Transcript
Automatically generated transcript. It may contain errors and includes testimony in languages other than English that is not individually marked up for assistive technology.
Jamie Dunphy
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Good evening.
I now call this meeting of the City Council to order.
Keelan, can you please call the roll?
Avalos.
Present.
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Present Here.
Here.
And Mr. Porter, could you please read the rules of decorum?
Welcome to the Portland City Council.
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The presiding officer preserves order.
Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others' testimony or council deliberations will not be allowed.
If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given.
Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting.
Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass.
Councilmember Additionally, council may take a short recess and reconvene virtually.
Your testimony should address the matter being considered.
When testifying, state your name for the record.
Your address is not necessary.
If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent.
Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when council clerk calls your name.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And, uh, colleagues, before we move to, uh, item 1, which is agenda approval, I'm going to take a moment of privilege and turn the, uh, microphone over to my new vice president, Councilor Clark, to say a couple of The opening of our first full council meeting.
Thank you, Council President Dunphy.
I appreciate this.
Colleagues, I woke up this morning feeling a little blue.
Don't worry, I'm, I'm better now.
But I wanted to share a reflection with all of you really about the times that we're living in and what is happening all around us.
Thank you.
We just experienced the first year of the Trump administration and what would have been the 97th birthday of Martin Luther King.
But I wanted to reflect very briefly on the responsibility that we have for our city in the midst of the challenges that we confront.
This really hit home for me with the shooting of the 2 immigrants by federal agents in Portland, what, about 2 weeks ago.
Right after the murder of Renee Goode in Minneapolis, and then again this week with the shooting of 2 of our city employees, both police officers in the line of duty.
Colleagues, I, I feel there are forces swirling above us and around us that we don't control, but they have a deep impact on us, on all of us and the people in our community.
And I just wanted to call this out today or tonight.
And I know I can only speak for myself, but I believe we are all feeling it and we're all coping in our own ways.
And in addition to what's coming at us from Washington, D.C. or, or other parts, we have our own challenges guiding the city through a difficult budget and many pressing issues in partnership with the mayor and the city manager.
I have faith that we will rise to the challenge And feel the full measure of our responsibility to the entire city.
My desire, my ask in bringing this reflection to you tonight is that we don't take these pressures, internal or external, that we don't take these pressures out on each other, and that we move forward with respect and kindness towards one another.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor.
Thank you, Vice President Clark.
Um, that moves us to item 1, which is our agenda approval.
Um, at the beginning, I'd like to make a note on our agenda update.
Um, I— we've added an update on the implementation of Resolution 37730, the council strategic priority setting.
I'll be inviting City Administrator Lee and the resolution co-sponsors, Councilors Ryan and Koyama Lane, to offer updates and comments, but we'll take this after the city administrator's report.
Are there any concerns with that?
No.
No?
Are there any requests to amend the agenda, to reorder items, or to reschedule an item to a future meeting date?
Do I have unanimous consent to approve the agenda?
Lots of nods.
Great.
The agenda is approved.
Keelan, can we please call public communications?
First up, we have Holly Brown.
Thank you, thank you for being here.
Uh, can I start?
Yeah.
Okay.
On September 17th, 2025, after months of public pressure, the City of Portland issued a land use violation to the Portland Ice Facility for violating the human It is now January 21st, 2026, and the city has yet to even collect fines for the violation of the conditional use permit by ICE.
In the 4 months since the land use violation was issued, Portland experienced a surge in ICE raids with a minimum of 380 detentions occurring in November 2025 alone.
The National Guard was deployed to Portland to protect the ICE facility, as they say, and just a couple weeks ago, the city issued a new order to allow ICE to detain Renee Goode was murdered by ICE in Minneapolis, and 2 Portlanders were shot by Border Patrol the very next day.
How many more lives need to be lost or destroyed for City Council and the mayor to treat this like the emergency that it is?
I am here today to call upon the mayor and Portland City Council to do your jobs, step up, and protect Portlanders like you are sworn to do, and to put forth immediate emergency legislation to revoke the permit for the Portland ICE facility and shut it down.
We do not accept your excuses.
We do not accept silence, and we do not accept inaction.
Most of you on council have remained completely silent about this issue, and shame on you.
Others have told us repeatedly that there is nothing you can do, that at the advice of the city attorney, who I'm glad is here today, you must remain silent on the issue and just let the situation play out through the undemocratic and lengthy permitting and development process.
I want to say very clearly to City Council, the people did not elect the city attorney.
The position exists to protect the city from lawsuits, not to protect the people from harm.
In the time I have been politically active, I've repeatedly seen city attorneys act in the interests of wealthy and powerful people and attempt to stifle the people's movements.
When you turn up your nose at the movement and tell us over and over that you won't do what the community asks of you at the direction of highly paid lawyers who likely don't even live in the neighborhoods that are under attack by ICE, You make it very clear who you stand with.
I'm not sure what more needs to happen to convince City Council and the mayor to start using legislative and administrative power to actually do something real to combat ICE and Trump.
ICE is terrorizing Portland out of a home base that was approved by City Council in 2011.
This process happened in just 7 months, the approval of the facility.
We're now on month 4 since the land use violation was issued, and the process to begin revoking the permit for the facility has not even begun.
Councilmember Loretta Smith.
Many of you have the nerve to say abolish ICE, but won't even do the bare minimum when it comes to kicking ICE out of Portland.
Until those words are paired with action, they are nothing more than that.
They're just words.
To City Council, you have legislative power.
The ICE facility is privately owned.
You must and have to put forth immediate legislation to shut down the ICE facility and to prevent any other facilities like this from being created.
We are depending on you.
Lives are at stake.
There's nothing more important that is happening in Portland and across the country Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
And folks, I appreciate the enthusiasm.
I appreciate the support of our testimony.
But please remember, we ask not to applaud in here.
We are happy to do jazz hands or other expressions of approval.
I appreciate the community showing, but we ask that you refrain from applause.
Thank you.
Please.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Casey DeSantis.
Welcome, Casey.
Hello, Council.
Uh, today I sit in front of you at 120 days since the notice of land use violation was handed down to the Portland ICE facility.
In the latest update posted to Portland City website on January 9th, we have been told that there is no timeline to see action, and it has been 120 days In these 120 days, we have seen ICE operations not only continue but ramp up in the Portland metro area, with the McAdam ICE facility serving as the hub for ICE agents and many other federal agencies.
2 Weeks ago, Renee Nicole Goode was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis while exercising her rights to protest and free speech.
When this happens, we can very easily make the connection that it could have happened here.
Councilmember Herbold.
To any community member that does MigraWatch, Adopt a Corner action, or hands out know-your-rights information or whistle kits.
It has been made very clear by comments from PPB officers that anyone who dares to stand up to ICE are deemed criminals and can get shot as a result.
One day after Good was killed in Minneapolis, 2 immigrants were shot by Border Patrol agents here in Portland.
Portland City Council, this legislative body needs to be treating this like the emergency situation that it is.
Thank you.
We have killer ICE in our streets and members of Portland's own police force that agree with their actions.
This is a public safety emergency.
With this, I urge the City Council to pass emergency legislation that shuts down the McAdam ICE facility or ceases their operations at the very least.
We cannot afford to have a hub for ICE and federal agents in this city while people are being killed.
Thank you.
For more than 120 days, we have been begging this council for substantial action regarding the ICE facility, anything that can affect its operations in a real way.
What we have received are councilors who make double or triple our salaries talking down to and patronizing us.
We have been told by councilors that your hands are tied, and while I love the idea of progressive councilors in office, I have been profoundly disappointed at how you have been seemingly strangled by the system instead of making an honest effort You and I know that change does not occur by playing by the rules of a broken system or even merely throwing sand in its gears, but by being bold in change and fighting back.
I direct my next comments towards Mayor Wilson, who I see is absent yet again for a public comment.
So Mayor Wilson, it must be really hard to properly respond to this emergency situation when you're also busy being a CEO of your company.
I am not a CEO.
We have been told by multiple councilors that this is in your hands and you hold the power to push this along.
So while over 18,000 people have signed the petition to revoke the ICE permit for the facility, while we have sent thousands of emails to your office and met with other councilors regarding this matter, your office has not responded to any of our requests to meet with us.
We have sought you out in public and at other meetings trying to have this conversation.
And, you know, your position aligns more with landlord Stuart Lindquist than those of working Portlanders affected by your inaction.
Councilmember Loretta Smith.
Again, folks, I am sorry, I have to ask to please not cheer and clap.
I— we have rules in this committee, in this chamber, and we have to show our support in, uh, other ways.
I apologize.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Nancy Moreno-Whaden.
Thanks for being here.
Hello.
All right, this is my first time doing this, so I'm nervous.
My name is Nancy Moreno-Waden, and I am here as a concerned citizen, as a member of Portland contra las deportaciones.
I want to start by saying that our community deserves better.
City Council Mayor Keith Wilson and Governor Tina Kotek keep saying they oppose ICE violence.
They issue statements, they express concern, and they say the right words.
But when But when it comes to action, there is no urgency.
None.
Our community members are getting hurt because of it.
2 Of our community members were shot just recently, shot over civil matters.
Immigration violations are not crimes.
Being undocumented is not a crime.
Yet these ICE terrorists are using military-style force on our streets while our elected leaders stand by and watch.
Councilwoman Mayor Wilson himself said after our community members were shot, he says our community deserves answers and our community deserves peace.
City Council says ICE's actions are unnecessary and unjustified and potentially unconstitutional.
Governor, Governor Kotek has said federal immigration tactics foster lawlessness and recklessness.
These are their words.
Thank you.
But where is their action?
Right now, we already know that the ICE facility on McAdam has violated its permit by detaining people overnight and holding them longer than allowed.
A sanctuary city should never allow that.
City Council keeps saying there's nothing they can do, but there's— that just sounds like a cop-out.
They have the tools.
One second.
If Oregon calls itself a sanctuary state, then it must actually protect people, not with statements, not with sympathy, but with action.
Shut down the McAdam facility and protect our community now, because no one should be shot by these violent ICE goons over a civil matter.
No one should be detained in an illegal facility, and no one should die in ICE custody anywhere.
Revoke the permit and shut the ICE facility down.
Thank you for being here.
Uh, next up— and again, folks, sorry, please, I appreciate the support we're showing our speakers, and I have rules I have to enforce.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Cole Donahue.
