"Complex social problems do not yield to simple solutions. " Amen to that. But, just for fun, here's another simple solution. Isn't Dignity Village still going strong? Perhaps the homeless themselves should be in charge. But then they might become a political force, and that's the last thing anybody wants.
A degree of self-management of such facilities is a good thing, though I am not up to speed with how the Dignity Village model is working today. Who knows whether management by residents would build a political constituency? I don't think we should let predicted political consequences block exploration of good ideas.
Thank you for this thoughtful editorial revealing the complexity of our social problems. There isn’t one easy answer. My goal is to address one piece: the acuity level of the on-street behavioral health problems that leave people vulnerable and can threaten the safety of the rest of us.
The vast majority of what you call "on street behavioral health problems" are the direct result of addictions to chemically based opioids.
The vast majority of crime is the result of addictions to chemical opioids.
The vast majority of homelessness is the result of addictions to chemical opioids.
Destruction of low income subsidized housing units is the direst result of addictions to chemical based opioids.
It is the excused use and dealing of these chemically based opioids that "threatening the safety of the rest of us". Housing first advocates need to shut up and go to the back of the room, and any elected public official who is unaware of phenal-2-proponone should voluntarily resign.
Most sane people agree with you, but sadly the City is not in charge of addiction, mental health, courts or jails. Thats Multnomah county. The County chair has all the power so this is an extremely important race to break the status quo. Sharon Meieran is my #1 pick.
Candidates for office should be asked to address not only demand for tax payer funded housing but also the expense of the supply.
Why is demand stubbornly high?
Why is "homeless" still being used as the catch-all?
Why does Portland attract drug addicted?
Why do productive members of society need to supply housing to all unproductive members regardless of cost?
Why is taking drug addicted off the streets and placing them in treatment facilities considered inhumane but leaving them in an unhealthy state considered humane?
What about creating a triage system that identifies each unfortunate citizen by their challenges and have a solution menu?
From my vantage point Portland is flailing and failing. The same solutions being applied seems to be insanity.
Why do productive members of society need to supply housing to all unproductive members regardless of cost?
Great questions Marc. I did my schooling in San Diego and got married in La Jolla. I would have loved to own a home in La Jolla yet I could not afford to, and I didn’t see the city as being responsible to build me one that I could afford.
Portland attracts drug addicted because there is little to no enforcement, no expectations of pro social behavior, view them as victims of a capitalist society, and enable the heck out of them. As several interviews with the homeless have shown, the homeless say it is easy to be homeless here. There is all carrot and no stick.
Thank you, Ervin. This is a very sorry state. I am apprehensive that Kotek will win again. Monied people know this will be bad for the present and the future. Education and personal safety matter more to me than acres of parks and DEI. Be well.
I attended an event yesterday sponsored by Revitalize Portland and Design Portland, among others, focused on revitalizing Downtown Portland. The Mayor spoke, but the presenters were the leaders of three downtown associations from other cities who have similar problems; Denver, Philadelphia and Seattle. All are trying to revitalize their downtowns with more housing, especially affordable housing, along with other activators to supplement the office that will remain.. All have a homeless problem exacerbated by drug addiction and psychosis they are dealing with in different ways. All are liberal cities. But all three have much more financial and business support than does Portland due to more robust economies. I won't go into that here too much. Maybe later. But the most important takeaways were:
Public/private alignment is needed for acceleration of improvement. Denver and Philly have this, Seattle does not but has made up for it with a very strong and established downtown business organization, the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA), established in 1958 when I-5 was being built through Downtown. The audience got a good laugh from the speaker's joke about the DSA getting so much national attention these days (the other DSA, with whome we are quite familiar). All three have downtown-wide private sector sponsored and government recognized organizations that focus on public safety, cleanliness and activation in their downtowns. In all but Seattle, the alignment is good and somewhat formalized. Less so in Seattle, where referendums have been used to get big projects done. Seattle is the only one that already has a large downtown residential population (1 in 8), although additions to that have stooped, post Pandemic. Both Philly and Denver are actively converting office to residential. Seattle, like Portland is constrained by seismic obstacles where Denver and Philly are not. All are worried about older office buildings without any obvious apparent reuse. But they have a plan, we don't yet.
