James "Jas" Davis (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. Innovative housing solutions is one of my top priorities, including a broader mix of housing options, both as a way to create more affordable housing and to encourage more walkable neighborhoods in order to reduce carbon emissions.
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. More walkable and transit-oriented neighborhoods help reduce our carbon emissions, which is among my top three priorities as a candidate. I say a lot more about this on my website at http://portland2020vision.org.
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. I do not believe neighborhood associations should be disenfranchised in order to accomplish important policy objectives. Nor should other community organizations. All voices should have a seat at the table, and city commissioners should take responsibility to make the best decisions that take care of all Portlanders, especially those with the least resources to advocate for their needs.
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. Earmark Construction Excise Tax (CET), Cannabis tax revenues, a fee or additional property tax per empty unit on large developments with long-term empty units (see my answer at bottom for more ideas about generating resources to address this issues). Ultimately, my vision is to bring the cost of rents and housing down so the city does not need to subsidize housing, and I have several proposals to do that. Until such proposals are implemented the prices come down, the city should expand its programs to make housing available through subsidies and other programs.
Would you support a citywide moratorium on evictions during the three coldest months of the year, as Seattle recently adopted?
Yes. Yes, however there should be rent assistance so homeowners don't suffer and risk losing their homes.
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.
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.
We need to implement innovative housing solutions to meet the housing needs of ALL Portlanders. I want to….
1) Expand the range of available housing to encourage greater housing affordability.
2) Charter a public bank to implement net-benefit financing to provide better lending and refinance options for homeowners and homebuyers.
3) Take a big-picture, restorative, whole-systems approach to housing affordability by taking steps to reduce the incentive to speculate in housing.
Regarding right-to-stay options, I do bring this up below, but do not believe we should place this burden on landlords.
We need to implement innovative housing solutions to meet the housing needs of ALL Porlanders. I want to….
1) Expand the range of available housing to encourage greater housing affordability. More available housing translates into lower cost housing. For the houseless, we should take a Housing First approach to help people find stability in fixed housing such as housing pods or refurbished dorm housing (such as at the former Concordia campus). Needed services could be available in housing pods throughout the city. For all of, a fuller range of housing would include pod housing, tiny homes, SROs, ADUs, tiny home communities, housing pods, smallplexes, cottage clusters, and small-to-moderate-sized apartment complexes, multi-family and multi-generational housing, as well as collaborative and communal housing, ecovillages and coops. Personally, I lived in an ecovillage community coop for several years until recently, and spent a fair bit of time there figuring out how the community could purchase the homes we lived in collectively through our cooperative.
2) Charter a public bank to implement net-benefit financing to provide better lending and refinance options for homeowners and homebuyers. A public bank would also provide better lending options to small businesses and co-ops, and fund large municipal projects, saving the city millions of dollars in interest and cutting project costs substantially. And rather than lining the pockets of stockholders and Wall Street, profit from the reduced interest would be reinvested into the community in programs that meet its community mission of affordable housing, like subsidized and guaranteed loans for right-of-return and stay-in-place programs to help people acquire their first home or return to ancestral neighborhoods where their families were dispossessed through red-lining and other racist development and zoning policies and practices.
3) Take a big-picture, restorative, whole-systems approach to housing affordability by taking steps to reduce the incentive to speculate in housing. Housing speculation has resulted in a rapid rise in housing costs and rents. To remove housing from the speculative market, we could move to a progressive property tax based on density. Higher density homes and buildings would qualify for a lower tax bracket while lower density, often higher-end, homes would fall into higher property tax brackets. This would incentivize making more units (rooms, studios, etc) available for long-term lease
Large residential properties with fewer people would be taxed at a higher rate than large properties with more people, while smaller residences with few people would be taxed at a higher rate than smaller homes with more people, though not as high as a large home with the same number of people. A simple formula to determine a residential building’s tax bracket would be to divide the building’s square footage by the number of long-term occupants. Notice that short-term occupants do not count toward reducing the residential property’s tax bracket. This would incentivize, and effectively subsidize, house-sharing and subletting to long-term occupants. It would also motivate property owners who have a lot of empty units sitting on the market for months or years to lower their rents to attract tenants, thereby increasing housing supply and having a general rent-reducing impact more broadly.
Those who prefer to AirBnB their properties are still welcome to do so and likely would if their profits more than made up for the increase in property taxes. This is a long-term solution to housing affordability and would eventually bring more homes onto the market at more reasonable prices that current tenants who want to become homeowners could buy using conventional loans or loans from the public bank.
This is a multi-pronged, systemic approach to resolving houselessness and housing affordability. It is important to acknowledge that the current market dynamics encourages the housing and rental environment in which we find ourselves. To truly alter that situation we must alter the market forces that created it. This will not happen overnight. In the meantime, I support addressing immediate concerns of tenants through the kinds of measures advocated by tenant advocates. That said, those measures often address symptoms of a systemic problem that should also be tackled at its roots. At the same time, I do not believe in punishing the thousands of homeowners and investors who have effectively created financial stability by “playing by the rules.” A shift to a progressive property tax should take place over time to give people time to evaluate their financial strategies and shift those strategies if they wish.
Oregonians tend to favor progressive taxes. As someone who has been both a tenant working for affordable housing, and a landlord who has has out rented rooms both through AirBnB and to long-term tenants, I can see many sides of the matter. In the end, we have to ask ourselves what kind of world we want to live in? Do I want to live in a world where I can get ahead, but a lot of people are struggling or suffering greatly, or would I rather live in a world where everybody is doing ok, and I am perhaps doing as well financially, or only moderately better, than other people in my community? Personally, I choose the latter.
What else should Portland pro-housing, pro-tenant community know about you & your candidacy?
I've been a progressive activist and community organizer for over 30 years on a variety of issues from sustainability, wealth disparity, consent culture, voting reform, and more. I've served on volunteer boards and helped coordinate community involvement in policy processes. I grew up here and raised my children here, and I want them to be able to live here when they are adults. As a small business owner of wellness centers, I am committed to making tough choices and implementing real solutions to address the roots of the challenges that confront us so that we can more effectively create a world where community health and well-being are prioritized and all of us can live more fulfilling lives. Together, we CAN build a more resilient city that works for ALL of us.
I challenge this group to bring together all the primary candidates who support your issues to have a conversation about the best ideas to really fix the housing crisis (not just address the pain and hardship caused by this matter, but actually correct the causes that create this situation). Then challenge those candidates to commit to those ideas, regardless of who wins the primary. While my ideas actually get at the underlying roots of the issue, I am more concerned about real solutions getting implemented than about me getting elected and being the one to implement them. Many of the current "solutions" being offered simply address the effects of the housing crisis without fundamentally changing the causes. If we limit ourselves to addressing the impacts, the housing crisis will grow until the underlying causes are addressed and the situation itself starts to be corrected. Yes, tenants need relief now, and we should provide that relief, but what ultimately serves tenants is transforming the conditions that create the current situation so that a better situation for tenants evolves 5 to 10 years from now. If you accept the challenge, let me know how I can help. Many of our campaigns have city matching funds and might be able to pitch in some funds to make an affordable housing summit happen in late April.
Davis received a B overall from our scoring committee. See all scores and read about our process here.