An urgent need for supportive housing voiced in the Legislature, but lawmakers continue broad focus on housing supply
Jean Hendron had a lot to say about a bill to allow commercial spaces to be used as residential housing, but she chose not to use words.
Instead, without comment, she sent the Senate Committee on Housing and Development a series of photos of people living on the street — a reminder that people already live in commercial spaces.
They're just not allowed to go inside.
"Those photos were taken in downtown Portland, showing the absolute bare-bones existence these people are forced to endure after the sweeps," Hendron told Street Roots. "They lose almost everything because they have nothing to carry away their belongings in and nowhere to put them."
Hendron isn't a "service provider." She doesn't work for a nonprofit organization. She is a Salem resident who saw people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in her community and decided she couldn't stand idly by.
She does what she can for people. That includes frequently testifying before the Legislature.
Hendron is a bit disappointed in House Bill 2984. The bill allows the conversion of commercial space to residential housing, but it doesn't specifically require the housing to be affordable or help people off the street.
"I haven't been too worried that luxury apartments will be built in commercial zones because wealthier people would not choose to live there," she said. "I could be wrong. The thing that disgusts me the most is that they don't build the right kind of buildings. Ordinary apartments are not appropriate for the mentally ill."
Hendron said she works with a couple with mental illness who continually breaks their washer, dryer and garbage disposal.
"If they didn't have such a nice landlord, they'd have been evicted long ago," she said. "If our leaders still can't figure out that the people on the streets are mostly disabled and needing supportive housing, it will only push average, low-income people into more and more polluted and undesirable areas.”
Supportive housing for people with mental illness may not be a major priority for legislators this session.
A matter of priorities
There are the haves. There are the have-nots.
Oregon legislators and their staff members often, if privately, add a subgroup to the have-nots. Some call it the "but fors." Several sources inside the Capitol tell Street Roots (anonymously) the group wields significant political power this legislative session.
These are the people who would live mainstream lives with mainstream jobs and housing "but for" the vicissitudes of the economy, natural disasters and medical conditions (unrelated to mental health).
They can be saved. Or so the political thinking goes.
If enough housing is built and enough resources made available to help them overcome their circumstances, they can resume their derailed lives and reduce the ranks of the unsheltered.
Legislators say (again, privately) they are less interested in helping people who "want" to be homeless and insist on living conspicuously on the streets and upsetting registered voters with permanent addresses.
Hendron said those unsheltered people are often labeled "service-resistant" and shuffled off the bottom of everyone's priority list.
The Oregon Right to Rest Act (House Bill 3501) died in committee this year for the fourth legislative session in a row. The bill would have allowed people experiencing homelessness to remain on public property without being harassed.
Hospital bill DOA
The same fate befell Senate Bill 1076, which would have required hospitals to find resources for patients experiencing unsheltered homelessness after they are released from care.
The bill made it as far as a scheduled work session before the Senate Committee on Health Care on April 3 before committee Chair Deb Patterson, D-Salem, pulled the plug.
Patterson co-sponsored the bill with state Sen. Kayse Jama, D-Portland, and state Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth. She withdrew her support and declined to hold the April 3 work session because she said the bill was no longer necessary.
Oregon Hospital Association officials and others in the medical community are willing to work in "good faith" with service providers, Patterson said. She added the response of hospitals to their homeless patients will also be addressed in a different bill — Senate Bill 1079.
The bill would require the Oregon Health Authority to study hospital licensing requirements and submit a report to interim legislative committees no later than Sept. 15, 2024.
Patterson said a task force on hospital procedures in regard to unsheltered patients could potentially result from that study. In the meantime, she said, she plans to organize discussion groups on the subject in her Salem district.
"Without legislation, we can simply sit around a table and talk," she said.
Commercial to residential
Increasing Oregon's housing inventory over the next several years remains the biggest priority in Salem. Gov. Tina Kotek signed House Bill 200 on March 29, providing more than $200 million to confront homelessness.
Much of the money goes toward the governor's goal of creating 36,000 new housing units — particularly affordable housing for people earning wages below their communities' median incomes — over the next decade.
State Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, said part of that strategy includes converting commercial space into residential housing. She is the chief sponsor of House Bill 2984.
Marsh's bill would require local governments to allow the conversion of buildings with their urban growth boundaries from commercial to residential without requiring a zone change. It would also regulate how cities can collect certain system development charges and impose minimum parking requirements.
The bill is similar to Senate Bill 8, passed during the 2021 session and signed into law by then-Gov. Kate Brown on June 23 that year. Senate Bill 8 requires local governments to allow the development of certain affordable housing on lands not zoned for residential uses.
