The record · Transcript
Council session — 2026-02-24
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (18,036 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.
Okay. Good morning. I call the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee to order on Tuesday, February 24th at 12:03 p.m. Diego, please call the roll.
Dunphy here.
Ryan. Morillo here. Zimmerman here. Avalos.
Present. Claire, please read the statement of conduct.
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@Portland.gov. Council agenda, slash homelessness and housing committee. Or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, please state your name for the record. 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.
Okay. Thank you claire. So today we have two main items on our agenda. First, we will hear from members of the public on their feedback on homelessness and housing issues. It sounds like we've got all three slots filled. And then we will talk about social housing today. So we've got staff from the Portland housing bureau here to give us an update on progress on the social housing study resolution directives. And we also have three invited panelists to talk about alternative financing and other on the ground models that can work here in Portland, as well as councilor. Green will be providing some testimony as well. But before we get into those items, we need to adopt the committee minutes for the month of January. And so unless there is any objection to approving the meeting minutes with that, no objection, minutes are approved. So then, diego, please read item number two.
Item two homelessness and housing community feedback.
All right. So we're going to hear from community members on their concerns or feedback regarding homelessness and housing issues. Each testifier has three minutes. So diego, go ahead and call up our first person.
We have garlin woodsong there joining virtually just a couple seconds. And once you're ready, garlin, feel free to unmute and begin.
Hello? Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead.
Okay. Good afternoon, chair and commissioners. My name is garland woodsong. I'm president and chair of or co op the Oregon cooperative housing network or ocean. We are building the statewide infrastructure model needed to make cooperative housing conversions viable at scale. Informed by the work behind my forthcoming book, the cooperative housing blueprint, we are currently seeking a Portland partner to replicate the limited equity cooperative model pioneered by square one villages in the eugene area. Last year, council unanimously passed a bold social housing resolution. The question now is how to implement it. Here are five actions the city can take immediately. First, create a zoning bonus specifically for limited equity cooperatives and non-market housing. If a project is permanently restricted to limited equity or non-market, resale, formulas increase the allowed residential entitlement. Upzone permanently affordable housing, not speculation. Second, establish a seed fund and first lost reserve dedicated to cooperative conversions and new limited equity projects. A modest pool of city backed capital can unlock senior debt from lenders like national cooperative bank and mission aligned cdfis. Third, prioritize land and site assembly for cooperative use, direct surplus public land tax, foreclosed properties, and strategic acquisitions into a land bank with the right of first refusal policies favoring limited equity cooperatives and community land trust partnerships. Fourth, streamline permitting and provide fee relief for limited equity cooperatives. Pass a resolution that the conversion of office to residential space does not constitute a change of use, but do require fire sprinklers to serve all dust created spaces. Finally, integrate cooperative housing into the city's homelessness response. New resident owned micro villages and conversions of multi-family buildings into tenant owned cooperatives both represent prevention pathways. Limited equity cooperatives preserve affordability without requiring massive ongoing subsidies, and they build collective housing stability instead of private speculative profit. We are ready to convene partners, trained leaders and line up financing with targeted zoning, seed capital and aligned land policy. Portland can turn resolutions into residences. Thank you.
Thank you. Love that last line. Appreciate your feedback and definitely timely as we have this discussion today. So let's keep in touch. Let's bring up the next person.
Next we have benjamin gilbert.
Hello. My name is benjamin gilbert and I'm a volunteer lobbyist with the Portland chapter of the democratic socialists of America. I look forward to seeing what comes out of the social housing study. I had the privilege of seeing firsthand what a robust system of social housing and strong tenant protections looks like in person. Walking in a city like vienna, where working people have affordability and real stability in their housing, was eye opening. A city where systemic failures don't result in thousands suffering on the streets is possible. In 19, vienna was in a housing crisis, but the government implemented bold policies to improve not only housing but public education, health care and sanitation policies grounded in and centering the working class, led by socialists, but preserved and expanded on to this day by social democrats, socialists, greens and even some liberals. There was a time when American cities, too, were bold in their policy. When we built housing for the many, not the few. But these bold policies don't have to be relegated to the past. And they aren't from our sister city in Portland, maine, where champions like our socialist councilor Katie sykes is pushing forward on social housing to montgomery county. Shout out frankie fritz, maryland, where, after hosting a delegation of viennese city councilors, they're already projected to build 6000 units in the next 20 years, leveraging state matching funds. $100 million fund for cheap capital from the county and housing initiative fund, which will cover about 20% of capital stacks. Leveraging, like us, a triple a bond rating of the city. They also had an amazing bill 525, which created a dedicated funding stream for hfpef bonding, creating a single family home demolition tax, which they dubbed the mcmansion tax. So really exciting stuff and I yield my time. Thank you.
Thank you ben.
Next we have noah goldman who's joining us online. Noah, feel free to unmute and begin when you're ready.
Hi. Good afternoon everybody. My name is noah goldman. I am a member of afscme as well as a housing case manager at a county funded shelter program. I'm a resident of district two, but I'm joining here today as a private citizen. One thing I want to note is the recent development from Multnomah county's budget proposal, which will result in the loss of almost 700 shelter beds, which is a significant amount of the county funded stock of of of shelters with wholesale closures of multiple shelter programs. A lot of this is coming from recent shortfalls and budgets. Part of this is loss of one time only assistance as well as decrease in the funding, which is a large component of of a lot of the housing services departments. Shelter. Shelter, budget, the loss of the shelters are not only it is not only about 700 people that are served, but this is hundreds and hundreds more that use these beds over the course of any of any given year. It is also a matter of these are people's jobs and livelihoods who work on the shelter floors and act as support services in these shelter spaces. The skills that employees gather from their time in these spaces is invaluable, and it is an expertise that they develop over time to create an effective shelter response. This drastic cut is going to lead to the loss of a lot of expertise, obviously, and the shelter beds that many of our community rely on. Part of this comes from a bit of a bizarre study that the housing services department did recently, where they weren't really accounting for housing barriers to screening processes, you know, assuming that they can shut down shelters and that funding can be put towards rental assistance. And there's a one for one increase in movement into housing. Unfortunately, we deal with a world where screening barriers exist, and that is something that's labor intensive to work through, requiring that case management and support staff expertise. So this is really troubling. This is the very beginning part of this budget for fiscal year 27. And we're coming to the city about what the city can do. The city obviously has that amount of housing funding that they uncovered, and I think this would be a good use to at least extend these programs for another fiscal year. Part of this is I believe these objectives align with both both objectives to just create more shelter beds. These programs are up and running, as well as objectives to provide shelters that have support staff in case management. These programs are those very programs. They're not not shelters. Sorry. That thing kind of got to me. So one thing is that this is an opportunity for the city to step in and help support. If shelters do need to close a more managed draw down of that supply. Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony. Thanks to all of our testifiers. Very timely testimony as we have this conversation. So I appreciate you. Well, let's go ahead and head into the next item. So diego, could you please read that.
Item three social housing study progress report.
Okay. So I have a few remarks and then we'll I'll bring up in a moment. So before we begin, I just want to briefly ground us and why we're here today. I think it's been a minute since we've had this discussion. So I want to put the context back on the table to guide our our discussion. So last year, alongside with councilor Green, I sponsored resolution 37 703 because we heard clearly from our community that the status quo is not enough. In today's status quo, portlanders are losing their homes faster than we can house people. Renting is precarious, and homeownership is increasingly out of reach. And the status quo is also pushing our social safety net to the breaking point. And I've seen the human costs everywhere I go in my district, portlanders are asking us to think bigger and more structurally about housing, not just how we produce more units, but how we create long term affordability, stability and public benefit in our housing system. That call was heard by each and every one of us sitting at the dice. Today. The social housing study was advanced with the full support of this committee and adopted unanimously by council. So we all have an interest in making sure that the social housing study is successful. This is about expanding our toolkit. It's about examining models that treat housing as a public good and exploring what it would take to responsibly implement elements of these models. In Portland, during the vienna study trip, I took as part of the larger local cohort, including council president Dunphy councilor Green fb staff, we saw what those models look like in practice strong, livable communities where neighbors feel connected to each other, where renting is stable, dignified and designed to build long term security. We now and now, we know that we're starting at a disadvantage compared to the gold standard cities like vienna. They have 100 year head start as they continue to remind us on the trip. But we have to start somewhere. And the social housing study is our first step towards a Portland where housing is a right, not a privilege. One of the most powerful meetings that we had in vienna was with a local leader, who made it clear that their system is the result of deliberate political choices, choices made over and over and over again for more than 100 years to defend housing as a public good. So I believe that we have a responsibility to make different political choices than the officials who came before us, because the problems that we're facing are a direct result of past decisions. The design housing policy to transfer wealth to those in power rather than transform our communities for the better. So today's presentation is a progress report. It is not the final set of recommendations, but it is an important checkpoint. And as chair of this committee, I'm particularly interested in how this work connects to our broader strategies around homelessness prevention, land acquisition, long term affordability and tenant stability. I also see it as an important touchpoint as we move into conversations about the millions in unbudgeted fb funds that council will be having at the March 5th work session and beyond, and the millions available give us a rare opportunity in an otherwise tough budget cycle to think big. I'll make this quick because I want us to have plenty of time for the presentation, but let me just emphasize that this study was designed to be rigorous and grounded with technical analysis, community engagement, and careful examination of financing, governance, and implementation realities. We are not looking for theory alone. We're looking for viable pathways. That is why I invested my personal office funds so that the fb staff member responsible for drafting this report, jennifer, could learn directly from the foremost practitioners on alternative housing models in vienna. I appreciate work to move this forward and I look forward to hearing about the progress, what questions are still being explored, and what we should expect between now and the final report later this year. So our plan for today is we're going to hear the staff presentation. Then councilor Green will share some remarks. Then I'll have our invited panelists come up to speak, and then we will turn to committee questions for staff and or the panelists. So with that, come on up, folks. I'll turn it over to interim director, buonocore and fb staff. Thanks for being here.
