Portland City Council will hear two housing-related items at their meeting on Wednesday, April 2nd.
First is a resolution to study ‘social housing’ and how it could be implemented in Portland. Social housing is permanently affordable, non-market housing, that is publicly or community owned. That could mean the government, a non-profit or even a housing collective owns the housing.
It is commonly used internationally, and is starting to be adopted in the U.S. Seattle and Portland, Maine have started social housing initiatives in the last year or so.
Portland declared a housing emergency in 2015, and city data from 2023 showed that over half of all renters in Portland are cost-burdened. That means they spend more than 30% of their income on rent.
Unlike international cities where social housing is commonplace, 92% of the Portland rental market relies on market rate housing, according to the Portland Housing Bureau. That, it is argued, is a big part of why the affordable housing crisis is so intense.
The proposed resolution, co-sponsored by Councilors Candace Avalos and Mitch Green, passed out of committee by a unanimous vote for the full council to hear on Wednesday.
Green testified before the Homelessness and Housing Committee on Tuesday, noting that he intends to take social housing beyond the inquiry phase.
"I also want to acknowledge that Portlanders are weary of the study, plan, study, plan cycle that generates reports that may sit on a shelf and never be used, and that too many Portlanders are suffering from a housing crisis that burdens their household budgets, or worse, leaves them out in the cold," he said.
Green says, it's important to do the work to get it right.
"It is my intention that this city council will be remembered as the body that looked at the dire state of housing affordability and said enough, no more. We're bringing every tool we have to the problem to address affordability at its root causes," he said.
Also on the agenda for Portland City Council on Wednesday is an ordinance to ban the use of anti-competitive algorithms to drive rent prices.
Oregon is one of ten states in an anti-trust lawsuit against RealPage, which alleges that the company trains an AI algorithm on confidential information to artificially inflate rents.
The resolution was introduced by Councilor Angelita Morillo and is intended to “safeguard tenants, promote fair competition and ensure market stability,” according to the text of the ordinance
Business groups, developers and their lobbyists opposed the ordinance, saying it could mean a drop in needed development in Portland.
City Councilor Jamie Dunphy pushed back on that idea.
"We've heard from expensive lobbyists representing moneyed interests who imply that their clients should have practically unfettered access to manipulating a failed market to extract maximum profits regardless of the community cost, or else no one will ever build more housing in Portland ever again," Dunphy said. "The social contract has been broken."
Dunphy emphasized that city government has had to repeatedly clean up the mess created by tech companies like Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Ticketmaster and others, and this is no different.
"I read in testimony that price fixing is already illegal. And yet, when enough potential profit is dangled before moneyed interests, its predictable that those tech companies will push the bounds of legality until something breaks ... Today we take a small but meaningful step in drawing our line in the sand and saying enough," Dunphy said.
The resolution passed out of committee on a 3 to 1 vote.
Both that ordinance and the resolution to study social housing will be before Portland City Council on Wednesday April 2nd starting at 9:30 a.m.
Portlanders can register to testify on these items on the city website, at portland.gov/council/agenda