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U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) debuted a federal housing proposal at a Sept. 5 press conference alongside Portland housing advocates and elected officials.
Blumenauer said the core of his plan is an effort to reverse the federal government's historic failure to provide adequate affordable housing for people nationwide, and said that the federal government "needs to get back in the game, or in some cases, to finally get in the game. We need a reset."
All the panel members agreed: local governments and groups are trying hard to remedy homelessness and increase housing, but the federal government is resisting—and has been for decades.
“The [country] has never recognized that housing like food and healthcare, is a fundamental human right. In one of the wealthiest nations on earth, we’ll have over a half million people tonight who [will] sleep without a home,” Blumenauer said.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who is the commissioner in charge of the Portland Housing Bureau, was not invited to the event.
Blumenauer staff tell WW that Wheeler's absence "was not an intentional move in any way."
Two of the focuses in Blumenauer’s plan are reversing current housing discrimination practices and decreasing homelessness by increasing affordable housing and protecting tenants from evictions.
Multiple panel members touched on Portland’s history of aggressive housing discrimination.
Multnomah County Board Chair Deborah Kafoury said minorities in Portland have suffered through discriminatory housing policies for decades.
One of those practices was government redlining during the 1930’s—where officials isolated what neighborhoods were deemed “best” and what neighborhoods they deemed “hazardous.” The communities that were marked as “hazardous,” lenders avoided granting home loans to residents. This kept most residents as non-homeowners. Many of the neighborhoods redlined were made up of mostly minority populations.
“In Multnomah County, people of color are more likely to lose their housing. People of color have been denied the opportunities for housing wealth that have sustained white Portlanders,” Kafoury said. “And people of color continue to face discrimination and barriers in the private housing market.”
One of Blumenauer’s proposals is to create a new restorative justice loan program that enables first-time homebuyers to afford a home in formerly redlined or segregated neighborhoods, like the Albina neighborhood in North Portland.
“We should commit to housing programs that reflects the repudiation of our racist and discriminatory past while remedying past harms,” Blumenauer said.
Nkenge Harmon Johnson, president and CEO of the Urban League of Portland, said housing discrimination isn’t “ancient history”—and that the policies that enable housing discrimination based on veteran’s status, income, race and sexual orientation are still being sustained locally.
“For decades, the federal government created policies that lead to the dearth of opportunity for black homeowners,” Harmon Johnson said. “It was as simple as federally-backed racism that foreclosed so very many Portlanders from being able to live their piece of the American dream.”
Studies have shown that health and education outcomes are often partially determined by someone’s zip code. This is also true in Portland, said Harmon Johnson. She said outcomes are “tied to where Portlanders live. Too many of our neighbors have been denied the ability to even try and build their dreams.”
The plan also proposes that Congress should rescind policies that allow landlords to evict renters for a single crime and also strike down a policy that allows landlords to kick out entire families if one member commits a crime.
Board Chair Kafoury said that over 20,000 people in the county who are collecting disability checks, which “top out at $771 a month,” are not able to afford even the cheapest rent available within city boundaries.
Blumenauer’s plan outlines doubling the federal homeless assistance funding and expand the legal services available to evicted tenants to fight against evictions.
“The easiest way to prevent homelessness is staying in the home,” said Blumenauer. “And people who have access to legal services are often able to protect their rights and stay in their homes.”
Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who has championed tenant protections in the city, said that the “worst of human nature is at the root of this crisis: greed, exploitation, neglect, racism, and other forms of discrimination.”
“It’s the government’s job to protect our rights, but for decades our [government] has abdicated its duty to ensure that this most basic, essential right and need is secured for millions of Americans,” Eudaly said.