Welcome, Cole.
My intent today was to speak directly to Mayor Keith Wilson, but unsurprisingly, he has once again refused to talk to his own constituents about ICE and the threat they pose in Portland.
It has been 126 days since Permitting and Development found that ICE's facility on McAdam is in violation of its conditional use permit, and since then, there has been zero movement towards revoking the permit.
With ICE kidnapping and brutalizing hundreds and hundreds of Portlanders since this notice of violation was issued.
This has all happened under Keith Wilson's watch as someone with direct control over permitting and development.
The Revoke the ICE Permit campaign has sent Wilson's office well over 1,000 emails demanding to meet with him and for him to provide a detailed plan for how he is going to kick ICE out of the city he was elected to represent.
He has never responded.
Myself and other organizers with the campaign went to his office on January 8th, the day after ICE murdered Renee Nicole Goode, to demand a meeting with him.
We did not get a meeting that day because Border Patrol attempted to murder 2 Portlanders, and we needed to respond to that crisis because we knew the mayor would do nothing.
He would do nothing but send thoughts and prayers.
We are still demanding that meeting with him, and we are still demanding for the immediate revocation of ICE's permit to operate the facility here.
We are also demanding that the city council assembled here today, although some of them could not bother to come to work today, to start putting in the work to kick ICE out.
Every single time you all meet with the mayor, you should be demanding that he hold a town hall to listen to his own constituents about how ICE is affecting them.
You should be demanding that he do more than just spew empty rhetoric and instead take real action.
You should be demanding that he revokes the ICE permit.
Thank you.
Additionally, you all should be bringing forth legislation to shut it down on your own.
We will not accept you throwing your hands in the air and saying there's nothing you can do.
You are Portland's legislative body and you should start acting like it.
We don't have time to wait.
This is an emergency and we need action to end this emergency as soon as possible.
Just a few minutes ago, Councilor Clark dared to invoke the names of Renee Nicole Goode and the 2 Portlanders that were shot by Border Patrol, and yet she refuses to take any action to revoke the permit.
Shame on you.
Councilor Sameer Kanal.
Jane.
Until the permit is revoked, until ICE— as long as ICE has a home base in this city that they used to terrorize thousands and thousands of Portlanders, we will not allow business as usual because outside the walls of this City Hall, we have not had business as usual for a very long time.
Revoke the permit immediately.
Yes, Councilor.
Thank you for being there.
And again, folks, I will remind— I know you're doing it on purpose, but I have to do a job regardless.
Please remember that we have rules of decorum where we express our support without clapping.
Next up, we have Chris Olson.
Good evening, Council.
Hey, how's it going?
All right, well, good evening, Council President Dunphy and councilors.
Uh, first, I want to congratulate you, Councilor Dunphy, for your election.
I look forward to the next year of your leadership.
I really do.
For the record, my name is Chris Olson, and I'm a resident of District 2, and most of you know me for my work with the Portland DSA, but I'm not speaking for the chapter at this time.
I'm speaking as a proud resident of the city for the last 5 years who wants to see everyone being treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve.
I wanna talk about what I can best describe as the disgraceful racist comments made last week during the presidential election in these chambers.
In particular, I will focus on the white members of this council in my comments.
To the BIPOC members, I want you to know that I approach this topic with humility, and I may not say the right things, and maybe my criticism doesn't go far enough for you.
As a white man committed to anti-racist practices, I'm open to correction and criticism myself.
I'm extremely disappointed by the lack or minimal response to the racist comments by Brian Orendoff and others in the council.
Group chat shown at the Portland Mercury last week, particularly Councilors Clark, Novick, Ryan, and Zimmerman.
I saw no written condemnation of their comments on their social media.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney, I appreciate your statement, but honestly, I did expect a stronger condemnation for someone who represents District 2 and who has had a history of racist land use policies that came from real estate developers like Brian Owen Doff.
It's no surprise that all the councilors I mentioned were endorsed by the Portland Metro Chamber, of which Owen Doff has been a member for many years.
The Portland Metro Chamber also failed to issue any statement condemning the remarks of a prominent individual associated with their organization.
Clearly, many of the white councilors here are putting the interests of a racist real estate developer over those of the people of color in their districts.
Your lack of serious comment on the matter means you are too cowardly to say anything for the fear of losing the support of Owen Doff and the group, those in his group chat.
Since we are remembering Martin Luther King Jr. this week, let me read my favorite passage from his letter from Birmingham Jail.
A message for the more moderate members of this council.
I must make 2 honest confessions to you.
First, I must confess that over the past few years, I have been gravely disappointed by the white moderate, and I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride towards freedom is not the White Citizens' Councilor or the Ku Klux Klaner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice, who continually says, I agree with you on the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.
Who paternalistically believes that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom.
Who lives by the mythical concept of time.
Who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a more convenient season.
A shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than an absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
It's not enough to just not be racist these days, but you must be anti-racist.
You must do better and condemn any racist language with the strongest language possible.
And I'm very disappointed by some of you.
Thank you, Verena.
That completes communications.
Thank you very much.
Colleagues, 3rd item on our agenda is committee referral report.
It is posted online.
You all can read it.
I'm not going to try and read it very quickly.
Many things have been referred to committees.
Some have already gotten heard.
Take a look online and they will have a hearing in a committee near you.
Thank you.
Moving on to item 4.
Can we please call item 4?
Annex.
Revoke the permit!
This is considered disruptive conduct.
This is a warning that if there is continued or otherwise disruption of this meeting, we will be facing ejection from this meeting.
Sir, this is a disruption, and I'm asking you to please return to your chair.
This is a council disruption.
Security, I'd like you to please have this gentleman removed from our council chambers.
This is a disruption, and if it does continue, I will be clearing the chamber.
Council is going to move to a 2-minute recess.
Council is now resumed.
Christina, can you hear me?
Hey, Keelan, I can hear you.
Perfect, thank you.
Sure.
Oh, this isn't working.
Oh, that's okay.
Good evening, folks.
As we are starting to reconvene here, if anybody who has signed up If anyone who signed up to testify, as we are reconvening virtually, has not received a link to log in to testify, please do let us know.
You can email council.clerk@portlandoregon.gov to get an additional link sent to you, or find some other way to let us know that you haven't gotten your link, and we will try to get you to testify.
If folks who are signed up to testify are still in the building, we have opened the Lovejoy Room.
Thank you, Council Clerk Keelan McClymont.
And Lovejoy will still accept public testimony where you can come and speak to us directly.
So, and as councilors are logging on, we will give it just one more minute before we start again.
Thank you.
Everyone has very different quality of cameras.
They should all be the same, bro.
They're not.
Oh, fun.
And I can't hear anything.
Sorry, hold on a sec.
Can you hear us now, Jamie?
No, I can't hear you.
Okay, are we ready to go?
I am reconvening this meeting of the Portland City Council virtually.
Uh, Keelan, can you please call item 4?
Yes, just a moment.
Can you hear me okay, Council President?
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
Item 4, annex the— You're on mute.
I can't hear Are others having trouble hearing me?
I can hear you.
Councilor, apologies to everybody who is watching at home as we are exploring this technology through its tests.
We're gonna try this again.
All right, can you hear me now?
We still can't hear.
I still can't hear anybody, so let us move over to this.
Hey, Keelan, do you mind, uh, giving us a test?
Yep.
Can you hear me now?
Okay, thank you.
Keelan's on mute still.
Oh, she's through the main one.
Yes, I see.
Okay, one more time.
Oh, sorry.
Can you hear me now?
Does that work?
Oh no, see, it's defaulting to this.
It's treating this as an audio drive, so you gotta save the download.
Okay, one more time.
Yeah, Keelan, one more time, please.
I want to see testimonies.
They're out our door.
They're being nasty.
Hey Adam, I can see you're in the room.
Perfect.
You can hear me?
Okay, great.
Okay, we have audio.
Uh, we are ready to, uh, we are ready to go here.
Thank you, Adam.
Sincere apologies, colleagues.
I think if folks can hear me and I can hear you, we are ready to go.
And Keelan, wait.
Okay, go ahead.
Can you hear me now?
Yeah, there we go.
Technology.
Thank you so much for everybody.
All right, uh, item 4, annex the 5048 Southwest Hilltop Lane property.
Thank you, colleagues.
This is the second reading of an ordinance.
Uh, is there any discussion on this item?
Not seeing any hands.
Keelan, could you please call the roll?
Roll call.
Oh, sorry, we're addressing some technical issues.
Avalos?
Aye.
Smith?
Councilor Smith?
Okay, uh, Kanal?
Yes.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
The ordinance passes with 11 yes votes and 1 absent.
Thank you very much.
If City Administrator Lee is ready, we're ready to call item number 5.
Trying to unmute myself.
There we go.
Can you hear me?
Thank you.
Keelan needs to call the item real quick.
Hold on.
Again, to everybody watching at home and to everybody on this meeting, I really appreciate your patience as we figure out these technical difficulties and logistics.
All right, Council President, are we Are we on the consent or the city administrator report now?
Yes, please.
Okay, thank you.
Number 5, January 2026 city administrator report.
City Administrator Lee, thank you for, uh, joining us.
And, uh, for, uh, this is your first presentation to us for your report.
Congratulations and welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council President and Vice President, City Council.
Uh, this is my first opportunity to formally present the City Administrator's Report, and I want to begin by saying how much I appreciate the partnership already taking shape between Council and the administrative team.
I approach this role with deep respect for Council's authority and a clear understanding that your direction, priorities, and values head help set the course for this organization.
The purpose of this monthly report is straightforward.
It is designed to provide you with a clear, high-level view of how the organization is operating, where progress is being made, and where challenges require attention or shared problem-solving.
It is not intended to capture everything happening across the city, but rather to surface the issues, trends, and decisions that matter most to effective governance.
As you review this report, as I know all of you have already, you will see both positive momentum and real constraints.
You will see where we're dedicated employees are delivering critical services every day, progress on public safety, infrastructure, and community investment, and also the fiscal and organizational realities we must navigate together.
My commitment is to be candid about both, to communicate clearly, bring forward our options, and ensure you have timely and accurate information to support your decision-making.
Going forward, you can expect this report to continue to evolve.
My goal is for it to become a dependable tool for transparency, accountability, and alignment between policy and operations.
