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The number of unspent dollars in Portland Housing Bureau coffers, for months believed to be $21 million, has grown fivefold in a week. As business closed Friday afternoon, City Administrator Raymond Lee disclosed that the surplus now totals a whopping $106 million.
That means administrators admit the Housing Bureau stockpiled an additional $66 million on top of the roughly $40 million they disclosed to city councilors last weekend. (City Councilor Loretta Smith spilled the beans Monday evening that the number had doubled from $21 million to about $40 million.) How exactly the bureau managed to collect that much revenue and not deploy it to assuage the city’s housing crisis is a question to which city councilors were demanding answers for much of the week. That outcry is certain to grow.
The Housing Bureau’s self-described responsibilities include funding affordable housing, ensuring protections for renters, and preserving existing homes.
Lee, the newly appointed city administrator, offered a detailed memo explaining where his office had found “previously unbudgeted housing funds” since November and how the money may be legally spent. But he offered little in the way of explanation of how so much money had accumulated without being budgeted. Lee suggested, however, that housing officials bore some responsibility.
“This moment reflects the city’s ongoing shift from bureaus and offices developing budgets independently to the city of Portland managing its finances holistically under our new form of government,” Lee wrote to councilors. “I am prepared to support the council, as the city’s legislative body, in making fully informed decisions.”
