Loss of low-cost housing routing poor from downtown

Affordable housing for Portland’s poorest residents has declined significantly in the city center, even as more high-end housing increased.

According to the Central City Housing Inventory, released in July by the Portland Development Commission, the city center lost more than 22 percent of its lowest income housing options, but gained nearly 12 percent more in the number of units for higher incomes.

The result, according to those in the business of placing people in affordable housing, has been a shift of poverty from the central city area to outer parts of Portland and Multnomah County.

“Here in mid-county and in east county we are seeing an increasing number of people seeking low-cost affordable housing,” says Jean DeMaster, executive director of Human Solutions. “And we believe part of it is the lack of housing in the central city areas and the decrease of housing in the central city area.”

The sources interviewed for this article all point toward a growing trend: the displacement of low-income people, who can no longer find affordable housing in the central city, to other parts of Portland and Multnomah County.

The increase of people looking for housing in eastern parts of Multnomah County has been happening for the last three or four years, DeMaster says, but Human Solutions saw a “marked” increase in the last six months, corresponding with the deepening of the recession.

The inventory, published every three years, monitors whether or not the city is adhering to its “No Net Loss” policy. Passed in 2001, the No Net Loss policy establishes that the same number of rental units available to people earning 60 percent of MFI or below in 2002 would remain the same through preservation or replacement. That number is 8,286.

Extra! Extra!

Journalism is the first rough draft of history, a famous publisher once said. Get a leg up on the future and buy a copy of Street Roots first thing tomorrow. Your friendly neighborhood vendor will thank you! Here’s what’s making history on our pages this week:

Living between two worlds: Mara Grunbaum reports on how African refugees battle cultural isolation as they try to adapt to their new home in Portland.

Feds extend $30 million to staunch Section 8 bleeding: The latest in a string of reports about the fallout from housing assistance cuts in Northwest Oregon and beyond. Joanne Zuhl reports.

Street papers lay foundation for stronger movement: Israel Bayer writes on the 2009 conference of the North American Street Newspaper Association and the leadership role Street Roots has taken in this remarkable movement.

Good money after bad: Seattle puts $8 million behind grassroots initiatives to stop youth violence on the streets. This is one of two stories inside this edition that looks at the state of youths on the streets in America.

Addicts Almanac: Tye Doudy continues his series on life on the streets of Portland, living through addiction and learning to survive.

And check out new columns from Leo Rhodes, our vendor in the Northeast, and the Mental Health Association of Portland. Page after page, this issue is just packed! And still just a buck.

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

Sen. Wyden calls on HUD to prevent Section 8 terminations, homelessness

Sen. Ron Wyden has written a letter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, calling for assistance for the families in Northwest Oregon who are being dropped from rental assistance at the end of the month.

At the end of May, 285 Section 8 recipients in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties received letters from the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, or NOHA, informing them that they will be cut from the program by July 1. NOHA said it did not receive the needed funding to be able to keep them enrolled, and that it had surpassed its HUD-approved limit of 1,077 vouchers and had to trim back.

Wyden’s letter:

 

Advocates across the state are organizing around this event and calling critical attention to the actions of HUD, its funding formula, and local authorities. Their campaign is reaching lawmakers in Salem and Washington D.C. We’ll keep you posted.

For more on this issue, pick up the current edition of Street Roots, or check out “The Letter.”   To add your voice to Wyden’s in calling for a solution, visit our Act Now.

Posted By Joanne Zuhl

The Letter

Jennifer Cherry stands in the doorway of her home, holding the cancellation letter from the housing authority. Photo by Ken Hawkins

It arrived late May to nearly 300 Section 8 recipients in Northwest Oregon, giving them 30 days to avoid becoming homeless

By Joanne Zuhl
Staff Writer

This summer, unlike the past, held promise for Jennifer Cherry.