Good afternoon, chair Avalos. Councilors. It's nice to be here. Michael buonocore, interim director for the Portland housing bureau. We're excited to be here today and give you an update on the social housing, social housing study progress report. And for today's presentation, I'm joined by my four colleagues who will introduce themselves when they speak. We have a lot of ground to cover, so we're hoping you can hold questions until the presentations are completed. Thank you for that consideration. Go ahead. And yeah there's us next slide please. So today we'll start with sharing information on resolution 37 703 and an overview of the social housing study work. We'll also discuss what our team is exploring to improve housing affordability and stability in the context of the study. We'll then share updates on our progress from last July to this month. And finally, we'll close with ample time for questions and discussion. Next slide please. Like many cities across the country, Portland faces high housing costs and a shortage of affordable housing, making it difficult for people to live and work here. In April 2025, as chair, Avalos said, city council unanimously passed resolution 37 703, with councilor Avalos and councilor Green as co-sponsors. Next slide. The study will summarize research, analysis and evaluation of social housing and other alternative housing finance models and ownership models for feasibility and potential adaptability in the city of Portland. It directs the Portland housing bureau to research several areas, including international and national models, alternative financing and ownership models, and develop policy and program recommendations. Next slide please. The study involves coordination with several team members in the bureau. We have 12 staff leading different parts of the work. The timeline has four stages with the star in front of you indicating where we are now in this month, which is in the middle of conducting research, analyzes and engagement. In early spring, we'll begin to summarize findings, develop recommendations, and complete the study by August 31st. A three month extension was approved by councilors Avalos and Green due to fb experiencing delays in procurement processes, which have moved back our timeline on several critical areas of the study, I'd like to emphasize that completion of the study will not be an end, but rather a launching point for council to continue assessing opportunities and considerations and provide policy direction on how the work continues in response to our community's needs. Next slide. Based on our research, there are several common principles that appear in most social housing models and literature. We have a working definition of social housing describing models which hold housing as a public good, not a commodity for profit. Four common principles include housing that non-market housing non-market or out of the private seeking market. Out of the profit seeking market. More coffee, which is publicly, cooperatively, or nonprofit held housing that is affordable, affordable for the long term. Housing that has strong stability for residents with tenant protections, self-governance and self-governance opportunities, and housing that builds social cohesion. Serving people with a broad range of incomes, household types and across different life stages. This working definition provides us with some shared understanding and maintains flexibility for exploring a broad range of alternative models. We expect this to change as our conversation and the work and work in the area grows. Next slide. So here is what we are currently planning as major sections of the study. The study will have sections focused on portland's housing need. Key takeaways from a literature review, a beginning framework and recommendations across multiple areas. We're using several approaches and methods to gather information for this study, including research experiential learning such as the vienna and the uhab cohort. Consultation and collaboration and education. Providing opportunities for staff and community members to learn together about social housing and Portland study. So now I will pass it to josh for the next section.
Thank you and thanks to the committee for your time. I'm josh roper and policy and planning director for the housing bureau. I'm going to spend just a few minutes talking about some of the conditions that have led us to be interested in social housing and alternative strategies for housing. One overarching goal of this work is to improve housing affordability and stability. And I want to just spend a little time there before we dive into the progress. Update next slide. Thanks. So I'm going to start with a note on affordability. You'll see rental housing in Portland is unaffordable for many working people because rents are growing faster than incomes. You can see on this slide that from 2010 to 2023, the median rent increased by 43%, while the median renter income increased by only 20%. And we can go to the next slide. So one way the housing bureau and similar agencies across the country attempt to address this lack of affordability in the market is to develop affordable housing using the vitek system or the low income housing tax credit system, with rents that are tied to area, median income, area, median income, or ami, is based on the incomes of homeowners and renters in Portland and the surrounding area. Homeowners make about double on average what renters make in Portland, meaning their income skew that ami number higher. The dark blue bars on this slide represent rents based on area median income of 30, 40, 50 and 60%, and you'll see only rents for one bedroom apartments on this slide. So for a 60% ami one bedroom unit, this means rent is capped at a little under $1,400. That's the far right dark blue bar. But if you were to calculate median income based only on Portland renters, you'd end up with shorter bars, the ones that are to the right of each dark blue bar. So that same 60% ami one bedroom unit, if it were just based on Portland renters, would be capped at $654. Of course, that would require significantly more subsidy. And you'll see here, if you look at the farthest left bar in dark blue, we're pretty close to what a 30% ami unit looks like in the current system. That far left dark blue bar and the far right bar. I think that's kind of an interesting comparison. So this all underscores the need for vigilance and analytical rigor and understanding our community's housing needs. And it underscores the need to investigate alternative financing and ownership strategies, not to replace the current system, which can deliver deep affordability with significant subsidy, but to supplement it. And I also want to point out that affordability is related to, but distinct from, stability. One of the goals of exploring social housing is to create more housing stability for portlanders. We can see in our data that duration of leases has trended down, indicating increased turnover and affordable housing and social housing. And these alternative strategies that we're studying present potential opportunities to address both of these issues affordability and stability. Next slide. Our team is exploring also the possibility of setting a system wide goal to increase non-market housing as a unifying framework for research and recommendations. In the study, comparative research from the organization for economic cooperation and development from 2024 indicates that countries with at least 20% non-market housing tend to experience more durable affordability and significantly lower displacement pressure. This slide shows a side by side comparison of Portland and vienna in terms of housing in the two cities considered private market or non-market. As you can see, Portland has about 8%, and the non-market slice or slice is 92% in private market, whereas in vienna almost half of its housing is non-market. Establishing this long term goal could serve as a north star to align development strategies, preservation efforts, long term investments of public and community assets, and communities with more stable housing systems. They have moved beyond treating non-market housing as being a niche intervention. Instead, they intentionally cultivated as a structural pillar of the housing system, giving their cities a counterweight to speculation and boom cycle volatility. Next slide. I won't go deep into this graphic, but just a few comments. First, it's a picture of the fact that there are a variety of financing and ownership models that exist under these categories of non-market and private market. This isn't meant to be exhaustive. In the light blue section, you'll see models that fit into the conventional private market market rate, and the section on the far left are financing and ownership models were primarily exploring in this study, and then also included. This is the middle column. Also included under non-market is subsidized affordable housing and inclusionary housing units, which are existing models we have in place that produce non-market housing. I'll acknowledge we also have in our sort of local housing ecosystem, community land trust housing, even those, though these didn't start as main focuses of the study and remain not main focuses of the study. I do want to highlight that some of what we're learning from the study is suggesting there might be ways, for example, to use inclusionary housing as a tool in alignment with the social housing research that we're we're doing. I believe that's all I've got. I'll pass it to jennifer to share about our progress. Thank you.
Thanks, josh. And hello, committee members. Good afternoon. My name is jennifer chang. She her pronouns with the Portland housing bureau. So we'll be highlighting our team's progress on the study, focusing on July last July through this month. And we'll cover five main areas in our report today. One is I'll share about the forming of the social housing technical assistance panel. Then we'll also discuss progress in exploring alternative financing models for rental housing, as well as alternative home ownership models. We'll then discuss some updates in a few other areas, including engagement and educational opportunities. Fb convened the social housing technical assistance panel, or tap, last November. The purpose of this ad hoc group is to serve as a think tank, and also a sounding board to help inform and advise staff as we're moving through and kind of working through different parts of the study. It consists of 23 people who bring expertise and local knowledge in key areas, which include financing, housing development, homeownership, landlord tenant policies and design, and the built environment. Excuse me. Several members of the panel were also part of the Portland delegation delegation to vienna last September, and are contributing the learning from that experience to inform the work. A list of the members is on our webpage and we will provide the link in one of the closing slides of this presentation. The full panel met twice last year and had some grounding and introduction to the resolution and also the study, and began and we began some discussions about early concepts that are being explored by the team starting this month and through March, and probably beyond. The panel members are meeting in smaller groups, advisory kind of work, groups that are focused around five different topic areas. And these areas include alternative financing models and homeownership models, land banking, tenant protections and residence stability, and then design and the built environment. We have such a wealth of knowledge on the panel and also in our community, and we're using both the panel and the opportunities of engaging with members to learn and inform this work. The information from the work groups will be brought back to the full tap group in April, and their feedback on it will help to inform how we develop recommendations for the study. And I'll pass it to marcel to cover updates on our work on alternative financing models.
