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Mayor Keith Wilson in a Monday letter implored the Portland City Council to make policy changes that he says would ensure that affordable housing providers don’t go belly-up in the coming year.
He warned in the June 8 letter that structural issues plaguing such providers were so severe that within six months, some of the providers could become financially insolvent.
“We must now turn our attention to the structural factors that threaten to drive our affordable housing portfolio into financial insolvency,” Wilson wrote. “The risk we face is not distant or hypothetical. Barring swift action, major housing assets may cease operations in as little as six months.”
He listed challenges including “unpredictable and unsustainable material and personnel costs, unprecedented behavioral health and substance use disorder rates, faltering resident security, unit vacancies, and chronic tenant nonpayment.” He wrote that residents living in low-income apartments have told city leadership that “floors and entire buildings have been effectively seized by traffickers and squatters” and noted that providers complained of severe damage by a handful of tenants and their visitors, requiring providers to make months-long repairs to units.
Perhaps the most obvious example illustrating the issues Wilson listed is Home Forward, the city of Portland’s housing authority. The organization, which owns around 7,000 units of affordable housing across the city, has been the subject of extensive WW coverage in recent months that culminated in the resignation of its former CEO in April. The organization has been roiled by high vacancy rates, long turnover times, chronic nonpayment of rent, tenants with severe criminal histories that disrupted entire buildings, and drug markets flourishing inside of building walls.
Wilson in his Monday letter made claims that the “untented active” count—it wasn’t immediately clear if that just means someone who’s living unsheltered—in the central city is 477 “and is closely associated” with drug activity outside of three apartment buildings in the downtown core: the Jeffrey Apartments, Gretchen Kafoury Commons, and Bud Clark Commons. All three of those buildings are owned by Home Forward.
Wilson warned council that “the consequences of housing failure could ripple across our city, including closures, bailouts, cascading selloffs, and the displacement of our most vulnerable.”
For his part, Wilson said he would be focusing on three things in the coming months: creating more robust security systems in affordable apartment buildings, finding a permanent Portland Housing Bureau director (that bureau has seen three directors in just six months), and moving more people into housing from shelter through a strike team he created last year. The last time WW checked, the housing bureau and Wilson said the strike team was still in its nascent stages, and they could not say how many people it had placed in housing.
But the primary purpose of Wilson’s letter appeared to be imploring council to make policy changes around affordable housing.
He asked them to revisit the city’s Fair Access In Renting Ordinance to tighten screening policies around criminal activity, particularly sex crimes, arson, violence and drug dealing. And he asked them to tighten eviction policies for those who engage in criminal activity, vandalism, human trafficking and “rent nonpayment combined with engagement refusal.”
Wilson signed off on the letter by asking the council to not “let our systems-level perspective and policy formation erase what is a deeply human experience.”
His biggest request of council, though, was to find a stable funding source to fund and maintain affordable housing.
He offered no ideas of his own.
