Steve’s Priorities
(Click button to jump to a specific priority)
Housing and homelessness
We won’t truly solve the homelessness crisis until we solve the affordable housing crisis. As long as we have tens of thousands fewer affordable units than we need, some people won’t be able to find homes at all. Nationally, homelessness is highest where rents, relative to income, are highest. As a recent Los Angeles Times article pointed out, West Virginia has lots of drug addiction, but little homelessness, because housing is cheap enough that even people with low incomes and serious problems can find somewhere to live. In Portland, as in Los Angeles, the rents are insanely high. And, as the Times observed, in a tight market, “[t]hose with the most hurdles — addiction, mental illness, criminal convictions and poverty … — are most likely to be stuck at the end of the line and shut out.”
The only sure way to get housing prices down (for everyone!) is to build a lot more housing. And there are things we can do to ensure that happens (see below). But even if we do everything right, it’s going to take years before we have the tens of thousands of affordable units we need – and we can’t have unlimited, unregulated camping in the meantime. We need to get people off the streets and into places that are safe, even if they aren’t permanent homes. Places like the sleeping pods in the Safe Rest Villages.
How can we reach the long-term goal of having enough housing that rents will go down? Taxpayers can’t pay to build all the housing we need, so a lot of it will have to be built by the private sector. Fortunately, there are things we can do to increase private sector housing production. We can fix the city’s slow-as-molasses permitting system. We can continue to change zoning laws to make it legal to build more affordable units in more places. When I was on the Council I championed the idea of legalizing “middle housing,” duplexes and triplexes, in the many parts of the city where it was outlawed – an idea later picked up by, among others, Governor Kotek. But we probably also need to legalize larger multi-family buildings in more places.
Beyond zoning and permitting, we need to look at and reevaluate every barrier to building new housing. For example, every time a new unit is built, it has to pay the city what are called “system development charges.” The biggest of these is a charge that goes into a fund to pay for new parks. That charge can add $10,000 to the cost of a 750-square-foot unit. Although there are places where it would be good to have new parks, at a time when housing is the biggest priority, and we can’t afford to maintain the parks we already have, maybe we should rethink that.
But again, it will take time for these changes to lead to anything like the number of units we need. So yes, the “left” is right: the homelessness crisis is largely a housing crisis. But the “right” has a point too: we can’t just throw up our hands and allow unlimited camping until there’s a permanent home for everyone.
In addition to reevaluating all the obstacles to building, we also need to constantly reevaluate the millions of taxpayer dollars we are spending today on housing and homelessness. Does it really make sense to spend $482,000 a unit to renovate an “affordable” housing project, as Willamette Week reported? Are we making evidence-based decisions about how to strike the right balance between spending on shelter and spending on homelessness prevention programs like rent assistance? Too few of our political leaders have been asking enough hard questions about what’s cost-effective and what isn’t.
It's important to note that Multnomah County, not the city, has most of the money available to address homelessness. But hopefully, the relationship between the City and County – rocky at the moment - will improve, and the County will listen to what the City has to say.
CRIME
Both violent and property crime are serious problems in Portland. I’ve been lucky, but I know people whose cars have been stolen. I know a business owner whose place was burglarized three times in a few months. I know people who have been randomly attacked on the street, in broad daylight.
For over two decades, starting in the 1990’s, crime kept on going down. During the pandemic, it went back up. That means it needs to be a higher priority than it was just a few years ago. We need more police – and, as Chief Day has said, the police also need to be strategic about using their limited resources as effectively as possible. And we need to see if we can free up police time by having more calls, like “welfare checks,” taken by people other than armed officers, like Portland Street Response.
We need to have a conversation as a community: what are all the things we want the police to do? How many officers would it take to do all those things? Can we pay for that number? If not, how do we prioritize given the resources we have? For example, the number of detectives to investigate crimes has gone down dramatically in recent years – but the police say they are also short on patrol officers. If we can add 200 officers, should they all be added to patrol? Or could some of those 200 be detectives? I suspect that’s a conversation that Chief Day – who’s a very thoughtful guy – would welcome.
By the way, saying we need more police (and more prosecutors too) isn’t the same as saying “bring back mass incarceration! Lock ‘em all up and throw away the key!” Criminal justice experts say that what deters crime is not the severity of sentences, but the swiftness and certainty of sanctions. We can continue to reduce the number of people serving long prison terms - a sentence of five years as opposed to three doesn’t really do much to deter crime – and still reduce crime by ensuring that potential lawbreakers know that they are highly likely to face some kind of sanction.
One thing I am interested in is trying to recruit more progressive young folks to be police officers, resulting in a force that increasingly looks and thinks more like Portland as a whole. I’ve been impressed with New Zealand’s creative “Do you care enough to be a cop?” recruitment campaign.
Climate change
Climate change is not just the greatest challenge of our time – it’s the greatest challenge in human history.
Portland needs to be a leader in reducing carbon emissions, reducing the harm climate change imposes on vulnerable communities, and helping people in those communities participate in the benefits of a clean energy economy. Portland voters passed the Clean Energy Fund to do those things. The Clean Energy Fund has done some great things, like buying energy-efficient “heat pumps” – which also act as air conditioners – for low-income Portlanders who lacked air conditioning and, based on age or medical condition, are especially vulnerable to extreme heat waves.