After two years on a waiting list, Jennifer and her family finally received their Section 8 voucher and in February found a home. For her and her fiancé, Jeff Crist, and their three children, it meant they could move out of her mother’s house, put her children in good schools in Garibaldi, and concentrate on recovering physically and finding jobs. They each suffered disabilities that left them without work — Jennifer has a herniated disc in her neck and Jeff is recovering from a collision with a logging truck two years ago. But he had recently received his certificate as a flagger and was looking to get on a crew this summer. Next month, Jennifer will go in for surgery to correct her neck.

Yes, there was a lot of potential in the air, right up to the moment Jennifer opened the letter from the housing authority at the start of June.

“Our funding has been reduced significantly effective June 1, 2009 through Dec. 31, 2009. Our only option at this time is to terminate rental assistance for a minimum of 230 program participants…. We apologize for the inconvenience this will cause your family…”

The “inconvenience” poses an insurmountable financial barrier to her family. Jennifer and her fiancé’s combined income is $700 a month through disability assistance. Their rent is $984, of which NOHA paid about 90 percent.

“It has taken so long to get where we’re at, and then to just be pushed out,” Jennifer says, in between silence and tears. “It’s taken us two years to get this far, and in one month we’re supposed to be homeless again?”

Homeless by bureaucracy

A Street Roots Editorial

Take a good look at these faces. They reflect the faces of today’s homeless population – right before they become homeless.

They are not the faces of people who are lazy, addicted or chose the streets. They are among the tens of thousands of the people who are working hard, right now, to get a solid footing during the most difficult economic conditions of our lifetimes.

They are not about to become homeless because they failed, but because they system they relied upon, the one they were directed to, failed them.

By July 1, the funding need to keep the family on page 8 in housing, to offset their disabilities while they recover, to keep their children in good schools and a stable environment, will disappear, as it will for 284 other recipients of Section 8 housing assistance in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties. The blame ricochets between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD and the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, which distributes the Section 8 assistance to the poor, disabled and elderly in the three-county region.

But lost in the numbers game both agencies play, are the families that will pay with their lives.

The check is no longer in the mail

Instead, 285 Section 8 recipients in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties got an eye-opening letter from the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, or NOHA.

The letters informed the tenants that as of July 1, they would no longer be receiving rent assistance through Section 8 vouchers, which serve the poor, elderly and disabled. The cuts to tenants come after NOHA was informed it would be receiving more than $600,000 less in needed funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the letter sent out May 26, NOHA Executive Director Carol Snell said they hope to have the funding reinstated at the end of the year, at which time tenants who have been terminated from the program could have their Section 8 restored. But for people on very limited incomes, who relied on the subsidy for a significant portion of their rent, the rest of the year looks bleak.

Street Roots wins honors from Society of Professional Journalists

Street Roots writers Mara Grunbaum, Tye Doudy and Joanne Zuhl  took home honors from the Oregon and Southwest Washington Society of Professional Journalists May 30. The event honors journalistic achievements of 2008.

Mara Grunbaum received the second place award in the News Feature category for “Rest in peace, and dignity,” a report on work to preserve the memory of Hawthorne Asylum patients buried in unmarked graves in Lone Fir Cemetery. The package of stories not only looked at the memory of the Hawthorne Asylum, but also society’s changing view of mental illness.

Tye Doudy was awarded second place for general columns for his highly personal series of columns called “Addicts Almanac.” The seven-part series gave Portlanders an eye-opening tour of their city through the life of a heroin addict.

Joanne Zuhl received third place honors for social issues reporting for her piece “In need of a New Deal,” a report on the obstacles facing affordable housing developers following the economic collapse. The report was part of a Special Edition of Street Roots that navigated the maze of affordable housing.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Street Roots, a nonprofit newspaper, competed in the non-daily category for papers with 8,000 circulation or less.

Street Roots chimes in on baseball in Lents

Street Roots editorial coming out in the May 29 edition.

The city of Portland is pushing the idea of using $42 million – mostly from Portland Urban Renewal funds — to build a minor league baseball stadium in Lents. Bad idea.

