Dan Ryan (running for Commissioner position 2)

Should policies be adopted to ensure every neighborhood in Portland welcomes more neighbors, through smaller, denser, lower-cost housing options like smallplexes, cottage clusters, and small-to-moderate-sized apartment complexes, via both the nonprofit and private markets?

Yes, everywhere. Proposals like the Residential Infill Project and legalizing the missing middle are essential to fixing a planning, zoning and development process which has vastly restricted supply by limiting most land in the city to detached single family zoning only – a housing type already oversupplied relative to today’s market and increasingly mismatched with the demographics and needs of the future. Following and exceeding Minneapolis’ example should be an inspiration. Accelerating our compliance with the new state law enabling more diversity of housing types – and going beyond those state requirements – is an urgent must. The fact that many of our most popular neighborhoods would be illegal to build today (NW Portland for example) can tell us nearly everything we need to know: what are the things people like that the modern zoning regime prohibits? People like neighborhoods not overrun by cars, so therefore we should ask ourselves why we continue to have post-WWII parking requirements that mandate neighborhoods must be overrun with cars? Especially if the market doesn’t want it?

Clearly, the recession that we are already in will hamper production. But market lulls and reduced construction prices are actually a good time to ready ourselves for an upswing, and maybe housing production can even be one way out of recession, particularly with the incredibly low interest rates. While my personal philosophy is that in general the private market is the main driver of housing supply, and government should get out of its way, I also believe government can play a role on the demand side.

Should Portland expand transit-oriented development (allowing apartment complexes by-right within a short walk of all major transit lines) as a way to discourage the use of single-occupancy vehicles and reduce our city’s carbon emissions?

Yes. I believe our transportation expenditures ought to be tied much more accountably to positive social and economic and environmental outcomes. I want to have faith that the Metro Council package will have crisp cumulative impact priority goals like reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving safety for people walking and biking, and better transit. The package needs to result in more equitable access and environmental benefit if I am going to support it. I can’t get excited about just another status quo laundry list of random projects. I expect more from Metro.The majority of TriMet’s customers ride buses, despite the fact that light rail seems to get a lot more attention. We need to pay more attention to buses. Making buses faster, more frequent and reliable should be a priority, and it is one where the city government has shown it can play a leadership role. The city government owns and manages the streets and traffic signals the buses operate on, and we should expedite PBOT’s “Rose Lane” projects and prioritize buses on our major arterials. City officials should also play a more influential role communicating to the TriMet board of directors and amplifying our residents’ service priorities. The TriMet board has virtually no oversight and the city commissioners should fill that void, even though we are not legally in charge of TriMet.The most important issue for transportation equity is access to service, particularly transit service. It all starts with having service that is frequent, safe, clean, reliable, runs all day including evenings and weekends, and takes people to the major destinations they need to reach. We need to focus on adding service – more hours of operation, more frequency in the parts of town that need it the most. It’s not a matter of theoretical new technology; it’s a matter of getting the fundamentals right.

Should neighborhood associations have less, as much, or more power than other community organizations when it comes to questions of housing, such as whether new apartments or homeless shelters are permitted in a given neighborhood?

The same amount of power. We need new complementary voices that accurately represent the diverse interests and people of those neighborhoods. These neighborhoods create new avenues for diverse communities to participate and have a voice.

Should Portland dedicate less, as much, or more money to regulated affordable housing? (If you answered "more money," what funding mechanism(s) would you pursue to build this additional housing?)

More money. Another housing bond, more financial incentives for private developers to build more middle income housing and more accountability from prosper to incorporate real progress, real progress for affordable housing in Broadway Corridor and other major projects. My vision for affordable housing in Portland is the same as how I would prioritize those communities being displaced 1) Elders who have been in their neighborhood for years, allow them to age in place. 2) Families with school aged children. Housing mobility for children and youth in our school system is a top factor in why those in poverty fail to achieve. Students who face poverty at home need more structure, consistency and routine from their teachers in their neighborhood school.

Would you support a citywide moratorium on evictions during the three coldest months of the year, as Seattle recently adopted?

Yes. We need to address these complex issues by disrupting the status quo, bringing new people to the table and getting people out of their silos. I’m not happy with how Portland’s leaders are handling this crisis, and you shouldn’t be either.

Huge positive impacts on homelessness are happening in cities around the country. That’s happening because they are bringing nonprofits, communities of faith, business, and government to the table to create solutions and get results. Currently our City Hall operates in silos and is short on the innovation to address these complex issues. We have passed recent housing bonds and the public is left to wonder about the impact of their investment. At minimum, we can do a much better job of communicating with the voters who have been extremely generous at the ballot box.