Thank you jennifer, and thank you, committee members for your time. For the record, my name is masai hoshide. I'm a Portland housing finance coordinator, so there are many current forms of pursuing affordable housing production and operational stability over time. Developing a common shared understanding of alternative financing models for rental housing is key to addressing the current housing crisis. Alternative financing models for rental housing, which are informed by national examples and yet grounded in our local conditions and community, is key for the city of Portland. Next slide. So we're very excited that in December, two teams were selected from our limited profit housing request for for proposal or RFP. Csg advisors is an advisory firm with nationwide experience in affordable and middle income housing programs, and co is a local development firm with expertise in sustainable development, redevelopment and complex financing structures. Fb is finalizing contracts with these two firms and work is starting to launch this month. Next slide. So together, csg and ellen and co will work together to advance a shared scope of work to bring each of the firm's strengths and experience towards national and local models, towards housing, production and financing. The scope of the limited profit housing consultant deliverables is focused on understanding the levers, tools, challenges and opportunities to make affordable housing feasible to fund, build and sustain across a large spectrum of income levels. The key to any affordable housing strategy is to align land with funding and public agency collaboration, along with community values and goals. Next slide. So over the next couple months, the consultant teams will work on the following main deliverables. Currently, we're identifying best practices for limited profit housing. Next, we're going to move to market and feasibility analysis. In the summer, we'll be focusing on financial modeling and capital stack strategies. And finally we'll be looking at partnership and institutional structures. We're looking forward in the fall and in the early part of 2027 to actually bring you and explore potential pilot projects for these alternative financing models. Next slide. And finally, exploration of mass timber continues to be a key consideration for the Portland housing bureau, and it remains a strong interest as we explore social housing models. When thinking about social housing framework for Portland. Fb looks forward to cross-collaboration with other city bureaus and public agencies to consider the benefits of mass timber, contributions to social housing. And as my colleagues will continue to discuss, this includes homeownership, multifamily rental, housing, production efficiencies. We have opportunities to look at economic development, job creation and apprentice training opportunities. And finally, we have a deep opportunity to look at carbon emission reduction and environmental positive outcomes that all of our residents can feel proud to live in. And with that, I'll pass it to rahul to continue to cover our updates. Thank you so much.
Thanks, messiah. Thank you, members of the committee for having us. For the record, my name is preciado mendez. I use here their pronouns. I am the east Portland policy coordinator with the Portland housing bureau. We are exploring alternative home ownership strategies and the concept of limited equity. Homeownership has emerged as key, particularly in the context of residential cooperatives and community land trusts. Limited equity homeownership preserves affordability, which can provide several benefits for people. Among them, not limited to is the ability to move into market rate housing in the future, if they choose, staying long term in their communities. If they choose building retirement savings or other forms of wealth with the money that they're saving on their affordable housing. And just as a note, this is a picture of the masala cooperative and the boulder housing coalition. And we used a creative commons license, which I think I had to say. So go ahead and go to the next slide please. So residential cooperatives are living arrangements where residents pool together resources to purchase a property they share, usually in the form of a cooperative corporation. These are membership based organizations that make rules about their living spaces, make decisions together, share resources, share space, and often share community. They're an important type of limited equity homeownership. Go ahead and go to the next slide, please. Another piece that we've explored are community land trusts. And to be very clear, community land trusts themselves are not a form of alternative homeownership, but can be used as a tool to support the ownership of homes. Community land trusts are organizations that acquire land, usually through purchase or donation, and allow the construction of their home of homes on their land to help keep costs down. This means that when someone purchases a home on clt land, they do not own the ground underneath their home, but purchasers agree generally to resale restrictions to preserve affordability long term. Go ahead and go to the next slide, please. Over the past several months, we've conducted research, including 16 interviews with 12 local and national organizations working in the area of limited equity, housing and cooperatives. Additionally, Portland housing bureau sponsored eight people, including staff and community partners, to participate in a five month training program run by a nonprofit based out of new york called ub. The program ran from September to January and included tours of limited equity cooperatives in new york city. Also earlier this month, we hosted an in-person cooperative convening that brought together over 40 community members and agency reps interested in the topic. Here are some of the policy recommendations that have been surfacing from this work. And conversations are just loosely summarized here, but I really want to highlight that this list is not exhaustive and that we need to do sort of a legal and feasibility analysis on these policy recommendations that are not recommendations yet. Go ahead and go to the next slide, please. So just a really important takeaway from the research that we've done into limited equity housing is that the current cooperative ecosystem and the community land trust ecosystem in Portland are already very vibrant and they're growing. There's a lot of long term experience in cooperatives of other types around the city. This includes storefronts from bars to wellness centers to all sorts of different kinds of cooperatives. And there is strong manufactured home cooperative work happening on the part of casa. Organizations like casa that are happening across the state. And we have the largest community land trust in the pacific northwest, proud ground, who's speaking a little bit later today. So I will actually pass it back to jennifer for our final comments.
Thanks. So our team is moving forward. Work in several other areas for our study, which include but are not limited to these areas. So that includes land banking, tenant protections and stability design and the built environment environment, and also conducting a literature review and analysis of international, national and local models. We're glad to provide additional information on our progress in these areas, either in the discussion time or at a later time, for a progress report, and I'd like to share. And by sharing some great resources that have been created and are available or will be available to the public. As part of this work, we developed the social housing study web page with information on the resolution as well as some resources on social housing and updates of events. And then also the bureau has a contract with neighborhood partnerships and their partners, fifth element community development and consulting and the urban commons. And they've developed several resources to of which are listed here. So the the image in the middle is a course book called housing the city a beginner's guide to the social housing system. And this provides in-depth information about viennas housing system. And it includes a shorter companion document that is really focused on learning themes and questions for Portland community members to explore. So we're the bureau is currently in the process of talking with the authors and setting a time frame, hopefully in March, to make these resources available on our web page. And then a final resource we want to share about is a three part educational webinar series on social housing topics and tools. So the first webinar occurred on February. That's the image shown here, which was focused on land banking and had panelists from international, national and our local city. And it presented we had different lessons from those cities and had over 150 people attending. And it was a virtual event. And we have two other webinars on different topics scheduled for April and may. So I think that that includes our presentation, and I want to thank the committee members again for their support and pass it back to committee chair councilor Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos: Awesome. Thank you all so very much. I have some thoughts that I'll share after, but appreciate you. Please stick in the room. We'll have you up in a moment. But let's bring up councilor Green. And why don't we also go ahead and bring up the invited testimony and have you all sit up here and we'll have councilor Green share his thoughts first. Thank you.
