The write-in candidate would draw from her personal experiences in formulating housing policies
This is the first time we’ve included a write-in candidate in our election issue, but we believe the circumstances around Teressa Raiford’s campaign warrant her inclusion. The massive Black Lives Matter movement that has unfolded in our city was ignited after the May election, where Raiford secured just under 9% of the vote. Raiford is a prominent racial justice activist and founder of Don’t Shoot Portland, and many of the movements’ supporters are campaigning for her. The result is the strongest write-in campaign we’ve seen in the recent history of Portland politics, despite Raiford’s limited participation in the campaign that was launched on her behalf.
Candidate Q&As: Portland mayor’s race
• Ted Wheeler
• Sarah Iannarone
• Teressa Raiford
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?
Teressa Raiford: The first thing would be to address the inequities in our process of providing housing through policy in a lot of situations. I grew up in a situation where we had to depend on Section 8 housing and different affordable-housing opportunities in order to even find a place where we weren’t discriminated against, because people felt that if there was someone helping to pay rent, that they didn’t have to care much about if we were going to destroy the property or whatever. But the policies, they eliminate an opportunity for family success, or for anyone’s success, because of the discrimination that is in the undertones.
Growing up with Section 8, you have to rely on just the state or just the position of living in poverty to be qualified. You could lose your housing if you provide housing for someone you love, or someone in your family. You have to file waivers, or you agree to certain terms in receiving services that kind of take away your civil liberties and your privacy.
And those things affect your outcomes. Even if you own a house, it’s hard to get to that standard of the American dream that everybody talks about when they say that making it affordable or available to vulnerable communities is what’s going to help us get out of the circumstance we’re in. The fact that that whole system is set up against them, and they’re supposed to figure it out, it hurts. It’s harmful. And so there needs to be an incredible restructuring in order to eliminate the inaccessibility and the humiliation of even trying to participate in and engage in receiving housing that’s fair.
Street Roots: Do you have any specific measures, actual actions, that you want to see put in place that would remove those inequities?
Raiford: A lot of the audits that we’ve demanded from certain agencies within the city, to show us, What are their fair rules? What are their accountability to communities? Why are they posturing certain community agencies to be stakeholders over community services and outreach?
I think that once we receive those audits, once we’re able to exchange what that accountability looks like in those systems, that not only that money, but a lot of the revenue, from the shifting of cannabis tax dollars to actual housing and infrastructure, that could be used to mobilize access to housing. A lot of people know that I’m a component of preservation, and restoration and rehabilitation of buildings and homes, and especially in communities that I grew up in that I can recognize. But I think that we have a lack of investment in developing that infrastructure.
We’re not looking at the direct investment in building on properties that we already have, or shifting funds so that we can make more housing available. And so all through my campaign, I worked with cannabis stakeholders, people that are actually making money in that industry. And they didn’t know that the percentage of money that was going into policing, that there wasn’t any way they could harness that money to help with our housing pandemic. So, that’s something that I really would like to see happen. And with the money they bring into the city, we could literally probably eliminate the unhoused community’s issues around having access.
Street Roots: What did you learn from your experience while you were homeless that you wish other people understood, and also that will inform your decisions should you win the race?
Raiford: Well, the things that I learned was that the resiliency of someone who knows already that they have things stacked against them because they are unhoused, their ability to be courageous through that. What I saw so many people doing, that’s the inspiration that kept me moving. That’s the inspiration that kept me going, those people on the ground, everyday people doing all these different parts to influence these politicians. Whether they were unhoused and advocating in City Hall or whether they were showing up at Multnomah County or whether they were participating in the stuff that we were trying to make leaders know statewide, their influence carried all of us forward as a society because it brought humanity into the process of dealing with public safety.
And I’m happy and thankful and honored to be on that front line with so many people.
