Over the past few weeks the Portland Business Alliance has seen print in most newspapers throughout the city for their role in helping downtown get public restrooms and a day access center.
The Alliance has pitched in $45,000 for the day access center and is offering to maintain public restrooms for free. We applaud their efforts. But to listen to the Portland Business Alliance, you would think they are leading the way to end homelessness in downtown themselves. Unfortunately, the organization continues to insist a law is needed that will ban people (homeless) from downtown sidewalks.
We want to get behind the PBA — and in fact Street Roots may end up partnering with them through the Rose City Resource Guide — but we still have more questions than answers. History tells us business alliances, a.k.a., chambers of commerce, have been lobbying for laws against poor people in urban environments since at least the 1860s. Locally, history tells us the PBA has politically tried to lobby the city for "quality of life" laws affecting people on the streets in a negative way, and has tried and failed take out politicians who championed efforts to gain more housing downtown and who sympathize with the poor, specifically Erik Sten.
In the Feb. 1 issue of Street Roots we ran an interview with Mike Kuykendall, vice president of the PBA. Kuykendall declined to answer two questions — on a real estate transfer fee and on developers giving ‘X’ amount of dollars to affordable housing for every square foot built downtown — noting that these issues haven’t become public issues, so the PBA didn’t have a stance. We think it’s time for the Portland Business Alliance to take the lead with local businesses and City Hall to establish sustainable funding streams for affordable housing.
The real estate transfer fee, a one-time, market-based fee tacked onto the sale of a home, could create millions of dollars for affordable housing. Currently, Portland and Oregon can’t even attempt to create a real estate fee because of a Realtor-supported ban in Salem that makes it against state law to create a fee. While the PBA doesn’t represent individual homeowners or buyers, they do represent members in the real estate industry, and their lobbying efforts would go a long way to lift the ban and make way for more affordable housing.
We also challenge the PBA to look at alternatives to create affordable housing by offering money per square foot built by developers in downtown — much like efforts by business leaders and developers in Seattle. If the Portland Business Alliance is real about ending homelessness in downtown and not pushing the problem to surrounding neighborhoods, it will take on these efforts. It’s one thing to help build restrooms and provide money for a day access center, but it’s another to take real steps toward ending homelessness as we know it.
Portland is booming, and the chance may not come again. We can talk about ending homelessness today or we can continue to squabble over quality of life laws for the next century. The choice is up to us. We challenge the Portland Business Alliance to do the right thing and help get the affordable housing. Portlanders need to survive!