A key difference between Marsh's bill and the 2021 bill is that there is no mention that the housing needs to be "affordable."
The bill was passed by the House on March 28 by a vote of 35-20. It then went to the Senate Committee on Housing and Development, where it was approved 4-1 on May 10. It now goes to a vote before the full Senate.
The GOP goes AWOL
The vote on House Bill 2984 could take longer than originally expected.
Republicans walked out of the Capitol on May 5 to deny the Democratic majority a quorum and delay votes on bills addressing gun control, gender-affirming care and reproductive rights. As of May 15, they remained committed to their strategy.
However, they may be back by press time.
Ballot Measure 113, passed by 68% of voters last year, prevents any legislators with 10 or more unexcused absences in a session from running for reelection. Many Republicans insist people know their whereabouts so their absences are not unexcused. That tack may not work for them.
‘Somebody is going to have to pay’
When they do come back, they will likely take issue with Marsh's bills because of its provisions on system development charges, or SDC. City officials don't like the state curtailing their ability to collect charges intended to pay for infrastructure improvements.
Converting commercial space to residential housing puts additional demands on water and wastewater infrastructure, said Mark Landauer, the government affairs director for the Special District Association of Oregon, during a hearing before the House Committee On Housing and Homelessness on March 2.
"Somebody is going to have to pay for it," he said. "There's no free lunch. Infrastructure costs money, and somebody is going to have to pay for it."
Breaks on system development charges encourage development, said Ziad Elsahili, president of Fortified Holdings. His company converts commercial spaces to residential housing.
"It is definitely not cheap in today's work with rising cost of construction in general," Elsahili told committee members at the March 2 hearing. "Waving SDC charges is also a nice incentive to help offset some of those costs. I think the ultimate devil will be in the details on these deals in terms of each building is going to have its own set of either complications or costs.
"This bill has the potential to make a real difference in the lives of countless Oregonians who are currently struggling to find housing.”
Diane Linn, executive director of Proud Ground, a Portland nonprofit that helps people buy homes, echoed his sentiments.
‘A crying shame’
"We need more units of all kinds," Linn said. "The historic lack of inventory in communities across Oregon is really driving prices up and causing people not to be able to afford to live in the communities where they want to raise their children and grow old in."
Nonetheless, Linn voiced concern that the bill doesn't specifically encourage affordable housing.
"It would be a crying shame for this bill to pass and have it only be high-end, market-rate units," she told committee members.
The market already supports market-rate homes, she added.
"I would just hate to see us lose the opportunity to improve the bill to create better incentives because the renovation process is challenging, it is difficult, and it is costly," Linn said. "We understand that, but let's get more creative about trying to achieve the affordability if at all possible."
Marsh said it's important to increase Oregon's housing inventory across the board.
"With a deficit of 140,000 housing units, we still need to double down on housing on the ground," she told members of the Senate Committee on Housing and Development during an April 12 public hearing. "Our current production of approximately 18,000 homes per year falls well short of what the state needs to begin to ameliorate the housing gap and ensure that every resident has a place to call home.
"We need to think differently (about) how we use existing structures to quickly produce housing for people who live and work in our communities.”
A side benefit of the bill, said Nicole Possert, Restore Oregon executive director, is residential development will preserve historic buildings that would otherwise fall into disuse.
"By helping our fellow citizens preserve our state's unique built, natural and cultural environments, we help celebrate and promote much of what makes Oregon special," she said.
Snowball effect
Michael Andersen, a senior housing researcher for think tank Sightline Institute, also said there is an overall benefit to people living in previous commercial spaces.
"When people spend time in walkable downtowns and commercial hubs, the environmental benefits are huge and calculable," Andersen said. "They are also gravitational. Like a new star or snowball, commercial hubs accumulate more and more economic benefits."
Andersen said he didn't anticipate a massive rush by developers to convert commercial buildings.
"There are so many barriers to these retrofits," he said. "Best case scenario, this bill may unlock a small trickle of private capital. Commercial districts need every trickle.
"The simpler we can make this bill, the more likely all Oregonians are likely to benefit from it through reinvestment in existing commercial areas without major new infrastructure needs. The most cost-efficient infrastructure is the infrastructure that is already built."
Hendron said such efforts may help in the long run. In the meantime, as legislators bandy about system development charges, she said people continue to fight for their lives.
She told Street Roots she spent May 10 on the phone with Adult Protective Services.
"They can't even go out and check on a mentally and physically disabled woman who appears to be being victimized by meth dealers," she said. "So there goes her housing."
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2023 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404