I worked for Dr. (Neal) Rendleman at Old Town Clinic. And so I knew the humiliation that people suffer just because people believe they can be violent towards you. And I’ve experienced all of that, you know, from people that I thought were going to help me, but that’s those experiences and where I’m at now and where our community is that’s made me a stronger person. It’s made me a better person. And so, I just want to say that. We’re not others. We’re not less than a lot of people, whether you have the firm education that money can buy or whether you’re like me and you grew up in foster care and you saw gun violence and gang violence and domestic violence your whole entire life. And you still matter. What you say and how you feel, it actually makes things better if you’re able to share it. So yeah, don’t use it against me.
Street Roots: In an interview with The Oregonian, you talked about getting control of the city out of the hands of corporations and big business. You specifically call out the real estate industry and call for returning the power to ordinary people. What specific steps are you planning to take to make that happen?
Raiford: One of the first things I thought about when I learned about gentrification — because I thought it was “urban renewal” like a lot of people do; I was happy to see the investment in our communities happening — but what I realized was that that investment was not reaching the people who already owned property in those communities, when they talked about vulnerable communities, and their access to funding so that they could develop in those neighborhoods.
They didn’t speak to the homeowners or the people that actually were residents in those communities. And that’s what created the chaos and the trauma for those communities that were displaced. Because during the planning and the engagements where other people were learning about the resources and the tax benefits or rehabilitation process, or getting any kind of partnership with city benefits that allowed for development. They were not there, they were used after the fact. And that was the biggest problem. Because if we’re going to say that we’re building in communities that had experienced blight, why wouldn’t one of the first steps be to eliminate blight through investment in those neighborhoods? And the fact that redlining did exist on the record, and that bias and racism does exist on the record, and that our policy is based on upholding those standards, we have to change the standard, and just properly giving the resources to communities is not enough.
Communities need to be reconstructed and it’s going to be starting with resources and education. Homeowners need to know. I know, businesses that were on Alberta (Street) and homes that were owned by those same business owners. They’re barely housed anymore and their businesses are gone. And I grew up in those neighborhoods, and it’s horrible to see the families dealing with mental health and unhoused issues, and not have a grandma’s house to go to. But because they couldn’t keep up the maintenance and the neighbors, they complained about them, they lost everything they had. There was no resource, except for Realtors saying, “hey, I could buy this house,” “hey, I offered you money.” That’s predatory. And it was allowed, and I believe it was promoted. And, you know, we know what it led to.
Street Roots: And do you have any specific plans around keeping local business owners within their communities, both housed and their businesses successful? Are there any specific steps that you would be willing to take?
Raiford: I just say personally, as someone who used to do business development and worked with a (certified personal accountant) for 15 years, a lot of my advocacy is on that level.
We were already working with lawyers and accountants and different people to help bring the testimony of the issues to the forefront so that we could play those issues out in court. It takes education. It will be easy for us to say, “hey, we’re gonna allow $200,000 or $2 million to go into communities that have been affected by this A,B,C issue,” which we’ve heard for generations — I just turned 50 years old.
But it’s another thing to enable them, again, through the education and the direct resources of the city. And what that looks like is going to have to be a part of restructuring because no parts of it exist in a way that actually promotes true equity.
What I’ve learned over the last couple of years of protesting and demanding and audits is that everything on the record, when it’s promoted to us, looks as if it’s something that could actually benefit us. But when we go in to figure out how to engineer that change it’s almost the immobilized because of the direct policies we have that are in place.
One of the reasons that I thought about running for mayor this time was because there’s a judicial focus, and there is a statewide legislative focus and influence that the mayor should have. And their ability to use that to support the work of people already doing that work and directly dealing with those issues that are affecting the value of our city to people.
That hasn’t been seen. I haven’t seen it happen in 10 years. I’ve not seen a mayor go to the state for anything on our behalf to work with any of us to make change happen, to influence policy in any direction, outside of keeping it in the standard in which it is and it’s exploiting.
One of the reasons a lot of people are saying, “hey, why won’t she list any policy issues?” Because I think a lot of our systems need to be investigated to the point of why it needs to be reconstructed. I think the audits on our unhoused community, the audits on the Gang Task Force, the audits on our education system, the audits on the Housing Bureau and other agencies. This shows that there’s clearly no leadership in the city.
