WE NEED YOUR VOICE AGAIN TO SUPPORT STABLE SHELTER FOR OUR HOUSELESS NEIGHBORS IN PORTLAND ON APRIL 14th.

After taking testimony on the Shelter to Housing Continuum package on March 17, Council held a work session on March 24. Council voted on S2HC amendments, extended the Housing State of Emergency, and set an additional hearing date for amendments relating to Tiny House on Wheels and RV lot allowances, sewer requirements, and allowances for shelters on church parking lots. The next hearing is Wednesday, April 14th and we need your testimony of support. Sign up now.

The two items up for discussion are:

1. Allowing churches, faith-based organizations, and community organizations to host shelters on their property by right.

2. Legalize Tiny Homes on Wheels (THOW) and RVs on residential property under the current guidelines from the Bureau of Development Services, not the stricter requirements currently proposed. The current proposal would risk displacing current RV & THOW tenants by requiring narrow electricity and plumbing requirements. Our amendments would prioritize safety and sanitation while preventing avoidable displacement.

Talking points: Shelters on churches, faith-based organizations, and community organizations:

• This amendment reduces barriers to faith-based and community-based institutions helping people. We look to churches, temples, mosques, nonprofits, and other faith-based and community-based institutions to provide leadership in supporting struggling people. The city should make it easy for them.

• It also aligns the Shelter to Housing Continuum code with the Expanding Opportunities for Affordable Housing code. In EOAH, Council recognized the special role that community-based institutions play in supporting struggling people, and made it easier for those institutions to help. This simply applies that same lesson to immediate housing for the very poor.

Talking points: flexibility for THOW & RVs on Residential Property:

• Legalize THOW & RVs on residential property. THOW/RVs are an important housing option now and should be expanded in the future. We generally support them being formally legalized in code.

• Codify the current rules from BDS for utilities; don’t make them more restrictive. The current Guidelines for Occupied RVs and Tiny Homes on Wheels on Private Property are working well and to remove them would be to displace people.

  • Sanitation: These guidelines acknowledge that there are multiple safe, workable sanitation options like waste pumping, greywater dilution systems, and hermetic sealing or dehydrating toilet systems.

    • Switching to a one-sized-fits-all approach (such as requiring sewer connections) risks displacing people for whom that one size doesn’t actually fit.

    • Council should codify the Guidelines as listed on the BDS website and direct BDS to clarify them where they need clarification.

    • BDS could issue permits for alternatives to sewer hookups, which could also provide a much-needed source of revenue for BDS.

  • Electricity: The current city guidelines can safely provide power to an RV or THOW without significant added cost to the tenant or property host. 

    • A campground style post can cost thousands of dollars to set up. 

    • Codifying the current rules and following a BDS permitting process will provide flexibility and lower barriers to entry for housing insecure people.

• Use the loan program to incentivize sewer hookups but don’t pretend it’s a replacement for flexibility. The Water Bureau’s proposed loan program for landlords to install sewer hookups is a good program that we support but it does replace flexibility.

  • Not all homeowners hosting THOW or RVs can take on upwards of $20,000 worth of debt. These homeowners will be forced to evict their tenants .

  • Homeowners that do take on this debt may well pass the payments onto their tenants in the form of rent increases.

  • Either of these risk displacement.

Here are our previous testimony recommendations, in case you’re curious what we said last time:

We need your voice to support stable shelter for our houseless neighbors in Portland.

On March 17, Portland City Council will consider the Shelter to Housing Continuum (S2HC), which would expand the legal housing and sanctioned shelter options for houseless Portlanders. They need to hear from the pro-housing community, to ensure Portland adopts the most humane, effective solutions available.

The Shelter to Housing Continuum started in 2018 and is a collaboration between the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, the Housing Bureau, and the Joint City-County Office of Homeless Services. It’s been approved by the Planning and Sustainability Commission and now will go to City Council for testimony and a vote. The S2HC seeks to make more low-barrier, entry-level, temporary shelter available to more people experiencing homelessness. It also seeks to provide more transitional shelters with onsite supportive services and allow the construction of a wider variety of affordable types of permanent housing. At its core, this project is a zoning code change for the very, very poor. This code change allows for greater livability for the very poor, many of whom are homeless. Many cities in the region, and across the nation, are facing concurrent crises. We are seeing increasing homelessness and face a looming eviction crisis. Now, more than ever, we need to get this code change right. 

S2HC would legalize important tools to support houseless Portlanders. But we know that NIMBY groups will oppose it. With your help, we can ensure that City Council adopts the best possible policies and rejects NIMBY exclusion.

Here’s what we urge you to do:

• Participate in public testimony on Wednesday, March 17th from 2pm - 5pm. You can sign up here to speak to city council by video. (When they ask which agenda item number you want to address, just enter “Shelter to Housing”)

• Our key messages:

  • Pass the Shelter to Housing Continuum

  • Adopt amendments that give greater flexibility to provide shelter, and

  • Extend the Housing State of Emergency.