I look forward to working closely with each of you through these reports.
Through briefings, through ongoing dialogue, to translate council's priorities into measurable results that Portlanders can see and experience.
With that, I'm happy to walk through the highlights from this month's report and answer any questions you may have.
I also have my executive leadership team on this call as well to address any questions that council may have as it relates to the report.
Thank you.
Thank you, Deputy City Manager.
Thank you, City Administrator.
Just to be clear, would you prefer to go through to present or give a highlight of any of these, or would you rather any of our councilors, in interest of time, who might have questions jump in the queue and ask that?
Let's jump into the queue and ask any questions that they may have, just for the essence of time.
Great.
Colleagues, if you have any questions for our City Administrator for his first City Administrator report in this Challenging environment, please go ahead and jump into the queue.
Vice President Clark, please go ahead first.
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, City Administrator Lee.
I just wanted to note that in the report— they're vacuuming out here, I don't know if you can hear it— the section on public works under parks calls out partnerships, and I was really pleased to see that.
That's something I'd like to see across all the bureaus, more partnerships.
Thank you.
EVP Clark.
Councilor Green.
Uh, thank you.
Um, I'm gonna shout because the vacuuming is the worst timing you can possibly imagine here.
Um, uh, just wanted to note, I think given what we've experienced tonight, I think it would be a good idea to have a standing line item that just gives us a status of the phase at which we're at in the land use reconsideration process for the McAdam Ice Facility.
I don't expect that we would put any sort of editorializing in that, and we would not talk about any pre-decisional, you know, opinions or sort of leanings.
But I think at a minimum, I think what we could do To show the community that we're working on this is just to provide a timeline.
Here's where we're at.
Um, and so we, so we have some of that information.
So, um, I think I've shared that in a private venue, but I just wanted to raise that now.
Thanks.
Most definitely, we can do that and accommodate that.
Thank you, sir.
Any other questions or comments for our city administrator on his first city administrator report?
Thank you, Council President.
I see that DC Oliveira has turned on his camera, so I think I'd like to first just allow him to answer anything about the permit process and timeline, and then I might have some other things after that.
I'm also happy to wait until later at your discretion, Council President.
All right, thank you, Councilor Kanal and Councilor Green.
Hello, everyone.
Donnie Oliveira, for the record.
Just for a quick background, since we haven't touched this topic in a while, Following a formal complaint in July of 2025, Portland Permitting and Development issued on September 18th a notice of violation to the McAdam facility for violation of their conditional use.
This triggered 2 timelines: one, a 30-day window for the violation, and a potential 60-day window for reconsideration of that conditional use.
On October 3rd, a law firm representing the owners of the McAdam Avenue requested administrative review of that notice of violation, which essentially was they were challenging the violation itself.
They had time to provide their findings to suggest that that violation was void.
We actually had a staff— excuse me, not me, but staff had a meeting with the legal team on December 30th to receive those findings.
Thank you.
We've collected that information, and now staff in the City Attorney's Office are earnestly at work evaluating that administrative review for a decision.
And the 2 outcomes of that is one, we would see their findings as accurate and would remove the violation.
If we don't believe those findings are accurate, we would proceed with the timelines.
That would result in potentially a fine on that 30-day window, or if on that 60-day window, that would restart that clock.
That would be the situation where a hearings officer could reconsider the conditional use for the permit that was granted in 2013.
I will also note that this appeal process that we are in can be appealed to a circuit court, so we are far from completing the legal process on this admin review for the initial violation.
But the next step is staff will make a determination on if the admin review process resulted in any findings that we hadn't found that would make the violation void.
Can I clarify on that?
That's where— yeah, what is the timeline on the staff making that determination?
What is the deadline, I should say?
Great question.
There's not a code-specific timeline, but I can tell you that staff and city attorneys are actively working at pace to get that result as soon as possible.
Okay.
And when you say code-specific, you're referring to city code, DCL?
Yes.
Okay.
So the timeline is defined there.
That's helpful.
And then the other piece is after that is done, then a hearings officer, what's their timeline for issuing their finding?
If we restart that 60-day clock that started in September but was paused in October, We restart that clock to get to that 60 days.
The permitting director would have the authority to initiate a reconsideration of the conditional use.
That would require staff to actually put together a recommendation to a hearings officer.
And that, that is, again, on staff's diligence to get that to them.
There's not a, there's not a clock-specific timeline, but again, it's a, it's an issue that we take very seriously and would move as quickly as possible to get that scheduled.
Thank you.
And just to follow that thread, Councilor, if we get to that point in the proceedings, of course, that process could be appealed at a hearings officer, at which point then that decision would move to council for contemplation.
But I have to restate, there's a lot of steps in there related to appealing.
So there's legal processes that would have to play out before that happens.
Okay.
And then my last question on this, and then I'm happy to circle back around for other things later in the queue, Council President, is Last time I asked questions about this in the City Administrator's report, I think I was imprecise in how I asked the question.
I asked when the mayor's next public engagement was to discuss this, and I think that was a little narrow in its focus.
So I want to be a little clearer now.
When is the next time that the administrative side of our city government is having a place where the public can weigh in on this process to you?
And that might include the mayor, might include the administration, administrator all the way down.
Yeah.
To anyone in this process?
Yeah, Councilor, thank you for the question.
As far as the process that we're in right now, which is this admin review, there is not a public comment period on this particular case.
Once we get into the phase where it might be going to a hearings officer, people that had standing, i.e., people that, you know, submitted the complaint on the initial violation, could in fact participate in that.
Reconsideration.
So when we get to that phase of reconsideration, people who have standing in our policy— because this is obviously following a legal process— would have standing.
As far as a scenario where we are hosting an information session, not that you suggested that, I would obviously talk to City Administrator Lee and the mayor about that.
But right now we're staying focused on making sure our process is airtight and we don't have an administrative appeal about process, because that's certainly— Right.
Is potentially an option if we don't, you know, dot all our i's and cross our t's.
Yeah, thank you.
And I'll just pass it back to the council president.
But first, I wanted to mention portland.gov/news for those who haven't seen it, has a statement from the mayor about this process from 5:30 PM today.
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
Thank you, Council President.
Warm welcome to City Administrator Lee.
Appreciate that you're with us and you're hitting the ground running.
I appreciated our coffee chat the other day, and I love that you are prioritizing having those with each elected.
I saw on there a shout out for the Arts Access Fund, which is exciting and will distribute over $8 million to Portland's 6 different school districts.
And those funds plant artistic seeds that are very important to help students grow into artists, musicians, Also, not sure how many folks saw buried in Appendix D, but there was a note there about the Creston Skatepark Award that went out before the holiday break.
And I have a staffer who's an avid skateboarder who pointed out that this is going to bring an amazing covered park to the heart of D3 that's really going to bolster Portland's reputation as a leader in city-supported skate— skatepark design.
I'll let you try to figure out later on who the skater on my team is.
Thank you.
And I also appreciated the section that you wrote about your hope for partnership with council, regular engagement, candor, healthy dialogue, and you specifically talked about alignment between policy and operations being essential.
I'm just wondering if you can let us know a little bit more about what you envision with respect to aligning policy and operations.
Thank you.
You know, as we continue to go through the process of our priority setting, session that we will have with City Council.
That's a huge part of aligning policy with operations.
Once we have clear priorities and alignment from where City Council wants to take the organization, it'll be staff's main objective to really develop the goals and operational pieces that help achieve those goals and objectives and priorities that Council has overall.
And that will be critical for us to have that buy-in from City Council on how we plan on achieving those goals.
This can't be done in a vacuum, and it can't be done from our eyes where we're the only ones with lenses on this.
This has to be a collaborative process that we are engaging with Council regarding what does success look like?
What are those outcomes and measures that we're using to gauge success?
And then What are those key performance indicators that we can communicate to the community of what success is for this organization?
Those are all key things that we're going to have to partner with in aligning what that policy direction is from city council to the operational things that we're doing as a city, and it will play dividends in how we look at our budget as well, which is the biggest policy decision that council will be making year after year.
Is the city's budget, a huge policy document, and we're really leaning into those priorities that council has, help shaping what that policy document truly looks like.
And what are we and how are we funding programs and initiatives and, and actual projects to help achieve the overall priorities that council has for the organization?
Thank you.
This is a continuous conversation that we have to have.
I also believe in quarterly check-ins with council as it relates to those priorities, and where are we in achieving those things, and also a year-end report that kind of talks through what we have done for that full year from a policy standpoint of implementing what council— the council has asked of us to do, and where we are with implementing those, and where we are.
With implementing those, and where we are Thank you, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Council President.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Thank you.
Um, thank you, City Administrator Raymond Lee.
I appreciate you, uh, attending the Martin Luther King Um, Urban League celebration brunch this Monday.
Got a chance to introduce you to a lot of folks, so I guess this is going to be your life for the next year or so.
Um, I have a question.
We have $26.7 million in pending federal grant awards.
Um, what areas of, um, the city government do those— a good portion of those lie?
Are they block grants, transportation grants?
What are they?
You know, that's a good question.
I don't know if we have our CFO Jonas on this call to be able to talk to, or Tracy on this call that may have a better understanding from a budgetary standpoint.
See, Jonas just jumped on to kind of speak to that, uh, topic.
Thank you.
Yeah, uh, uh, good evening, Council.
For the record, Jonas Biery, Chief Financial Officer.
Uh, Councilor Smith, great question.
Um, I'm not— um, I'm pulling up the report here and not finding the exact $26 million that you're referring to.
I'm guessing we won't know that even if we can identify that on the spot, but more than happy to follow up with you and get that information.
Follow up with you on that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, more than happy to do that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Avalos.
All right.
Hello.
Thank you so much, City Administrator Raymond Lee.
Welcome to this role.
Quite a first day officially.
I really appreciate the report, and I have some specific questions as it relates to the Protect Portland initiative.
So first, First, can you explain the rationale for opening the immigrant affairs lead position for only 1 week and how the city ensured that the abbreviated posting period still allowed for a robust and inclusive candidate pool?
You know, when we look at that position overall, I believe the staff were looking at the amount of applicants that they had roll in for that, which it was a good amount of applicants to come in as it relates to that role within the organization and going through those interviews.
It's one of those situations, if we didn't feel that we had an adequate number of applicants that met the minimum qualifications for that role, we probably would have kept that position open longer.