And even when we state policy, it becomes rhetoric, because we have no mobile way to do what we want to do. I can’t say I want to do anything, I can’t. I can’t imagine what we are able to do because we don’t have direct involvement from the community. And without that they can’t change anything, which we’ve seen. It’s like we’ve had a steady hand of just uncooperative leaders, but just because they’re not even willing to engage with one another.
Street Roots: There is a wave of evictions expected as rents and mortgages come due early next year in Multnomah County. How do you intend to respond if you win this race?
Raiford: Well, one of the things that I was trying to tell Ted (Wheeler) was that when they were talking about putting that CARES Act money there to help support businesses and corporations, that if he didn’t think about the families of the people that were working for those businesses and corporations, including the business owners, that we were going to have issues with our housing and the inability for people to be able to get on track. And even the fact that we have a global pandemic — that wasn’t something that the community or those businesses even made happen; that was the global crisis.
He should have been trying to institute ways to, let’s say, if we’re waiving the cost for several months, you figure out a way in January to pay those landlords back so that you don’t create a circumstance where they’re harming the people that live with them.
The chaos that was inflicted on communities to fight for housing, during a global crisis, when resources could have been allocated, to just sustain and to support so that we could deal with the crisis and not fight each other. Never was that opportunity done, and that’s what I’ve been saying during the forums. I was like, “Come on, why don’t you direct some of those resources so that we can have stable housing throughout this process?” Because we don’t know how long the crisis is going to last. And if they’re gonna waive the cost of rent, make sure that in January, you have a resource for them to receive their funding so that they don’t go back to the renters on it, because we’re still going to be in trouble.
And I think that should have come through that emergency funding. And I think the money that we spent on tear gas and emergency surveillance and investigations could have definitely went in to help sustain social services and the needs of people during a global pandemic.
And I know that there’s going to be more resources coming. So I hope that they start thinking about that, because we don’t need to be pitting communities against each other when it’s none of our fault that we’re experiencing this right now.
I was just on a call with the Physicians for Human Rights commission yesterday, and they said that there’s federal mandates that emphasize the fact that cities need to build preparedness, not chaos. Our leadership is not in that focused mind.
Street Roots: You have mentioned "real housing" in the past (as part of your platform). Do you want to elaborate what that is as well?
Raiford: When I grew up in Northeast Portland, a lot of people know, there’s like, three, four, or five bedroom houses. Every house has a basement. We used to share housing. It wasn’t a problem to have three or four Black people living in a house in that neighborhood all up and down the street in all the communities.
And we didn’t trip when other people of color lived in those communities either.
The fact that in my lifetime, I’ve seen the repositioning of our community demographics happen — I remember when we put in the sidewalks for wheelchairs.
We were working on ways to include our entire communities. So how did we get to where we are now, to where we want to accommodate small housing or row houses or whatever, when we know that everybody wants to sit in a backyard.
Especially with COVID, learning so much about space, and how we want to make those spaces accessible to so many people, just for the health aspect and social benefits. Real housing, to me, just means that we participate in providing services to people. You can’t have three or four or five bedrooms and just be a landlord. You should be able to facilitate allowing your family to come and stay with you.
When I was on Section 8, that’s when I had the most domestic violence happening to me, because guess what? It was against the law to have my baby’s dad come stay with me.
So for me to have the benefit of us having an argument and me being able to put him out — that always being something that we have to rely on, it’s violent. And so we need to try to figure out ways to not politicize families and not to separate families when we provide housing.
You can’t keep calling drug crimes felonies and saying that you’re not qualified for housing because of that. You can’t keep saying that when you’re 18 that you have to get off through your parents lease because Section 8 doesn’t allow you to stay there unless you’re still in school.
Housing is an essential need for a lot of people. And so we need to make it accessible for people. And we need to stop keeping them out of it. They want to participate inside.
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