A note from P:NW’s Board President
TLDR: Portland: Neighbors Welcome has a big year ahead - this fall, we won a substantial grant to hire staff and expand our ability to fight for more housing and more livable communities. We are hiring a part-time organizer to support housing abundance in the upcoming 2025 legislative session, we will be hiring an Executive Director next year, we are looking for new board members and I am personally asking you to consider becoming a member at a level meaningful to you to support our work next year. Onward!
Look, there’s no sugarcoating it. America voted to reinstall a vicious and cruel administration into the White House, people whose values appear deeply antithetical to those that guide us here at Portland: Neighbors Welcome. We have every reason to suspect that the next federal government will be virulently anti-neighborly, to put it mildly, and their atrocious housing agenda as outlined in Project 2025 appears explicitly designed to screw over renters, punish and incarcerate the unhoused, stifle sorely needed construction of new market-rate and affordable housing, and do so in ways that calcify hideous racist and classist housing practices that housers have spent decades trying to dismantle. It’s capital B Bad.
Thanks to PNW volunteer Saurav Palla for testifying at Portland City Council last month
In many ways, these awful federal results only affirm the importance of an organization like Portland: Neighbors Welcome. Our group exists because we believe there is a moral imperative to make it easier and more affordable for more people to live here. So many Americans are directly threatened by this upcoming administration, and the Pacific Northwest has an opportunity and a responsibility to be a beacon of neighborly inclusion that actively welcomes those fleeing what’s happening in the rest of the country - be it evangelical revanchism, volatile climate degradation, erosion of the public sector or economic uncertainty. Building more homes in Oregon is also a political imperative - without major reform, Oregonians are likely to suffer less representation in Congress and the Electoral College.
Building a sharable city
Wonking out on zoning reform and housing policy may not immediately seem like the sexiest or the most urgent contribution one can make towards girding our community for another Trump presidency. But we at Portland: Neighbors Welcome know that all of Oregon’s claims of valuing inclusion and tolerance are irrelevant if we don’t get a handle on our reality of unaffordable rents and rising housing costs that prevents us from actually welcoming new people into Tom McCall’s Eden. We know that greater housing abundance is a necessary and singularly insufficient component of a larger movement for housing justice that aims to ensure everyone is welcome to live and be sheltered in the City of Roses. Oregon needs to build 500,000 homes over the next two decades; we aim to organize our prolific volunteer base to proactively push the city, region and state to adopt more aggressive targets for building more homes, at more levels of affordability, catering to different family sizes, in our most walkable, desirable neighborhoods as praxis for economic development, climate action, racial justice, and yeah, as resistance against the forces of fascism at our doorstep. We recognize the importance of being unapologetic allies to others demanding tenant protections, supporting those ensuring our homeless neighbors are sheltered and met with dignity and respect, and those fighting for government investments in affordable housing and supportive services.
Simply put, Portland must build (a lot) more homes if our city is going to be affordable and accessible to people at all ages, wages and stages of life - for current and for future Portlanders alike. Housing scarcity breeds inequality and instability; housing abundance enables collaboration and community. We must build a sharable city.
A big year ahead
I’m proud to share that as an organization, Portland: Neighbors Welcome is poised to take the next step to grow our power. Over the years, our all-volunteer organization has made significant contributions to tackling housing affordability in Portland, including our critical role in passage of the Residential Infill Project, our leadership in building a vision for support for the Inner Eastside for All campaign, and our electoral work which ended up endorsing and greenlighting 9 pro-housing members of the new City Council, as well as the new Mayor.
This fall, the organization won two significant philanthropic grants that will help us scale up our local and statewide work by hiring staff to leverage our formidable volunteer base, policy wonkery and electoral advocacy into demanding Portland has enough houses for anyone who wants - or needs - to call it home. We’re eager to work with the new Portland City Council and Mayor (11 of 13 them who support our Inner Eastside for All campaign) and the Oregon Legislature, where we are tiptoeing into exploring how to help support initiatives for social housing and other public funding to dramatically increase housing production across the city and state. We are hiring an organizer to help turn out our community in the 2025 legislature, and will be hiring our first Executive Director next Spring.
Are you with us?
But our organization is only as effective as our base of members, and that’s where you come in. For us to fully leverage these grants and build the political power at local and state level of government to demand the housing we need, our organization needs to continue to build our base of volunteers who believe in our mission and contribute whatever mix of time, money, energy, and passion they have to give. If you believe in us and want to see us continue our work to demand that Portland build enough homes for everyone who needs one, I’m writing today to ask you to become a member of Portland: Neighbors Welcome, or renew your membership. With your support, we can continue to expand what’s possible - and make sure our elected officials continue to listen to our demands for a robust and aggressive agenda for housing production and stability.
There are so many worthy causes and organizations to support as we buckle up for whatever awaits our community in the years ahead, and I encourage you to find a way to show up for these efforts in ways that feel meaningful to you. If fighting for housing as a human right and demanding that our city, region and state prepare for the metaphorical and literal storms ahead by building abundant housing in inclusive, climate-smart communities are causes that speak to you in this moment, I hope we can count on your support today and in the years ahead, whether as a volunteer, member, donor, or new board member.
- Your friend, neighbor and conspirator in housing justice,
Aaron Brown, Board President of Portland: Neighbors Welcome
Apply to be on the Board of Portland: Neighbors Welcome - Applications due December 8th
Apply for our Organizer Position - Application Review begins December 8th