In 2022, Portland residents voted to drastically change the city’s form of government. That includes using ranked-choice voting to expand the city council from five seats to 12.
Another change is the creation of four geographic districts, with voters in each district electing three candidates to represent them on the new council.
“Think Out Loud” is hosting a series of events throughout Portland to help voters meet the district candidates. They were invited based on the number of individual donors who contributed to their campaigns.
On Oct. 9, we held a District 3 candidates forum at Gigantic Brewing Hawthorne Pub. We partnered with the Urban League of Portland for the event which they livestreamed on Facebook.
District 3 covers most of Southeast Portland, west of I-205. It includes the neighborhoods of Mt. Tabor, Sunnyside, Montavilla and Woodstock. It also includes some neighborhoods in Northeast which cross Sandy Boulevard such as Rose City Park and Roseway.
The D3 candidates we spoke to include: Rex Burkholder, Jesse Cornett, Daniel DeMelo, Chris Flanary, Theo Hathaway Saner, Harrison Kass, Tiffany Koyama Lane, Angelita Morillo, Steve Novick, Jon Walker and Luke Zak.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We hosted a candidate forum for District 3 for the Portland City Council last week, in partnership with the Urban League of Portland. As a reminder, voters in each of four new districts will send three people to the soon-to-be enlarged council. To give voters more information about their packed ballots, we invited 11 candidates to join us at the Gigantic Brewing Hawthorne Pub last week. Invitations were based on the number of individual donors who contributed to their campaigns. These events are a combination of brief sit-down interviews and lightning rounds.
Angelita Morillo went first. She is a policy advocate and legislative strategist at Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon. I asked her a question that had come from the Urban League of Portland: The number of households experiencing homelessness in Portland has increased significantly since the pandemic, but Black residents in particular are roughly 400% overrepresented in our homeless population. So what is your plan to increase access to culturally-specific resources and housing for Black Portlanders?
Angelita Morillo: Yeah, I think the first issue that we’re seeing for Black Portlanders in affordable housing is that the affordable housing that the city currently has is not affordable to many Black residents that are living on the median income for that demographic. So, for a family of four, $90,000 is actually highly unrealistic. The average Black family is making around $32,000 a year – if I’m remembering that number correctly – and that is not going to be affordable housing for anyone who’s making that much.
So I think we need to adjust what we consider affordable housing to actually reflect what people are making in the city of Portland. And we need to ensure that the city is also hiring workers that have lived experience, that know the issues directly, that know the communities that they’re serving, so that the outreach that is done is gonna be culturally-specific. Because it’s very different when you’re talking to someone that doesn’t share your experiences and your struggles, versus someone that does.
Miller: Aside from homelessness, what do you see as a top issue facing the city? And why are you the person to address it? One of 12 people to address it?
Morillo: I think a top issue that’s facing the city is transportation infrastructure. I think that we are seeing, with Hurricane Helene and all of the different climate crises that we are facing right now, that we need to move towards clean energy infrastructure. And to me, that means moving away from car infrastructure into more bike and pedestrian-friendly alternatives. This crowd seems happy about that [in reference to audience cheering]. That’s good.
I think that I’m someone who has been a bus rider my whole life. My mom actually didn’t know how to drive; she only knew how to ride a bike. So for me, it’s a need, it’s not something that’s like a fun wonky thing. It’s part of my daily life to rely on bus and bike infrastructure. And I wanna make sure that that’s accessible to people as we move into a new climate future.
Miller: Here’s a question from a member of the audience here: “Please describe what you understand to be the role of a city councilperson under the new form of government. What are your qualifications for that role?”
Morillo: The role of a new city councilperson is going to be to be a legislator, first and foremost. So it’s going to mirror what you see at the state legislature. We’re gonna be crafting policies that are informed by community experience and then turning that into policy. Usually, you take that to a budget office and they help you figure out the right amount of money for that. And I think that I am highly qualified for that because I am a policy advocate and legislative strategist. In my job, I work with community to craft policy; I take their feedback; I work with agencies to ensure it’s in compliance; and then we push that through the state legislature and secure funding for it. I’m also a lobbyist for our organization, so I know what it means to push people to get policies in the right direction to serve community, and I’m ready to do that on city council.
Miller: This whole new system of government – both the enlarged district form of city council, and the mayor, and manager – how will you assess if it’s actually working?
Morillo: That’s a big question. To me, the true measure of success is where the people who are the most impacted by the issues are landing on things. And I have not shied away from the fact that I’m really here to represent the most vulnerable people in our city. I’m one of four council members that was unhoused for about a year when I was in college. And I think that when we see that those people are actually being taken care of in a way that’s ethical, that brings in their input, that’s going to be success.
Miller: You have about 30 seconds left – not time for a question, but more to tell us, to tell listeners and folks here about yourself.
Morillo: About myself?
Miller: Yeah. What else do you want voters to know?
Morillo: I’m a first generation Paraguayan immigrant. I graduated from Portland State University, and I really believe that there is a way for everyone in our city to win. I think we’ve been told a myth of scarcity and that we have to pit working class people against unhoused people. And I’m really here to say that that’s not true and that we can fight for a Portland where everyone succeeds and everyone thrives.