We were able to receive a good number of applicants that met those minimum qualifications and went through a very aggressive and very important recruitment process of interviewing, selecting people for that role.
Thank you.
I know Tracy can kind of talk through some of the typical processes, how we do some of the hires in the hiring process and interview process for those type of roles.
But I know that was one of the important roles for the city, that we were able to pull in a number of applicants, qualified applicants for that role, to be able to fill that position.
Happy to also answer any questions, Councilor Ottawa.
But we did have a process in which we did an initial posting for one week with the understanding that we would evaluate the applicant pool, see the level of applicants and their level of qualifications to determine whether or not we would keep it open longer or close the recruitment.
We did have quite the applicant pool with lots of talented individuals on that applicant pool that helped us to feel comfortable in moving forward with the recruitment process.
That did include an interview panel that included multiple stakeholders for a first round.
Then we had a second round interview process that also included stakeholders, and then we are in the process of making final decisions.
Thank you.
So my next question is that my understanding is that each bureau has designated an immigration lead.
So I was curious what criteria and process were used to select those individuals and what resources or support are given, are being given to these leads.
Absolutely happy to weigh in on that as well.
So each bureau has designated an immigration lead.
Each of the bureaus' directors were provided criteria for selecting immigration affairs liaisons for their bureau.
We listed out things like a natural affinity to the work, an interest in doing the work, capacity to be able to do the work, having an understanding of policy and other dynamics related to the work within the city.
They were then supposed to identify folks who could participate as their bureau representative, and they had to be willing to commit them to a certain amount of time.
We estimated, you know, roughly somewhere between 5 to 10 hours a week that they would be needed, and then we quickly realized that we needed to add a resource in the mayor's office to help continue to facilitate that work and make sure that they had adequate support for ongoing needs.
So that's part of the driving factor of creating the immigration affairs liaison lead position and recruiting for it quickly.
Okay.
And my last question is 2 parts.
So my understanding is that the city has implemented a new immigration leave policy.
So my first question on that is, does this policy create 40 new hours of immigration leave for employees, or does it allow employees to use up to 40 hours of their existing leave for immigration-related matters?
So it is neither.
What it does is it allows employees to use up to 40 hours of city-paid time.
They're not using an existing leave bank, and a new leave bank is not being created.
It's kind of like when someone attends jury duty and we say you're doing that on city time.
There's a special code that they use, but it doesn't take away from their leave banks, and they don't have a pot sitting there that's available.
That's good to know.
And then the second part to that is, what protections are in place to ensure that immigration leave records and any related communications to that Cannot be accessed, disclosed, or used by federal immigration authorities to identify individual city employees that are using this service?
Absolutely.
So, um, the requests are going through the Bureau of Human Resources, and we are specifically not asking for certain levels of documentation.
Okay, thank you.
That's all for now.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Councilor Kanal.
Thanks, um, Council President.
So, uh, welcome again, City Administrator Lee, and thanks for your, uh, report.
Thanks also to, to former Administrator Jordan.
I know you were probably part of, uh, some of that planning.
Uh, excited to see the iteration month over month, including the inclusion for the first time of the intergovernmental agreement list on page 59.
I also wanted to thank you for the updates on the direct impact of the sanctuary Modification of Protect Portland initiatives and the continued status updates on budget notes, in particular around the updates coming back to council due back on February 28th for long-term residential and commercial vacancy fees and package delivery fees.
I appreciated the shoutouts.
Michelle Koenig-North has done a lot in leading, building, managing 311, her whole team, and Ranger Schultz as well in the other section related to park rangers.
I had one question and then a comment.
Yes.
How many citations and arrests were there in the first 5 weeks of the camping ordinance enforcement actions?
On page 3, it talks about 111 people connected to services and 11 people sent to deflection, but it doesn't talk about what was in the, the sort of small-scale reports on a few days at a time about how many folks were arrested or cited.
Do you happen to know that off the top of your head?
I don't know that off the top of my head, and we can follow up with that information before the end of this week so you can have that information.
Okay, great.
Then the comment I wanted to say, and I know Councilor Clark had already touched on a lot of this earlier on, but I was excited to see the success in recruiting.
PBEM did a great job in filling some of those net volunteers at Bumper Crop there.
I will note that there are also vacancies we've been seeing for years at PPB that are being filled and appreciate that.
And I wanted to second Councilor Clark's appreciation to our city employees for all that they do and also add my well wishes and hopes for a full and speedy recovery to the 2 police officers who were shot a few nights ago in Northeast Portland.
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge and send speedy wishes to the 2 police officers who are Who were experiencing gun violence trying to do their jobs, and to all the police officers who are out there trying to find the gentleman who did this to them.
We wish those 2 officers a speedy recovery, and we wish the community safety as soon as possible.
And thank you to all the city staff who are helping with this, this report.
Colleagues, I would accept a motion and a second in order to vote on this report.
So moved.
Second.
So moved.
Second.
That's a motion from Councilor Kanal, second from Vice President Clark.
Keelan, can you please take the roll?
Avalos?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Ryan?
Aye.
Koyama Lane?
Aye.
Murillo?
Aye.
Novick?
Aye.
Clark?
Aye.
Green?
Aye.
Zimmerman?
Aye.
Dunphy.
Aye.
The report is accepted with 12 yes votes.
Thank you.
And colleagues, I mentioned at the beginning that following the city administrator report, I was going to take a moment to turn over to city administrator, as well as Councilors Ryan and Koyama Lane, with regard to an update on Resolution 3773.
Before I do that, I just wanted to explain to my colleagues This is the council resolution that we all passed about a strategic priority setting exercise.
In order to ensure that that work is met to the extent that the authors of this bill wanted to see it done, and it wasn't at my discretion because I ultimately, you may recall, voted against it.
I want to see this be successful on behalf of the entire council.
And so I have asked City Administrator to work directly with Councilors Ryan and Koyama Lane on scoping, and I'm going to turn it over to them to give us a brief update on where we are with that.
Thank you, Mayor.
On where this stands?
I can probably open this up.
Uh, we are making headway, uh, with actually getting agreement in place, uh, with a consulting firm to actually, uh, conduct and facilitate the council retreat.
We should have an agreement in place hopefully by the end of this week, uh, which is a major milestone for us to be able to get that done within the time frame.
I know we also have some upcoming meetings with the council offices as well to, to kind of talk through expected outcomes of this retreat and kind of the timing of the retreat.
We would love to be able to schedule that meeting along with the facilitator that we're looking at to conduct this retreat.
So as soon as we have that in place, we can start the ball rolling on that.
What, you know, what I'm also anticipating in this— so forewarn the council on this— There will be potentially some pre-work associated with this retreat that we're going to be asking the councilors as individuals to sit down and think through some priority work and think through some priorities that you have overall and some of the objectives that you're looking at trying to achieve, not only in the upcoming fiscal year, but also thinking 3 years down the road as well, and being— having some foresight in some of the priorities that we're setting as an organization.
Thank you.
But I just want to kind of set the table with that piece first to let council know we are almost there of having a contract in place and having a facilitator on board to help facilitate that conversation.
There will probably be some more information going out to trying to locate dates for the full council to be able to sit down for this retreat as well.
Excellent.
And Councilor Ryan or Councilor Koyama Lane, would you like to Also add anything to your expectations for this process?
Uh, sure.
Thank you, Council President, and thank you for the update, City Administrator Lee.
Former Council Vice President Koyama Lane and I joined forces with Councilor Kanal and Councilor Vice President Clark to sponsor this resolution.
It establishes an annual priority-setting exercise in January of every year.
The original version is that the council come together to talk high level about their individual priorities to see where there might be collective priorities to move forward on.
This can only help to guide the work of this year.
Additionally, I'm a big believer in us having a less formal discussion that is not scripted.
I advocate that the work session moves from beyond— from behind the dais, and we can sit at a table together.
Thank you.
Preferably without constant reliance upon technical devices, a device-free conversation, if you will.
And what a great dialogue that we could have.
Imagine that.
I would like to also clarify how others have talked about this exercise.
I don't see this work session as a long retreat or really a long strategic priority type planning session.
Those are much more in-depth, as we know.
So I think it's important in this dialogue to To right-size this and what it is.
So I hope people just come free and open to discuss their priorities.
It's intended to be a focused conversation, and I look forward to that and not getting down into the details and tactics of everything that we are prioritizing.
So I really think that what I wanted to do right now is just kind of right-size this a bit.
It's about coming up with our individual priorities.
Thank you.
Sitting around a table and discussing those with one another and seeing where we can find some commonality.
And I look forward to that being scheduled.
And I know that the council president, vice president, along with you, City Administrator Lee, are on that.
And I look forward to those details being worked out.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Councilor Koyama Lane, did you want to add anything?
No, thank you for that, Councilor Ryan.
The only thing to add And you can let me know if you agree with this, but I— what I'm hearing is Administrator Lee is going to need some flexibility in executing the resolution, especially with the deadline that was set.
And so I am supportive of him having that flexibility as needed to make sure that this goes as well as possible.
Agreed.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Council President.
Is this supposed to be a day long, 2 days long?
What is I know some of the conversations that we've had with council has been a day retreat of discussion.
Some of that is going to be really hinged on what the expected outcomes of this retreat and what we're looking for.
So in upcoming meetings that we'll have with the council liaisons that are working on this retreat will help kind of set that course.
Thank you.
But what I'm thinking is a day retreat of getting this out at the most, most a day and a half to get it through.
Because what I would love to be able to see, if we're moving towards a good direction, everybody's satisfied, good.
If we're moving towards a direction where people want an evening to really contemplate and think about what they have on the table right now and what we will move forward with.
Um, I might have missed this.
Where— what is, what is the budget for this?
Where is the budget coming from for these actions?
That's a good question.
We're looking through the budget right now to find funds, uh, to be able to actually have this, uh, ordinance passed.
And then to be clear, this will be like, uh, in public?
Yes, uh, we have to have this meeting in public.
Our, uh, laws require us to— for this to be a public meeting.
Okay, sounds good.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Green?
Yeah, thank you.
Um, thanks for making a little space if you're here, uh, for us to come and speak.
To get the little update.
I appreciate the motivation by the carriers of it.
I was supportive of this from day 1.
