By Marshall Hammond

The average rent for a studio apartment in Portland is $1,238 per month. The wage required to rent such an apartment without being rent burdened (spending more than 30 percent of household income on rent and utilities) is $28.85 an hour. Portland’s minimum wage is $15.95 an hour. How can someone afford housing in this city on a minimum wage job?
This was one of many problems discussed by a panel of housing experts participating in an online “Policy Talk” hosted by the non-profit Portland For All on Monday, June 24. The panelists were Dr. Lisa Bates, Portland State University; Mercedes Elizalde, the Latino Network; and Michael Andersen, Sightline Institute. The discussion was titled, “Making Enough Housing for Everyone.”
The first question put to the panel was, “What do you see as the key problems facing Portland when it comes to the housing crisis?”
“Ultimately I think the commodification of housing is what drives this,” said Elizade. “We’re not really thinking about our housing as critical to all the other systems that we have in front of us. We’re continuing to think about housing as one of the ‘widgets’ in our economic system that’s building other people’s wealth instead of thinking about it as a critical safety net that we should be investing in all of the time and making as abundant as possible.”
Andersen cited the lack of and unaffordability of housing for low-income groups as the two key drivers of the crisis, with a direct correlation between high rents and homelessness. “The number one predictor of the homelessness rate of a city is the price of market rate housing in that metro area,” said Andersen. “And that’s because 90 percent of poor people live in market rate housing.”
“Most people are evicted because they don’t have enough money,” said Elizade. “And if we’re going to have a minimum wage that is not a housing wage, we’re already committed to not paying people enough to always be able to afford housing.”
When it came to solutions to the housing crisis, the group proposed dozens of suggestions, ranging from simple policy changes to overhauling our whole approach to housing.
“I’ll share what’s kind of my dream policy,” said Elizade, “which is to eliminate some of the commodification of housing by actually repeating some of the things we’ve done with food. Food in our country is subsidized twice. It’s subsidized in production, and as an entitlement program it’s also subsidized on the consumer side with the SNAP cards. In housing, we actually talk about that like it’s a bad thing.”
The panelists agreed that some of Portland’s recent housing policies are having a positive effect. “Tens of thousands of people are being housed by the policies that we have in place. So this kind of extreme narrative that nothing is happening is just not based in reality,” said Elizade. “If you hear folks saying that kind of thing, really scrutinize where that’s coming from.”
The panelists also agreed that to actually solve the housing crisis and provide housing for everyone, more social changes are needed.
“One of the most important things that we need to have is more community organizing, more tenant organizing,” said Bates.
“We need to address the kind of power imbalances that happen, whether that is NIMBY (“not in my back yard”) homeowners on the neighborhood association coming to development hearings, whether that is corporate landlords who want to enter the market here trying to game the state legislature,” Bates continued. “Whatever the scale or level that we’re talking about, we need to have the organizing happening for working class people, for poor people, for people of color, for tenants who are not controlling their own housing.”
When asked for a policy change that could be quickly enacted by City Council alone, Elizade argued for more funding for the Portland Housing Bureau—the government office tasked with developing citywide housing policy, increasing affordable housing, promoting stable homeownership and managing housing resources.
“The Portland Housing Bureau has effectively been dark for a number of years now because they don’t have any money,” said Elizade. “We need a city council that is prepared to fund the Portland Housing Bureau every year. Every year, no matter what, forever.”
The solutions proposed by the panel were numerous, but as the conversation began to wind down, Bates addressed an elephant in the room—the apparent lack of will from government and citizenry to actually solve this crisis. What was needed was a discussion of Portland’s “values.”
“Do we have a value that if you’re from here, you can stay here? Do we have a value that kids today should be able to live in the neighborhood that they grew up in or another neighborhood around here?,” asked Bates. “Do we believe that the people that are handing me a cup of coffee at the coffee shop should be able to live and get to work in 20 minutes? Do we really believe that every person that we see that’s sleeping in a doorway, or that we maybe saw using drugs on the street, is also part of our family and our community, is one of our loved ones?”
With a Mayoral and City Council election approaching in November that will be deeply divided along issues of affordable housing and homelessness, Portlanders may soon get an opportunity to ask themselves these very questions—and answer some of them at the ballot box.
You can watch the entirety of this Policy Talk, as well as other past and future talks on Portland For All’s website, portlandforall.org.