Ronault LS Catalani (Polo) (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. Yes, City Council must move Portlanders toward more kindness through more inclusivity. Through better sharing our neighborhoods, especially those areas wherein so much of each next budget cycle's tax dollars have always been invested. The cost of just maintaining these districts takes a disproportionate (AKA: inequitable bite) of valuable City services. 

But aspirational City Hall policy pronouncements, without engaging strategic gov/business/community/faith and civil society partnerships, and without the funding necessary to feed urban policy partnerships -- will only increase community disappointment, even bitterness. Which will only further decrease downtown government's credibility. I say this as a 36-year activist lawyer and journalist, having lived and worked in Parkrose and Brentwood-Darlington. Inspired year after year by pretty speeches and earnest pronouncements.

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, but again, repeating how I responded to your Q above -- regarding more inclusive housing for better blending all our socioeconomic and ethnocultural communities -- City Hall urban development initiatives cannot effectively proceed without strategically engaging gov/business/community/faith and civil society partnerships. 

Moreover, our City bureaus must move out of their turfy jurisdictions and into shared responsibilities. Our City's Planning, Development Services, Transportation, and Parks bureaus (for example) have to better share their respective political clout and their considerable technical resources. 

These shifts toward sharing authority and assets must be secured with the funding necessary to feed big city policy partnerships. Or else, as with past lofty downtown policy pronouncements, outcomes will only increase the squandering of tax payer dollars and increase loss of respect for downtown leadership. These deficits only further paralyze real big city problem-solving. And encourage those easier aspirational goals. 

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. This is a complex and constantly evolving issue. Again, and forgive me for cutting & pasting from responses to your Qs above, I've been an activist lawyer and journalist working out of outer E. Portland for nearly 40 years. All those years,  I've been working the segregated worlds of our shared city's roughly 100 neighborhood associations (NAs) and our 100 mutual assistance associations (MAAs).  In addition to sharing really similar acronyms, when they're at their best, both NAs and MAAs are a lot alike. 

Take-charge types animate both. NAs are led by neighborhood activists. MAAs are led by community aunties and uncles. That is, dutiful elders and younger, savvier civic activists. African American churches for example, are MAAs. Folks go to them for information, direction, community problem-solving. Most MAAs are however, not faith-based. They are ethnic or national communities. They're from the same sending-countries or regions, even hometowns. East Portland runs at about 75 ethnic streams from around 55 countries.

In my experience, to the degree a particular neighborhood association is committed to community-building (rather than protecting an existing order), that NA's work has easily, even creatively and joyfully, integrated into the daily work of our MAAs. 

So yes, these two kinds of civic activists, one committed to place, the other committed to people -- should be equally resourced to engage in local democracy. They make a beautiful blend. During my 10 years as City Hall's immigrant integration policy guy, our East and North Portland MAA/NA/gov/business/civil society partnerships brought home 26 national, state, and local honors.

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. Much more. Portland is a big city. From my shamelessly biased and humanly limited experience in working and loving this place and the beautiful noise of our peoples mix, our biggest urban problem is downtown leadership's misunderstanding just how deep our big city problems are. Pick a Portland problem: our zip codes' startling health and wealth disparities, or our commitments to last century's fossil fuel-fed economy, or the one you ask about: our affordable housing crisis. 

All of these emergencies, including the current shortcomings of our emergency management system, arrive because of City Hall's inability to properly assess big urban issues, to respectfully inventory all ready-to-rumble parties' assets in managing our problems, and in adequately funding the dynamic scaffolding necessary to fuel the public/private/community partnerships absolutely central to work and work our complex and constantly evolving big city issues.  

Here's a concrete example: the Portland Housing Bureau does not have a credible count of our houseless neighbors. For example, our annual federal street count of homeless Portlanders is not a good place to begin projecting the political will and tax payor dollars necessary to manage this crisis, to alleviate this sorrow, and embrace all the present and future societal costs of folks and families not secure in warm homes. 

On any given night, those MAA elders and their young civic activists I mentioned above, can quadruple that annual homeless count by just counting the numbers of Tongans, Somalis, Chinese, Mexican, Haitian families, large ones including grandmas, teenagers, and babies, all sharing one or two bedroom apartments. And that's just counting Portlanders from three sending-continents and two island nations. That's just a slice. 