Miller: Angelita Morillo, thanks very much.
Harrison Kass is with us now, a policy advisor for Portland Commissioner Rene Gonzalez. Welcome.
Harrison Kass: Thanks for having me.
Miller: What is your plan to increase access to culturally-specific resources and housing for Black Portlanders?
Kass: I don’t see housing as a culturally-specific issue. I’m just trying to include everybody, you know. Like, for example, my family needed affordable housing at a certain time in our lives. We would not have benefited from culturally-specific housing. So I don’t see it as a racial issue, I see it as an economic issue. And to that point, I would like to increase housing through incentivizing developers to build here. I would like to stabilize the public safety system to attract outside investment. Right now, people aren’t really interested in investing, but we need more housing and we need it urgently.
Miller: Aside from housing, what do you see as the most urgent issue that the city is facing? And why are you one of the people who should be in the council to address it?
Kass: The most urgent issue? You got two things, and they combine with one another more than people want to acknowledge: it’s homelessness and public safety. With respect to homelessness, we need to enforce the unsheltered camping ban and provide housing for everyone on the streets of Portland. Simultaneously, we need to strengthen our public safety infrastructure – so police, fire, 911 call-takers. Right now, the emergency response time is four times the national standard. That’s a life or death situation, it’s not acceptable.
We have maybe half of the police officers we need. We are going to move incrementally towards getting over 1,000 officers. We are under 800 right now. We should be closer to 2000. And these are objective measures that we need, and we see the negative ramifications on the street. Did you ask me why I’m qualified to do that, to address that?
Miller: Yeah.
Kass: I’ve been working in public safety for a few years. Policy advisor to Rene Gonzalez; before that, public safety advisor to Mayor Wheeler. I’ve come from a criminal defense background, so I’m not a law-and-order zealot. I’m very much in favor of constitutional protections, innocent until proven guilty – all of that. But I see the need on the street now reflecting a need for an enhanced public safety. And I’ve got several years of experience.
Miller: What do you think of the current relationship between the city and the county in their partnership to address homelessness?
Kass: I think, from my seat in Rene Gonzalez’s office, I’ve seen that we’ve been successful in forcing the county to be more assertive. They need to deliver more on the money that we’re giving them. So, from our perspective, we need to be assertive. We need to build in metrics and conditions to contracts. We have a 90 day look-back period coming up here in a few days. Situations like that moving forward can help us get more from that relationship.
Miller: This is another question from our audience: “Why should we have faith in candidates who participate in quid pro quo matching fund donations?”
Kass: Why are you asking me?
Miller: The bowl gave it to me.
Kass: I think the quid pro matching donations was a non-story, frankly. I think it speaks to willingness to collaborate between candidates. I think most of those donations were made in good faith. I made and accepted donations to other candidates that were based on shared values, and I stand by those and support those 100%.
Miller: You have about 30 seconds left to tell voters more about yourself and why they should put you in city council.
Kass: More about myself – I’m a hair metal fanatic. And I spent a lot of time at Movie Madness three blocks that way. So, I don’t know if that qualifies me, but I’ll let you know that.
Miller: Harrison Kass, thanks very much.
Kass: Thanks for having me.
Miller: All right. Daniel DeMelo, welcome.
Daniel DeMelo: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Daniel DeMelo is a software engineering manager. Same first question to you: what would you do in terms of resources, specifically for addressing housing and homelessness for Black Portlanders?
DeMelo: Yeah. One of the contentions I’ve had in my years of experience working as the chair of the Joint Office of Homeless Services’ Community Budget Advisory Committee is that when the Joint Office gives us metrics about their achievement of equity goals, they give us those metrics as just simple “yes” or “nos,” instead of variable numbers over time, right? And so it’s masking this potential issue where even though we still might be sheltering Black homeless Portlanders at a rate higher than the white population, we might see a year-over-year decline even though that’s still above that threshold. I’d like to see a commitment to releasing more data around that so we can make sure that the programs we’re investing in are achieving those outcomes.
I can’t say specifically which kind of programs are gonna be more successful. If culturally-responsive programs are more successful at sheltering Black Portlanders, then we should support those, and I think the data will demonstrate that. Overall, I’m really committed to making sure that the programs and the policies that I support are demonstrated with good results. And I think any policy that we bring forward, we should be able to say, OK, if we’re going to hand more money to culturally-specific organizations, we should be able to expect an outcome that increases the amount of Black Portlanders that we’re sheltering in these shelters.
Miller: Besides housing and homelessness, what do you see as a top issue the city is facing and why are you one of the people who should be put forward to help?
DeMelo: I think there’s a big issue with public safety right now. I hear that day in and day out on the campaign trail, biking around – I put 500 miles on my bike over the course of this campaign. I have had to call 911 at least once every two months. And when you call 911, they put you on hold. And right now, very few of our 911 calls get through within that national standard – I believe 15 seconds – less than 37% of our calls get through that national standard or that threshold for good practices. I’d like to get that 911 call time down.