But I think the Fund should constantly be thinking about how to spend money most cost-effectively to both reduce emissions and help low-income people and people of color. The Fund is focusing the lion’s share of its resources on retrofitting homes to reduce home energy use and costs. But transportation is both a bigger expense for low-income people, and a bigger source of carbon emissions, than home energy – especially since the state has mandated that the electric utilities move toward green energy and eliminate carbon emissions by 2040. Smart investments in transit and bike and pedestrian infrastructure, giving people alternatives to driving, both reduce emissions and save families money. And helping people move from gas cars to electric cars also reduces emissions and saves families money – in both fuel and repairs.
Based on PCEF’s numbers, it appears that each home retrofit (for single-family homes) will cost close to $46,000. That might save that family $40 a month in energy bills. But for $46,000, you could buy a three-year-old electric car and a charging station for each of two families, which should save each family at least $100 a month in fuel and repairs, compared to a gas car. You’d help twice as many people. (Of course, if PCEF could get people to switch to electric by paying just part of the cost of an electric car, it could help even more people.)
Meanwhile, the Portland Bureau of Transportation should continue to take steps to make it easier for people to get around without driving – walking, biking, and taking transit. I’m proud that the Fix Our Streets measure I led has made major investments in bike-ped infrastructure. I also know that PBOT has a huge budget shortfall, because of falling parking and gas tax revenue, so it’s going to be challenging to continue to make those kinds of investments.
Although societal change, not just individual choices, is necessary to address climate change, people want to know what they can do personally – and we should look for ways to give them the information they need. For example, some foods are much more climate-friendly than others; beef is bad (largely because cows belch methane!); chicken is somewhat better but not great; sardines, lentils, and chickpeas are fantastic. We should call on grocery stores and restaurants to post some basic information on the relative climate-friendliness of common food types. And City websites should have that information as well. There’s research showing that information makes a difference!
A passion project: a way to reduce youth suicides
One of the most meaningful things I have ever done was to put an end to decades of suicides on the Vista Bridge by putting up a barrier. One of my personal top priorities on the City Council would be to have Portland become one of the leaders in reducing youth suicides – specifically, suicides committed with guns. In 2021, eight hundred and fifty-seven American children shot themselves to death. The City of Portland could help to reduce that horrific number if it joined other cities around the country in using their market power to help drive the development of “smart guns.”
“Smart guns” are guns that are designed - using fingerprints or other biometric markers - so that they can only be fired by the original, legal purchaser. If such guns became widespread among the gun-owning public, it would dramatically reduce gun fatalities, especially youth suicides. Those eight hundred and fifty-seven children used their parents’ guns. If their parents had had “smart guns,” they would still be alive.
The technology to make smart guns has existed for a long time, and recently a Colorado start-up started selling some commercially. But the major U.S. gun manufacturers have not produced them on a mass scale, because they have been cowed by the N.R.A. Smith & Wesson was going to start making them years back, but the NRA threatened a boycott of the company, so they stopped. (The NRA fears that if smart guns were available, dumb guns might be prohibited.)
Polls show that many people would prefer to buy smart guns, but manufacturers don’t seem to trust that. But if they knew they had a guaranteed market for smart guns, you would expect the big manufacturers to step up. And that’s where cities can play a huge role. Several years ago, a group of Midwestern mayors realized that if local and state governments committed to buying smart guns for police forces, the gun companies would start making them – and then they would be available for regular folks to buy as well. The mayors of Cincinnati, Toledo and Dayton Ohio, and of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, created the “Gun Safety Consortium” to promote this idea and other gun safety measures. Other cities have joined, but none on the West Coast.
If smart guns became a major part of the market, those teen suicide numbers would fall. It could also prevent many gun crimes. According to a 2019 Justice Department survey, only 10 percent of guns used in crimes were lawfully purchased from a retailer by the criminal. The rest were obtained through the black market, theft, relatives, etc. Of course, as long as dumb guns exist, there will be criminals with black-market guns – but in a market dominated by smart guns, someone who steals a gun often won’t be able to use it.
Of course, we couldn’t ask the police to use smart guns until we are sure they are reliable. But if they are reliable, police should embrace them, for one simple reason: it would save officers’ lives. One out of ten police officers who are shot on the job are shot with their own guns.
So I would push for Portland, and other cities throughout Oregon and the West Coast in general, to join those Midwestern mayors in committing that once reliable smart guns are commercially available, we will buy them for our police forces.
By the way, of course, I support a wide variety of gun regulations and fervently hope that Measure 114 is eventually upheld in the courts. Unfortunately, the State Legislature prohibits cities from adopting any gun regulations of their own. But they can’t stop us from buying smart guns.
Even when smart guns become widely available, it will take time for them to gradually replace dumb guns in homes. But children’s deaths in the year 2040 will be every bit as tragic as children’s deaths today. City political leaders can reduce the number of those tragedies – simply by using the power of the purse.
Donate to Support Local Change.
For Portland Residents, this is a small donor campaign where up to $20 is matched 9 to 1 by the City.