For the record, my name is Mitch Green. I'm a Portland city council from district four. I trust that you'll pull me off the stage with the hook if I'm. If I'm going too long. Thanks. Chair. Avalos, vice chair, Dunphy and the rest of the committee for hearing me today. And special thanks to this team of excellent champions behind us. Continue to be inspired by their work. And thank you, director buonocore for for giving me the space to do that work. It's really important to me. I want to touch on a couple of broad themes here. In April of 2025, we passed a landmark resolution that put a stake in the ground to seed this new approach to publicly underwritten housing production in the city of Portland. This update today marks an important milestone in that work. When I ran for this office, I ran on a platform of social housing. I ran with the idea that it's going to be the core of changing the game in terms of affordability, not just for renters, but for everyone. But I also knew that good transformational policy does not happen in a vacuum. It does so in reference to our suite of institutions that are existing, our policies that are existing and are communities of practice who've been in this space for a really long time. And so the resolution that we worked on gave cause to this work stream that we just heard from, that sought to explicitly take stock of where we have been as a community trying to solve housing affordability together and see if we can apply a new model together. So I think this team has done an excellent job in pursuing this study, and specifically with fidelity to the resolution. That doesn't always happen, but I've just been I continue to be impressed by that connection to the language and the resolution. Obviously, no one likes when a timeline slips. The original resolution had envisioned may being when the report would be due, but there are there were conditions outside the control of the team who I think were really looking to councilor and I to to for a permission structure to say, can we take our time and do this right? And I was happy to stand by them and give them support. So my commitment has been that we continue to engage these communities of practice and do the work right the first time, and that's what we're doing here today. And I think it's just really critical to underscore that if we adopt a social housing approach by policy as a council, that it has to be grounded in this community conversation, work like we have to know how it intersects with how we currently do things. So I'm going to pivot a little bit and talk about some of the opportunities, challenges and core commitments that are not just in this study work, but also around us right now. Councilor Avalos, you had mentioned that we want this conversation to be connected to the broader strategy of how we approach housing and homelessness. So I want to touch on kind of three buckets of items. Like, first of all, we have some one time money available right now, and council is going to have to make a decision on how to spend that one time money. And while the social housing study itself is not complete, we do have an opportunity to use some of the one time money and identified in these php sub funds to lay the groundwork, lay the foundation for social housing. I think. I think it would be a mistake to ignore that this good work is going in a direction, and not appropriate these funds to enable that direction. Part of that for me, is thinking really expansive about what social housing is. It's a lot of different categories as we're as we've been thinking through it, and we have existing affordable housing units in play that are struggling. And so when we talk about rent, buy downs and buy down the cost structure of our existing providers, I think about that as stabilization that moves towards a cost based rent model. More to come on that. I also think about capitalizing revolving loan funds. I think it was garland with the kind of cooperative space had had made an appeal that said, like, they're ready to go and do some of this. And and so if we can establish some funding mechanisms that take some of the risk off the table from some of these providers who operate in very unconventional spaces, we can unlock a lot of private activity. And and then finally, I think we owe it to ourselves when we when we think about moving forward to recognize that I think the first in line or tenants right now and that we need to acquire buildings for tenants to to benefit from rent reductions or or ownership right now. And so I think when we think about developing social housing in Portland, it's in two phases. The first phase is going to be acquisition and conversion into something we call social housing, whether that's limited equity co-ops or municipally owned housing. And then as we build the framework to build something new, which is which is much more costly, and then so I want to move second into thinking about the tif districts. We're we're spinning up six new tif districts. It will take six years to really realize any resources in those districts. And so we've got some really I guess we're privileged by time because we can let this social housing work cook, and we can develop a really good policy framework to build the new stuff ahead of when those resources come online. And so I think that as we're talking about this in our communities of practice, and I really look forward to doing this on the housing committee with you, chair Avalos, is to think through how we how do we change our housing, set aside policy to have a more expansive set of language that that enables social housing, not and not just sort of governed ami sort of rent models? More to come. And I last on pilots. I think there's just two big opportunities, like if we have existing resources to to devote towards building something new and we see some good opportunities. I think that we have to start in gateway district. We've talked about this before. It's not my district, but I believe in the health and heart of this city. And I think that part of the city is a transit infrastructure rich area that just desperately needs some activation. I know, I know, some of you all up there have talked about this, and so I want to support that. And then co-op conversions again, I think is going to be a big opportunity. I'll just close by just talking about wealth a little bit. We can't talk about social housing and changing our model without recognizing that homeownership has been the engine to build wealth in the united states, and there have been some communities who have been left out of that practice. Communities of color have been not only left out of the practice, but displaced from the the wealth that they've owned through some really, really bad practices in our past. And so if we're going to do something new, we need to foreground the wealth conversation, in my view. And I just want to note that there's a tension between using homeownership to generate wealth and this idea that it sets up a zero sum game and it creates very strong displacement pressure. And so social housing, if we do it right, will be a cost based model that sets rents at the cost of production and cost of maintenance of a unit, so that when you grow your income, you get to save some of that in other forms of wealth generation, you can save it in financial assets, which is frankly a better, more diversified approach. But you might have a little extra to to invest in the business. You want to start on your own. And, you know, the limited equity co-op model, I think offers a lot of promise here, too. And so it doesn't stop there. Councilor you know, jurisdictions can can, I think, approach restorative approaches to wealth distribution and redistribution and generation much more explicitly. But thanks for letting me speak to this today. I look forward to the work that the Portland housing bureau is going to deliver. I look forward to hearing from our other partners on this, and I'm just really glad that we've assembled a team of experts in these taps. I've met some of them on that trip and they're just brilliant people. So thanks so much.
Thank you, councilor Green. And were you planning on staying behind? Just wanted to know logistically okay.
You guys can.
Have that way. Maybe you could join in some of the discussion. Okay. And then so I've invited three panelists, two of whom were on the vienna trip last fall and all of whom have experience with social housing models. So based on their on the ground experience, I've asked them to tell us what we need to be thinking about to make social housing projects a reality in Portland. And so for their comments today, I've asked them to consider these three questions one. How are your organizations approaching this work, and what project examples can we learn from in the local Portland setting? Two based on your current work and, if applicable, what you learned in vienna? Where can the city make the biggest impact in creating more affordable rental or owner ownership opportunities using limited profit and other alternative financing models? And three keeping in mind current financial constraints as well as recently identified unspent funds, what city support is needed to make these projects a reality? And so with that, I will hand it off. I don't know if there's a particular order any of you wanted to go in. Who's jumping at the bit?
We didn't figure that out. All right. You're looking at me. Okay. Carly's on the screen. Okay.
Go ahead and introduce yourself as well and tell us your title and then get started.
Sure. My name is jonathan trut and I am the director of development at home forward. Thank you to the council for the opportunity to provide these comments and to do my best to answer these questions. So I did not go on the vienna trip. I do bring two perspectives to this discussion. One, I am someone who has been developing and preserving affordable housing, affordable rental housing in Oregon for 21 years. So I know what the current affordable housing rental system does well, and I also know its limitations. That's one perspective. The other perspective is that my mom grew up in a limited equity co-op in new york city, and my grandparents lived out their years in that building. And I that's 40 years from my grandma. And I'm sorry for my grandfather and 50 for my grandfather. So I have gotten to experience firsthand the kind of stability that a limited equity co-op can provide. So home forward is really keen, very interested in supporting this work. We need all of the new housing that we can get, and we need to create the housing stability and opportunity we seek. If we want to get there. We need broader approaches than the standard affordable housing financing approaches and tools. Following on councilor Green's comments, I think one thing we've done and we've done in close partnership with the Portland housing bureau that could be relevant to social housing efforts or acquisitions. Acquisitions are an opportunity to stretch our dollars and achieve some scale. As we look to modify housing. A quick example that is, I think relevant here is our purchase of goose hollow apartments in the goose hollow neighborhood. It's 61 homes, mostly studios and ones a few two bedrooms. We purchased it last may and we are buying down the rents. It's it was a market rate property and we are buying the rents down. So that is affordable to households earning 50% of area median income. In plainer english, that's about $44,000 for a single person and about $50,000 a year for a couple. It's an eight year old building. We bought it for $183,000 per apartment, which is less than half the cost of building new right now. And current market conditions continue to allow for similar opportunities. And, you know, I think there are multi projects where owners are looking at a a significant tax hike where they may be motivated to sell in upcoming years. So what can the city do? Three ideas. One is to advocate for low cost funding and financing, and the city could use its geo bond authority in creative ways. And I saw it on one of the slides. But investment from labor unions and public pension funds is is the city could use I won't call it a bully pulpit, but its position to advocate for those kind of investments. And there are really interesting things that happen in canada where teachers pension funds invest in social housing. Another idea do everything possible to achieve operational economies of scale, because it's always easier to start something than to sustainably maintain it. And this is where I think my mom's experience, our family's experience, really comes to mind. She grew up on the 15th story of a 20 story tower, and when you went down to the lobby, it was attached to three other, I'm sorry, two other buildings there were there were these clusters of three. When you went outside, you saw three other clusters, nine more buildings, all 20 story towers on the lower east side. And the point here is the scale. And when I think back on it, I, I can't imagine what it would be like if every single one of those individual buildings had to have its own board of directors, undertake individualized capital planning, obtain its own insurance, establish and maintain banking relationships. And there is so much strength and capacity in portland's existing mission based organizations who are already advancing rental and ownership opportunities without seeking profit. But we have to recognize that for these organizations and for any new entities created in this effort, social housing will be new and there will be new reporting and compliance requirements, new operational realities. And there really is only so much human capital in our city to manage all of this work. And that's why we need to build operational efficiency of social housing system in from the very start. And last but not least, I think especially in these early years as we try to shift the curve and maybe move more towards looking like vienna, mitigate risk for the the early, the early adopters, the first movers in the slides about the principles. One of them is that we want inclusive communities with people from a broad range of incomes and life stages, life stages. And I think that also that that runs into some headwinds when you think about the norms and the financial incentives that are just baked into the American housing market, which tend to lead to socioeconomic stratification. And so I think one thing the city could explore is, at least at first, as we're trying to achieve these mixed income communities, that that the city help explore ways to mitigate financial risks of first movers may take, especially as they're taking on some kind of financing, most likely some kind of mortgage they have to pay. That could be an operating and debt service reserve. It could be a replacement reserve for emergency repairs. It's something to help shoulder that risk. There are two other panelists. So I'm going to conclude my remarks and turn it over.
Cully and carly is joining us online. Carly, did you want to go next?
I would love to go next. Can everyone hear me okay.
Yes.
