The landscape of Portland is changing before our eyes. New housing and business developments, apartment buildings and condos are popping up across neighborhoods. It’s a brand new era. There’s money to be made, and lots of it.
Saying all of that, we’re proud in Portland for what we have been able to accomplish. Take the urban growth boundary, for example. It’s something to be proud of, right? The idea that we would create an urban area with restrictions on growth to preserve the natural beauty of our state is something that is now looked upon as revolutionary.
What’s unfortunate is that we’ve developed one of the globes most prized urban growth strategies without any sort of equity and poverty lens.
There’s no question that one of the gravest mistakes elected officials and urban planners made is not creating a regulatory standard for building and maintaining affordable housing within that urban growth boundary, especially as it relates to our transportation and new development in the private market.
Sadly, not much seems to have changed. None of the growth strategies that I’ve seen to date seriously attempts to answer the questions of affordable housing. Never mind that we’re already an estimated 40,000 units short regionally and our population could increase by 1 million people by 2030, and up to 2 million people by 2060.
We haven’t even talked about the effects of climate change and how it will affect the region’s growth as it relates to poverty and affordable housing. We should. It will. It is.
It makes me cringe when we as a community put our own needs ahead of what’s best for the region at large. You don’t want density in your neighborhood? Tough. What’s more important — having a particular neighborhood free of affordable, skinny or tiny homes and a variety of housing options, or helping solve a housing crisis?
Some believe there is a way to build more cost effective affordable housing, as highlighted in the mayor’s state of the city address. There’s always room for debate, but that debate shouldn’t come at the cost of people suffering. When it comes to trying to find a solution to the problem of affordable housing, everything should be on the table. We should be supporting all of our options.
What we need to solve the issue is not more process and bureaucracy. What we need are visionary leaders willing to take smart and calculated risks.
Airbnb is one small example. Instead of redirecting money made from Airbnb for real regulations and money toward affordable housing, where there is a clear nexus, we simply said that it can’t be done. That’s not the way the system works. Unfortunately, right now, the system for building the necessary affordable units needed for people experiencing poverty doesn’t work, either. Something has to give.
There is a wealth of opportunity when it comes to creating more equitable housing in our community. We have to find a way to get it done.
