Julia DeGraw (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. Having recently re-read Michael Andersen’s Sightline piece MAPS: PORTLAND’S 1924 REZONE LEGACY IS ‘A CENTURY OF EXCLUSION’, I am convinced that it is past time that Portland begin to correct its deeply inequitable, unjust, and racist history. Portland’s single-family housing policy, which essentially banned all duplexes and fourplexes since 1959, has effectively excluded low- and middle-income people from living in most Portland neighborhoods, particularly close-in. In order to have truly liveable, walkable neighborhoods, we have to allow for mixed development that includes housing at every income level and all the necessities anyone needs within either a short walk or transit trip. We can only achieve that vision by allowing all the types of housing listed in the question. Other reports from Michael Andersen have gone into great detail about how building four-, six-, and eight-plexes not only get the units to truly affordable levels, but they also have a smaller carbon footprint and can begin to address our severe shortage of housing availability at every price point.
I’m very interested in exploring land banking, cooperative ownership, generous/supportive first-time home-buyer programs, as well as enabling area nonprofits to build deeply affordable housing to ensure that the smaller housing units are actually affordable and made available to members of historically disenfranchised and underserved communities.
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. Yes, we should have been building in a transit-centered way for decades! Ever since the City paved over its original extensive trolley system, we’ve been heading toward ever more car-centric infrastructure. This leads to bad air quality, particularly in low-income and black neighborhoods, and unwalkable neighborhoods east of 82nd Avenue, where low income people often have to drive in order to get to and from work, pick up the kids, and run errands, all on a tight schedule. For example, if we have transportation hubs where busses go in all four directions with high frequency throughout East Portland, people would choose transit––especially if it meant not sitting in traffic and getting to and from work quickly and efficiently. People may opt-out of care ownership entirely to avoid expensive monthly payments, gas, and maintenance costs. To me, this isn’t just about reducing carbon emissions: it's about improving quality of life. If people only need cars for specific trips, not for daily commuting, car shares and other options become much more attractive than individual car ownership, putting more money in peoples’ pockets, which means more money flowing in our local economy.
There are only long-term benefits to investing in and building housing at every income bracket (including below 60% MFI) mixed-use, transit-centered neighborhoods that have access to parks and greenspaces and other necessary amenities that contribute to a high standard of living.
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 support the goals of the proposed Code change; it was unfortunate the way the program was introduced to the public made it hard to tell truth from fiction. Attempting to address the deep inequities and injustices of our City’s policies and institutions is going to take time, and it’s going to be uncomfortable and painful to so many people who have knowingly or unknowingly benefited from the status quo. Nonetheless, this hard work must continue––just as personal growth is painful and uncomfortable, so, too, is this collective change we must make to ensure a more equitable and just future for our city.
This is why I support revisiting restructuring the Office of Community and Civic Life and the way the City directly engages with and supports all community organizations, including neighborhood associations, and also finding better ways to directly engage with Portlanders When we talk about making the city more just and equitable, that means that we have to give all communities a seat at the table. No single group should be able to stop all of the needed progress toward creating more deeply affordable housing in every neighborhood. While these denser and inclusive neighborhoods will undoubtedly bring change, many people will welcome this change. Change is inevitable; we are a growing city, and we will likely continue to grow for some time to come. We are going to have to figure out how to grapple with our historic inequality and injustices, while also making sure we can grow in a way that enables everyone to live together throughout the city. I believe that neighborhood associations can be part of the solution in this process, but we must also welcome other community voices and groups.
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. There’s a lot of different ways we should pursue funding. We should immediately change the zoning laws to allow nonprofits to build affordable housing that could qualify for public financing. I also want to find public/private partnerships that help build more affordable housing. Experimenting with land banking and land trust options to build affordably is also worth looking into. When elected, I am committed to working closely with affordable housing developers, community housing groups, and nonprofits, as well as with fellow Commissioners and other local elected officials to find/come up withWe more funding for affordable housing projects. I also support the fees laid out in the anti-displacement measures to help pay for more affordable housing.
We should also try to squeeze more money out of the Federal government, especially if we have a new President and can flip the Senate. My vision is to build deeply affordable housing in such a way that doesn’t require ongoing subsidizing and that is innately and permanently affordable because it relies on either a land bank or land trust model. We need to find alternatives to traditional market-rate housing, especially if we intend to treat housing as a human right, which I believe it is. While helpful in the short-term, temporary subsidies to make affordable units in apartment buildings isn’t a holistic long-term solution to the lack of permanent affordable housing. I am committed to working with both tenants’ rights groups, housing organizations and nonprofits, and affordable housing developers to come up with creative ways to subsidize housing that leads to permanent affordability for Portland-area residents. In the short- to mid-term, we also need to do much better with providing those who need it with emergency funding in the form of rental assistance in order to prevent people from becoming houseless.
