Among Portland’s last four mayors, Ted Wheeler is the first to seek re-election. It’s a tough job. Portland’s mayor often gets all the blame for the city’s problems while operating in a “weak mayor” government structure, where the mayor’s vote carries no more weight than the votes of other city commissioners. The mayor typically serves as police commissioner and has the authority to assign other city bureaus among commissioners. In a crowded mayoral election earlier this year, Wheeler failed to earn a majority, with 49% of the vote. This forced a runoff against Sarah Iannarone who garnered 24% of the vote.
Candidate Q&As: Portland mayor’s race
Street Roots: You’ve said now that you would pull out of the city-county partnership to end homelessness, the Joint Office of Homeless Services, if they don’t meet a demand for more shelter beds and the county doesn’t step up. Critics have called this an attempt to appease voters disgruntled with seeing unsheltered homeless people on our streets. Given that shelter beds don’t address the issues at the root of homelessness, how should we see this differently?
Ted Wheeler: Under my leadership, we have delivered record affordable housing out of the Housing Bureau. We have more than delivered on the promises of the 2016 housing bond. So on the built environment, we’re doing the best we can. We committed to 2,000 units of permanent supportive housing, thanks to the leadership of my late friend and colleague, Nick Fish.
But it’s a drop in the bucket. And here’s what happened: No. 1, we let the federal government get out of the low-income housing business, something that I hope we will continue to push back on and ultimately change.
No. 2, the state of Oregon willfully and intentionally, over a period of decades, has defunded our mental health infrastructure in this state. We are now near the top of the list in terms of needs for critical mental health services and substance abuse. And we’re somewhere near the bottom of the list in terms of our ability to deliver those services for the community. Meanwhile, what we are doing is we are putting people out into the elements.
And here’s where the (Multnomah County) chair (Deborah Kafoury) and I may be having an honest disagreement of opinion.
I do not — and you can disagree vehemently, but it’s just what I believe — I do not believe people camping on the sidewalks, on the streets, in our public right of ways, in traffic medians, I don’t believe that’s a humane response at all. I think that is the opposite. I think it is a highly in-humane response. And we’ve become immune to it. We’ve become used to it.
It takes people coming from other countries to come to our community and walk through Old Town-Chinatown and then report back on TripAdvisor that they couldn’t believe that people in a civilized society, in a city that considers itself progressive, in a country that has unbelievable wealth, that our solution to the homeless crisis is to “go here, camp here” or “there, camp there.” That’s not a solution.
I know that “shelter” is a dirty word in an environment where we’ve gone all in on “housing first,” which I support. But I don’t think it’s either/or. I think it’s both/and. We have a crisis before us right now. Today, we have thousands of people living on the streets. The weather’s going to turn bad. And last year, we lost about 80 people on the street. I believe that if we can provide places, either shelter indoors or managed camps, like the three we worked really hard to stand up as a response to the COVID crisis, that have access to water — clean water — that have access to toilets that are clean, that have access, potentially, to services where people come through and help clean up the camp and keep it so that it doesn’t become a public health or an environmental hazard.
All you need to do is walk through Old Town-Chinatown and you see that there are people living in conditions that aren’t healthy for them. And it’s not healthy for anyone else in the community. And so, I really believe that we need to not only do the things we’re doing through the Joint Office of Homeless Services.
We have an emergency in terms of the people, the number of people who are currently camped out on the street, many of whom don’t want to be there. And I feel like I’m alone in the wilderness when I say that. And I can’t believe I’m alone in the wilderness. I can’t believe anybody can drive by the camp on I-84 and look at the conditions that those poor people are living in and feel good about it. I don’t.
It’s probably also relevant that I’m the guy who gets blamed for it all.
There’s this broad coalition we created, the Home for Everyone coalition, which is great. It’s a lot of the right people sitting around the table. Not everybody who should be at the table, but a lot of the right people. We have the Joint Office, which makes a lot of sense, and Marc Jolin, I think, is a saint. I think he’s one of our most effective bureau directors.
But we’re missing a key point, and when 90% of the people in this city agree on anything and they agree that this is not a good solution, not for people on the streets, not for the rest of the community, they want humane solutions to get people off the streets and connect them to the services to help them stay off the streets. And that means we have to push our state partners around mental health. I mean, in the middle of this homeless crisis last year, what did the state Legislature try to do? They tried to cut $20 million out of the mental health safety net — the safety net that I think we all agree by any measurement is already a catastrophic failure for people who are living on the streets.
Maybe I’m coming across as a jerk. But I feel like I need to wake people up. I feel like they’re in a deep sleep. They’re in some sort of a dream. They’re embedded in ooze that makes it hard for them to see the inhumanity of what is going on on our streets.
Street Roots: How are people experiencing homelessness informing your position? And originally, I was thinking about the Joint Office of Homeless Services, but I would like to expand that to your decisions around your approach to people experiencing homelessness.
Wheeler: I talk to people who are homeless all the time. I was in Old Town-Chinatown the other day. I was up in Gateway, talking to people there. And I actually talked to people who are on the street, not just advocates, but people who actually are homeless, many of whom just got there, by the way.
