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LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
Last month was the first in some time at which Parkrose School District Superintendent Karen Fischer Gray was not present at a meeting of the Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission, yet her presence was felt thanks to her comments at other sessions on the same topic.
Kate Allen of the Bureau of Housing treated the commission to a briefing on the so-called Big Look, a multi-jurisdictional examination of tax exemption programs. Several such programs relieve developers of having to pay taxes on new housing development for a specified time - usually 10 to 20 years - in return for keeping the units produced “affordable” to people below a certain income level. “Tax exemptions can be tools where we need a relatively light touch to get the goals we want,” Allen said. It is used for “places where development will occur except for a little bit of a push.”
Critics, including Fischer Gray, have charged that the use of these “tools” has been myopic. Because the land is cheap, developers, aided by tax abatements and other subsidies, are building concentrations of low-income housing in places where there are not sufficient schools, sidewalks, commercial services or other supports for them. What is worse from the schools' perspective is the abatements reduce the tax base that support area schools. In recent years, the most glaring examples of these phenomena have been in mid-Multnomah County in the David Douglas and Parkrose School Districts.
Last month, as various commission members noted this fact, member Gary Oxman said, “We're all trying to channel Karen Gray today.”
Allen said officials have heard this. “We need to be better aligned with city goals,” she said. The use of exemptions and other programs should take in “social equity, access to amenities, special populations, connected neighborhoods and commercial services. We need to look not just at housing needs, but what's around the housing.” She added, “We're considering new guidelines for (encouraging) home ownership opportunities in high asset neighborhoods, places where low income minorities can't find appropriate housing that they can afford.”
“Hosford-Abernethy (roughly defined as from Southeast Hawthorne to Powell Blvd., and from the Willamette River to 39th Avenue) instead of Powellhurst-Gilbert,” commission member Chris Smith said.
Yes, said Allen. “A family should be able to choose to live near transit, services and schools.” However, she said, there is a problem: a lack of resources and “a screaming need to keep people from becoming homeless. That's our absolute priority.” In addition, most of the bureau's money consists of urban renewal funds that formerly went to the Portland Development Commission. This represents “foregone revenue” in the view of school districts and Multnomah County. All are represented on the Big Look committee, and they are making this point: “We need to take a really hard look at exemption programs in view of declining revenues.” The object should be to “incent quantity, quality and location of housing where the market will not provide it,” Allen said.
Commission member Irma Valdez, a Laurelhurst resident, felt there is a cheaper way. “Interest rates are really low right now,” she said. “Many minority families are paying rent that's equal to what a mortgage would cost. All you'd have to do is make the opportunity known, and it wouldn't cost much money. The opportunity is here, and no one recognizes it. Instead, we're all waiting for miraculous things to happen. Rationality has left the room.”
In contrast, commission member Howard Shapiro said, “In these economic times, most of the new housing will be rental.”
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