I really want to echo my support for the, the idea of stepping away from the dais and getting into a different space, maybe a roundtable.
Put the phones away.
I, I'm going to start to get myself mentally prepared for this, knowing, yes, the public will be watching through some sort of noticed and maybe open signal, but also it's important that we enter that room being willing to be vulnerable and understand that what we're doing is we're laying on the table our priorities, and it's not a performance, but it's really just us coming together and speaking to each other directly about what we think the city needs, which I think all of us want to do.
And so I'm just really, I'm really excited for the work, and thanks for your One of the first things you do, City Administrator, when you come into this and help us focus on priority-based policymaking.
So I appreciate that.
Looking forward to it.
Thank you, Councilor Green.
Councilor Ryan.
Yeah, thank you.
I just want to add this.
I think that City Administrator Lee, the way you're talking about it, I just want to say the word retreat in Portland, Oregon.
I think can move people into a very different touchy-feely place than I think we were intending to do with this.
I think we're seeing ourselves as sitting around a table having conversations about our priorities.
I think that I just wanted to put that out because I think the word retreat sometimes can suggest a much longer process and would get into some places that were never really discussed.
Thank you.
When we were looking at this as merely a dialogue about our priorities.
So I think I'm trying to just manage the expectations by making this comment right now.
So I hope that you can take that feedback where it was coming from, which was to just manage expectations and move this forward.
Yeah, there will be no trust falls on this session.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Bye-bye.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Thank you, City Administrator.
And, uh, with that, we're going to move forward to, uh, Council Item Number 6.
It's our consent agenda.
Do— Oh, yep, Council President, I can call a roll for the consent agenda if you would like.
Yeah, let's do that, please.
Thank you.
Aye.
Thank you.
Smith?
Aye.
Kanal?
Yes.
Pirtle-Guiney?
Aye.
Ryan?
Aye.
Koyama Lane?
Aye.
Morillo?
Aye.
Novick?
Aye.
Clark?
Aye.
Green.
Aye.
Zimmerman.
Aye.
Dunphy.
Aye.
The consent agenda is approved with 12 yes votes.
Thank you.
Please call item number 7.
Item number 7, assess property for sidewalk, curb, and driveway repair for the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
Thank you, colleagues.
This is a second reading, but I believe Councilor Zimmerman has an amendment to this.
Is that correct?
Yes.
And I'm trying to make sure that— I'm basically, folks, I'm introducing an amendment just from the administration.
I'm making sure we've got our ducks in a row here.
So just give me one second.
It's a housekeeping item.
Okay.
So on December 8th, 2025, the Finance Committee referred this item to the council.
A property subsequently filed a remonstrance— hopefully I said that correctly— and the ordinance and the exhibit now need to be updated to reflect the removal of that property from this document.
Thank you.
For the record, these changes will remove lien number 178721 from property R169569, located at 4431 Southeast Taylor, Portland, Oregon 97215, for $6,328.61.
The number of liens assessed is updated from 180 to 179.
And the ordinance amount is updated from $500,018.204.16 to $511,875.55.
Uh, when this was originally programmed, uh, we did have some revenue folks in the room at the previous council meetings.
I just— having gone virtual, I don't know if we do right now, but if the question comes up, folks, um, I would say we We would be best to refer them to— refer those questions to those folks.
But with that, I want a motion to amend this ordinance and have Exhibit A filed with the clerk to reflect these changes.
And sorry for the detailed work here, but when we were talking dollars and cents and liens on properties, it's important to get this right.
So thank you for the staff who prepared this.
And colleagues, I would appreciate a second to that amendment.
I think a second.
Amendment is moved by Councilor Zimmerman, seconded by Councilor Ryan.
Colleagues, Councilor Kanal.
There's a quick question.
This is the only the one, uh, property at the bottom of page 14 of the exhibit, is that correct?
And is there any— I'll just ask both my questions, I guess.
The other question is, is there anything we should read into it that, uh, at all that there was a, uh, This item was introduced by Mayor Wilson, but that, Councilor Zimmerman, that you're putting up the amendment?
I wouldn't read anything into it, Councilor.
Turn up the audio.
I wouldn't read anything into it, Councilor.
I, uh, most of the things that come through finance happen to just be from them, and, um, once it's here, there's no way for a CFO, for instance, to read an amendment to us.
And so I'm carrying the amendment on behalf Got it.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you, colleagues.
Is there any further, uh, discussion around this amendment?
And I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll.
Avalos?
Aye.
Smith?
I don't know who it is.
Kanal?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Green?
Aye.
Zimmerman?
Aye.
Dunphy?
Aye.
The amendment— oh, thank you, Councilor Smith.
The amendment is approved with 12 yes votes.
And Keelan, please confirm for me, this is a non-emergency ordinance, is that right?
Yep, that's correct.
It'll pass to second reading again.
Okay, we will, we will move this item to second reading.
Uh, next week.
Could you please call item 8?
Assess property for sidewalk, curb, and driveway repair for the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
Thank you, colleagues.
This is also a second reading of an ordinance.
There is no amendment to, uh, being proposed.
Uh, is there any further discussion on this item?
Seeing none, could we please call the roll?
Avalos?
Aye.
Smith?
Aye.
Kanal?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
The ordinance passes with all yes votes.
Thank you.
We please call item number 9.
Establish City Council's priorities for the allocation of approximately $20,700,000 in unspent rental services office funds and urge the mayor to reflect these priorities in the proposed budget.
Thank you.
Do we have a Council Ops Committee summary?
Hi, Claire.
Hi, Mr. President.
Yes, we do.
Mr. President and councilors, for the record, Claire Adamsick, Council Policy Analyst and staff to the Homelessness and Housing Committee.
The resolution before you, document number 2025-478, was heard in the Homelessness and Housing Committee on December 9th, where it was referred to the full council with a recommendation it be adopted.
The resolution urges the mayor to allocate approximately $20.7 million in funds within the Rental Services Office within Portland Housing Bureau.
Budget to investments focused on renter stabilization.
The resolution specifies that allocations should prioritize community-based organizations serving Portlanders at risk of experiencing housing insecurity, including immigrant, refugee, Black, Indigenous, and people of color, and linguistically isolated households.
Allocations recommended by the resolution are in addition to funds already allocated in FY25-26, the current fiscal year.
Thank you.
For certain purposes and include $4 million over 3 fiscal years for rent assistance for tenants at risk of losing housing, $2 million over 3 fiscal years for rent assistance and rapid rehousing for tenants facing eviction, $3 million over 3 fiscal years for rent assistance for individuals experiencing homelessness, $1.5 million in FY26-27 for a right-to-counsel pilot program.
Providing legal assistance to households facing eviction.
$9 Million in— to Home Forward in FY26-27 for emergency housing vouchers.
$200,000 In FY26-27 for the development of landlord-tenant education resources.
$750,000 In FY26-27 for nonprofit housing providers in the North Northeast Preference Policy catchment area to stabilize operations.
And $250,000 in FY25-26 The full impact statement on this item includes information on financial and budgetary impacts and analysis, economic and real estate development impacts, and community impacts and community involvement.
23 People testified during the committee meeting on December 9th.
48 People submitted written testimony on this item prior to committee action, and an additional 2 people submitted written testimony today.
Councilmember Herbold.
Prior to the posting of this full council agenda, the general themes of the testimony that the committee heard included the urgency of local long-term rental assistance support in light of projected reductions or elimination of federal funding, lack of accessible housing and disproportionate representation of people with disabilities, seniors, and domestic violence survivors who are experiencing homelessness, balancing the city's investments in shelter with investments in eviction and homelessness prevention.
Thank you.
Acknowledgment of cost increases that small landlords are experiencing.
Recognizing that some of the— recognizing some of the root causes of homelessness, including unaffordable rents, lack of living wages, medical debt, and lack of rent regulation.
Oversight and accountability for how the funds are disbursed.
And finally, inclusion of community expertise and lived experience when designing these rental assistance programs.
Thank you, Deputy City Administrator Nancy Thorington.
And that concludes the committee staff summary.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Claire.
Colleagues, I want to give a couple of notes.
There are over 70 people who are signed up to testify tonight, and there is simply not enough time for us to be able to hear all of them.
As such, I have already moved the remainder of our— this meeting and the final vote on this resolution to next week.
We will have a conversation next week regarding votes on amendments and the final resolution, and the conversation As it pertains to amongst ourselves about the ordinance that actually allocates these dollars.
But I would like to take a moment to just say something.
I, as council president, it is my expectation that we will be prioritizing items that are filed first come, first serve as they come out of committee.
And with the exception that we are going to be hearing things of high particular public interest on evening council sessions like we're hearing tonight.
Thank you.
But I would like to acknowledge that I think that there are some things that have happened around these dollars in particular that go against some of the best policy practices that I think that we should be adhering to as a city.
By having multiple conflicting ordinances over the same dollars, it creates a hostile working environment.
It creates an opportunity where we are using procedural power in order to try and control narrative, when instead my preference would be always to Do this how we're supposed to.
We have amendments.
We can amend an ordinance.
Anybody is able to do that.
But I would ask my colleagues to please strive for better so that we don't get stuck in the doldrums of infighting over really legitimate reasons.
Because this, I will tell you, there are no good— there are no— well, there are some bad uses, but there are almost no bad uses for how we're going to use these dollars.
And we The public deserves an opportunity to hear and from both from us, and we deserve to hear from the community about how to spend these dollars.
So thank you for that.
And with that, I'd like to turn it over to the— to Councilor Avalos, who is the chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, who heard this bill.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council President.
Yes, I would like to take an opportunity to provide some additional context.
To the council and to the community about what is in front of you today and why it looks different from what passed out of the Homeless Assistance Housing Committee.
So on November 20th, Councilor Dunphy and myself were made aware of these excess funds from the Rental Service Office.
At that time, the mayor asked to work with— to work together on a proposal to bring to the Homeless Assistance Housing Committee.
The next day, on November 21st, an email was sent out by the administration to all of council letting them know about These funds and asking them to connect with our offices on the development of the proposal.
Our offices immediately set about connecting with community partners, reviewing recommendations for these funds that were developed by the previous Housing Bureau Director, looping in our fellow District 1 Councilor, Councilor Smith, and creating a package that would align with the need and the urgency to keep people housed.