• See our full testimony recommendations below

• Whether or not you take part, submit digital testimony along these lines to the city’s Map App. Your written message doesn’t have to be long; if you want, you can just say you support Shelter to Housing Continuum and the amendments proposed by Portland: Neighbors welcome.
  
  

Portland: Neighbors Welcome Testimony Recommendations for march 17th

We support passing the Shelter to Housing Continuum project, with a few simple amendments. 

The Shelter to Housing Continuum will help our houseless neighbors find and keep stable living situations.

• S2HC allows Group Living by right in existing residential structures of any size. It should be easy to site residential units in a residential zone. This code change allows for some Group Living uses without a conditional use, which promotes fair housing practices and enables a wider variety of solutions to meet present and future housing needs identified in Portland’s 2035 Comprehensive Plan. We know Portland is changing and needs more options across the spectrum. This measure gives us more tools to house everyone. 

• S2HC creates new, legal, and stable options on residential private property. This provision legalizes small-scale housing on private property without counting it against ADU limits. By permanently legalizing one RV or tiny house on wheels per private site, this empowers welcoming neighbors to create thousands of opportunities to keep roofs over Portlanders' heads.

• S2HC relaxes conditional-use review requirements for shelters in most zones. In all zones except low-density zones (formerly called single-family zones), the City has designated a ceiling for the number of shelters allowed without triggering a long and expensive conditional-use review. 

• S2HC allows accommodation types in Outdoor Shelters to include RVs, Tiny House on Wheels, and other types of shelter/housing. This allowance gives homelessness advocacy and shelter providers the flexibility they need to create safe and decent shelter for unhoused people. 

Actions and amendments proposed by Portland: Neighbors Welcome:

• Extend the Housing Emergency at least until the end of the declared public health emergency, plus six months to help ensure a safe transition back to some version of normal. Although the Shelter to Housing Continuum will make huge strides in codifying the best tools of the Housing Emergency, it is designed for long-term thinking, not an emergency and removes some important tools while the real-world emergency continues.

  • Limiting properties to 1 RV or tiny home on wheels per site may make sense for the long term but some sites are currently hosting more than one, and it would be tragic to upend these stable situations during a public health crisis.

  • [Note: The Housing State of Emergency is not currently being considered by Portland City Council as part of S2HC but is due to expire in April, and will require action by City Council to renew soon.]

• Allow sanctioned Outdoor Shelters in appropriate, approved sites in Open Space zones and in the right-of-way (ROW). Nobody expects outdoor shelters to be sited in parks or sensitive natural areas, but Open Space zones extend beyond that. We ask the City to remove the blanket ban on sanctioned shelters in Open Space Zones and the ROW and allow small sanctioned shelters in specific sites, if approved by a vote of City Council. Open Space Zones covers enough viable territory that, if the community identifies an appropriate place, City Council should be able to approve it without going through an onerous rezoning process. Otherwise, the City will be taking good sites off the table and limiting our ability to respond to the crisis.

  • For example, Right 2 Dream Too is technically in the ROW, which could be forbidden by the current language in Volume 3. We should not evict R2DToo.

  • There are currently Portlanders living in an Open Space zone right next to the Hygiene4All Hygiene Hub under the Morrison Bridge on MLK that is not a sensitive natural area nor a park. This is one example of public land zoned OS that we may want to consider for an Outdoor Shelter. Other examples included publicly owned parking lots or ROW.

  • These are just two of many examples of potential adverse effects of removing Open Space zones or ROW from siting options.

• Reduce time and cost for setting up Outdoor Shelters.  Currently, conditional-use permit fees can cost over $20,000 in land-use fees per application, and often far more in professional services fees. These fees require six months or more to have a decision rendered. Conditional use permit requirements can act as a functional ban on siting shelters and they are rightly waived in many zones under Shelter to Housing. We believe they should also be waived in narrow, appropriate circumstances in residential and Open Space zones. To solve our housing crisis, we need the ability to use every tool, and the right tools, and not take viable sites off the table through arduous conditional use processes.

  • In low-density zones, we recommend allowing churches, faith-based organizations, and other community-based organizations to host sanctioned shelters without conditional use review if they are below 20 accommodations on site. This is aligned with Expanding Opportunities for Affordable Housing, which Council passed last year to partner with community-based organizations to address the housing crisis. Exempting churches and nonprofit organizations from costly and long conditional-use reviews on their sites will speed providing shelter to our most vulnerable populations.

  • Any site in an Open Space zone that is approved by a City Council vote for a sanction shelter with 20 or fewer accommodations should not require conditional-use review.

• Don’t undermine existing vehicle dwellings. Do not require vehicle dwelling to have sewer connections, which would make many existing dwellings illegal or prohibitively expensive ($10-20k per connection). Adopt alternative best-practice sanitation solutions, such as establishing dumping sites, a mobile street team, or a pumping service such as those used for portable toilets, as Eugene does.