Great. Okay. Well, you know what? Jonathan couldn't have said everything better than my. I mean, I can't say it better than jonathan, but my name is carly harrison. She her pronouns. And I'm the senior vice president of real estate at the albina vision trust. And I'm also a member of the tap. And thank you, everyone, chair Avalos and members of the committee for having me here today. Albina vision trust was formed to steward the restorative redevelopment of lower albina. And as many of you know, this is a neighborhood that was systemically displaced and paved over by urban renewal, freeway construction and institutional expansion. And our our mission is really to not just build housing there. And certainly it is to build housing, but it's to rebuild a whole neighborhood, repair harm, return opportunity, and ensure that the land in the district is stewarded in ways that center community, wealth and belonging and long term, long term stability. I had the privilege of attending the trip to vienna with a colleague of mine, michael greenberg, and really to see neighborhoods at scale that actually really embody these aspects and values, values that are really at the core of what Portland wants for itself and what Portland has had at different times. And I think has, has in certain areas. But I think we can all recognize that we need some new tools to preserve housing affordability, and I'd say livability outcomes, as the old ways are not enough to meet our high standards as a city and what we believe is possible for ourselves. My background, similar to jonathan, is in housing and other mission related real estate development, both in the development of it and financing. And so I'm very familiar with the current tools. There are opportunities, especially where they don't have current replacements, but also there are challenges. And I think there is it is a new time to look at different, different tools that can come to the table. We are structuring. Yeah. In the last couple of years as an organization, we've actually actively acquired properties in lower albina, including an existing multifamily housing building that I'll talk about. We've developed new construction, affordable housing. And so we've seen first firsthand, even just in those couple of years, some of these complexities and how the current, the current tools don't really work for the long term goals that we have, certainly as an organization, and that I know our city has at the end of the day, I think for me and my background and the way I see it, the reality is that real estate and housing as it currently is. And you saw the slide with 92% financed by private capital. It's almost entirely driven by its capital sources. What money is used to buy, own and operate it? What does that money want for it? What is their cost of capital? When do they want it back? All of those decisions that tie to the actual capital, and the decision makers behind those capitals drive everything. You know, we've been fortunate to have been a place that has attracted investment from the private market, as it's been the primary tool to just develop housing, which we need to keep supply and demand in balance, which keeps rents and balance. But we won't have different outcomes in our neighborhoods. We won't have different. We won't have non-market housing if we're not willing to structure capital differently. So to chair Avalos questions what we're learning on the ground in Portland. First, you know, alternative capital. It's required if we want different outcomes. So just kind of reiterating that the core constraint we face is not lack of desire for different housing outcomes. We just lack different capital. And that's capital that takes the place of the current sources that could work in conjunction with the current sources, both private and I'd say the capital affordable housing subsidy. I think right now there's there's just so much opportunity to look at how different tools can work within the current structure and also pave the way for a new structure. Right now, most of the housing is financed by private capital, investor equity and debt, and then capital affordable housing, financed by largely state and municipal funds, the latter of which is mostly used up now here in our local market and metro. With the exception of the funds referenced. And I do want to reiterate, like we have to celebrate having private capital participate in our city because right now they're going away. And it is the large it is the main producer. However, this is right now. There is perfect opportunity to buy housing at a really good deal. As jonathan mentioned. And if we want different results, we need to substitute. Second, there's an opportunity to act. Now, the benefit of the Portland market suffering in the eyes of of the national and global real estate market is that we can get housing for really good deal. It's never been less expensive to buy really quality buildings, communities, future homes for the kinds of communities that we we really want. And as a firm believer in the future of Portland and our fundamentals as both an amazing place to live and a city for investment, I believe that this won't last. I think this this opportunity will will fade. And it's a question of when. And so I hope that that we can respond as a city and try and yeah, buy some property up and make it the mission driven housing that we want that serves mixed income communities, affordable, affordable residents. And so a real world example similar to jonathan is we were able to purchase a property last fall using using some of the funds from the city's rapid acquisition RFP. This was 66, 66 unit multifamily building that came to market. It was operating as naturally occurring affordable housing, and we were able to buy it as an anti-displacement building. Anti-displacement strategy as this building is really key within our district, it had it been acquired by a traditional private buyer or held by the owner longer, you know, as the current market does improve, we know that we would have seen rents increase, pushing out those who had been long term tenants. We were able to buy it for $166,000 for a unit with $82,000 from the city of Portland per unit. And even with some future renovations that will be made to the building in years to come, this is a much lower cost of capital cost relative to any new construction by far, and as the units turned over, they'll be they'll be available for tenants earning between 50 or 50% ami and below and 60%. And then the key here is and this is where we really get creative with the housing bureau, all existing tenants in the building, if they're well over the affordability covenants, can stay as long as they want. For those that do meet the affordability requirements, they will get much lower rents. So until all units turn over and we don't know if that will ever happen, this is actually effectively operating as a mixed income building, which we are really thrilled about. I will stress, like we were able to do this acquisition because we had additional access to really patient, mission driven capital that I think will not, does not really currently exist in the market and is likely not to be very replicable for that reason. You know, I think there's definite need to take advantage of this kind of acquisition and for for city participation to make that possible so that we have this community benefit. I think jonathan said everything that I was going to emphasize. So I with that, I will I will pause and let let the next panelist comment. Thank you.
Thank you carly. Go ahead dom.
All right. Thanks, chair.
Avalos, good to see you again. And thanks to the rest of the committee members for hearing my testimony. I think carly and jonathan did a great job. So I'll try to focus mostly on the community land trust as a community land trust that I'm the executive director of. I think for the record, my name is dominique meriwether, executive director for proud ground. We are the northwest largest community land trust. I think we're also, when it comes to homeownership, we're like in the top five in the nation for homeownership focus clts. And I think I think one of the one of the things that I want to talk about with reference to social housing is that our experience in the northwest, in particular with community land trust, has been for ownership, housing. And the reality is, across the nation we serve different purposes, whether it be for holding rental houses, commercial, commercial, property, ownership, housing. So our our model is flexible. I think that's one thing that I want to leave with the committee today is that we can serve multiple purposes. It doesn't just have to be homeownership. So with regards to outrun and what we do. So a few things that we do to serve our community. One, we're HUD certified homeownership counseling agency, which means that we take folk who are seeking to purchase a home, not quite sure if they're mortgage ready or not, and we walk them through their process of becoming mortgage qualified. We we walk with people on their journey. It can be, you know, a quick journey for folks who are ready and able. And for some folks, it takes a little bit of time. My first month on the job, I was able to hand keys to a homeowner who had been working on their process for over three years, and it just sent chills down my mind down my back just because one. It shows their commitment, but it also shows the commitment of agency when we walk beside people and empower them to create their own journey for stability and around housing in particular. The other thing that we do is obviously we co-develop homeownership opportunities in the past, most of our history. So we have 602 ownership housing units in our portfolio. In addition, we we land lease a senior housing facility to another affordable housing operator. It's 100 senior housing units. And then and so our history has been with scattered site homeownership opportunities, which means the buyer decides where they where they want to live. And so we help them become mortgage qualified at an amount. And then we bring in subsidy to sort of take the amount that they qualify for, bring in subsidy to make the market to bring it to the market price. And that worked for proud ground for probably 20 plus years. And then we saw the housing market just take off. And the reality is, is that, you know, the amount of subsidy that we would need to to to qualify an individual for a single family housing that was not attached to other housing units. But, you know, I think median median home prices are nearing $700,000 in the city. And so, you know, most folks below 80% ami, they're qualifying for around just under $300,000 for mortgage. So that's $400,000 in subsidy. And it just doesn't exist. And it definitely doesn't exist at scale. So what we found in the last five or so years is that we're moving more towards co-developing multi unit projects, which, you know, run the shape of townhomes, condominiums, cottage clusters, which is having individuals separate units on one larger lot. And so we've really started to change our model to assist the one. The economics of today's time and the you know the subsidy, the affordability that's really available in our community while also, you know, helping folks along their journey for homeownership. So it's really been an interesting time coming into ground. I've been the executive director for two and a half years. My background was as a commercial lender doing affordable housing, lending on the as a banker. And then I got frustrated. I think a lot of folks in this room have probably got frustrated with housing. I was one of those folks. I got frustrated and then became the cfo of a of affordable rental provider in our city and got frustrated again, just because, you know, I think. I think that at times we run the risk of institutionalizing folk into certain types of housing. And I didn't feel that we were really serving as a and I say we as an industry, that we often don't serve people well because we, you know, we put a lot of things in applications to make us score higher, like financial counseling. And of course, being a former banker. My question is, what is financial counseling look like? And and for a lot of folks, it turned out to be eviction prevention. I'm like, well, that's backwards. We should be talking to folks in these in our communities about their financial goals. If they have them, great. If they don't have them, maybe we can inspire them. Some folks just want to be where they are. That's perfect. But then there's other many other folks who want to aspire to have different housing options. And we weren't really having those discussions at the beginning. We were asking to review their checkbook when they were getting evicted, eviction notices on their doors. And I just thought that was backwards. And so the opportunity for ground came available, and it felt like it was really a good mix to really focus back on folks having dreams and aspiring to chase those dreams. And for many folks, it looks different. For some folks, it's attached housing. For some folks, it's single family home ownership, and we could serve many of those different options. And we shouldn't limit people to the types of housing that they have. And that's one of the things I really appreciate about the social housing trip to vienna. I was one of the folks who went, I think I was the only person there who was focused on homeownership, which was not necessarily the topic of the day and many of our sessions. But what I really appreciate about the trip was just people centered housing, and that really is what inspired me before I left on