All have used weekend activation to increase foot traffic overall but all are struggling with mid week visitation and have targeted strategies to help that, including building stadiums and cultural venues downtown, targeted office and retail tenants (co-working), revitalized pedestrian shopping experiences and parks built for activation with intentional activation a key element.
All are coordinating between state and regional and local efforts. Denver in particular is not trying to poach from the suburbs, but trying to poach from outside the state, including Oregon. The poaching is intentional; for the kinds of business growth they want to see in the state. State policies are designed to help local governments and especially central cities which are the center of expensive transport hubs gain traction. In short, Oregon is in competition with every other state and Portland with every other City.
All are working on streamlining permitting as a consequence. Denver seems further along. They have eliminated "design review" and have set a specific 180 day target doer permit approval. Not sure how Seattle is doing on this. They have some policies that are impeding any new housing permitting and the DSA is looking to new policies in San Francisco as a possible solution.
It seems to me Oregon generally and Portland in particular have these basic necessary obstacles to overcome, none of which alone are sufficient to revitalize the State or City economies and grow housing.
-The private sector is not going to build housing for a shrinking population, especially when the population that remains or is replacing those who depart, cannot afford housing at the inflationary cost it takes to build it today. And affordable housing is even more expensive to build. Construction costs have risen dramatically since the Pandemic for macro and micro reasons with plenty of blame to go around. To turn this around will require policy changes at every level of government in our state.
-The recent rise in interest rates, driven by the bond market and the growing national deficit, is making the cost of borrowing much higher for those wo want to build homes, including government, and and banks, via lending or bonding.
-The "sticky" high prices of buildings not responding to the current market conditions. Investors and individuals bought high and financed at low rates before or during the Pandemic. It is a long process that forces those properties back onto the market.
-Lack of certainty. All of us value certainty or some reasonable basis for predictability, and that is especially true of developers, lenders and investors, as well as governments. We are in an unprecedented period of anomie, it seems to me, with AI, MAGA policies changing the world order, the surprise Iran War and an uncertain election. Add to that, the local inability of Portland Government to adjust and set a direction due to a deadlocked City Council, a new form of government and a City staff trying to adjust to that new form of government. We are unable or unwilling to do some of the things Denver and Philly have found success with, even if conditions were right.
-Lack of a Plan. The Downtown Recovery Plan is being worked on with a lot of energy but it is being second guessed at every step pf the way. Hopefully the upcoming election will help that and our DSA will no longer be able to place a roadblock to any progress.
-Lack of the willingness to deal with the public safety and homelessness issues in a meaningful way by getting those addicted into treatment and sober housing they are ready for, as Denver has, and to get people with psychosis into treatment and ready for housing, either in suitable supportive housing or an expanded functioning State Hospital, so they, their families and society remain safe.
-Lack of adequate community policing in the downtown and central city, where the most productive, diverse and integrated segments of our society live, mingle, work, recreate and participate in communal events designed to bring different communities together and create something new and great and get you to and from safely. That is what the central city is all about and it can be the center for all kinds of housing, from affordable to luxury in a respectful environment.
-We know our attractive features pretty well nice scalle, walkable city with some very attractive architecture and parks and a nice waterfront and a very nice Art Museum and a pioneering public transit hub) but we have not maintained or built on them and the state has not stayed competitive. We have not activated the things we have.
The demise of downtown is a golden opportunity to create a 24 hour diverse, safe and active community due to the lowering of values and the land underneath these buildings. Let's set the stage for something to happen, and that is especially housing. Time for alignment. Let's start with this upcoming election. The Mayor has tons of energy. He is learning and promoting us every day. He just got back from Denver. We need to actually do something meaningful and help him generate some momentum.
Mr. Classen raises an important question that goes well beyond the numbers themselves: Are we measuring what we build, or whether what we build is actually working?