We followed all of the established processes we've been using to create and pass policy, and the Slow the Inflow resolution passed out of my committee on December 9th with a clear intent.
To prioritize keeping people housed by investing heavily in renter stabilization, eviction prevention, and homelessness prevention.
Councilors Zimmerman, Ryan, Dunphy, and Murillo all sit on the committee, and except for Councilor Murillo, no amendments were offered or discussed.
Since then, that resolution had been waiting to be scheduled for a full council vote, and no one from any other office has approached me about amendments.
However, in the time between committee passage and today, Councilor Zimmerman created a counterproposal through a separate ordinance process with a completely different set of funding priorities for the same dollars.
Councilmember Zimmerman, you have 5 minutes.
And instead of running it through the Housing Committee, he chose to run it through his Finance Committee.
I want to say this plainly.
I am collaborative by nature.
I believe deeply in shared governance.
And when it became clear that other councilors wanted different priorities reflected in this funding, I chose to engage rather than dig in.
So what is before you today reflects that effort.
It is not the package me or the co-sponsors originally brought forward.
It is not the full investment in renters that this community deserves.
And I know many of you showed up today I know that many of you were expecting something stronger because that is what you were advocating for.
And so I share that disappointment.
But I also believe that partial progress is better than no progress and that protecting at least some of these investments now is better than losing them altogether.
So that is why we, Councilors Dunphy and Smith, are going to be bringing forward an amended package today, which I'll explain in a moment.
I want to be clear about one thing.
The changes to this package were not driven by a lack of need, data, or community support for rent assistance.
I heard about the need all the time when I was at the doors in East Portland, and these changes are the result of differing views among councilors about how these dollars should be used and what our priorities need to be to keep people housed.
I remain committed to renters, to prevention, and to slowing the inflow into homelessness, and I will continue to fight for that every day and in the budget and beyond.
So with that, let me go ahead and introduce the 2 amendments that Councilor Smith and I— Councilor Smith-Dunphy and I are proposing.
These were pre-filed so that folks have an opportunity to see them.
So first, I would like to move Avalos-Dumphy-Smith Amendment 1, which removes the be it further resolved clause that establishes a revolving loan fund.
The reason that we have to remove this language is because the Housing Bureau informed us that there are not additional dollars coming in that could fund this as we previously thought.
So to keep this language in could risk defunding other rental service office programs that that current funds provide.
Second, I want to move Avalos-Dunphy-Smith Amendment Number 2, which replaces the funding allocations under the second be it further resolved with a new compromise package of funding allocations.
I think I've said enough about how and why this package came about, but I know that my colleague Councilor Smith would also like to say a few words, so I will go ahead and pass it on to her.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
I appreciate this, uh, collaboration.
Colleagues, this amendment represents a thoughtful and collaborative effort and District 1 councilors to ensure that our limited resources are directed where they could make the most meaningful impact for Portlanders during a critical moment.
Our shared goals with this resolution is straightforward.
To reduce the flow into homelessness by strengthening the full continuum of housing support, funding affordable housing development, expanding rent and financial assistance, supporting tenants facing eviction, and creating pathways to homeownership.
In developing this amendment, it was important to us that we benefit that the benefits reach each and every district.
Housing stability is a citywide priority, and every community deserves to see tangible investments that reflect their needs.
Portlanders are looking to us for steady, practical action, and this amendment is one way we demonstrated good governance.
Thank you.
By developing one-time resources quickly and responsibly to projects and programs that can both help people now and expand our capacity to house folks in the future.
This past— this package reflects what we heard from the community partners across the city, and I am so very grateful and thankful for my District 1 colleagues for their partnership I appreciate the effort across this council as we work together to respond to the housing crisis with some clarity, compassion, and commitment to serving all Portlanders.
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Thank you.
So the chair recognizes the motion for the amendments of Avalos, Dunphy, Smith 1 and 2.
Uh, Councilor Avalos, do you mean to move these as a package Um, yes.
Yeah, okay, so we'll move both, both the individual amendments together as one motion forward.
Is there a second?
Second.
Councilor Avalos introduced, uh, moves.
Councilor Smith seconds the amendments.
Um, I am, uh, colleagues, CFO Beery and Budget Director Levine are both here available for technical Thank you, Councilor Smith, for those helpful clarifications.
Do councilors have any technical questions at this moment?
Councilor Kanal.
Yeah, I'd just like to ask if CFO Biery or Budget Director Levine could talk through what the legal limitations are on usage for this particular fund.
I think that might be helpful for both the public and for councilors.
Either are able to jump online.
Oh, hello, Budget Director Levine.
Hi, for the record, Ruth Levine.
I'm the budget director.
I'm also just looking to see if the city attorneys are on at all.
I don't know.
Just for a second.
So, There are some legal restrictions around the use of the, um, of the dollars in the Housing Investment Fund, which is where this rental services office sits.
Um, the, uh, I would, I think, defer to the city attorney on the specifics around the, like, original ordinance passage and the like.
Um, but I think the The dollars need to be used in alignment with that ordinance and with the fund statement of purpose, which is the administrative rule essentially that governs how the housing investment fund can be spent.
So funds can be sort of reallocated, and because this is a resolution, it would require an ordinance, a follow-on ordinance.
Thank you.
To actually reallocate or to appropriate and/or reallocate any funding within the Housing Investment Fund to kind of codify if the resolution passes in whatever form it passes.
So I think I'll pause there unless there are follow-up questions or if City Attorney is on.
Councilor Kanal, do you have any follow-up questions?
Yeah, I mean, I think that we'll get into it when we get into the actual things, but I'm, I'm basically trying to understand if some of these things are legal to use the money on, and the, um, the link that was provided, uh, for it was dead.
So I'm trying to get the, uh, the updated fund statement of purpose, um, for it.
And Councilor Kanal, we can follow up with the City Attorney's Office to give an update.
There was a memo previously sent out on this as well.
But we can follow up with any legal interpretation of that as well to get to, uh, council, uh, and that should suffice if we're not taking any action today.
That time we should be able to get that out to you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Councilor Green?
Yeah, I just entered the queue because I, I just want to remind folks that we have a lot of people sign up for testimony and it's already 8:07.
So as is sometimes our habit to keep talking well before it, I, I hope that we can just move to the testimony at this point.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Smith.
Thank you.
Can you hear me?
Uh, yes.
Council President, thank you.
And just for the record, I have a, uh, companion ordinance that is to the letter of the Slow the Flow resolution.
So we do have one of those available that we can use as our instrument to be legal And if we're going to hear this next week as well, we can pull that up in our next meeting because it is identical to the Slow the Flow with the amended versions, um, that we— if they pass today.
Thank you, Councilor Smith.
Councilor Novick?
Yes, I plan to introduce an amendment to the amendment as proposed to be amended version And I just wanted to know, should I quickly state what my proposals are going to be so that people are giving public testimony can keep that in mind?
Yeah, I think that'd be fine if you want to explain.
I was given instructions that we would need to do some procedural work to amend an amendment, but you are welcome to explain your amendment at this time.
Okay, and I'm not going to go into justifications.
I'm just going to say literally what it would do.
Thank you.
What it would do is It would delete the first 4 items under rent and financial assistance in the latest proposal.
It would delete the $250,000 in funding to United Way, the $250,000 in funding to Our Just Future, the $2 million for rent and other financial assistance to be divided among various organizations, and the $2 million for rent assistance and other financial assistance for tenants prior to eviction.
It would increase the amount allocated to eviction defense from $1.2 million to $1.56 million.
But instead of saying that would go to the Commons Law Center's tenant eviction defense services, it would say that it would be for eviction defense services to be administered by the Portland Housing Bureau.
And it would also return $4.14 million to the general fund by applying PHB's authorized administrative fee to the total $20.7 million.
$4.14 Million is the maximum amount that can be reserved.
And the purpose there is to Use that $4.14 million to reduce the amount of deficit that we're going to have to address, which would otherwise be addressed by cuts to largely police, fire, and parks.
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
Yeah, I have one question.
My team and I have not been able to figure this out.
The original resolution passed out of Housing and Homelessness recommended $9 million for housing vouchers to support 426 families, seniors, and people who need that assistance.
Um, but that is nowhere in this resolution or in the ordinance passed out of finance.
So wondering what happened there.
Why is that?
Yes, it was removed.
Um, as you can see, the amended package is definitely not similar to the original, um, resolution.
Um, that's what we will be here debating.
But it was— yeah, people did not— people that were negotiating did not want that money to go towards that purpose, so it was removed entirely.
Okay.
Councilor Green, is that a— are you back in the queue, or is that a legacy hand?
Okay.
Councilor Koyama Lane, was there further questions on that?
Okay.
Thank you.
With those being technical questions out of the way, Keelan, can we please move to public testimony?
Yes, thank you, Council President.
Um, we'll call people in groups.
First up, we have Lydia Kiesling, followed by Molly Hogan and Rebecca Morgan.
Welcome, Lydia.
Go ahead.
Hi, my name is Lydia Kiesling.
I live in District 3, and I'm a member of Portland DSA.
In order to pursue a headline-grabbing stunt of ending unsheltered homelessness on a very short timeline, the mayor has employed methods that do not work.
I don't even want to call them Band-Aids because Band-Aids can at least be momentarily helpful.
When the mayor moves to kick traumatized people out of tiny house shelters where they have a little bit of stability and force them into overnight-only shelters, that is literally making people more homeless.
Councilmember Kiesling, Right now, there are almost 2,000 quote-unquote affordable housing units sitting empty because what a market-based housing system calls affordable is not what many houseless people can afford.
But rather than work to layer subsidies or streamline and centralize a very complex affordable housing system, the mayor chose to fire one of the foremost experts of social housing in this country and hide millions of dollars from this city council.
The housing crisis is not solved by a single bed for a single night.
Thank you.
The solution lies in the weeks and months and years that lead up to that single night, keeping people in homes with robust rental assistance, eviction defense, and a social safety net.
And when people have been failed and are forced to sleep outside, it's about easing a speedy return to housing.
It's about flooding the system with navigators who can do the arduous things like build trust, get people ID, help them figure out disability payments, rental assistance, legal issues, and healthcare.
City Council has been very accommodating to the mayor, and I think that was a gracious way to move in the beginning.
But if you look outside, it's clear the mayor's methods have not led to his promised result, no matter what the little thermometer out in your hallway says.