Would you support a citywide moratorium on evictions during the three coldest months of the year, as Seattle recently adopted?
Yes. We need to do more than just prevent evictions in the coldest months. If people are unable to afford their heating bill and rent, we should be offering rental assistance to these households so they can land on their feet when the cold weather passes. It’s not as though people living paycheck-to-paycheck will somehow have extra money for back rent once the weather warms up (whatever amount the heating bill declines is likely not enough to cover back rent). We also need to make sure that those at risk of eviction in the cold months are receiving all other public assistance they qualify for, whether it’s to help cover their water, heating and food expenses or all of the above. In short, yes, I support a winter eviction moratorium, but I will also push for more protections to ensure that tenants can afford to stay where they live permanently.
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.
The most important thing is to act! We must fully implement and enforce the anti-displacement policies. The City is notorious for making commitments and then failing to follow through with adequate funding, implementation, and enforcement. These policies are only as effective as the City’s ability to implement, fund, and enforce them. I fully support the 11-point plan for anti-displacement. I’ve been pushing for just and enforceable Community Benefits Agreements and increased tenant protections (especially ending no cause evictions) for years, and I’m excited about land banking and opening up affordable housing construction to nonprofits, as well as many other effective anti-displacement measures.
In addition to all of that, when elected, I will push the State to end its preemption on commercial and residential rent control. While this is a tool that must be used carefully, it is a powerful tool that should be part of the toolbox we are using to aggressively slow down and ultimately prevent continued gentrification of the Portland metro region. I will encourage neighboring municipalities to implement similar policies to help ensure that those who have already been pushed out of Portland don’t suffer a similar displacement yet again in their new home. These kinds of policies cannot exist in a vacuum; we need to be coordinating with the entire Portland metro region to get this right.
Much of my vision was outlined in the previous answer. I would like to add, that as Portland grows and develops, we have to ensure that neighborhoods remain accessible to those who already live there. The only way to do this is with strong enforceable anti-displacement policies baked into every aspect and level of our growth and development.
What else should Portland pro-housing, pro-tenant community know about you & your candidacy?
I am the system change candidate. I ran for this seat in 2018 on a system change platform, and I’m doing it again now because it’s more clear now than ever that we need to tackle our big systemic problems differently if we’re going to address them effectively.
The housing crisis is the definition of a systemic problem, and part of the reason things got so bad is because Portland’s Commission form of government is ineffective and has failed to address this issue holistically and collaboratively. Additionally, our at-large elections are an extension of our inequitable and unjust history. At-large elections, in which a candidate has to win a citywide race, has led to a City Council that has predominantly been made up of members from the wealthiest neighborhoods, and has only included nine women and three black people in the City’s 171 year history.
In our Commission form of government, City Commissioners are assigned bureaus by the Mayor – they then spend 90% of their time running their bureaus, leaving very little time for constituency services or long-term planning and policy-making. It also leads to what insiders call “siloing”, where bureaus and Commissioners compete for scarce resources and try to solve problems through the bureaus they are assigned, rather than collaboratively across bureaus and jurisdictions. No wonder the response to the housing crisis has been slow and disjointed (despite the efforts of stellar and hard working staff).
What we could have instead is City Councilors elected by districts from across the city, and have those Councilors focus on legislating and constituency services. The City could hire a Chief Operating Officer (or similar position) to professionally manage the city; that position would be hired and fired by the Mayor, with the Council’s approval. We could consider the insights from the Sightline report that suggests that multiple-member districts would help lead to better representation in a city as white as Portland. Whatever system we choose, it is important that historically underserved and disenfranchised communities must play a leading role in this process.
We are heading into a once-a-decade Charter Review year in 2021, and I am committed to helping facilitate a community-led Charter Review process that centers leadership from Portland’s black, indigenous, and people of color communities to create the system change Portlanders desperately need and deserve. Once we have a system where City Councilors are more representative of the entire city and can focus on collaborative long-term solutions, policy-making, and constituent services, I believe Portland will truly start living up to its reputation of being a progressive and innovative city.
DeGraw received an A overall from our scoring committee. See all scores and read about our process here.