But I think across the board, across all of these issues, we’re really facing a lack of confidence in government, and a true lack of accountability and transparency. I think too often government has come out and said we’re going to do X, Y, or Z and never actually demonstrate results. We said we’re gonna get to a 25% bike commute share by 2030. I’m not a betting man, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. We didn’t approach it with the urgency we needed. Climate emissions are up since 2020 per capita. We have seen twice as many people die on our streets from traffic violence ever since we committed to ending traffic violence. I think we’re spending far too much time planning and not throwing out hypotheses around what programs will work and the results we expect from the programs we implement.
Miller: But what’s the solution to the gigantic problems you just outlined? You have about a minute left.
DeMelo: I think when it comes to homelessness, there’s a lot of complexity. There’s drug addiction, there’s mental health care, there’s housing costs – and I will get into the weeds on housing costs, please give me a call. But the unsheltered part is a lot simpler. Sheltering is four walls and a roof, and someone, when we bring them into shelter, the mortality rate drops 80%. They’re much less likely to be involved in a fire, or a homicide, or as a traffic death. And so I’d like to see us commit to building enough shelter to shelter every single person, and not just saying, “OK, we’re going to build 3,000 shelter beds,” but also given yearly and quarterly goals that we can assess whether we’re building that shelter fast enough and getting people off of our streets.
Miller: Daniel DeMelo, thanks very much.
DeMelo: Thank you for having me.
Miller: Tiffany Koyama Lane is a third-grade teacher at Sunnyside Environmental School and a labor organizer. Welcome.
Tiffany Koyama Lane: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks to Gigantic Brewery!
Miller: What would you do, specifically, in terms of culturally-specific services, and housing support, and homelessness prevention for Black Portlanders?
Koyama Lane: First, I wanna say clearly that it’s empirically true that racism drew the lines of our city; redlining is very real, I think it’s important to acknowledge. People of Color are more likely to lose housing and to experience homelessness. So I wanna name that first.
Something that is very important to me … I am a community organizer, so I do look at everything through an organizing lens. And I spent a couple of years, leading up to the teacher strike that happened a year ago, serving as my union’s lead external organizer. So I did a lot of work meeting with different caregivers, PTAs, community organizations to get feedback about what they loved about their schools and what they wanted to see differently. For certain communities, really had to make sure that we found out the best ways to get feedback.
So there’s a middle school in Northeast Portland, and we were having a hard time hearing from those family members. And so we found a couple parents that were the ones that were kind of the center of the community there and asked them, “Hey, how can we get turnout to hear from the caregivers at your school?” And they were really clear; they said, “You need to have a meeting after 7:30 p.m., and you need to have child care, and you need to have dinner, and you need to have it in our school’s cafeteria.” And we actually had a great turnout, and families really shared what they cared about.
I will make sure that the people that are closest to the pain are part of the solution and are at the table. And it’s important to me. I teach this to my third graders – we always ask, “What are you noticing? What are you wondering? Who’s missing from this conversation?” And making sure that there are Black Portlanders that are brought to the table when we’re having these discussions.
Miller: That’s housing and homelessness …
Koyama Lane: I mean, it’s kind of everything.
Miller: What do you see as the other huge issues the city’s facing? Pick one and why you’re the right person to address it.
Koyama Lane: A huge issue that was just touched on is traffic violence. We’re just a few blocks from where Jeanie Diaz was killed just sitting at the bus stop. A lot of people talked about it as a tragedy; it was. It also was a policy failure. We need to make sure that our roads are being designed for safety over speed, and that needs to be a priority. My whole family walks, bikes, rolls to work and school. I ride my razor scooter with my gold helmet right down these streets every day to Sunnyside. And Jeanie Diaz’s story and her family’s story is not the only one. This is something that we’re hearing more and more about in our city, and it’s something that needs to be addressed.
Miller: This question from the bowl is actually relatively tied to it. This came from somebody in the audience – Portland streets, including arterials, are in terrible condition. Why, and what will you do to address this?
Koyama Lane: Yeah, this is something that I’m learning a lot more over the last year-and-a-half. Having a lot of conversations, I know that we need to look at our tax structure. I know that something like the gas tax is not cutting it anymore. And so I’ve been talking to my House State Representative, Rob Nosse … this is definitely on his radar. I am one of three candidates that he’s endorsed in this district, and he keeps telling me to get into City Hall because everyone’s calling him about city issues, and to make sure that there’s someone that can be talking about city stuff.
So I oftentimes see this false binary of we have to choose between fixing our roads and supporting people that are biking to work. I reject that, I think both are important. I understand why people feel like they’re paying a lot of taxes, and they’re still seeing the same pothole. I know there’s a long list that needs to be looked at, that PBOT [Portland Bureau of Transportation] is working hard on, and I know we need to look at where the bottlenecks are and make sure that we are making these improvements to our streets.
Miller: Tiffany Koyama Lane, thanks very much.
Koyama Lane: Yeah, thank you.
Miller: Steve Novick is a lawyer and former Portland city councilor. It’s good to see you.
Steve Novick: Good to see you.
