Mark White (running for Mayor)

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?

Creating affordable housing is relatively easy for a City Council that is actually authentic in its desire to ensure it. Greed is the driving force of much of what has caused massive spikes in rents in Portland. The solution is simple — incentivize affordable rents with business tax credits and penalize those whose rents are high with much higher business tax penalties. This will stabilize rents quickly and hopefully provide additional incentive for some property owners to lower existing rents in order to get to a point of paying little to no business tax. The only reason I can think of why the City won’t do this is because they want the revenue higher rents bring in. I have not seen a single proposal from the City that would actually reduce existing rents or reduce the amount of annual increases to a reasonable level. Limiting annual rent increases to 10% is a worthless gesture and does effectively nothing to address the financial impact on Portlanders.

The availability of housing is a bit more difficult. I’ve provided some detail on my campaign site, but in a nutshell, we need to utilize every property as much as possible.

However, we can’t allow our commitment to providing affordable housing to all Portlanders diminish our commitment to the highest quality of life possible. This not only means greatly improving accessibility to basic necessities, but also to incentivize things like reducing sound between common wall units to or near zero.

Greed has also robbed us of architectural design and natural beauty. We can also incentivize the removal of overhead wires to allow trees to grow taller and naturally. Rooftop gardens, living walls, and the integration of nature thru the use of water, color, and texture can help even the most densest residential areas are welcoming and seem to be teeming with life.

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. Electric vehicles will become more and more common, so this effort should target areas where the City has segregated low income individuals and families and others who are unable to make this transition to no or limited exhaust single occupancy vehicles.

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?

More power. The City comes to neighborhood associations when they want something. They will often tell the neighborhood association one thing and do another. In all cases, they will do what they want no matter what the neighborhood association says.

They also control the ability of neighborhood associations to communicate with residents in the neighborhood. I was president of my neighborhood association for a number of years. At the time, it had over 30,000 residents based on the extrapolation of data from the 2010 census. The school district had a free or reduced lunch rate around 80% and over 65 languages spoken by students. In addition, there were over 50 adult residential facilities, more unpaved roadways than any other neighborhood in the City, several of the most dangerous intersections in the City, including the most dangerous in the state according to the Oregon Department of Transportation, and not a single major roadway with contiguous curb and sidewalks or curb cuts.

For comparison, there is also a very small neighborhood in the same coalition as mine that has a total of 170 residents. Both neighborhood associations received the same amount of money for communication — $1,000.

If neighborhood associations were funded appropriately, they would be able to conduct more extensive outreach. This would lead to input from a broader audience within the community.

I think it is also important to note that neighborhood associations are staffed by volunteers. I was very fortunate to have some awesome people involved when I was president.

I strongly encourage all Portlanders to get involved with the upcoming Charter Commission, which gives the power to change any aspect of government structure directly to Portlanders.

There is more information bout this on my campaign site.

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?)

Less money. The City should only be building affordable housing if the incentivizing or penalizing legislative efforts mentioned in the first question don’t produce results.

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

Yes. In most cases yes, but this assumes a couple of things. One, the only reason for eviction is an inability to pay rent and not someone who is a clear danger to other household members or neighbors or other situations that demand their removal. And two, the property owner won’t move into foreclosure due to a loss of income, which would force everyone out.

Assuming all tenants and property owners fall into only two categories — good and bad — is not realistic and can be harmful. I would much rather direct situations like this to an independent City-supported community review board or other independent body that can mediate each individual situation.

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?

• None of the above

There are many components of the above that have value, but most, if not all, would not be necessary if the City implemented incentives or penalties as mentioned in the response to the first question. Please see my campaign site for more information.

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

Much of what Portlanders want in their government can be achieved thru the Charter Commission. Please see my campaign site for more information on this incredible tool that Portlanders have to address transparency, equity, accountability, among other things.

White received an F overall from our scoring committee. See all scores and read about our process here.