The citizens of Portland already are on the hook for $30 million from the last stadium. How can the city justify spending another $42 million on another stadium? We can’t.

The Portland Beavers play 72 home games a year. Each game lasts two to four hours. That’s an average of about 216 hours a year. That equals about one full workweek a month for five months. And most of the jobs at the stadium are low-wage jobs. Hardly an investment in the local community. It’s a slap in the face to average Portlanders to serve a man who doesn’t even live here. Urban renewal investments need a better payoff for Portland than a baseball stadium.

The city of Portland is currently considering relaxing the 30 percent set aside policy for the Lents Urban Renewal District in order to fund the stadium.

Whether or not readers support baseball in Lents, taking the funds slated for housing for families and seniors does not make sense. Considering Portland’s long history of gentrification, this deal would almost certainly drive poor and working folk out of the neighborhood.

The new light rail that will help bolster east Portland will improve Lents and many neighborhoods that traditionally have not been prioritized by Portland’s elite. Lents has the chance to become one of Portland’s coolest neighborhoods – much like the University/Portsmouth, Concordia and Mississippi neighborhoods in North and Northeast. If the Beavers move to Lents, the stadium will actually become a symbol of what is wrong with the neighborhood.

If we are investing public funds in Lents and surrounding neighborhoods, we should be investing in local affordable-housing efforts, small business start ups and improvements. Helping attract a grocery store such as New Seasons, for example, would do more in the short- and long-term for the neighborhood than a baseball stadium.

Street Roots is not against baseball being in our region. Possibly our neighbors in Vancouver or Beaverton would benefit from such a deal. We just can’t see spending $42 million on something that doesn’t pay off and isn’t really wanted by the majority of Portlanders.

Street Roots supports much of the great work that the city of Portland, the Portland Development Commission and other interest groups have done to make Portland a livable city. Saying that, we also know that the same engine that has created a livable city for some has affected poor folks and minorities over the years in a negative way. We can’t let the latter happen again, especially in a time when Portland needs long-term sustainable jobs and innovative ideas to lead us out of the economic downturn we all find ourselves in. Baseball in Lents is not one of them.

Walking on an incline

Hacienda CDC battles for supportive housing in Northeast Portland

By Joanne Zuhl
Staff writer
It is not difficult to spot Hacienda CDC-supported housing. It is by design the most colorful housing in the Cully neighborhood — now 400 units strong — and it is emblematic of the diverse, multicultural population that has resided in this Northeast Portland neighborhood for generations.

Hacienda Community Development Corporation was founded more than 15 years ago by a group of Latino leaders — all volunteers -— who saw a growing need to address the lack of decent and dignified affordable housing for the Latino community in Portland. It began with the fundamental need for housing, but it has evolved to fill the larger infrastructure gaps in education, socialization, child care, workforce development and homeownership. Today, about 1,500 people benefit daily from the network of opportunities afforded through Hacienda’s housing management and culturally specific programs — including after-school homework sessions for youths, anti-gang intervention, adult education and a thriving food service micro-enterprise.

Pietro Ferrari became Hacienda’s executive director five years ago, at a time when funding for new housing developments was still invigorated by the economy. Today, the market has changed dramatically for supporting housing initiatives, and Hacienda is feeling the same economic pressures as other housing nonprofits, the backbone of affordable housing development for the poorest populations in Portland. Ferrari says there simply is no other organization like Hacienda in the Portland Metropolitan Area, and the financial crisis, coupled with the bureaucratic dam on stimulus funding, is jeopardizing the organization’s survival. In the face of these challenges, Hacienda continues its focus at the grassroots level, helping families at risk of homelessness stabilize their housing, direct energy toward education and economic advancement, and facilitate their move upward.