Miller: Same first question to you: What would you push for in terms of culturally-specific policies for housing and homelessness, specifically for Black Portlanders?
Novick: Well, two things. In terms of homelessness, I’ve heard homeless people talk about the failure of our outreach systems, that you need to see the same people showing up at the same place, talking to the same people in the homeless community, week after week. And I think that probably that’s something we need to talk to the county about, because they have most of the resources to reduce homelessness. But I think that, in the context of making sure that we have the same people go to the same places and talk to the same people, week after week, we also need people who have some culturally-specific training and understanding who are going out to the places where there are higher concentrations of people who are African American, or Latino, or one race or another. So that’s one thing.
In terms of preventing homelessness, I think that we need to work with organizations like Habitat for Humanity, that are doing their best to address the homeownership gap. And one thing that the city can do to help all the nonprofits that are building affordable housing is to try to reduce the number of different requirements that are put on getting city money. And also work with the state, and Metro, and the feds, to work together to reduce the number of different requirements that we pile on them, that requires them to have all sorts of legal fees, and to align them so they’re not having to meet 65 different requirements.
Miller: What else do you see as an urgent issue that you are super qualified to address?
Novick: Well, the most urgent issue of our time or any time is climate change. And another urgent issue, as a couple of other folks have said, is improving our transportation system. And I have spent the past few years following what’s going on with the Portland Clean Energy Fund, which is a wonderful tool. I think that since transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions, and since transportation is also a huge expense for low income people, the Clean Energy Fund should be investing most of its money in transportation. It should be investing in bike infrastructure, pedestrian infrastructure and transit. One particular project they should be investing in is bus rapid transit on 82nd Avenue. There’s an application in for that now. I encourage you to call on the council and the committee to get them to approve that.
So that’s something where, in order to save the planet, we need to have more people biking, walking and taking transit. And also it makes the city a greater city. And it makes it a lot easier to deal with for low income people. In New York City, housing costs are high but low income people spend a lot less on transportation than they do here because public transportation is an option. And if I don’t get a chance to say it again, my old friend Charlie Hales used to say that his goal was to make Portland the best European city in America. I think that’s a great goal and I think that the Clean Energy Fund can help us get there.
Miller: Our listener Greg asked, “What’s your vision for an integrated mental health, health care and housing program for the unsheltered?”
Novick: I don’t know that I have a brilliant answer to that. I mean, we have an underfunded mental health system. We’ve got some shelter situations where we have a lot of resources, others where we don’t. One thing that I would like to do in order to increase the amount of mental health and addiction funding that we have is we need to make a deal with the state – and go on my website; this is a complicated thing and the state legislature would have to approve this. Where, if we as a community – which means basically the county and the DA [District Attorney], but the city can influence this – are spending less money on prisons, then we get the savings back to do things that relate to public safety, which includes mental health and addiction investment.
Miller: Steve Novick, thanks very much.
Novick: Thank you.
Miller: Rex Burkholder is a consultant on strategy and messaging for nonprofit organizations and campaigns. Rex, good to have you here.
Rex Burkholder: Thank you.
Miller: Same first question for you: What is your plan to increase access to culturally-specific resources and housing for Black Portlanders?
Burkholder: Well, there’s historical barriers and lack of access to homeownership in the African American community. There’s a great group in North Portland, the African American Alliance for Homeownership, which has been working to both train and help people put their resources together so they can actually become homeowners. I moved here in 1980. I lived in inner city Portland, in Northeast. At the time, that neighborhood was 50% African American and 75% low income.
We succeeded in making the city a place where people want to live. Unfortunately, people without money were displaced, and we really had no mechanisms in place to help that. Community groups like community development corporations, like the Northeast Community Development Corporation, PCRI [Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives], African American Homeownership group came together. Of course, they need resources to help make that happen. So I think the city can play the part by using our tax increment financing that’s being proposed – new versions of that – to actually get some funds there, but also the training available, so people who don’t have a history of homeownership in their families can actually become homeowners.
Miller: Aside from housing and homelessness, what do you see as the most urgent issue the city is facing? And why should you be put in City Hall to address it?
Burkholder: OK. So here’s why I say the most important issue this new council faces is getting our [act] together because we’ll have 12 new players, most of them with no experience in governing positions. Steve and I in this district have it. I have it, I have 12 years of experience working at the Metro Council where it required bringing together people from very disparate backgrounds, from Washington County, Clackamas County, Gresham, and bring it all together and saying, what is our vision for the future, and how do we get there, and how do we get there together? You don’t pass anything without getting another six people to vote “yes.” And this will be an important part about this and a skill set of bringing people together to collaborate, focus on a vision, and achieve that, I think is the most urgent thing we have to do. We have to get our act together so we can do all the other stuff that needs to be done.
Miller: Here’s another question from the Urban League: In the last four years, there have been more than 200 traffic fatalities across Portland that includes pedestrians, cyclists, drivers. A Vision Zero report this year found that Black communities in Portland experience traffic violence at a disproportionate rate, and research shows that drivers in Portland are less likely to safely yield for Black pedestrians. Given all of this, how will you approach road safety?
