Sam Adams (running for Commissioner position 4)
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. I support updating and reducing regulatory barriers to creating denser and more walkable housing and mixed-use developments in all zones, such as the Residential Infill Project (RIP).
The market, regulated and incentivized appropriately, could produce the right product in the right locations to meet today’s needs, while maintaining long-time resident’s ability to remain as the neighborhoods grow. This is an exciting, much-needed experiment with the potential to reshape our city for the better. I support the effort that has gone into working with anti-displacement and community advocates to include some basic safeguards. These are:
BASELINE: A comprehensive housing and income baseline analysis of neighborhoods most likely to receive the initial impact and redevelopment investment. We know that middle-income neighborhoods like Cully, Lents, Montavilla, and St. Johns will be most vulnerable to unintended gentrification, so the work that has gone into mitigating this possibility is critical and must continue.
GOALS AND MEASURE: The baseline should be used to set planning density, location, housing type, and housing affordability performance goals.
REAL-TIME MONITORING AND ADJUSTMENTS: The RIP should then be monitored in real-time so that if there are issues, the Council can intervene and make adjustments before it is too late.
I cannot stress enough how important these safeguards are in guaranteeing equitable success for the RIP. While previously serving on Portland City Council, I repeatedly sought council approval for the inclusion of these kinds of planning performance monitoring tools but was unfortunately unsuccessful.
This is the single biggest rezoning initiative in the city’s history. If done right, this can be transformative, bringing the effective cost of housing down to more affordable levels and opening the rental market to more residents. Done incorrectly, Portland’s middle-income neighborhoods disappear in a wave of gentrification. We won’t know until we get started. We need to be prepared and tread carefully.
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. Building off of my previous answer, I support further amending the proposed RIP, or quickly coming back to this topic in a future planning process, to allow even greater housing and mixed-use density along arterial and transit streets. This would include developments like multiplexes and affordable housing models like co-living and boarding houses. This will help reduce our dependence on car trips as well as contribute to the strengthening of 20-minute neighborhoods, where Portlanders can access basic needs, shopping and entertainment within 20-minutes from their front door.
In my previous job as Director of the World Resources Institute, United States I had the chance to spend time in cities around the world that are experimenting with innovative ways of implementing density, and I am eager to bring that knowledge in service of solving Portland’s housing challenges. For example, in areas of the city served by robust transit, I would like to experiment with apartments, districts, or corridors where there is a contractual purchase agreement that ownership or use of a personal automobile would be prohibited. With the advent of rideshares, bike infrastructure, and accessible transit, and with the goal of keeping housing affordable by encouraging density with reduced structural or surface parking, we have the opportunity to improve how our housing and transportation work together. This would be a huge step not only toward increased density and improved affordability but also towards reaching our climate goals, which should be a consideration in every policy.
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 strong neighborhood associations and appreciate the value they can have in the City’s decision-making process. I also believe that like many of our institutions they must become more inclusive of communities they impact. It’s unfortunate that the recent efforts to bring other community organizations into the neighborhood associations have been postponed by up to three years. I don’t believe we can go another three years without the inclusion of more diverse input.
If elected to City Council, I hope to work closely with established organizations that have been doing the work of empowering and lifting up Portlanders that historically have been left out of not only Neighborhood Associations, but other opportunities to take an active role in the policies by which they’re often the most affected. I propose to follow these organizations’ guidance in creating official city commissions of front line community members and historically marginalized stakeholders. These commissions would provide The City an opportunity to learn from their lived experiences and facilitate creating strong ties with The City that only Neighborhood Associations have had.
These commissions should have the same access to weigh in on the city government’s decision-making process as neighborhood associations; for example, they have the same
standing on land use issues. They also should be empowered to bring in the city bureau to examine equity and inclusion practices and performance regarding city services, hiring, and contracting. I believe a healthy process includes more than one perspective, especially if they disagree.
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. We need to spread our existing dollars more effectively. Saving money means more money for affordable housing units.
Additional funding options I would examine for feasibility, effectiveness, and political viability would include:
Transit-oriented development fee: In areas where robust transit exists, we can lower the cost of development by reducing surface or structure parking requirements. The money saved by these exceptions should then be redirected through a fee to invest in housing. We have piloted a similar effort on the streetcar system, where private property owners contributed to the cost of line construction.
Convert non-arterial city streets to no-or-low-cost sites for affordable housing: while unconventional, there are a number of existing streets with traffic controls to prevent cut-through traffic from main arterials. We can capitalize on the value of that property in the core of the city to construct affordable housing in those locations.
Take a close look at the regulatory costs and development fees and run an audit to see where we can streamline the process and reduce costs.
