Priorities
Protecting Tenants & Creating Long-Term Housing
Portland is composed of a majority of renters, and the housing crisis is forcing so many of the workers that our city relies on to live elsewhere. It’s already taking a toll on our culture and economy, and left unaddressed, Portland will find itself without the working class that has defined us for so long. There are three clear steps that need to be taken:
First, the city needs to ensure current and future tenants are able to stay housed by proactively enforcing rent control and all of its tenant protections. The burden to report violations of city law should not fall on the tenant, especially when doing so may jeopardize their housing. Likewise, the city must come down hard on landlords who violate the rights of tenants, especially repeat offenders. As your City Councilor, I plan to make sure that the Housing Safety Office is adequately funded, staffed, and equipped to proactively alert landlords and tenants if their units are out of compliance, and equipped to help both parties get into compliance. I will also hold their feet to the fire to ensure tenants are no longer taken advantage of
Second, we must crack down on short-term rentals. Hundreds of units of long-term housing are lost to the short term profits of landlords looking to make a quick buck with AirBnb’s at the expense of the tenants and our communities, which are slowly being hollowed out. Cities across the country have turned the tide on this by getting rid of non-owner occupied STR’s and by forcing multinational corporations like Airbnb to enforce the rules or face steep penalties. There is no reason Portland can’t do the same. District 2 has overwhelmingly voted to curb short-term-rentals and I’ll bring your voice to the table.
Third, we need to drastically increase the supply of new affordable housing. We can’t simply pay private developers to build luxury housing and hope that that housing trickles down to the working class in a decade– we need to craft policies that allow affordable social housing to be built, even if it doesn’t guarantee the high profit margin that private developers expect. There are a number of ways to do this that have been successful in other areas. One of the more exciting solutions, which I will push for, is creating a public developer position which leverages city land to build truly affordable housing.
Creating safe, environmentally conscious transit
Portland is a beautiful city, but our lack of dependable public transit and pedestrian infrastructure, makes owning a car a near necessity for too many. That means our iconic neighborhoods are clogged with traffic, parking garages, and, worst of all, pollution that makes our air worse and worse to breathe (not to mention climate change that will soon wipe out our working waterfront).
This is not an intractable problem, nor is it complicated, it just takes work and focus. We need more bus routes that run more frequently. We need better sidewalks, and fewer parking lots. Let’s invest in car share programs for those that must have a car. Let’s create bike lanes that are smartly designed and actually protect bikers. We could even get serious about light rail to move people on and off the peninsula. In short, we simply have to do what cities all across the world are doing to make their cities more walkable, clean, and family friendly.