the trip. And really, it's been inspiring my work and our work as an agency once returning. So I'm also a member of the taff. I think I'm on 2 or 3 of the committees, at least just because there's intersectionality within the committees. And it really there's also intersectionality between the work that we're doing already. And I think that's also one of the things that I want to leave behind. And as jonathan mentioned, there's infrastructure here already. And, you know, and one of the ways to get to scale is to not try to reinvent the wheel. It's actually, you know, bring in partners who are doing the work and maybe assess what's missing, but really try to leverage our strengths and, and for once have us nonprofits and other folks, developers work together to really scale social, you know, social housing or what we envision social housing to be in Portland. So I just want to take a few minutes and talk about the things that we're doing. Sort of the second part of question number one, obviously, I've talked about our traditional model of scattered site housing. I think a lot of times folks also don't may not may not know that, but we also do mixed income projects. We we did a project two projects last year actually, where we built, you know, a number of townhomes. Half of them were market rate and the other half were for 80% or below households. And so, you know, this mixed income, you know, smaller eight, eight townhomes, six townhomes, those those things exist. They work well. There's a way to do it to where the developer is able to, you know, get a reasonable developer fee and where we can also create, you know, permanently affordable homeownership and maintain that throughout our city into perpetuity. And then I think the last thing I want to talk about is we're also involved in some co-housing projects. I know we talked about co-ops a lot, and that's great. I think co-op co-ops are wonderful, but we also have some co-housing communities within the city. There will actually be a brown a groundbreaking of one in in the st. Johns area, cathedral park. It's called cathedral park co-housing. And what I appreciate about that particular project is it does have city funds. I think there's PCEF grant in there in addition to state funding, but it's 23 units total. 11 of the units will be for 80% or below ami. Five units will be have preference for households with id identification. And so again, just the flexibility of how we can use housing to really serve multiple needs. I appreciate councilor Green speaking to, you know, sort of the, the plight of, of bipoc homeownership, you know, in our, in our, in our city, in our state and throughout our nation, sort of the historical context of that. But now we can also address not only, you know, racial disparity, but there's also a large, large groups of other folk who are also sort of locked out of housing or locked in a certain types of housing. And we have an opportunity with this particular project to to bring those folks into more market rate housing, or at least visually, the esthetic is more market rate housing. And again, we're sort of dispelling this institutionalization of folks who have varying ability needs and sort of what their housing is look like traditionally in our country and in our city, and what it could look like tomorrow. So I think with that, you know, a lot of folks have talked about and I agree with scale and other things. I'm not sure if we're supposed to talk about question twos and three right now, but I'll go ahead since I saw the the hand raising. So question two is based on where can impact be made. I think again just pushing the scale button scale scale scale. And part of that again means not reinventing the wheel, but really looking at opportunities, whether it be, you know, purchasing, you know, a smaller apartment, buildings that are maybe on the market or in tax foreclosure. I think we could also look at how we treat single family residences or other types of homes that are in tax foreclosure, having some money set aside for refurbishing, if that's what needed. But how can we really take advantage of of opportunity? I mean, on one hand, it's another person's plight. On the other hand, if we can't save that household from continuing to be having homeownership or have or being in that unit, I think the opportunity to save that unit from going to market, market rate housing sort of ties into to social housing. But I also think that we should focus and have some preference for folks that are going through foreclosure challenges now. And our mind, every every homeowner that goes into foreclosure goes to homelessness. There isn't like a middle ground. You're either in your home or you're on the streets. And so having some set aside or some lens on what's happening from a foreclosure perspective, especially as the economy seems to be working for some, but not working for enough of us in this room. Land banking with preference for permanence. So that can work both on rental and different other models around housing, whether it be co-op or or or homeownership. Creating developable, developable lots. I know that the understand that the city has done some work on identifying different lots that might be available, and which ones have highest and best use, and how can we partner that with land banking to bring those lots to, to to the market? I think the other thing is looking at multi lot permitting. And so if we're talking about infill development in certain neighborhoods, we you know throughout north Portland, some parts of southeast Portland you walk down there's you know four four lots empty within a city block. And how could we speed up the development curve by not allowing by not by allowing developers to have one permit to to redevelop those four lots and create more housing and sort of leverage, you know, the new infill development laws and things that have been passed to kind of really scale up housing. So that's another idea that I've had. Let's see, my last thing is, well, two things, two things on that point. One is also, dare I say, fix the inclusionary housing for homeownership. We have an inclusionary housing bill in the city that has been available to homeownership practitioners. I think since its inception there's been less than ten units built. And I don't think that it's the the intended goal that folks have. When that bill was, you know, when that process and procedure was put into place, there is an opportunity for it to to work. It doesn't have to be recreated. It just needs to be tweaked a little bit so that there's incentive for folks in our, in our work to, to, to build for homeownership and to have more mixed use and, and make it work the way that it was intended to. And then I think the last part of number two is just we're looking forward to the RFP that's coming out for the tabor annex. I think it's an opportunity for for us to think about how we could use, especially the tabor site and how we could use that to as a model for social housing, which means that we may not if, you know, I would say as we talk to folks about that project, we're interested in it. We're not necessarily looking to build it to max density, because max density density doesn't always work with social housing. And so how can we build something that fits in the community but also creates, you know, space and again, develops with the people in mind as opposed to develop with how much can we sell and how can we maximize the purchase price. And obviously, you know, it's important that we make money, but I don't know if it's always important that we make the maximum amount of dollars and, and that that particular parcel, just given its location transit that's around. But on but really on too busy connecting arterials. Could we use it to sort of create the community inside as opposed to maximizing density and not leaving enough for the folks to actually have community, which is one of the tenants of social housing. And then moving on to number three, some things that we could use the funds for. And I mentioned some of these before. So existing multifamily properties, looking at which ones might make sense to purchase. Again, going back to foreclosed homes, especially tax foreclosure, I would say. Scattered site acquisition. I know that one has worked with some housing authorities on, you know, dispositioning or repositioning their scattered site portfolio. One way that we could utilize those funds potentially, is to assist agencies like ours and others with preserving those scattered site homes from going to the market. And so that's another opportunity there with with use of those funds. I mean, my list is like ten revolving loan fund foreclosure prevention, you know, just many creative and sometimes not so creative things that we can do. I think we've been limited by policy and bureaucracy at times. And and if we're really going to lean into social housing, we may have to consider how we open up our creative minds to sort of say, how can this work? As opposed to why doesn't this work? And sometimes that means modifying things that are in place already to to sort of keep our eye on the, on the north star and what's guiding us around social housing. And I'll end with that. Thank you.
Wonderful. All right. Lots of rich information. I'm sure my colleagues need a moment to just process that. Thank you to our invited testimony. Thank you, councilor Green, for being here. I want to move us into some committee discussion. I assume, too, that the committee might have some questions. I know I have a couple, but let me just to give my colleagues some time to get settled. Let me offer some thoughts. First, I'll say you mentioned dom around inclusionary housing. I actually had a meeting just earlier today and we are going to I think definitely there's a lot of discussion about needing to make some tweaks. And so it's something that's on my radar that I'll be working on. So let's touch base about that. But just want to flag for the public that we definitely do need to tweak that to maximize its impact. It does work elsewhere, so we just need to make some Portland specific tweaks. We've got some stuff going on at the state level. We're kind of watching to see what happens there, but just wanted to mention that that is a priority. When I was listening to jonathan, you talk about your mom and her experience in that housing. I think it triggered a memory for me about vienna, in which what I really liked is that because they're all working collaboratively, they can decide together what amenities the whole community has. So instead of each apartment complex, it's like they all have a gym and they have a this and they have a that. It's like, well, this one is going to have the gym and this one is going to have the art center, and this one is going to have that. And then they all get to share those amenities as a community. So I think that's a big difference in how they work as partners. And it doesn't mean that all of those builders of those units are necessarily the same. It just means that they have a shared understanding of the broader community benefit, and they work together to ensure that everyone can have these amenities, and they don't have to pay for all of them in each building. So I'm just noting what you were describing and how I saw that play out in vienna. And I think it's a big part of our problem is that we have so many silos, so many people working independently, and if we could get them, even if their private developers right, if we could create a culture where we are planning in a way that everyone understands, we're creating, you know, for this neighborhood, right? And even if you're building this building and I'm building that one, we can agree to what are the what's the community experience that everyone should share, regardless of what building they live in? I think the broadly, I'll just mention that for the unified housing strategy also passed last year. And both of these studies are kind of like mixing in some ways. And maybe I'll have michael come up and maybe we can talk a little bit about how that conversation is progressing, because, you know, where we're at with that. We had a progress report on us phase one, just to and that was just like putting together all the reports and all the documents, seeing what the landscape was. Now we're kind of piecing it all together, and we've had a couple of really great discussions so far where we're able to like that list that you all had in your presentation that was about social housing, specifically in some of those, you know, they're just ideas still not fully baked, but some of those things are already coming up in the broad list of what is the unified housing strategy need and have. So yeah, I'd love for maybe michael, if you want to start heading up here just to talk a little bit about the intersection of those two things, and then that obviously intersects with the conversation that we're going to be having next week. So just want to name that. And then before I have you answer or talk to that, mike, I did have a question for you because we've talked about this too. I know councilor Green and council president Dunphy and I, when we came back, we were like, what do we do about these tax foreclosure homes? Like, is there something we should assess there? Should we start looking at land banking that. But my question is like, what would we do with those homes? Because I think a lot of social housing, we talk about it in multi-unit buildings, not necessarily individual single family homes. So since you brought that up, I was just curious what what your vision would be for what we would do with that kind of land.