Burkholder: There are three components of road safety, right? One is about education. We do not require driver’s ed anymore, and we have very scattered training of our children in school about safe routes to school; some schools have it, some don’t.
Another part is about engineering. If you look at where the People of Color live now, after being displaced from the inner city, they live in East County which has roads that were built for cars, not for people. And so the speeds are really high. I think we should “Fosterize” – and that’s a term I love. Foster Avenue has become an exciting, pedestrian friendly place to be. It has bike lanes, it works really well. The businesses are very much succeeding. They’re safer.
And finally, we need enforcement. We need to go out there, and people who are speeding through our neighborhoods and running red lights need to be caught and punished for doing that.
Miller: Rex Burkholder, thanks very much.
Burkholder: Thank you.
Miller: That’s Rex Burkholder, now a consultant in strategy and messaging for nonprofit organizations and campaigns.
Theo Hathaway Saner is a property management and resident services manager at Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives, or PCRI. Welcome.
Theo Hathaway Saner: Thanks, Dave.
Miller: The first question for you, same question as for everybody: What will you do to increase the production of and accessibility to housing, in particular for Black Portlanders?
Hathaway Saner: Yeah, we have a project at Williams and Russell that is gonna have homeownership opportunities; Black-owned business opportunities; apartments; apartments that are family-sized, like four bedroom apartments which is kind of missing in the market. We need more programs, more projects like that.
Miller: Besides housing and homelessness, what do you see as the most urgent issue the city is facing, and why should you be one of the people to help fix it?
Hathaway Saner: The most urgent issue – much like Rex – is going to be this new form of government and making it work. The people demand a government that is accessible and responsive to the communities. And so that is going to be the main project, is making sure that we can get together, make decisions, know when decisions are made, and get things done that reflects the interests of Portland.
Miller: And what can you do to actually make that happen? Why should you be one of the people in this new system who’s gonna make that work?
Hathaway Saner: Yeah, I’m a good team player. I’m on the board of WeShine. We’re an organization that builds and operates micro-villages – transitional housing for people that are experiencing houselessness. We have two that are operational right now, and we did that by building coalitions, getting other organizations behind us. The Joint Office got behind us because we rallied around this issue that’s so important and got the funding, got things built, got things done, got people into permanent housing.
Miller: Former president, Donald Trump, said recently that he would, quote, “Surge federal law enforcement into every sanctuary city if he were reelected.” How would you want Portland to respond if that were to happen?
Hathaway Saner: [laughs] That guy says a lot of things. I trust that our local police would protect us from – I don’t even know what that means, “surge,” like ICE [immigration] raids and stuff? I mean, being a sanctuary city is so important to our communities that are immigrants here, and protecting them is important. And I would do everything I could to protect them.
Miller: Whether it is redesign or renovation of Keller Auditorium, or the possibility of a new Major League baseball park, or some other big civic infrastructure project that might have some kind of public money, how do you approach questions about public dollars in public or private buildings?
Hathaway Saner: Well, we need to have public and private coalitions, dollars mixed with public and private. Any big project like the Keller, we need to bring more people into downtown. We need to have more spaces where people are brought together and enjoying art. That is something that we’re all missing after the pandemic. I think that’s something that has caused a lot of our public spaces to be taken over by elements that we’re not all happy about. And so I would support projects. I think the return on investment from public dollars, we would see it in more people on the streets, more people shopping at businesses, more people being out and about riding their bikes.
Miller: You have about 20 seconds left if you want to tell voters anything else about you.
Hathaway Saner: I moved here from a small logging town, and I moved here to go to Portland State to study community development. And this has always been my goal to give back to the community and build a brighter future for Portland.
Miller: Theo Hathaway Saner, thanks very much. That was Theo Hathaway Saner, a property management and resident services manager at Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives.
Luke Zak previously worked at Travel Salem, and other events and tourism jobs. Luke Zak, welcome to this forum.
Luke Zak: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Miller: What would you do in terms of culturally-specific resources or housing for Black Portlanders?
Zak: So, for me, I think to start addressing that question, I wanna look at housing production and the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund [PCEF]. I know that there have been concerns in the past about how that money has been allocated to fill budget shortfalls. And I don’t think that that is what that is used for, but I do think that there are opportunities to use that money when it comes to investing in transit and in housing that can have an environmental climate impact, and serve the racial justice original intent of the PCEF fund.
So I think that there’s opportunity to increase our housing density. And then when we do that and as we’re building those, I think there’s opportunity to follow the priority policy as what they’re doing in Albina as they’re looking to redevelop that. And for folks that are unfamiliar with the Albina Vision Trust and the fantastic work they’re doing there, definitely go and look at that afterwards because that is a community redevelopment project happening in Lower Albina that is attempting to right a lot of the wrongs from the history of Portland.
Moving on from that, looking at housing and security, and helping Black and other minority Portlanders that are experiencing homelessness, I just wanted to take a quick moment to reference … Theo was just up here, and WeShine is doing fantastic work. I think we can uplift them and other nonprofits that are working to increase the variety of sheltering options that we have to meet the needs of folks actually experiencing houselessness. And that WeShine – the two villages they have right now, one is specifically aimed at helping BIPOC Portlanders experiencing homelessness and the other is aimed at helping LGBTQ Portlanders that are experiencing homelessness.
