COMMENTARY | The commissioner’s coalition-building style created lasting improvements in how we look at solving the crisis
I remember the first time I met Nick Fish. He had an almost naive optimism about what he wanted to accomplish on the housing front. I remember thinking to myself that it was both refreshing and a little out of touch with reality. I liked it.
Nick was elected the same year the Great Recession took hold, the biggest disruption in America’s housing market since the Great Depression. More than 8 million jobs were lost around the country, and nearly 2 million people lost their housing. Oregon as a whole was especially hit hard. State and local governments had been navigating budget shortfalls for years. Every year felt like another battle to just scrape together enough political support to hold the line in the annual budget for homeless and housing services.
Instead of surrounding himself with “yes” people, Nick surrounded himself with people who would both challenge and teach him about the nuances of the streets and the larger housing system.
In March 2011, Nick organized a group of homeless and housing advocates, civic leaders and the business community to travel to Seattle to study how they were successful at the ballot on the issue of housing. The goal was to potentially put a housing measure to voters in 2012. Unfortunately, due to the lack of political support, we would have to wait another four years before that dream would become a reality.
“The reality is to be successful on the housing front, locally and at the state level, we need a big coalition,” Nick would tell Street Roots. “Part of this is about the confidence and maturity of a movement, and its willingness to build a big tent.”
It was true. There was no "big tent" coalition thinking about campaign politics and moving anything forward at the ballot. Advocates and Nick wanted to change that.
While Nick and others continued to work to build a larger housing coalition, his office worked to streamline housing and homeless services in the city. It created the Portland Housing Bureau and pushed for countless policy changes that would support the improvement of homeless services in the city.
During that time, it wasn’t uncommon for Nick to offer or deliver people their first meal when they moved into housing, or for Nick to go out and talk to people on the streets, hoping to gather different perspectives on a particular issue.
I think Nick was extremely disappointed and perhaps even hurt in 2013, when the city reassigned the housing bureau to another commissioner. It was clear that he felt he had unfinished business.
Still, Nick never stopped being Portland’s de facto housing commissioner. Regardless of what conversations and policies were taking shape inside City Hall, at the county or in Salem, Nick was there, offering guidance and support. It had become part of his life’s work.
In 2015, when it was clear that Portland was going to move forward with a housing bond, Nick worked tirelessly with advocates and housing commissioner Dan Saltzman to make it happen. I’ll never forget Nick trying to facilitate a public partnership with Street Roots and the Portland Business Alliance.
Street Roots had openly battled with the business group for more than a decade over the criminalization of the homeless. At times it got nasty. It was fair to say we didn’t like each other all that much. I told him such an alliance would be a disaster for Street Roots and advocates, knowing that many other organizations and allies on the left wouldn’t take kindly to such a partnership. Of course, Nick reminded me that it’s better to be called a sellout and have built thousands of affordable-housing units for people than to be popular on the left and have not built any at all.
It was just one example of how Nick’s mind worked. While many people in the room were arguing about politics or posturing for the next move, Nick was thinking six moves ahead. In the end, Nick taught us that sometimes the fight was less important than the outcome. There’s no elected official who cared more about bringing people together across different political spectrums to work toward doing good in the community. Be it our parks, the arts, or working with the immigrant and refugee community, to name a few — Nick was always there.
Nick never put his own political ambitions before the people. Something that is very rare in politics. Nick truly believed in the idea that government should play a role in creating the best public infrastructure possible for our community and our world.
In 11 short years, Nick and many others helped transform the way the city of Portland would tackle homelessness and the affordable-housing crisis for generations to come.
During his tenure, he helped usher in myriad new housing policies, including inclusionary zoning, stronger tenant protections, the Portland and Metro housing bonds, a short-term rental tax, and a construction excise tax — all policies and revenue mechanisms to ensure that people have a place to call home for generations to come.
Both the Portland housing bond and the Metro housing bond serve as examples of the vision Nick had for building a “big tent” housing coalition to give people a safe place to call home. I have no doubt that Nick would want us all to collectively carry on his work in securing ongoing revenue streams for homeless and housing services. When it came to supporting people struggling on the streets and making our community a better place, there was never any time to spare.
Israel Bayer is the former executive director of Street Roots.
Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish died Jan. 2.
IN HIS WORDS: Nick Fish was a periodic contributor to Street Roots. Read his commentaries from recent years.
MEMORIAL
A celebration of life for City Commissioner Nick Fish is planned for 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 16, at the Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom at Portland Community College downtown. It will be open to the public. Seating will be limited, but the event will also be livestreamed on nickfishforportland.com, PSU said. Speakers will include former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts. The date and location of this memorial have been updated since this article was originally published.
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2020 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404.