Well, I think for one, there's an opportunity for us to, you know, obviously we have to assess sort of locationally where those homes are. My my suspicion is that they're on the east side of the river in majority. And I think that's, you know, and likely in neighborhoods that black and brown folks were displaced from. So I think in some ways it's it's an opportunity for us to work with, with the housing bureau to help leverage and scale up some of their housing homeownership goals or rental property goals. I know they have both. And so for some folks, you know, again, you know, they're just fine with, you know, being in multi-unit buildings and renting. And for others, they prefer to rent in, you know, renting a single family home. Maybe, maybe there's, you know, you know, maybe there's a reason that it makes more sense for them. Right. And so again, how do we put choice of, of where people live back with the people. And so like with using an organization like proud ground, the community land trust model, I think there's opportunities for us to be stewards of of that investment in those types of homes. And so for us, it really would be likely not much more different than what we do today. But it's just, again, opening up different opportunities for folks who are looking for different types of housing, who want different types of housing choice. And if it's and again, if it's in communities where folks were displaced, like how do you make how do you provide them with the opportunity to sort of work with the bureau, work with the preference policy about, you know, having an opportunity to come back to neighborhoods that they were displaced from. So I think there's an opportunity, especially with those tax foreclosed homes, if they are mostly on the east side of the of the river, there's opportunity for us to really be intentional about how do we expand opportunity for folks who are either lower on the ami scale or who have other, you know, let's call it preference points. That might where it might make sense for those folks to to have opportunity to consider other housing types and models.
Thank you. Michael. Briefly, if you could just mention the intersection of us and social housing and then we've got people in the queue.
Absolutely. I will do my best. Please help if I if I fumble it. So the unified housing strategy, as I think about it, and I believe as it was conceived by chair Avalos, is just recognizing that there are tons of plans and grants and goals associated with housing and and issues that are adjacent to housing and interconnected like climate resiliency and anti-displacement efforts. So how can we sort of collect those all in one, all in one place and have it, have it be in a sort of a manageable form and a sort of a categorization that makes sense and then gives you all the opportunity to, to really focus on what the what the priorities are and to to sort of have a conversation with the community about how to articulate those. And so one of the. One of the major goals, of course, is around the production of housing. And the one of the key questions, you know, for all of us becomes, as we're trying to, you know, think about what the next generation of housing is and how we're adding more apartments against a scale of need that is, you know, pretty daunting. And recognizing that we have spent down, you know, housing bonds. And we've got tif districts that are getting spent down and years out from when we have more funding, you know, how are we organizing ourselves around what it is? Oh, sure.
I don't have quorum, I don't understand is there a reason.
Other than council president's notice?
Well, councilor Greene's here. Does that count?
It would be of the committee members. So we would just need to take a brief recess.
Finish your thought, michael. And while I figure out what to do.
Sure. So in the in the context of thinking about what is it that we want to next produce, and when we ask the community to, you know, create resources that will support whatever that is, how are we, you know, what is it that we're asking to build and recognizing that, you know, through the housing bonds, we got valuable affordable housing added to our community. And also, you know, sort of the tech model of 60% units in particularly a lot of studios in one bedrooms is not what is needed. And this conversation reflects, you know, just thinking differently about what the future holds for us. And so so it is, you know, social housing informs what our unified housing strategy is, is driving towards.
Thank you. Apologies. I mean, I, I'm unsure what legally I must do at this point. I did we ever hear from councilor Ryan? I did not receive an absence. I did not receive an early exit from councilor Zimmerman. So I'm confused where they are.
We did receive an absence from ryan's office. I believe it came in about half an hour ago. I did not receive an absence form from councilor Zimmerman, so we would just need to briefly recess until the we reestablish quorum.
Hold on my mic. It is 132. Let's just until 140 and we'll try to get quorum back so we can continue our discussion. Apologies, folks, for the abrupt.
Just exploring. There you go.
What do we call it?
Thank you.
Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo: Thank you, chair Avalos. First, I just want to start with such immense gratitude for everybody for being here today. This was such an excellent presentation. And in a time where we're dealing with some of the most difficult homelessness and housing crises in our city, I can genuinely say that this presentation made me feel like the first inkling of hope that I felt for a long time, that there is a better and different way to do this. So I'm very grateful for city staff and for outside expertise who have come here to share all of this information for us. We are very lucky to have you here to to teach us about ways that we can do things differently and better. So thank you for your time. I think for me, the thing this is maybe, I guess I'll start with less of a question and more of a comment that we are constantly being told, you know, we have limited dollars and that's very, very true and very painful. And we are also being told often as counselors that we have to expand our temporary shelter system above all else, because then the streets will look cleaner and then we will be able to get more real estate people to come into the city and like profit and maximize off of the veneer of cleanliness of our city, which is often implicating a lot of things about unhoused people and how we treat them and think about them. Right. But we're not thinking about the fact that we have money where we can do things like social housing or cooperative housing. And I'm really interested in how we use these dollars for some of those long term investments. So I think that that is going to take some political courage because it's not an immediate fix. It's not something that you can immediately see. It's something that will take political courage, investment for long term housing. And I think it's necessary. So I'm just very grateful that we're having this discussion, especially as we are also having discussions about the additional funds that were in the housing bureau and how we plan to allocate them, because when I'm thinking about social housing and purchasing property and stuff, I'm thinking about those millions of dollars and how we want to use them. And as someone who grew up with a single mother who was, you know, low income our whole lives continues to be low income, the rent assistance stuff is absolutely critical. And sometimes I worry about how it essentially funds landlords poor decision making and behavior to make the rent exorbitantly high. When we have other solutions that are long term that we also need to be thinking about. So I'm just always balancing that dichotomy in my decision making. And I think a lot of us are for how much we do for immediate assistance to prevent people from becoming unhoused, and then what we want to look to in the future. I believe you brought up the the tabor annex building, and I immediately looked it up because it's in my district and it was, you know, set up for demolition because the city didn't end up really doing anything with that building when we had it. Do you would you happen to have any background on why that ended up? You know, nothing ended up being done with it. And what prevents. I would love to hear from the experts. Maybe on. I feel like the city constantly has these opportunities to make big changes, and then they constantly fall through our fingertips. So I'd love to hear sort of like case studies about what can we do immediately to purchase some of these buildings and actually put them to good use?
No. You know, I drove by there the other day and, you know, it's a it's a gravel lot now, so there's no building there. I don't have a, you know, an answer as to the history of the, of the building or the site or why it is the way that it is. My, my, my guess is that, you know, again, we developed with profit in mind. I mean, you know, as councilor Mentioned before, and others have like property ownership has been the core of wealth creation in America. We don't build housing specifically, necessarily with people in mind. I mean, we offer services, we do this and that. But like the intentionality of really building homes in a commodified basis to where people are centric doesn't really exist in our in our economic ecosystem. And so I think my guess is folks decided that they couldn't make enough money off of it, of redeveloping it. And that's why it's the way that it is today. That's my guess.
Gotcha.
I saw you came up. Maybe you have an answer for me.
I have a little bit more information. Thanks.
More educated.
Than I am. For the record, my name is tanya wolfersberger. I use she her pronouns. I am manage the development and construction services team at the housing bureau just a little bit, and I have been overseeing the development preparation of the mount tabor annex site, which was originally a school building. The housing bureau acquired that site from the parks bureau about 20 years ago, maybe ten, 15 years ago. I might be inflating that timeline with the sole purpose of developing it in the future as affordable housing. The housing bureau does not tend to acquire sites that it doesn't have that intention for. So for a long time, when the site was acquired and brought over to the housing bureau's portfolio, it was leased by the ymca and served as a daycare preschool for a number of years. That property was past its useful life. It needed a fair amount of updates and operational maintenance and repairs to keep it running appropriately for that use. It had a lot of asbestos and lead paint, which obviously is not ideal for running a preschool. It also had a very historic boiler system for the heat that just eventually died and would need to be replaced, so the ongoing operational costs kind of outweighed its use as operating in any kind of function. So it was vacated. The ymca decided that they would move to a different location. They did not have the capital expenses, nor did we to keep that building operational. And again, our long term goal was always to redevelop that into affordable housing. So once ymca vacated the property, we moved to start working towards those redevelopment plans. And the first initiative has been the deconstruction and demolition of the school building.
