So there's a shelter going on, going in on 12th and clay in on August. It's supposed to open on August 4th. We were not given any notice about this. We're happy that the shelter's going in, because it means that the folks that are living around our neighborhood will actually be housed. What we don't know is what the city's plan is to deal with the public safety and trash issues that this generates. This is a low barrier shelter. These people have guns and drugs. There's no plan to actually, you know, sequester them, the guns or the drugs. They will come out into the neighborhood at 7 a.m. What happens then? Where did they go? There's a preschool there. There's the university is one block away. There's a lot of student housing. There's no. My question is to the city. Is there a plan for public safety in this neighborhood? You know, we are also taxpayers and your constituents, but we see nobody paying attention to us. Please help us. That's why we're here. You know, coming to give your testimony. Last but not least, is, is I appreciate what councilor Ryan, you know, talked about is, is the seniors. There's several seniors that live in my building and they live on a fixed income. Some the one person is a was a psychiatric nurse with a county Multnomah county. And, you know, they struggled with these things because as as the property taxes keep going up, you know, where's the money going to come from? I've reached out to commissioner Moyer with the city. My time is up. So thank you very much for listening.
195 Can you state your name again?
196 Sandeep divakar. Thank you, thank you.
197 That concludes testimony.
198 All right. Thank you, folks, for coming to testify. We'll definitely create some more opportunities for folks to share. So we're going to go ahead and wrap up. Our next meeting is Tuesday, August 12th. And I'm noting that the committee we only have one meeting in August due to the council recess. We anticipate in that meeting to hear from the mayor on his shelter plan progress. We're also going to hear a code improvement project ordinance from permitting and development, and we're expecting our colleagues at the county and the housing bureau to come back to talk more about the homelessness response action plan and what recommendations are going to go into or from the city going into the 2.0 council. Ryan, do you have a comment?
199 I do, I just want to acknowledge that we've heard from four portlanders that took the time to testify in the middle of the afternoon. Thank you. And all for were really focused. They were focused on livability issues. And when we were going over this, we had some conversations that that got into that a little bit. But how are we addressing those conditions on the streets that are concerning to portlanders as we try to build housing that is actually safe for them and for those around them? I just I want to make sure that we acknowledge that we just heard testimony that was perhaps different than we thought we were going to hear. I didn't know what to expect, but all four were about livability concerns. And when you mentioned the mayor's plan at the next meeting, I think we heard from several that they want to know what is that plan from 7 a.m. To 9 p.m? You know what? What is that plan? I think all of us want to have better dialog about that and understanding. So I just want to make sure they know that they were heard. And as we try to figure out how to connect the dots based on everything going on, I hope that we take some time to absorb what we just heard. Thanks.
200 I appreciate that, and I think there was an Oregonian article that just came out, I think it was last week that talked about the fact that crime does not increase where shelter spaces are opened. And I think that it's important that while we experience personal, anecdotal things that happen to us when we walk on our streets, I know as a young woman I certainly do, but that happens regardless of if the person is homeless or a man in a suit that we do not talk about our unhoused population as if though they are a criminal population, because that is not always true, and we are now faced with a choice where our city, we are either going to get people into shelters and housing, or we are going to continue to see them on the streets. And so you cannot have your cake and eat it too. These are the hard choices that we are going to make in tandem with community. And I know that's a tough pill to swallow, but that is part of what we are facing right now, because these unhoused people are not going to evaporate into thin air. They are going to continue to exist. They are going to continue to have these problems. Our if we don't do something about our affordability, we are going to continue to see people move on to our streets. And regardless of personal anecdotes as well, statistically, the number one reason for people being unhoused is a lack of affordable housing in the united states of America. That is the number one reason people are on our streets. So until we actually get to the meat and the heart of that, and until we are willing to make concessions and agreements together as a community, then we are not going to see this problem move forward.
201 I just have to add on that it's an and yes, there's an affordable housing crisis and there's a livability crisis on our streets, period. Both of those are true. When I took the lead to do something in 2021 and build a safe rest villages, we ensured that we had enough staffing and wraparound services so that we kept those areas around the villages clean. In fact, we have people now in north Portland, out of north Portland, the peninsula crossing. They're upset that we closed the village because they appreciated that we were constantly cleaning up around the village and the peninsula crossing trail, which hadn't been used for 13 years, is finally being used by people in the saint john's community. It's an and so I don't want to dismiss anything we heard today. And I do think it's connected. And I think that at least with my lived experience, those of my family that were on the streets had nothing to do with their education level. It had to do or their job, their job skills, because when they weren't high on drugs and when they were actually taking their mental health medicine, they were able to function in society, pay their rent, keep their marriage going. So this is complicated. It's messy, but we cannot deny the truth that both things are true. And we have a humanitarian crisis. And in the state of Oregon, it is largely fueled by the fact that we're basically last in every category around mental health and behavioral health, and we are not providing the services necessary to ever see that improve. And we cannot deny that reality.
202 And I would add that with my actual lived experience of having been homeless on our streets, as someone who did not have any addiction issues, who was simply caught on the streets because of circumstances outside of my control, and did not have money to suddenly pay for a deposit and first month rent and all of those things to get back on my feet. Who pushed my way through college for the entire year that I was unhoused until I got my community to come and step up and take me in. That affordability is a number one reason why people are not getting off of the streets, statistically and personally. For me and those safe rest villages that were set up by you and commissioner Jo ann hardesty, because they.
203 Did help with one. That's true.
204 Thank you.
205 Yeah, she did an immense amount of work to get those safe rest villages set up. I agree that we should ask the mayor about his plan to make sure that those safe rest villages, or any new shelters that are coming up are being preserved, that we are doing community agreements, that things are staying clean. And I think that the public is at a crossroads where we have to acknowledge that there is going to be a give and take. You are either going to see people on the streets, or you are going to see them in shelters and in housing. That is where we are at right now. Thank you.
206 Councilor, I believe your lived experience. I just hope you continue to believe the experiences that people share here at these meetings.
207 Yeah, I do believe your experience. You're the experiences of your siblings. I do believe.
208 That. Those that.
209 Thank you both. Obviously we have very difficult discussions ahead. But I do think that we have a north star we're all working towards, and let's keep focusing on that. With that, I will adjourn the meeting at 1:31 p.m. Thank you.
210 Thank you.