As a leader with All Hands Raised I brought coalitions together to get dramatic increases in high school graduate rates across Portland and Multnomah County. We need this same kind of coalition building to address our homeless crisis – for our neighbors experiencing homelessness and our neighbors living side by side with them. We need new approaches that bring people with knowledge and expertise together, NOT the people receiving a grant from a government contract. We should include business who have compassion for the issue and have been successful in life because they know how to innovate.

This issue is personal for me. Four years ago I lost my older brother on the streets. Tim couldn’t move into a building unless there were services. His mental health crisis escalated, he medicated with street drugs, and never found the shelter with services he needed. He died as a result.

Additionally, our current structure to address mental health, addiction services, and criminal justice are not being properly addressed because the County and City silos prevent focused action. As City Commissioner I will accelerate streamlining services that are shared between the County and the City. I will also fight to increase investments in our community partners who are trauma informed in their approach and more nimble in their service delivery. Let’s empower these nonprofit service providers who have the expertise and are overseen by Boards of diverse community leaders to redefine their contracts to deliver on measurable results – not checking off the compliance boxes the City seems to love so much.

Systemic change is needed at all levels of our government. We have to untangle the duplication between the County and the City, and bring the right strategic voices to the table. It’s not hard. It’s just common sense.

As Portland implements an anti-displacement plan, which policies from the Anti-Displacement PDX Coalition would you support? What additional anti-displacement policies do you support?

• Require advance 90-day written notice to a tenant if the owner plans to sell, demolish, or redevelop their home.

• Grant a “right to stay” to existing tenants; require landlords to rehouse tenants they displace in their neighborhoods at a rent comparable to what they had been paying, or by helping the tenants to purchase a unit with down-payment assistance.

• Implement a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase policy that gives all current renters, and then the city, the first and second rights of refusal to purchase a property at fair-market value before it goes on the market.

• Earmark Construction Excise Tax (CET) revenue from construction in single-dwelling zones as a source of subsidy for affordable units in single-dwelling zones.

• Charge a fee for any redevelopment of a property in single-dwelling zones that does not include at least two units, unless prevented by site constraints and use the new revenue from this fee to subsidize regulated affordable units in the single-dwelling zones.

• Property tax exemption for any regulated affordable units built on-site, for the duration of the affordability restriction.

I believe the policies outlined about are well thought out, ambitious and necessary. I would prioritize who can’t be displaced with two priority groups: 1) Elders who have been in their neighborhood for years, allow them to age in place. 2) Families with school aged children. Housing mobility for children and youth in our school system is a top factor in why those in poverty fail to achieve. Students who face poverty at home need more structure, consistency and routine from their teachers in their neighborhood school.

What else should Portland pro-housing, pro-tenant community know about you & your candidacy?

A passing “A” grade from Portland Neighborhoods would show that you and I share important values, like making Portland more economically accessible to more people by deregulating a wide range of housing types, and that we are in alignment in a belief that investments should lead to measurable outcomes that are more than theoretical. Like I said at the transportation forum on March 10, Portland city government is too often characterized by high-flown abstract aspirations which are then not supported by the nitty-gritty of actual practice (like the outcomes of the zoning and development process) or budget (like saying we want to reduce traffic fatalities in Vision Zero theory but not then making the expenditures that would cause that to happen.) I sense you and I share an interest in finally matching Portland’s general progressive sentiments with day-to-day governing that actualizes those sentiments beyond platitudes. At All Hands Raised, I was all about translating noble but vague intentions about educational achievement into specific steps required to make achievement happen.

Dynamism and change need to be accepted as facts of life in an urban area, at least one that we hope is growing and offering new opportunities, rather than one that is always going to be as it is today. Today we don’t have as many livery stables or coal stores as we did 100 years ago and we don’t have as many video rental shops as we did 20 years ago. I am skeptical of government efforts to freeze neighborhoods in amber, particularly in terms of commercial activities. We can’t cater only to the nostalgia of those of us who have the good fortune to have been here a long time. I am a true Portlander, and I sincerely love some aspects of the Portland I knew in 1971 or 1991 or 2011. But I also know those were incomplete that the city we have today and want to have in the future will be different as well as somewhat the same. I think the best thing we can do for neighborhood “character” and livability is to have our planning, zoning and development systems allow for growth and change so that more people can create the Portland of the future they want.

Ryan received a B overall from our scoring committee. See both scores for this by-election runoff and read about our process here.