I don’t have any count. I don’t have any data. I don’t have anything except my eyeballs to count on. I believe the homeless crisis has gotten much worse since the beginning of COVID. And in part, it’s because a lot of our social service partners, particularly the nonprofit ones, have had to close doors due to COVID restrictions, so it’s harder for people to find the resources.
I’m actually seeing more people and larger groups of people gathering outside in really remote parts of the city. Over by the airport, up by Marine Drive, you know, out on outer Foster (Road). If this were a hurricane, we’d have an approach. We’d all be working together. We’d say, “Wow, there’s thousands of people who are displaced.” And by the way, we were ready to do that for the forest fire victims. There’d be an all-hands-on approach, and we would agree that people should, at a minimum, have a safe, dry, warm place. And even if it’s outside, at least access to water, or at least a place to go to the bathroom, where they’re not exposed to hepatitis or other potential diseases.
And we went into this good faith belief thinking, “OK, we’ll open these camps will keep people physically distanced and they won’t get COVID.” Can we agree that the non-managed camps, we have a lot of people clustered really closely together, and it’s not safe for them?
I’m sorry, I know I sound paternalistic. But the flip side of that is, how easy is it to get to a Joint Office meeting or an executive board meeting for the Home for Everyone? It’s buried on this obscure conference room on the third floor of the county building that you need to pass to get into. How many homeless folks do we hear from there? That would be zero.
Street Roots: So all of that being said and all of the resources and strategies that have been thrown at this, if re-elected, what would you do to address homelessness in your second term, that’s different from the approach you took in your first term, that you think would be evident on our streets?
Wheeler: No more Mr. Nice Guy. Look where nice got me.
We have failed to deliver the services necessary to get the chronically homeless folks in our community, our neighbors, off the streets. And we have failed over a period of years and years. What I’m talking about specifically is those who’ve been on the streets the longest. Those who are obviously struggling with serious mental health issues or substance abuse, addictions. There’s a lot of women on our streets right now. I’m sure you’re seeing that at Street Roots. There’s a lot more women. And we all know that they’re highly susceptible to victimization.
In terms of the biggest shifts, a deliberate, intentional focus on the chronically homeless. And that means not only helping them get inside, but helping them connect to mental health services or substance abuse or domestic violence survivorship services, whatever they need to re-engage in a healthy and successful way for the rest of their lives. And that means making a little noise at the state level, and making a little noise at the federal level, not to be a jerk but to just say, “Hey, we need help, we need partnership, we need collaboration.”
And the second thing I would do that’s different is we don’t actually have a plan. We have a bunch of plans, but we don’t have a plan.
Again, 90% think we’re mishandling this problem. And if 90% of people agree on anything, there’s got to be more than just a grain of truth to it.
It’s personally deeply troubling to me that this happened on my watch. There’s other stuff that people yell at me for that’s important now, that 10 years from now people will have forgotten about. People aren’t going to forget about this.
Street Roots: Communities of color are disproportionately impacted by high rents, homelessness and displacement due to gentrification. What are you proposing to specifically address these inequities?
Wheeler: When it comes to urban development, we engage those communities first and foremost. And probably the shining national example right now is here in Portland — and that’s the Broadway Corridor development and the community benefits agreement we just signed with a broad coalition. The goal was to put those individuals first and foremost, not just in terms of how we build it, which is usually the way we think of CBAs. But also in terms of how we operate it — who has access to it, who can live there, and equity and diversity were put first and foremost intentionally.
The second thing we can do is support those efforts in the community that specifically address gentrification. I was very proud of the fact that my colleagues and I on the City Council intentionally put gentrification strategies first and foremost, in both the conversation around the Southwest Corridor, the proposed light rail, as well as the proposed Rose Quarter project, which I’ve now pulled out of for a variety of reasons, but perhaps most notably, because the Albina Vision project wasn’t supporting it anymore, and they speak for the historic displaced people who were in that neighborhood before there was a Rose Quarter.
The North/Northeast Housing Strategy has been successful. I think they now have some 500 or 600 families of color that have received homeownership maintenance grants to help keep people in their housing. They’ve helped secure homeownership rights for people.
The North Russell (Street) or Williams (Avenue) site over at the old Emanuel Hospital. I said, that’s got to be led by the community. Prosper (Portland)’s not going to lead that; we’re going to let the community lead it. So there’s a board now, 24 people, almost exclusively Black local residents, and there’s a deep history that goes back there and explains why that is the case. But they’re calling the shots on that development. So it’s having people who are hurt first and worst benefit the most. We did that in our COVID recovery. Equity came first.
The first $2 million that went out the door to support small-business owners and operators, 90% went to businesses owned or operated by people of color
And we didn’t raise any questions when the community came to us and said, “Rent support is important.” We put $35 million into rent support along with our colleagues at the county. But people said, “We need support for household expenditures.” We put $8 million aside for household expenditures that largely went to people of color. And there’s no questions asked. You don’t have to submit receipts; you don’t have to submit bills. We did it because it was an emergency. It was a crisis. And we knew people were going to end up on the streets if we started creating so many bureaucratic hurdles for people to jump over when they’re already hurting in so many different ways because of the COVID crisis.