Gotcha. Thank you for that clarity. If there's anything that us district three counselors can do to help with that and create some sort of social housing model. Yeah, I'm just pitching to pilot it in my district. Of course, very selfishly. Congratulations. No, that sounds very helpful. Thank you for that background. And I think so often I get inquiries in my office of like, well, why don't you guys just buy every empty building and just convert it into housing? And it tends to be a lot more complicated than people think. Or, you know, you also don't want to put people into a horrific building that is crumbling and falling apart and then say, you're welcome. We fixed it. So thank you for that background. I know folks have more questions, so I will put my hand down and just wait for more discussion.
Councilor Zimmerman.
Eric Zimmerman: Thanks everybody. I mostly have questions for the housing bureau's presenting panel. I was really looking forward to this presentation today. I think that an update on this progress report is much needed. I think, director, it would probably be appropriate that we set up more time, because it doesn't seem like this is the venue for a lot of learning in terms of back and forth questions I've got. So I just want to give a little bit of or ask a couple questions and then some feedback that I'm hoping that since this is just a check in, that it can make it into the final, because we need that final report to hit a few marks. There were a lot of things that were presented by your staff that are I put them in the category of the things that were kind of discussed some many months ago when we passed it, in terms of why should we be interested in social housing? And those are great, but we have now done this to get into the study. So I'm trying to understand more of the mechanics of social housing. And so as those benefits for why we should be, if we can start articulating what is the city role in each of those, because some are very much like a nonprofit role or a collective community's role, and it's wonderful if they want to engage in that. I was having a very tough time differentiating some of the points that were made in terms of, okay, is that a city role? Right. Because I hear programs mission, I understand program's mission. But I'm trying to understand is that the city role mass timber got brought up. I'm trying to understand what what is that? Is that going to get us to scale? Is that the magic wand? I'm not sure what that meant there, so I'm looking for some more to go with that. Residential co-ops were brought up, and I and my note that I wrote down is like, these are great. Does it take the city to unlock those and make those possible? Or is it just acknowledging that those exist and they help us see a model that we scale up? I can't tell yet from from that, but I think if we could get into that, that would be helpful. I appreciate what councilor Green said in terms of cost based model, because that's actually truly what I that's where I've told my colleagues where my support on this is at is I believe we have a certain portion of the population who will always need to be supported by the greater, the greater public that that I'm not a I'm not sure I'm a fan of the home forward model. Right. I think the last few weeks worth of articles has made me really question the home forward model, which is. How do we how how can we fund public how how does publicly funded housing exist in the future? That is less about making its monthly rent and more about making sure certain people in our community are housed, regardless of the dollar connected to it. And I'm not sure the model that we exist in today works. I think that we somewhat there's some agreement on that, and I'm just trying to figure out what this means. I am very cautious that somehow the social housing model is an extension of what is right now, the home forward model. And that makes me very nervous. Six months to fill a vacancy is not a sustainable model. I don't think that's what we're going to, but we need a little bit more information here. What I'm really hoping to get in the final report is. It's not the it's it. Sorry. Before I do that, I want to continue. I said, I mentioned the cost based model that councilor Greene mentioned, and I say that as I own a single condo in a single building somewhere in town, I pay an hoa. That hoa is a cost based model for the upkeep of the building, if that. If that organization decides to have a any type of services like a barbecue area, etc. That's that's a cost based model. It has a reserve fund for its repairs that go to the life and health of the building, so that that building lasts for 100 years. But it's not about making any profit, right? So that makes a lot of sense to me. And so my my wonder here is if the government if Portland says, okay, it costs this much to build the building, if we start building the building and then go to a cost based model to just make sure we can take care of the building in perpetuity, what opportunities exist then to have extremely affordable rent, moderately affordable rent, mixed income. And I think that that kind of but that's where I'm thinking about it. That makes a lot of sense to me, both in a building model but also in a purchasing, I think. I think home forward actually discussed the goose hollow and I say, okay, yes, purchasing a building that exists. Now, how does that how can we scale that to be or to model or transition that to be a, a model where these different, you know, limited profit, different types of co-ops? How does how does that what's that glide path to that. What are the legal mechanisms that need to make that happen. So those are were some of my thoughts are going, but I, I say that to my colleagues, which they all know that I'm very much supportive of the most needy the most. And we've had this conversation too. There are some folks who are always going to need public support to be housed, and I'm okay. We should admit that we shouldn't try to get rent checks from them. It's a failure of our grander system and some people will always need our assistance. There's another part in this that I know a lot less about, and it's the not trying to make not trying to tie ourselves entirely to our savings account is our home. That is the the profit change that I'm trying. I think you guys have shared some about vienna that I'm trying to understand more about. That's where a lot of learning still exists for me in terms of what we bring forward, because we're not talking about people who are in the homeless continuum. We are talking about people who are choosing a different style of living that gives them a different outcome, and that I think being able to separate those two things makes this a little bit more for me anyway. It will be easier to understand, because I do think there are a couple of different branches of this that leave some learning on my behalf. So to that end, I'm looking for truly like a financial structure setup, right? How the finances of certain projects existed. What's the profile of a tenant? How are people selected? How how people move in or how they move out? Does a person have lifelong access the way I do to if I own a home, or is access temporary? So those are the types of things that I didn't get much in your presentation. I got a little bit from our guest speakers that came, but not from the housing bureau's presentation. And, you know, I pulled up the lower east side in new york while we were talking because I appreciated the example. And I think this works when it is a big scale. And when I when I visualize this, I visualize new york in a lot of ways, visualize those towers that maybe some people will will not like. But I, I really think if we could have a thousand unit type of development or, or pod of developments in each district, that's the foot into a scale that means something to me. With all due respect to the individual housing in the in the proud ground model, I'm not particularly interested in one off family models. I'm more interested in large scale because I think that's where I get to understand what the city of portland's role is versus. Different, different types of advocacy groups or nonprofits. So that's what I'm trying to understand, because I'm not sure I want to spend a lot of time working in the one single house model. But I think as we learn more about this, I'm looking to see how do we have large numbers so I can understand what the ask is. And that remains very unclear to me from the presentation. And so I give this feedback because I believe any having been a staff and worked in departments is that you want your studies to hit the mark. And so I'm giving the feedback and where I think will, I will feel like the mark was hit more for the questions that I've got. If we can kind of get into some of those areas. And let me make sure I've got my questions here. Yeah, I think that that hits the the bulk of my questions. And since we were so limited on the question time, I guess I just offer them up for further dialog later with your team or with you and however that works going forward. So thank you.
Sure. Councilor. And I'll just say briefly, I feel like we're tracking towards that. And one of the reasons that there's not more specificity at this point is because those two consultant firms are really going to help us get at that, and the reason their engagement is important is because I think we all understand we can't just sort of look at vienna and say, how was that financed? You know, in a context that doesn't apply to Portland. And so we have both a local developer and a national expert that really is going to make recommendations to us that specific to this, to this market. And I think we will certainly have recommendations that reflect what the city of portland's role might be, but perhaps also recommendations that have to do with how we might just create the environment, you know, whether it's through code or whatever the case may be, if not direct ownership. But what sorts of ways can we sort of fertilize the environment to for different kinds of models to exist? But I anticipate you're going to get all of that.
That's great. I appreciate that, director. And to the the team that's sitting in the back has been putting a lot of work in that is very clear to me. And so I want to I want to thank everybody who has been putting work into it and trying to make this more clear. I, I like to lay out the path so that people can, like, meet the metric in terms of what I'm looking for. That helps me understand this topic better. So to those of you that are working on this, my door is open. If anything I've asked today is unclear by all means. And for those of you who came to speak, thank you for giving so much time to it and for those that went on the trip, thank you for giving time to it, because it is a topic that comes with a lot of fervor and not a lot of fact. And I'm trying to understand fact. And then the last question I didn't mention is councilor Green brought up the tif piece of it, and if tif gets into it, I guess I I'm hoping to understand what that means to relative to this in terms of does it meet its needs. Given that I've always thought of tif about accelerating economic opportunity and so has that meets into this. If you've got your hands in this pot, I hope that as you have a chance, we can unearth that a little bit. But that was when you mentioned that I circled that as a question, councilor Green. So thanks everybody. Appreciate it.
Thank you all for your presentation. There's clearly more work to do and we will have more updates coming soon. We are last meeting of this current iteration of the committee will be on the 10th. And we will be hearing about the sdc waiver. I will adjourn the meeting at 2 p.m. Thank.