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Mayor Keith Wilson implored the Portland City Council in a letter Monday to make policy changes that he says would ensure 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 some could become financially insolvent within six months.
“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.”
Challenges he listed include “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 leaders “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 monthslong repairs to units.
Perhaps the most obvious example 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 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 claimed in his Monday letter that the “untented active” count—a city spokesperson later clarified the definition as “individuals who are not in tents or structures but are still actively present in high‑activity areas, frequently visible in known hotspots for drug activity—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 buildings are owned by Home Forward.
Wilson warned the 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 focus on three things in the coming months: creating more robust security systems in affordable apartment buildings, finding a permanent Portland Housing Bureau director (the bureau has had three different 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 to implore the council to make policy changes around affordable housing.
He asked councilors 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 tenants who engage in criminal activity, vandalism, human trafficking and “rent nonpayment combined with engagement refusal.”
Wilson signed off in 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 the council, though, was to find a stable funding source to fund and maintain affordable housing.
He offered no ideas of his own.