Eliminate SDCs for developments that meaningfully address a housing shortfall in the city: SDCs have fulfilled their purpose, but have become close to a prohibitive cost for small and medium-sized local developers to build in the City. This has served to further depress the Portland housing market and has extended the housing deficit in the city.
Significantly reduce or eliminate the construction excise tax, as it has failed to stimulate affordable housing developments that were promised.
Portland needs a housing plan to guide and monitor its housing needs. I tried to convince my colleagues on City Council to embark on a housing plan in 2006, but there was a lack of interest to proceed at the time.
“We have an affordable housing plan,” was the common reply.
“Why would we do anything for luxury housing?” was another.
At the time, my intuition was that the entire housing economy was tied together, with the supply, or lack of supply, and different price points all impacting each other. I guessed right: https://www.hfore.com/the-importance-of-housing-supply
The very precious dollars for building public subsidized housing need to be well spent and leveraged. One estimate for Portland Housing Bond projects is $310,000 per unit. That’s too high: legalizing more types of housing, like already mentioned, cheaper co-housing can help.
But to get the prices down, Portland needs to close the gap on the number of housing units required to keep rental and homeownership within reach of middle-income earners and those below. By some estimates, it will take an estimated 44,000 units in the next ten years, and an estimated $18 billion in new private-sector funding to begin to close the housing stock gap. I propose we do that by creating an evidence-based, inclusive, open, and transparent process.
Creating Portland’s first comprehensive, data-based housing plan will help us better assess where and which types of housing are needed and can be funded by the private sector.
As important to producing a housing plan, this process would identify and/or procure enough property/partners to create ready-to-build replicable multi-family housing projects, to help meet the annual requirement needed to achieve the 10-year housing goals outlined in the proposed housing strategy.
Would you support a citywide moratorium on evictions during the three coldest months of the year, as Seattle recently adopted?
Yes. Every three and a half days someone in Portland dies as a result of being houseless. This has to change. That so many people are dying on our streets should tell us that we need to address this issue with urgency and compassion.
That compassion and urgency must extend to those dangerously at risk of becoming houseless, forced out of their homes, especially during the coldest months. As Seattle Women's Commission and the King County Bar Association’s 2018 report that helped Seattle pass its winter evictions ban, often evictions are triggered because of only one or two months of unpaid rent. But being evicted will push too many already vulnerable people onto our streets, and this is unacceptable. We as a city and a community cannot stand by and let our neighbors freeze to death, as tragically happened only last winter.
Similar to Seattle, I would like to see an exclusion for mom and pop landlords that wouldn’t be able to afford to carry unpaid rent for three months and investigate other support for small landlords in good standing to mitigate impacts on their livelihoods.
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.
Invest and support organizations that follow the land trust model of removing the property from the market at large to keep it affordable and under community control. Examples include Rose Community Development that manages rental units or Hacienda CDC and Proud Ground that provide First-time Homeowners Assistance programs.
Invest in community-organization-run programs to provide home repair financial assistance to low-income homeowners to bolster their ability to hold on to their homes as their land becomes more valuable and attractive to development interests.
I am open to exploring all ADPDX policies above and supporting them depending on the details.
The City of Portland must look to community organizations, such as Living Cully, APANO and Anti-Displacement PDX, who are leading the way in anti-displacement work. It’s clear that any policy aimed at increasing the housing supply must be paired with strategic and community-centered anti-displacement measures. Only then, working together, will we ensure that new much-needed housing growth doesn’t destabilize already vulnerable communities.
If elected to City Council, I am eager to work with ADPDX to discuss the above-mentioned policies, identify those that are community priorities and work together to understand how they can best be implemented effectively and without disrupting the new housing supply.
What else should Portland pro-housing, pro-tenant community know about you & your candidacy?
We need to build more affordable housing, and we need to build it now. Our population is growing and continues to grow while housing construction, let alone affordable housing construction, has failed to keep pace.
I believe the city needs to complete a housing strategy that would provide an evidence-based approach to ensuring Portlanders have quality and affordable rental and ownership opportunities. I would also establish an Affordable Housing Permit Expediting Team (AHPET) to expedite affordable and middle-income housing projects, including those funded by the Portland Housing Bond, Metro Housing Bond, and private-sector only funded projects. Providing affordable housing will require City Hall to work together. This task force will be a subcommittee of the CHRRP, and comprised of liaisons from all the city bureaus, county, or state departments that have building permitting authority or responsibilities.
We must address this issue with creativity and flexibility. We must create a plan for growth and development with affordability and equity top of mind. Portlanders have a long history of prioritizing the livability of our city. We need to extend the same opportunity to historically marginalized communities in creating an affordable and sustainable future for housing in Portland.
Adams received a B overall from our scoring committee. See all scores and read about our process here.