Hacienda has joined forces with other minority-focused nonprofits to leverage their voices and raise their concerns to bureaucracies in Portland and beyond. Hacienda, along with Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives, and NAYA Native American Youth and Family Center, recently formed the Housing Organizations of Color Coalition, and together they hope to draw attention to the specific needs of Portland’s most vulnerable minority communities.

Act Now! Important housing measures hang in the balance in State Legislature

Several measures before Oregon lawmakers have the potential to fortify the state’s housing stock and preserve units for lower income, elderly and disabled Oregonians. Keep your eyes peeled on the following:

SB 5535 – Issue lottery-backed bonds to fund housing programs that preserve existing subsidized rental housing and manufactured home parks. $19.4 million in lottery-backed bonds is needed in 2009-2011 to keep vulnerable Oregonians in their homes.

SB 199 – Increase the cap on the Oregon Affordable Housing Tax Credit. This is unique tax credit leverages private dollars to fund affordable housing development and acquisition, including manufactured home parks. This will have little to no fiscal impact in 2009-2011, but will allow planning for future development.

How will these resources be used?

Oregon laws spells out how these resources will be used: to meet housing needs of low and very low-income Oregonians in both rural and urban areas. Oregon Housing and Community Services has effective programs in place that maximize the impact of state dollars and support community efforts to meet priority housing needs.

Shortages of affordable housing and homelessness affect all areas of Oregon. These resources will fund locally based strategies for housing Oregonians.

What you can do:

Call your local state Representatives and Senators asking to support Senate Bill 5535 and 199 to help secure affordable housing for all Oregonians. Also ask your representatives to support allocating general fund dollars to meet the affordable housing needs of Oregonians.

Write a letter to your local state representative or call the legislative line Monday-Friday 9AM-5PM at 1-503-986-1000 and ask for your local legislative office.

Extra! Extra!

In like a lion, as they say – March as definitely arrived! Why not celebrate this weekend with the latest edition of Street Roots, hot off the press and in your neighborhood vendor’s hands on Friday morning. Here’s what you will be enjoying soon:

Are we stimulated yet? What will Portland really reap from the economic stimulus plan? That’s the question that a lot of people are still trying to answer, but there’s a lot more hope in the air, even if we haven’t yet seen the change. Joanne Zuhl and Rebecca Robinson report.

Mental health funds left behind in the recovery: Mara Grunbaum looks at the tempest brewing over proposed cuts to mental health funding, while local business and police seek a controversial tool to get people off the streets and committed for treatment.

Detroit’s fall lingers in its harsh winter: Writer Cassandra Koslen returned to her hometown of Detroit to find it dying under the weight of it’s own past.

Banding together: A profile of a few of the colorful buskers earning a buck with their music on Portland’s streets.

And you’ll get to know Nathan Junkin – your vendor at Third and Alder. Plus a whole lot more, overflowing from the pages of the new edition of Street Roots.

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

Low income housing funds in recovery bill in jeopardy

Senate “moderates” of both parties have agreed on a list of cuts in the economic recovery bill. Reports from the Hill are that low income housing funds previously in the bill could be cut. Low income housing funds under threat are:
$5 billion for public housing modernization
$3.5 billion for HUD project-based assisted housing
$2 billion in Low Income Housing Tax Credit gap financing
$250 million for HOME

Very deep cuts in funding for other programs that would benefit people with low incomes are also projected to be on the chopping block. Call your senators to tell them that these funds must not be cut.

Posted by Israel Bayer

Act Now! Put your voice behind sustainable affordable housing funds

A document recording fee for affordable housing is currently making it’s way through the Oregon legislative process. The new law would raise the nominal fee for recording documents in deed and mortgage records of county to generate funds affordable housing. This would be a breakthrough for local communities, including Portland, to have a much needed, dedicated revenue stream for housing low-income individuals and families, at a time when other funds are disappearing, and affordable housing is increasingly needed.