Street Roots: If re-elected, what would you do in your second term to address the fundamental faults in our housing system, which is that it’s too expensive for many families to live and have the needed safety net to protect them from displacement and evictions in the first place?
Wheeler: I’m proud of the work that we did in the first term. The relo (relocation) ordinance is unique. And we obviously just lowered the threshold of rent increases down to zero; that was an amendment that I brought to the council that was supported unanimously.
The FAIR housing ordinance, Commissioner Eudaly takes a lot of heat for that. I supported it. I worked really hard to make it a proposal that I could also get behind and support. And now it’s being looked at as a national model. And I don’t want to take credit for that. That’s all Chloe.
But I was happy to, to shape it and support it and leverage it during the COVID crisis. And that’s, I guess, the good thing about the commission form of government.
We already addressed some of the building environmental issues. Probably the most significant is the Residential Infill Project. It was certainly the most controversial of the package of three items that the council passed over many years. But Better Housing by Design, as well as the Central City 2035 Plan, in my opinion, offer far more options and more diversity of affordable housing for people in the community. Portlanders are very generous; they supported the Portland housing bond.
I don’t believe there has been any levy or bond or district that’s been put to the taxpayers that has a stronger record than the 2016 Portland housing bond. I was proud to be the administrator of that through the housing bureau, of which I’m the commissioner in charge, and as I say, we’ve overdelivered.
I don’t want to make news because this is a question for my colleagues — we have honestly not had the conversation — but if we choose to bring another housing bond at some point, we now have a rock-solid record of accomplishment that we can take back to the voters and say, “We not only did what we promised we were going to do; we actually knocked the socks off of that promise, and we did it in a way that engaged the community.”
You’ll remember, I took a ton of heat for slowing down the implementation of the 2016 housing bond because we heard from the community that they wanted a seat at the table; they wanted to make sure that it reached the affordability levels that people wanted, that household size was taken into account. We slowed it down about three months. But here we are, basically four years ahead of schedule, having overdelivered.
One area where we’ve failed, and where I’d like to see us make a difference, is we really haven’t figured out the city bureaucracy around affordable-housing development despite really hard efforts on the part of many great people in the Bureau of Development Services and elsewhere. It’s still too bureaucratic, and it’s still too slow in the technologies that could speed things up and get housing into the market sooner. The regulatory overlays, they’re still pretty onerous.
I know there’s a lot of good will in the room. We have affordable-housing developers who are trying to work with us. I met with a coalition of 15 of them two weeks ago. They want us all to win collectively. We haven’t quite found the right formula. But we still need to figure out the internal bureaucracy and the rules and figure out how we can speed things up and reduce the costs.
I’ve engaged Dan Ryan in that as our newest commissioner. He’s really passionate about both homeless and housing issues. And so I’m leveraging some new blood on the City Council as well.
Street Roots: Your campaign spokesperson told the Willamette Week that once voters get to know both candidates, they will choose you. Can you give us an example of housing or homelessness policy that distinguishes you from your opponent?
Wheeler: I don’t necessarily have a good handle on all of Sarah’s ideas. I don’t think it’s necessarily appropriate for me to question her value around homelessness. I know she cares deeply about the homeless population, as do I.
The main difference is she strongly disagrees with the campsite remediation. And I want to tell you point blank why I do support it. And I know this maybe puts us at odds, but I want to be honest with you. There are definitely camps that are not safe. They are not safe for the people living there. And they are not safe for the public at large.
I’ll give you a couple of very specific examples. We had a large camp in the middle of the traffic median on the Ross Island Bridge. That’s a run-out place. That is where cars end up when they don’t navigate the turn. That is not a safe place, and people must not camp there, period. Similarly, we’ve got a traffic circle that we’re repeatedly cleaning on the intersection of I-405 and I-5 — same thing.
I visited the former mayor of Seattle on a day when a car drove through a homeless camp. It was not intentional; the driver lost control of their car on a curb, and it went into the homeless camp. And it went over three tents. Thank God nobody was in the tents.
Another example would be when we’re in a sensitive environmental area. You know, we’re not being jerks about this. We ask people if they can please move. Most people do, right away, and they get up and they leave. And we of course, under the agreement, we send in social service providers.
But we also realize they’re going to move out of an area where there is a public health or public safety or an environmental hazard and absent any real other solution, they’re just going to set up somewhere else, right? And right now, that’s probably better than setting up in a place that’s dangerous. But ultimately, it’s not a solution. And it still doesn’t give people access to toilets; it doesn’t give people access to running water; it doesn’t give them access to any services that can help them get off the streets so they’re not exposed to the elements or to other activities on the streets.
Sarah, I think she disagrees with everything I just said. And that’s a fundamental difference.
The other is I don’t think she sees the urgency I do around mental health services or substance abuse services. Substance abuse runs in my family; it’s up close and personal. And I know two things about it. I know it can destroy you. And I know it can destroy your family.
But I also know that you can recover from it if you’re given the opportunity to recover and you’re ready for the recovery process, which is extremely painful and hard.
So I’m going to be pushing people. This state needs a better mental health safety net and substance abuse safety net.