Miller: Besides housing and homelessness, what do you see as the most urgent issue the city is facing and why should you be on city council to help address it?
Zak: Yeah, so there are a lot of really important issues that we’ve talked about already. Climate is something that is inevitable, that we need to make sure that we are preparing for a sustainable future. I’m really interested in the infrastructure and investment around transit, but to Rex and Theo’s point, we need a functional city council. So when you’re looking through your ballot and leafing through the 30 candidates in your voters’ pamphlet, make sure that you’re also keeping in mind the folks that have the capacity to work across ideological divides, and find common solutions, and work together for the city. Folks that have a background and experience in long-term strategy, and folks that understand financial literacy and budgeting, because that is also going to be so critical in the new responsibilities of city council.
I have a lot of experience working alongside government in the tourism industry, in the environmental regulatory compliance industry. And I have my MBA from the University of Oregon. So I have formal education on a lot of that as well.
Miller: Here’s a question from the audience here: What’s your plan for building our city back to a transit-oriented, multimodal mecca that we once were?
Zak: I love that question. I think there’s so much that we can do. I mentioned PCEF potentially being used for housing. I think having complete neighborhoods where we have medium density housing, we have mixed-use buildings, we have vibrant retail corridors, and it is all centered around transit is vital. So I want to expand our reach, our reliability, our frequency, our speed of our transit – that includes our MAX lines, that includes the bus, rapid transit lines. And that is a complete connected network around the city, not just in and out of the hub of downtown, but entirely around the city.
Miller: Luke Zak, thanks very much.
Zak: Thank you.
Miller: Chris Flanary is a housing program specialist at the City of Portland. Welcome to this forum.
Chris Flanary: Thank you, thank you.
Miller: Same first question for you: What is your plan to increase access to culturally-specific resources and housing for Black Portlanders?
Flanary: So I do have some ideas, but I think the first step is to talk to some Black folks, right? Like, I’m a white person, I don’t – luckily for us, we have a number of culturally-specific organizations in Portland, including Urban League, one of our hosts tonight. Thanks y’all! I am showing off tonight that I did get some Urban League swag once upon a time, just saying. But yeah, like Urban League, y’all also got into the housing business, right? You’re partners in some multifamily affordable housing. My day job’s at the Housing Bureau. So I’m familiar with a lot of these organizations. So yeah, Urban League, PCRI, Sabin CDC [Community Development Corporation] – these are all culturally-specific organizations that are working right now in Portland to represent the interests of Black Portlanders.
We also need to stop treating Black people like a monolith. Somebody who was born and raised here in Oregon, in Portland specifically, is gonna have potentially some different needs than folks who have immigrated here or might have refugee status. So definitely starting with getting the right folks in the room because we don’t … “nothing for us without us” is something I believe in deeply as another union activist. And then to find the ways to invest appropriately, because Black and Brown people are disproportionately impacted by all the issues of poverty, including houselessness, including addiction, including the failures of our public health system. And so, while it can be reassuring to somebody who’s part of the majority to say, if we just offer up this help equally, that will make things right; it won’t. We need to be equitable, we need to put the effort where it’s needed.
Miller: Besides housing and homelessness, what do you see as the most urgent issue the city is facing? And why should you be one of the people to help address it?
Flanary: We need living wages. They do like that [in reference to audience cheering]. Too many of us are one flat tire, or one medical emergency, or one canceled babysitter away from potentially ending up unhoused ourselves. It used to be that in the city you could work a part time job and afford rent. That’s not true anymore. It used to be in the city that you could get an entry-level job, work your way up a little bit and afford a house; that is very, very rare, right? And so things are getting more and more expensive. Just between 2020 and now, the national average of what you need to make to buy a house has doubled – doubled.
Miller: So what would you do as a member of city council about either household costs or housing costs?
Flanary: About household costs or housing costs? I would be interested in pursuing different avenues. It’s gonna depend on who we elect. If we have a slate of council folks who are willing to do mandates, if we have the political will and the funding to enforce that, I think mandates are most effective. But I do work in the inclusionary housing program. So incentives balance out mandates in a lot of ways. So we could … say, if you voluntarily keep your rents below this amount, you’ll get this benefit from the city, whether it’s a tax break, whether it’s another sort of fee break that you get. There are different ways to approach the issue and I’m going to use one of them. It depends on who gets elected with me as to how far we can go in the first two years that District 3 will have as a term.
Miller: You’re actually the first person to mention that; this is one of the quirks … maybe folks here know, maybe folks listening know that this is one of two of the districts that are gonna have two-year terms. The other two will have four. Just a quirk of the start-up of this new system.
Flanary: Right. So they’re staggering the terms. So District 3 and District 4 – which is downtown, plus Sellwood, Eastmoreland, Reed – we’re gonna be elected on nonpresidential election years. And then Districts 1 and 2 – traditionally known as like East Portland and North/Northeast Portland – they are going to be elected, along with the mayor, on presidential election years.