His discussion of vacant subsidized housing particularly caught my attention. If significant numbers of publicly subsidized apartments are sitting vacant while some lower-income renters can find better value in the private market, that should cause us to examine the assumptions underlying our housing policies before simply producing more units.
There are a few figures in the editorial I would frame somewhat differently. Portland's adopted Housing Production Strategy calls for roughly 6,000 units annually, while Mayor Wilson's stated goal of 20,000 units over eight years works out to 2,500 annually. The governor's original 36,000-unit target has also since been revised under the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis. And while the published Northrup figures confirm relatively low occupancy, I have not located the source for the peak of 155.
But those details actually reinforce Mr. Classen's larger point. Complex problems require us to keep testing our assumptions against actual outcomes. Counting units is easy. Determining whether they are solving the problem is considerably harder.
We have models that work. CityTeam and Bybee lakes are saving lives and getting people from being addicted on the streets to independence, no subsidized housing required. They take voluntary people and court ordered. We know what works. It’s going to take the will of leadership to invest in proven solutions and stop capitulating to the clueless activists.
Wilson is limited in what he can do because he needs support and collaboration from the County. He does not have control over addiction services and who the county chooses to fund. I was just listening to the Mult Co chairs on City Cast. Brim-Edwards and Singleton support permanent supportive housing. Meieran supports transitional housing; the proven and long used model in addiction recovery and/or mental illness stabilization. Which is why Im ranking Dr. Meieran as my #1.
We need more than just “affordable” housing, which is now market rate. And we don’t need more “social housing,” which is just a rebranding of Housing Projects.
For the people that don’t want help and aren’t committing crimes, we need to enforce existing laws and show them you can no longer take advantage of our kindness and our public spaces.
I personally think the mayor is an honest person who made a mistake with the Pearl shelter and is meeting with other cities to see what’s working for them. I definitely don’t agree with all of his policies, but Who does? But I have trust he will learn from his mistakes. Time will tell.
"Complex social problems do not yield to simple solutions. " Amen to that. But, just for fun, here's another simple solution. Isn't Dignity Village still going strong? Perhaps the homeless themselves should be in charge. But then they might become a political force, and that's the last thing anybody wants.
A degree of self-management of such facilities is a good thing, though I am not up to speed with how the Dignity Village model is working today. Who knows whether management by residents would build a political constituency? I don't think we should let predicted political consequences block exploration of good ideas.
Thank you for this thoughtful editorial revealing the complexity of our social problems. There isn’t one easy answer. My goal is to address one piece: the acuity level of the on-street behavioral health problems that leave people vulnerable and can threaten the safety of the rest of us.
The vast majority of what you call "on street behavioral health problems" are the direct result of addictions to chemically based opioids.
The vast majority of crime is the result of addictions to chemical opioids.
The vast majority of homelessness is the result of addictions to chemical opioids.
Destruction of low income subsidized housing units is the direst result of addictions to chemical based opioids.
It is the excused use and dealing of these chemically based opioids that "threatening the safety of the rest of us". Housing first advocates need to shut up and go to the back of the room, and any elected public official who is unaware of phenal-2-proponone should voluntarily resign.
Most sane people agree with you, but sadly the City is not in charge of addiction, mental health, courts or jails. Thats Multnomah county. The County chair has all the power so this is an extremely important race to break the status quo. Sharon Meieran is my #1 pick.
Thank you Allen.
Candidates for office should be asked to address not only demand for tax payer funded housing but also the expense of the supply.
Why is demand stubbornly high?
Why is "homeless" still being used as the catch-all?
Why does Portland attract drug addicted?
Why do productive members of society need to supply housing to all unproductive members regardless of cost?
Why is taking drug addicted off the streets and placing them in treatment facilities considered inhumane but leaving them in an unhealthy state considered humane?
What about creating a triage system that identifies each unfortunate citizen by their challenges and have a solution menu?
From my vantage point Portland is flailing and failing. The same solutions being applied seems to be insanity.
Why does Portland attract drug addicted?
Why do productive members of society need to supply housing to all unproductive members regardless of cost?