Please listen to the experts who have been begging for more upstream prevention and downstream support.
Fund eviction defense, fund rental assistance, fund a coordinated process for getting people housed.
Stop letting housing sit empty.
Stop employing inhumane sweeps that make this crisis work and stop trying to shove people into a bed instead of a home.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for your testimony.
Molly.
Hello, Council.
My name is Molly Hogan, and I'm the director of Welcome Home Coalition, an alliance of organizations working for housing justice in the Portland region.
I'm testifying tonight in support of Slow the Inflow resolution, but also want to share concerns with the last-minute amended version.
We were excited to support the original resolution because it responded to the moment of crisis we are in.
The crisis of the Trump administration halting rental subsidies for emergency housing vouchers.
The crisis of ICE terrorizing our immigrant neighbors and making those households unstable.
The crisis of our state slashing eviction prevention.
We turned in a petition to you last month signed by over 2,000 people with a clear demand to fund eviction prevention.
Councilmember Smith.
The original Slow the Inflow put $18 million toward rent assistance over 3 years.
Local government proactively reducing the federal harm.
So while I speak tonight in support of $8.5 million in rent assistance, because it's better than nothing, there are concerns over this money being shifted away from direct relief for renters today towards developments tomorrow.
Our main concern is with a quarter of the $21 million being allocated to, quote, Broadway corridor project for 230 affordable units.
Welcome Home members, Home Forward, and Urban League are developers on this project and both shared today that it is fully funded and they did not ask for $5.6 million.
The public deserves clarity on who is getting this funding and what is it going to build.
I also want to be clear about the decision to remove funding intended to cover the lost federal vouchers.
Over 850 people live in these households.
Including over 400 children.
Over one-third are people experiencing disability and older adults, folks who are not likely to make additional income to cover rent increases.
You have the chance to prevent these people from becoming homeless, and you choose instead to focus on funding apartments that won't be open for five-plus years.
For a city that spent $325 million over five years solely on sweeps and shelters, essentially paying to keep people homeless.
I am angry to see you miss this opportunity for more meaningful impact right now.
But I've been in the game long enough to know that for tonight, I will ask you to say yes to this funding proposal because it's better than millions continuing to sit in the city bank account while thousands do their best to survive in a city that ignores their cries for help.
Thank you for your testimony.
Is it Rebecca?
No.
Yes, thank you so much.
Good evening, Chair and councilors.
My name is Rebecca Morgan.
I was displaced from District 4, um, for safety reasons.
I'm keeping my current location off public record, but what I'm sharing applies across Portland.
I am testifying in support of Item 2025-478, Slow the Inflow into Homelessness, because domestic violence is a major driver of housing instability.
For women and families, and prevention only works if people can access it in time.
I moved to Portland in 2017 with my children and my then-partner.
I survived domestic violence, and my children were impacted by abuse in our home.
We became homeless in 2020 while the abuse was still ongoing.
In 2022, after a no-fault eviction and with no relocation assistance available, I put our name on a Community Action Family Shelter waitlist.
And we became homeless again, living in a tent until shelter space opened.
I rebuilt through rapid rehousing.
I rebuilt stability as a licensed home daycare provider and community volunteer.
In December 2024, I left my abusive ex, and since then I have been navigating post-separation abuse and 3 court systems at once as the state's witness in a criminal case, in family court, and in eviction court, with a jury trial pending in March.
Thank you.
Then in August, my apartment became structurally unsafe and I had to pause my daycare.
Losing that income pushed me back onto TANF and SNAP, and I'm doing everything I can to keep my children from becoming homeless for a 5th time.
This is what inflow looks like.
Families fall through gaps because help arrives too late, or the process is not built for real-life complexity.
Slowing the inflow means stopping eviction and displacement before they happen.
Please vote yes on 2025-478 and implement it so people can actually access help in time.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide this testimony to you this evening.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Chris Olson, Christina Dirks, Natalie Hutchinson.
Christina, go ahead and unmute.
Good evening, Council President Dunphy, Vice President Clark, and fellow councilors.
My name is Christina Dirks, and I'm here on behalf of Home Forward, the Public Housing Authority for Multnomah County.
We support the following provisions of the Avalos, Dunphy, and Smith proposed amendment.
First, we support the $1.4 million for affordable housing portfolio stabilization.
This is a critical needed resource due to dramatically increased operating costs and market-driven vacancy rates.
Second, we support the collectively a little over $8 million in rent assistance for tenants and individuals exiting shelters.
We know emergency rent assistance both lifts and saves families from homelessness.
We also want to recognize that there are multiple competing and valid priorities in how the city spends these funds.
With that context, I want to flag the removal of the 12 months of rent assistance for Home Forward's emergency voucher participants from all resolution amendments.
Our EHV program, as we call it, serves approximately 420 families.
390 Of those live in the city of Portland.
These families will completely lose their federally funded monthly rent assistance in the fall of 2026 due to the early sunset of this program by HUD.
These families are some of our most vulnerable neighbors.
They are formerly homeless individuals, 91% of them.
Thank you.
95% Of the heads of households are older adults or people with disabilities, and more than half of the families are BIPOC renters.
This program provides stable housing for hundreds of children across the city.
Absent local support, these families will likely enter homelessness and access our coordinated systems at significantly higher financial costs, and we will see more homelessness in Portland.
Thank you.
And capacity by our partner providers.
Ultimately, the choice before council involves trade-offs, and we know that.
And the decision not to include this targeted rent assistance for EHV households should be understood in the context of the real downstream impacts for both these families and the broader system that the city supports.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this with you this evening.
And take care.
Thank you, Christina.
Natalie.
Good evening.
My name is Natalie Hutchinson.
2025 Was the first year in my 17 years as a renter that I was served an eviction notice.
My partner and I were both full-time, full-time students working over 30 hours a week at $25 an hour.
We fell behind by one month of rent, about $1,700.
So I did what tenants are told to do.
I called 211, I asked for help, and I was told that unless my debt exceeded $10,000, And then I learned that the City of Portland was sitting on $21 million earmarked for housing stabilization.
Renters in the city are held to extreme scrutiny.
To rent, you need a high credit score, a clean rental history, no criminal record, quiet compliance, and perfect on-time payment, or, or you're punished with fees.
We lived at a Merida property that required us to log into a personal bank account to pay rent.
Councilmember Lents.
They use Ciardi, which is an AI-driven rent pricing system, to inflate rents, and our unit went from $1,600 to $1,850 in one year.
They applied rubs fees, which means your landlord owns your utilities, so our garbage bill jumped from $20 a month to over $90 a month by the end of our tenancy.
In 15 months, I saw 26 different landlords.
Councilmember Herbold.
Including on my own.
Excuse me.
Um, so my question to the council is simple.
How do we hold these parties accountable while serving the great need in our community?
Um, I'm an architecture graduate student.
I've studied and designed housing systems for 8 years.
My understanding of our circumstance here is clear.
The way that we fund and build housing in the city is structurally broken and actively extracting from the people who live here.
Councilmember Herbold.
We cannot keep relying on outdated or out-of-state investors, AI pricing tools, and delayed intervention while residents fall into crisis.
My work proposes the creation of a neighborhood-scale housing governance model where communities invest in, govern, and benefit from housing directly, where stabilization happens before eviction, where money moves at the speed of need, not paperwork.
This is not theoretical to me.
This is my lived experience.
Housing policy that waits until people are already homeless is not policy.
It's negligence.
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, thank you for your testimony.
Chris.
Thank you.
Uh, good evening, councilors.
My name is Chris Olson and I live in District 2, and I'm a member of the Portland DSA Housing Working Group and a tenant advocate.
I'm here to testify in support of the Slow the Inflow resolution while also expressing my deep disappointment with the last-minute amendment Many of us signed up to testify because this resolution originally centered the people most at risk for homelessness right now.
Cutting rent assistance from $18 million to $8.5 fundamentally changes that promise.
While I strongly support affordable housing development, it is not a substitute for eviction prevention.
Affordable housing projects take years to come online and will have long waitlists.
Councilmember Smith.
These amendments seem to assume that we can mostly build our way out of this crisis, but that aspirational future doesn't help a family facing eviction tomorrow.
Redirecting eviction prevention dollars to development will create homelessness in the near term, and that is exactly what this resolution was meant to prevent.
Half of Portland renters pay more than 30% of their income to stay housed.
And at the same time, direct eviction prevention funding has been slashed by the federal— at the federal and state levels.
That makes local dollars here in the city even more critical than ever.
So I ask, why are we cutting the one tool proven to immediately keep people in their homes?
In the last 5 years, the city has spent over $300 million on sweeps and shelters, and yet there remains a persistent refusal to invest in the same— with the same urgency in the upstream Investments that keep people in their homes.
I urge the council to pass this resolution, but I also ask you to honor its original intent to stop people from falling into homelessness today, not years from now.
Also, we're going to be canvassing Districts 3 and 4 in the upcoming months, and we will be telling tenants, councilors who decided to cut these funds.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony.
Next up, we have Becky Strauss, Sonia Goodstephani, Leslie Nelson.
All right, Becky, go ahead.
Thank you.
Good evening, Councilor Dunphy, President Dunphy, City Councilor.
My name is Becky Strauss.
I'm with the Oregon Law Center.
I'm the managing attorney of our Eviction Defense Project.
We have a current contract through the Portland Housing Bureau to provide eviction legal defense.
Our contract pays for 2 attorneys and 1 paralegal, and we field calls from tenants across the city and connect them with resources and lawyers, including our own.
I appreciate your comments, Councilor Avalos, in the beginning about incrementalism and support as much rent assistance as possible.
That's some of our best homelessness prevention efforts that the city can be doing right now.
Thank you.
And I want to focus my comments on the legal services piece of the resolution.
Portland tenants who are facing eviction can call us.
We are the central intake line in the city of Portland for legal help for tenants.
We screen every single case that's filed in Multnomah County and statewide.
That's a growing number.
There are about 1,000 per month these days.
90% Of those are for nonpayment of rent.
We provide legal information to anyone who calls.
Thank you.
For tenants who become clients, we help them reach favorable settlements with their landlord.
We screen for legal defenses.
We help them soup to nuts on their case, including representation in negotiations and at trial.
Any eviction legal services funding package that comes out of a resolution, we urge for the council to have all of those parts adequately funded in the legal system, not just a direct allocation to one provider.