Miller: Chris Flanary, thanks very much.
Flanary: Thank you.
Miller: That’s Chris Flanary, a housing program specialist at the City of Portland.
Jon Walker is next. Jon Walker is a policy analyst at the Oregon Health Authority. Jon Walker, welcome.
Jon Walker: Hello.
Miller: Same first question for you: What is your plan to increase access to culturally-specific resources and housing for Black Portlanders?
Walker: So I think we have to look at housing as a multi-issue. There is some people who have a difficulty just affording housing, and the problem with that is there’s not enough housing. And people talked about redlining, which was a problem all throughout the United States. And when that ended, unofficial zoning redlining took its place. And if you want to make housing cheaper, you need to build more of it. So we have to allow for more human-scale density throughout the city, and that will create more housing that more people can afford, who are working.
Now, people who are suffering from mental illnesses, drug addiction, things that are preventing them from being employed, preventing them from being able to work a job; one of the things that compelled me to get into the race is we have received an 1115 Waiver from the federal government. Oregon’s gonna get about a half billion dollars to use on housing as health care. And we got a bunch of money during the pandemic to use for health, or to use for homeless issues, and we failed to use it properly. And I am worried that we’re gonna have another chance to get another bite at the apple, and we’re gonna fail to properly implement it, properly use this new influx of money we’re gonna have to help provide temporary housing and temporary rent assistance. And we’re gonna fail to do that again, and that’s what I want to prevent.
Miller: What other issue do you see as one of the top ones, and what can you do? Why should you be one of the people to address it?
Walker: I say my top three priorities are: implementation, implementation, implementation. I work for the Office of Actuarial and Financial Analytics where I enforce the largest contracts in the state – the Medicaid contracts – making sure the money is spent on care and services, not profit and admin. And we constantly have good ideas in Portland, we get voters to support them, and then we just fail to deliver on them. We planted a bunch of trees in East Portland to deal with shade equity and the trees died because we didn’t water them. And if we can’t grow trees in Portland, we really can’t do anything, and that’s all over the place.
We had a big opening ceremony up in Arbor Lodge. Big new shelter, patted ourselves on the back, what a great job we did, back in June. Nobody’s being sheltered there because the city and the county are in some permitting dispute. I would never show up at an opening ceremony and if one week later it’s not open, [then] I’d be driving people down, making them get in my car, go down to their office and making sure that gets worked out. And it really doesn’t matter what your ideology is, it doesn’t matter what your plans are. If you’re not focused on how you implement, how you track metrics, and how you enforce contracts we’re providing out there and making sure we’re getting what we pay for, nothing’s gonna work.
Miller: How do you do that as a lawmaker? Because you wouldn’t be an executive, you wouldn’t be the head of a bureau; you would essentially be a legislator.
Walker: Yes, but you write the legislation, and you write the legislation to have requirements. That is what you do as a legislator, you put in conditions. And that is what we need to be doing.
Miller: Here’s another question from the Urban League: Black Portlanders are twice as likely to die from overdoses as white Portlanders and are twice as likely to require the services of Portland Street Response. How would you approach non law enforcement entities like Portland Street Response as a member of city council?
Walker: I think, especially when it comes to overdose, we actually rely a lot on the county. Because the county has our medical – has the behavioral health service requirements, and they need to be the ones that really need to take the lead on this. Now, a big thing we can do is we have unsheltered homelessness, and I am a numbers guy, I’ve been a healthcare policy analyst for decades. The unsheltered population is at a huge, much higher mobility rate. And we need to build more shelters, and we need to require people to be using shelters. And that’s gonna be a big way to address the fact that we have a lot more accidents among that community. A lot more overdoses amongst that community, a lot more fires caused by the community, which is putting a huge stress on our emergency response services, because we went from unsheltered camping being about 3% to 4% of fires 10 years ago, to about 50% now. And that is what is causing us not to get response in time because they’re so overwhelmed.
Miller: Jon Walker, thank you.
Walker: Thanks.
Miller: Jesse Cornett is the policy and advocacy director at Oregon Recovers. Good to have you here.
Jesse Cornett: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.
Miller: What is your plan to increase access to culturally-specific resources and housing for Black Portlanders?
Cornett: Sure. As has already been hit on this program, these crises – homelessness and addiction – impact Black Portlanders more than white Portlanders. And it’s something that we have to hit on on a meta level. If we look at the issue of lack of housing being a cause of homelessness, the city is falling behind. We should be building about 5,000 units a year; we were at 500 as of August, so we need to really expedite that.
But if we want to get into culturally-specific and talk about the disparities when it comes to addiction, we’re not doing a good enough job. In my role with Oregon Recovers, seeing as a state as a community, we’re not doing a good enough job supporting culturally-specific resources in that area either, which will give folks the ability to sustain if they do get into a place. WeShine has been mentioned today; I would also like to highlight the Miracles Club, who works specifically with Black Portlanders in recovery to keep them there. And that is part of the longer term path to success if we’re ever going to get out of these dual crises.
Miller: What do you see as – aside from housing and homelessness – the biggest issue Portland is facing, and why should you be one of the members of city council to address it?
