Portland’s Interim Housing Bureau Director Takes Job at Washington County

The bureau has been without a deputy director for eight months now.

NOW LEASING: The Skyline of Slabtown in Northwest Portland. (Blake Benard)
By Sophie Peel

The interim director of the Portland Housing Bureau, Molly Rogers, has accepted a job heading up the Washington County Housing Authority.

Rogers took the interim director position at the Housing Bureau in July 2022, when then-director Shannon Callahan resigned. (She received $90,000 in severance pay.) For close to eight months now Rogers, who was deputy director to Callahan, has worked without a deputy director herself. That’s because, about five months after Rogers assumed the interim director role, the interim deputy director left for a job in Gov. Tina Kotek’s office.

The Portland Housing Bureau is approaching a difficult time. As Gov. Kotek and city leaders push to build more affordable housing, the bureau has spent down all of its funds from a $258 million housing bond approved by voters in 2017. Using those funds, the city built more than 1,100 units of housing and is in the process of building about 700 more. It’s unclear if the city plans to bring another housing bond to voters in the next couple of years, though recent polling would suggest Portlanders are experiencing tax fatigue.

Rogers’ last day at the city is Sept. 8.

Commissioner Carmen Rubio oversees the Housing Bureau. Her office says she has not yet hired a new director, but will appoint another interim director shortly.

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