Great questions Marc. I did my schooling in San Diego and got married in La Jolla. I would have loved to own a home in La Jolla yet I could not afford to, and I didn’t see the city as being responsible to build me one that I could afford.
Portland attracts drug addicted because there is little to no enforcement, no expectations of pro social behavior, view them as victims of a capitalist society, and enable the heck out of them. As several interviews with the homeless have shown, the homeless say it is easy to be homeless here. There is all carrot and no stick.
Thank you, Ervin. This is a very sorry state. I am apprehensive that Kotek will win again. Monied people know this will be bad for the present and the future. Education and personal safety matter more to me than acres of parks and DEI. Be well.
I attended an event yesterday sponsored by Revitalize Portland and Design Portland, among others, focused on revitalizing Downtown Portland. The Mayor spoke, but the presenters were the leaders of three downtown associations from other cities who have similar problems; Denver, Philadelphia and Seattle. All are trying to revitalize their downtowns with more housing, especially affordable housing, along with other activators to supplement the office that will remain.. All have a homeless problem exacerbated by drug addiction and psychosis they are dealing with in different ways. All are liberal cities. But all three have much more financial and business support than does Portland due to more robust economies. I won't go into that here too much. Maybe later. But the most important takeaways were:
Public/private alignment is needed for acceleration of improvement. Denver and Philly have this, Seattle does not but has made up for it with a very strong and established downtown business organization, the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA), established in 1958 when I-5 was being built through Downtown. The audience got a good laugh from the speaker's joke about the DSA getting so much national attention these days (the other DSA, with whome we are quite familiar). All three have downtown-wide private sector sponsored and government recognized organizations that focus on public safety, cleanliness and activation in their downtowns. In all but Seattle, the alignment is good and somewhat formalized. Less so in Seattle, where referendums have been used to get big projects done. Seattle is the only one that already has a large downtown residential population (1 in 8), although additions to that have stooped, post Pandemic. Both Philly and Denver are actively converting office to residential. Seattle, like Portland is constrained by seismic obstacles where Denver and Philly are not. All are worried about older office buildings without any obvious apparent reuse. But they have a plan, we don't yet.
All have used weekend activation to increase foot traffic overall but all are struggling with mid week visitation and have targeted strategies to help that, including building stadiums and cultural venues downtown, targeted office and retail tenants (co-working), revitalized pedestrian shopping experiences and parks built for activation with intentional activation a key element.
All are coordinating between state and regional and local efforts. Denver in particular is not trying to poach from the suburbs, but trying to poach from outside the state, including Oregon. The poaching is intentional; for the kinds of business growth they want to see in the state. State policies are designed to help local governments and especially central cities which are the center of expensive transport hubs gain traction. In short, Oregon is in competition with every other state and Portland with every other City.
All are working on streamlining permitting as a consequence. Denver seems further along. They have eliminated "design review" and have set a specific 180 day target doer permit approval. Not sure how Seattle is doing on this. They have some policies that are impeding any new housing permitting and the DSA is looking to new policies in San Francisco as a possible solution.
It seems to me Oregon generally and Portland in particular have these basic necessary obstacles to overcome, none of which alone are sufficient to revitalize the State or City economies and grow housing.
-The private sector is not going to build housing for a shrinking population, especially when the population that remains or is replacing those who depart, cannot afford housing at the inflationary cost it takes to build it today. And affordable housing is even more expensive to build. Construction costs have risen dramatically since the Pandemic for macro and micro reasons with plenty of blame to go around. To turn this around will require policy changes at every level of government in our state.
-The recent rise in interest rates, driven by the bond market and the growing national deficit, is making the cost of borrowing much higher for those wo want to build homes, including government, and and banks, via lending or bonding.
-The "sticky" high prices of buildings not responding to the current market conditions. Investors and individuals bought high and financed at low rates before or during the Pandemic. It is a long process that forces those properties back onto the market.