Cornett: I think the biggest issue that Portland’s facing that nobody’s talking about is that our current city council had a $70 million shortfall in our discretionary budget last year from our per dollars, from the federal one-time dollars we’ve created entire new programs that are critical and should continue into perpetuity. But we’re facing an absolute budget cliff here that the current city council is leaving behind. And I’m somebody that’s worked around public budgets. I have a masters of public administration. It’s something that, as a result of my work around the legislative process and teaching legislative process at Portland State, I’ve always been keenly aware of. So I feel uniquely suited to help with the cliff that we’re about to fall off of.
Miller: Current city council members have something like six or seven staff members each. If you’re elected, you might just have one. How would you prioritize their time?
Cornett: Sure. I think the job of this, if you look at the way the legislature has operated, having one staffer under this environment could be good. But what we really need to do is then shift and prioritize. If we have 12 city councilors, we don’t need 12 environmental experts. We do need somebody with the environmental expertise, with public safety expertise, with budget expertise. So I think the city should be looking into having a function comparable to a legislative policy and research office, a function similar to a legislative budget office. So when we, as independently elected officials, need access to information, we have people that we can turn to.
But I think in terms of having personal staff, the way this is designed, it’s going to be sufficient. And I think that person will basically double our time. They’re going to be meeting with constituents, they’re going to be holding meetings on our behalf with city staff, and all the way around.
Miller: You mentioned the budget cliff, as you called it. But what other issue do you think does not get enough attention in this race?
Cornett: Public safety and addiction.
Miller: Those get a ton of attention; you’re saying they don’t get enough.
Cornett: There’s no possible way addiction can get enough. I did listen to your program just last week where Multnomah County is saying that it turns out that we’re actually seeing a plateau in overdose tests, which is really good news. But until we see a drop, no, there’s absolutely not enough attention that could be given to that issue.
Miller: What do you see as an issue that is bigger in this district – which is a big chunk of inner Southeast Portland, a little bit of Northeast Portland – here than in the rest of the city. I mean, is there something that’s specific to this district?
Cornett: I’ll just highlight Powell Boulevard being a state highway cutting through a whole lot of neighborhoods in our city, and being a very unsafe street to walk up and down, or especially try to cross on your bicycle like I do most weeks.
Miller: Thirty seconds left. You’d be one vote among 12, and you’d need to get at least six folks with you to do anything. What experience do you have that shows you could do that?
Cornett: In the 2021 legislative session, I was a lead lobbyist to pass something called Cover All People. I had members of a coalition on one side who were SEIU – the most liberal, large, public employee union in the state – and on the other side, The Oregon Association of Nurseries. Seventy-five organizations came together to get healthcare funding on an ongoing basis for 55,000 Oregonians who needed it.
Miller: Jesse Cornett, thanks very much.
Cornett: Thank you.
Miller: Jesse Cornett is the policy and advocacy director at Oregon Recovers.
We finished the forum with a lightning round: a series of quick, often less serious questions intended to just give voters a better sense for who these candidates are. Here’s a taste of it.
Miller: Chris Flanary, did you have a pandemic hobby?
Flanary: Oh, goodness. I started playing D&D [Dungeons and Dragons] 5th Edition with some friends on Discord.
Miller: Daniel DeMelo, what is your favorite spot in all of District 3?
DeMelo: I really do love doing yard work in my home.
Miller: Tiffany Koyama Lane, what was your favorite concert?
Koyama Lane: Trombone Shorty at the Oregon Zoo.
Miller: Luke Zak, do you have a political hero?
Zak: For those that don’t know, I’m a transplant from Minnesota. So I got to vote for Ilhan, and I also got to vote for Tim Walz, and I like them both, and I’m really excited to vote for Tim again.
Miller: Jesse Cornett, what would you name Portland’s new WNBA team?
Cornett: Oh my. Something that starts with P; I am not clever with this one.
Miller: Jon Walker, if you could travel to another century, which one would you choose?
Walker: The future.
Miller: Harrison, are you a renter or a homeowner?
Kass: New homeowner.
Miller: Theo Hathaway Saner, what endorsement are you most proud of, and why?
Hathaway Saner: The endorsement of my dear friends and family.
Miller: And now, it’s a couple of repeats for the last four. Rex Burkholder, did you have a pandemic hobby?
Burkholder: I got the New York Times and The Oregonian delivered in paper form and read them all the way through every day.
Miller: Angelita, what endorsement are you most proud of, and why?
Morillo: That’s hard to choose. But I would have to say SEIU, and the reason is that they represent a lot of home care workers. And my mom, who is an immigrant, took care of a lot of elderly people in homes and cleaned people’s homes. And it just means a lot to be endorsed by people who remind me of her and what she did to raise me.
Miller: And Steve Novick, last one. Fill in the blank: I wish Portland were more …
Novick: I wish Portland were less passive-aggressive.
Miller: All right, we’ll leave it there.
That was part of the lightning round from the Portland City Council District 3 candidate forum that we held last week at the Gigantic Brewing Hawthorne Pub in Southeast Portland.
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