Under-assessing our city's problems, not respecting existing nongovernmental partners ready to co-lead, then undercapitalizing what will surely be a long and focused fix -- is Portland's problem. A problem made and maintained by our segregated communities, that is by leadership drawn from and accountable to a relatively homogenous socioeconomic sliver of who Portlanders actually are. 

Our crises (excluding our current pandemic) did not sneak up on us. Our leadership simply hasn't lived those problems.

Just as San Francisco and other responsive municipal governance has done, my vision is City Council directing Portland's private sector built-environment developers toward a mix of affordable/market/luxury housing construction. This is a process beginning with building strategic public/private/community partnerships that will secure all parties' goals, including that of our developers' profits. They have a right to get rich. Portlanders have a right to secure cozy homes. These interests are not contrary.

My vision trusts technocrats -- and we already have our region's best urban planning, structural, transportation, greenspace, and environmental engineers -- to know better and do better than I can possibly imagine.

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

Yes. Eviction moratoriums are not enough. Letting rent go unpaid but still due, for three months, only deepens hopelessness. Bitterness will be x3 in 90 days. Moratoriums are an opportunity for beginning to address housing insecurity.  Eviction protection pronouncements can be political grandstanding, good for advocates inside and outside of government, but sincere progressive populism requires incorporating the kindness and creativity of landlords big and small, social support systems of every sort serving every generation, ethnicity, and faith. Justice is really expensive. Housing equity is a long-long commitment.

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?

• 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 people in your organization know more, and have a much more sustained commitment to understanding displacement causes and effects, than I do. I cannot know more, so cannot add more strategic or practical ideas.

I've likely made more mistakes than added kind and creative vision to our city's rolling housing insecurity wave. I'm happy to describe those mistakes and the mistakes of a dozen different ethnic and national communities when we went all-in with civically engaging local, state, and, regional governing bodies in our best effort to manage destructive reconstruction of affordable outer eastside neighborhoods. There's so much I don't know. 

I cannot add technocratic skills or forecasting to this complex and dynamic issue. My work has always been setting an empowered place at the table, then getting our ridiculously optimistic families and our businesses, our professional, communal, and spiritual associations around that raucous table. My goal has never been winning, pero only participating in shared solutions. Sharing our city.

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

As I've tried to integrate into your very specific policy questions above, what our campaign wants to bring to City Council, which is my work as an activist lawyer and journalist for 36 years. We’ve worked and worked out of North and East Portland’s neighborhood centers, coffee and noodle shops, our church, temple, and mosque basements. We’ve produced inclusive and creative policies at Oregon’s Legislative Assembly and at Portland’s City Hall.  

For 10 years, I coordinated the City of Portland’s immigrant integration policy and practice initiatives. Together we blended government resources and community assets into nationally and locally honored strategic partnerships, that designed then delivered valuable City services to some of our most awfully underserved neighborhoods. Together we elevated the joy and alleviated the sorrows of what now amounts to substantial populations of Portlanders. It's important to keep in mind and heart that about half of Portland's school kids are nurtured in immigrant ethnic minority households. That's a lot of promise.

My candidacy represents first, the HOW of City governance. The WHAT-part follows from this. I believe a responsive Portland policy leader is all about HOW we face our challenges. Are elected officials effectively engaging everyone affected by our City’s policy priorities?  Are policy leaders adequately assessing what’s really at issue; then properly inventorying and valuing all the assets that affected communities and businesses are asking to bring to the fix?  I believe the fix is always in our mix.

The WHAT question comes next. What do we do about our big city urgencies?  What precious tax-payer dollars do we allocate to what very valuable City services?  This second part we can only determine after authentically securing the first part – the part about HOW we govern our shared city and our shared future. 

I'm saying this with great respect and affection for all Portlanders: We've failed to implement the inspiring kindness and creativity we own in the aggregate, among us (the WHAT part) because we're always rushing past the how-part. Because we're confident with our crowd of family and friends. 

Better though is us packing our kitchen tables and our conference room tables with Portlanders of all generations, of all abilities and ethnicities no matter who each of us loves, whether we rent or own or wish we owned a home. The foods always better. Our joy and our sorrows are always better, together.

Catalani received a D overall from our scoring committee. See all scores and read about our process here.