Now it’s time to pick up the phone and remind your representatives in Salem that we want them to support HB 2436. Here’s who you should call or write:

Transportation and Economic Development Subcommittee
Sen. Betsy Johnson, Vice-Chair, District 16
Contact: 503-986-1716 sen.betsyjohnson@state.or.us
Rep. David Edwards, Co-Chair, District 30
Contact: 503-986-1430 rep.davidedwards@state.or.us
Sen. Rod Monroe, District 24
Contact: 503-986-1724 sen.rodmonroe@state.or.us
Sen. Bruce Starr, District 15
Contact: 503-986-1715 sen.brucestarr@state.or.us
Rep. E. Terry Beyer, District 12
Contact: 503-986-1412 or 541-726-2533 rep.terrybeyer@state.or.us
Rep. George Gilman, District 55
Contact: 503-986-1455 rep.georgegilman@state.or.us
Rep. John E Huffman, District 59
Contact: 503-986-1459 rep.johnhuffman@state.or.us
Rep. Mike Schaufler, District 58
Contact: 503-986-1448 rep.mikeschaufler@state.or.us
Rep. Brad Witt, District 31
Contact: 503-986-1431 rep.bradwitt@state.or.us

Senate Finance and Revenue Committee
Sen. Ginny Burdick, Chair, District 18
Contact: 503-986-1718 sen.ginnyburdick@state.or.us
Sen. Frank Morse, Vice-Chair, District 8
Contact: 503-986-1708 sen.frankmorse@state.or.us
Sen. Mark Hass, District 14
Contact: 503-986-1714 or 503-641-2742 sen.markhass@state.or.us
Sen. Diane Rosenbaum, District 21
Contact: 503-986-1721 or 503-231-9970 sen.dianerosenbaum@state.or.us
Sen. Chris Telfer, District 27
Contact: 503-986-1727 sen.christelfer@state.or.us

Financial crisis ripples through affordable housing corporations in Portland

From the Dec. 12 special affordable housing edition, “In need of a new deal.”

In 1986, while the Reagan administration was busy slashing and burning its federal housing resources, Congress created the affordable-housing tax credit program. The program shifted funding for the nation’s housing needs to the balance sheets of bankers and corporations who offset profits with tax credits. In the process, it turned the Internal Revenue Service – not the Department of Housing of Urban Development, or the homeless assistance programs under the McKinney-Vento Act – into the single largest affordable-housing generator in the federal government.

For many in the business, it worked well: banks and corporations invested in affordable housing by buying the credits, which, for the investors, cut their tax obligation. But it only worked as long as the investors had profits that needed offsetting, which they did in spades during the ’80s, ’90s – right up until 2008.
What a difference a financial meltdown makes.

The profits are gone. The tax credit market is in the toilet. And as the pink slips and foreclosures pile up, the number of people who need affordable housing is one of the few rising economic indicators you can bank on. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, once 40 percent to 50 percent of the tax credit market, have all but dropped out of the game.

“Homeless Giant” by Eric Drooker. His graphics have appeared on countless posters, books and CD covers and his paintings are often seen on covers of the New Yorker Magazine. He makes his work available to social-justice nonprofit organizations at no cost.

When is new housing not new? When it’s reprogrammed

From the Dec. 12 special affordable housing edition, “In need of a new deal.”

Portland’s efforts to build a net gain of affordable housing for its lowest income residents have failed more than the city bureau charged with creating that housing would like you to know.

In 1978, 5,183 units in Portland’s downtown core were affordable to people living at 0 to 30 percent of median family income (MFI), considered low-income. In 1984, the city’s Central City Plan mandated that at least that number would always be affordable downtown.

In an effort to get back to that number, the Portland City Council approved a No Net Loss Policy in 2001 calling for rehabilitating, preserving, and creating affordable housing in the central city through regulation and additional financial resources.

Since 1994, the non-profit Northwest Pilot Project, which serves the elderly homeless and low-income, has inventoried downtown affordable housing. The last inventory was published in 2007, and counted 3,330 affordable units in the downtown area, well below the 5,183 units the City has committed to retain.