-Lack of certainty. All of us value certainty or some reasonable basis for predictability, and that is especially true of developers, lenders and investors, as well as governments. We are in an unprecedented period of anomie, it seems to me, with AI, MAGA policies changing the world order, the surprise Iran War and an uncertain election. Add to that, the local inability of Portland Government to adjust and set a direction due to a deadlocked City Council, a new form of government and a City staff trying to adjust to that new form of government. We are unable or unwilling to do some of the things Denver and Philly have found success with, even if conditions were right.
-Lack of a Plan. The Downtown Recovery Plan is being worked on with a lot of energy but it is being second guessed at every step pf the way. Hopefully the upcoming election will help that and our DSA will no longer be able to place a roadblock to any progress.
-Lack of the willingness to deal with the public safety and homelessness issues in a meaningful way by getting those addicted into treatment and sober housing they are ready for, as Denver has, and to get people with psychosis into treatment and ready for housing, either in suitable supportive housing or an expanded functioning State Hospital, so they, their families and society remain safe.
-Lack of adequate community policing in the downtown and central city, where the most productive, diverse and integrated segments of our society live, mingle, work, recreate and participate in communal events designed to bring different communities together and create something new and great and get you to and from safely. That is what the central city is all about and it can be the center for all kinds of housing, from affordable to luxury in a respectful environment.
-We know our attractive features pretty well nice scalle, walkable city with some very attractive architecture and parks and a nice waterfront and a very nice Art Museum and a pioneering public transit hub) but we have not maintained or built on them and the state has not stayed competitive. We have not activated the things we have.
The demise of downtown is a golden opportunity to create a 24 hour diverse, safe and active community due to the lowering of values and the land underneath these buildings. Let's set the stage for something to happen, and that is especially housing. Time for alignment. Let's start with this upcoming election. The Mayor has tons of energy. He is learning and promoting us every day. He just got back from Denver. We need to actually do something meaningful and help him generate some momentum.
Do you know why this problem doesn't exist in other cities around the country and also in Lake Oswego? They don't offer any services.
Mr. Classen raises an important question that goes well beyond the numbers themselves: Are we measuring what we build, or whether what we build is actually working?
His discussion of vacant subsidized housing particularly caught my attention. If significant numbers of publicly subsidized apartments are sitting vacant while some lower-income renters can find better value in the private market, that should cause us to examine the assumptions underlying our housing policies before simply producing more units.
There are a few figures in the editorial I would frame somewhat differently. Portland's adopted Housing Production Strategy calls for roughly 6,000 units annually, while Mayor Wilson's stated goal of 20,000 units over eight years works out to 2,500 annually. The governor's original 36,000-unit target has also since been revised under the Oregon Housing Needs Analysis. And while the published Northrup figures confirm relatively low occupancy, I have not located the source for the peak of 155.
But those details actually reinforce Mr. Classen's larger point. Complex problems require us to keep testing our assumptions against actual outcomes. Counting units is easy. Determining whether they are solving the problem is considerably harder.
We have models that work. CityTeam and Bybee lakes are saving lives and getting people from being addicted on the streets to independence, no subsidized housing required. They take voluntary people and court ordered. We know what works. It’s going to take the will of leadership to invest in proven solutions and stop capitulating to the clueless activists.
Wilson is limited in what he can do because he needs support and collaboration from the County. He does not have control over addiction services and who the county chooses to fund. I was just listening to the Mult Co chairs on City Cast. Brim-Edwards and Singleton support permanent supportive housing. Meieran supports transitional housing; the proven and long used model in addiction recovery and/or mental illness stabilization. Which is why Im ranking Dr. Meieran as my #1.
We need more than just “affordable” housing, which is now market rate. And we don’t need more “social housing,” which is just a rebranding of Housing Projects.
For the people that don’t want help and aren’t committing crimes, we need to enforce existing laws and show them you can no longer take advantage of our kindness and our public spaces.
I personally think the mayor is an honest person who made a mistake with the Pearl shelter and is meeting with other cities to see what’s working for them. I definitely don’t agree with all of his policies, but Who does? But I have trust he will learn from his mistakes. Time will tell.
Allan---Thank you for your always great and intelligent reporting.