Breaking News: Portland Housing Bureau director to head state housing agency
Van Vliet will leave her position with the Portland Housing Bureau Sept. 15.
“I want to see housing be front and center,” Van Vliet told Street Roots. “Housing has been a little bit on the sidebar, and relegated to the second or third to public and private proprieties. I want to raise the profile of the issues, and be at the table when other conversations are happening about job creation, about the health profile in this or that community — what’s the housing problem that sits underneath that? It tends to be an afterthought, so my highest value and priority is to get it more entrenched in the public thinking about what’s important and what we need to address in the community.”
Commissioner Nick Fish appointed Van Vliet two years ago to helm the city’s housing operations as it transitioned from the Bureau of Housing and Community Development into the Portland Housing Bureau. Fish told Street Roots that he has mixed feelings about her departure.
“On the one hand, a feeling of great pride, that the governor has selected Margaret to lead the state’s housing efforts, and I think it’s a testament to how respected she is, not just here in Portland, but statewide, and she’ll do a great job. But at the same time, I will miss working with her. Over the past two years, we created a new bureau, the PHB, and she has a remarkable record of accomplishment.”
Fish noted the completion of the Bud Clark Commons and the ground breaking of Veterans’ housing at Block 49 among those accomplishments.
“At the state level,” Fish said, “she’ll be in a position to be enormously helpful to Portland and the cause of affordable housing.”
