Anti-displacement measures are already set. Council just needs to say 'Yes!'
Portland’s City Council has a historic opportunity to act on its stated commitment to racial equity and to lay the foundation for a more just future for our city.
The council recently began discussions about Portland’s 2035 Comprehensive Plan, which will determine how Portland grows and accommodates some 260,000 new residents over the next 20 years. The plan governs what can be built, where and under what conditions – including housing, transportation and commercial development.
This new Comprehensive Plan represents a potential turning point for Portland. It is a chance for City Council to change the rules that govern both private development and public investment so that Portland’s growth no longer pushes communities of color and low-income families out of their neighborhoods when property values and housing costs increase. City Council can adopt a Comprehensive Plan that creates more opportunity for marginalized people and communities – rather than pushes them to the edge of the city and beyond. To do this, council simply needs to say “Yes!” to a package of anti-displacement policies that is already in the recommended draft of the plan.
In response to the advocacy of Anti-Displacement PDX, a coalition of 30 community-based organizations, the city’s Planning and Sustainability Commission included more than two dozen anti-displacement measures in the recommended draft Comprehensive Plan that it sent to City Council in July. These measures are designed to prevent the displacement of long-term residents from their homes, redress the injustices of past displacement, and expand access to affordable housing citywide.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES: Portland must choose to end displacement injustice
The anti-displacement policies in the recommended draft range from more robust community participation in decision making to protections for renters to proactively setting aside land for affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods. The plan also requires the city to analyze how developments and investments will affect housing affordability for marginalized populations – and then take action to mitigate those effects. The recommended plan’s anti-displacement measures work as an interconnected web to respond to development pressure and neighborhood changes that cause displacement. Absent these forward-thinking measures, our current comprehensive plan, in place since 1980, has enabled racialized displacement and an increasingly segregated city. The 2035 Comprehensive Plan is City Council’s opportunity to change this pattern and respond to the needs of communities of color.
The plan’s anti-displacement measures were developed and proposed by community-based organizations that work with and represent communities of color and low-income Portlanders. Planners often cite engaging communities of color in plan-making processes as one of the toughest challenges when working with the public. Communities of color, on the other hand, point out that when they do engage in decision-making processes, their needs are not addressed and their ideas are not incorporated. However, in this instance the PSC and planners at the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability listened and worked with these organizations to integrate their proposed anti-displacement measures into the plan.
Now City Council will decide whether to honor this work. A vote on the final Comprehensive Plan is expected in early 2016, following public hearings in November and December. To make a change to the PSC’s recommended plan, a City Council member must offer a specific amendment, which would then need the support of a majority of the council. What does this mean for the anti-displacement measures? The measures can only be removed through an intentional decision by City Council members to dismantle the strategies and policies that would put Portland on a path to a more equitable future.
Plans matter. They hold real power by shaping the growth and development of our city. They also articulate our community’s values and priorities. The measures advanced by Anti-Displacement PDX and incorporated into the recommended Comprehensive Plan make real Portland’s stated commitment to racial equity. Parkrose School District Superintendent Karen Gray, who served on the Planning and Sustainability Commission that adopted the recommended draft plan, summarizes the importance of the anti-displacement measures: “The Comprehensive Plan is a once-in-20-years opportunity to change course when it comes to equity and inclusion. If we don’t take decisive action now, Portland will become more and more exclusive as people of color and working families continue to be displaced. I call on City Council to ensure that these important anti-displacement measures are included in the final version of the Comprehensive Plan.”
The right anti-displacement policies are already in the plan. All City Council needs to do is simply say, “Yes!”
Marisa Zapata is an assistant professor of land-use planning at Portland State University.