So we urge council instead to decide together the types of services and interventions on legal support that you would like to fund, um, and then resolve the decision about the specific provider through a bid process through the Housing Bureau.
The current amendment would leave our program without additional resources to meet the growing need for our services.
So we urge an addition to the resolution that would direct resources to eviction legal defense Generally, and provide for a procurement process through PHB to determine how best to support all critical aspects of eviction legal defense.
Thank you.
Thank you, Becky.
Sonia.
Hello, good evening, councilors.
My name is Sonia Goodstefani.
I'm the director of the Community Law Department at the Metropolitan Public Defender's Office.
Thank you for allowing me to speak today.
I am also— my team is also one of the legal organizations that is funded by the Portland Housing Bureau to provide full-scope eviction legal defense.
We were really excited by the resolution.
We were disappointed by the amendment, and then I think we're a little bit excited about Novick's amendment to the amendment, although being a lawyer, I'd love to see it in writing.
I'm going to focus my testimony just on highlighting the importance of full-scope legal eviction defense.
Thank you.
As I said, my team has a contract with the Portland Housing Bureau for full-scope legal defense.
We represent 350 city residents a year facing eviction.
From whenever we get the case to the end of the case, we have a 91% positive outcome rate for these cases.
We track the difference between what is originally demanded by the landlord and what is ultimately settled upon.
On the eviction case for last year, when I pulled the numbers on it, we saved just over $284,000 for our tenants because of legal negotiation that took place over the course of the entire case, not just the initial hearing.
Through this contract, we also provide rental assistance dollars that we can use as leverage to stop evictions.
With 85% of evictions defended.
For nonpayment, we really need these rental assistance dollars to make a difference in people's lives.
This contract also comes with a case manager so that we can get to the root causes of evictions.
I applaud this council for the progressiveness of providing that kind of service.
What I want to say just is that while I am constantly thrilled by the work my team does, we don't get to help enough clients.
We really look forward to this amendment passing and whatever amendments there are so that we can continue to provide these services.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much.
Leslie.
Hi, council members.
My name is Leslie Nelson.
I'm a lifetime Portland resident and I currently live in District 4.
I work along with Sonia Good Stefani, who you just heard from, at the Community Law Division of the Metropolitan Public Defender's Office.
I've worked at the Metropolitan Public Defender for more than 35 years now as a criminal defense attorney, and then working for the past more than a decade in the Community Law Division, where I work with landlord-tenant issues, homelessness issues, and work along with Sonya on supervising the housing team with our Community Law Division.
Thank you.
And I would like to encourage you to allocate funds toward eviction defense and rent stabilization programs.
Every day, along with my colleagues, I see Portlanders facing eviction— families, seniors, veterans, people with disabilities, and workers who simply fell behind after a job loss, an illness, or rent increases.
Eviction is not an abstract policy issue for us.
It's something we witness in courtrooms every day and in our office with our clients, with real and immediate consequences for people's housing, health, employment, and children's well-being.
One thing's very clear from the work that we do in that is that people do better when they have attorneys.
Tenants with legal representation are far more likely to remain housed, are to be able to negotiate reasonable outcomes, and avoid the long-term harm that comes with an eviction on their record.
Access to counsel in situations where the other side almost always has representation makes the process fairer and prevents avoidable displacement of Portlanders who are in need.
I urge the councilor to invest in both robust rental assistance and legal representation for low-income tenants facing eviction.
I thank you for your time and for your commitment to housing stability in Portland.
Thank you very much for being here.
Next up, we have Tyler Fellini.
Jennifer Park.
Aaron Meachen.
Good evening, councilors.
My name is Tyler, and I'm the executive director of and a registered lobbyist for Portland Jobs with Justice.
I'm here today to urge you to vote yes on the Slow the Inflow resolution championed by Councilors Avalos, Dunphy, and Smith.
At Portland Jobs for Justice, we fight for the rights and dignity of working people, but we can't— The worker from their home.
A worker who doesn't know where they will sleep tonight cannot focus on their job tomorrow.
A family facing eviction is a family in economic freefall.
The numbers from the 2025 Tri-County Point-in-Time Count are more than just statistics.
They represent our neighbors, your constituents.
38% Of respondents reported that last year was their first time experiencing homelessness.
The number of BIPOC community members on our streets has almost doubled since 2023.
We need funding now to slow the inflow.
In the past 5 years, the city has spent $325 million solely on sweeps and shelters.
How many Portlanders could that have kept housed?
The last-minute cuts to rent assistance in this resolution are deeply disappointing.
While the development of affordable housing is an essential investment, it is a tool that is already funded with federal and state dollars, while direct Eviction prevention has been slashed enormously at every level of government.
The original resolution directed $21 million in unexpected funds exactly where they belong: prevention.
That is the most cost-effective way to address homelessness.
It is far more expensive to pull someone out of homelessness than it is to keep them in their home in the first place.
Over 2,000 Portlanders signed the Finding Home petition, asking you to meet this moment and uplift Portland's working class by ensuring that housing remains a human right.
Not a luxury good.
Vote yes on the resolution.
Use these funds to protect our people, stabilize our neighborhoods, and invest in a future where working families can actually stay in Portland.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tyler.
Hello, thank you, uh, President Dunphy, Vice President, um, Clark, and council members.
My name is Erin Meehan, for the record, and I, uh, testified last Last December, December, really excited about the resolution.
Slow the inflow.
About finding that money under the under the mattress, as I think it was Councilor Zimmerman mentioned something about that.
Here's the deal though.
That's what happened to that original resolution.
The amendments reduced prevention from eviction and stabilization efforts and emergency voucher support.
This is a stabilization effort.
What happened to that?
Thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
I don't know if you know, but I'm on the Housing Stability Council.
I'm not here as a council member.
I'm actually a resident of Gresham.
I also worked for Community Alliance of Tenants, where I was laid off due to the 75% cuts to the budget for stabilization programs and tenant education.
Mediation works.
I've been in that courtroom with an eviction.
I've been on both sides of that fence.
Have you been to the courtroom to listen, to see, to hear these stories, and to see what these defense attorneys do to help these folks?
Folks that are going through an eviction.
It's amazing work.
I don't really understand what the amendment is.
I do support the stop the inflow the way that it was originally put forth.
I do know that part of the problem I feel really on these developments is, are we talking to our other government partners?
Has anybody spoken to anybody at Oregon Housing Community Services and discussed the Broadway Corridor Project and how in December, as a matter of fact, they were Housing Stability Council passed, um, uh, for, uh, passed, um, you know, for them to have an impact statement for over like $40 million.
Are we working together with our account with your government agencies across the board here to find out what's going on around us so that we can put this money to where it's supposed to be for housing stabilization?
I hope that we can do that collaborative inquiries with our needs and testimonies from the orgs named in this amended resolution should guide you back as proposed in December to stop the inflow.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thanks, Jennifer.
Good evening, councilors.
My name is Jennifer Park.
She/they.
Focusing on priorities that slow the inflow into houselessness is the right approach at the right time to actualize the outcomes to the mission of the 2018 Residential Rental Registration and Fee Ordinance, quote, to provide essential support for existing and potential tenant protection policies of the city.
Preventing evictions before they occur is one of the most cost-effective steps toward addressing our homelessness crisis and results in approximately 4x Social return on investment, including improved educational outcomes, lower healthcare usage, and the decreased use of homeless services.
Missed rent payments are the cause of over 90% of local evictions, dramatically spiking from 13% 5 years ago this month during Oregon's COVID eviction moratorium era.
As you debate and discuss your multifarious legislations around homelessness and housing, I ask that you reflect on a few considerations.
Number one, where does the homelessness to housing continuum really begin?
If we think of the start of the continuum at the point at which people are already houseless, not when their housing becomes unstable, we're trying to screw the cap onto a running hydrant.
Councilmember Koyama Lane, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Number 2, for 6 years I worked in permanent supportive housing of high acuity chronically homeless adults.
No one is unhousable.
To believe that is to believe that housing is not a human right and somehow a person can be undeserving of the barest necessity for stability and health.
Due to the testimony time constraint, I will submit the rest of my testimony, references, and data sources to your offices directly.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you, Jennifer.
Next up we have Skylar Cruz, Jonathan Greenwood, Jesse Marin.
Jesse, go ahead and unmute.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
My name is Jesse Marin.
I'm currently a Brooklyn neighborhood resident.
When I saw that the city would be expelling people from shelters for failing to properly engage with the system within the system's timeline, I was reminded of several friends I made back in 2019 while working with my Sunnyside neighbors to get the shower project and Beacon Village up and running.
Several of the folks who came in regular that first year started out as just being between places.
They'd never been homeless before.
They were bright-eyed.
They were funny.
They were employed.
They were fed.
They were just living rough until they could get that housing part stabilized.
Within a year, every one of those folks had been arrested, were experiencing addiction, had experienced severe mental health breaks on our facilities, and 2 had died.
They had crossed an invisible line into another world.
The thing about living unhoused is that it's a different country.
The rules, the customs, the language, the necessary survival skills are all different, unfamiliar.
Thank you.
And very often invisible to those of us who live in houses, who get water when we turn on our tap, and find our garbage magically whisked away on a regular schedule.
Not everybody who crosses that line survives, and once you've crossed, it can be extremely challenging to get back to the land of the housed again.
I've only lived in Portland for a couple of decades, but in my short time here, the one consistent thread has been the commitment of entitled class representing the mayor's office and the council to speak aspirational words, to act in political self-interest, to fund bureaucracy, and to push the hard work out to the community level.
I respectfully request that the diversion of monies to the general fund be rejected and that council tangibly protect your constituents from the mental and physical, in addition to financial damage of housing instability by providing direct rental support on balance with eviction protection.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you, and thank you for everyone who signed up to testify tonight.
Thank you, Jesse.
Thank you for being here.
Uh, okay.
Um, Skylar Cruz, Jonathan Greenwood.
Okay, um, let's move on to Jeremy Smith, Diane Meisenhelter, and Jamie Cartridge.
My name is Jeremy Bosley Smith.
I live in District 4 in the Lair Hill neighborhood.
All of us should be able to afford to live in Portland.
Housing is a human right.
Rental assistance is critical to slowing the inflow into homelessness.
Welcome Home Coalition surveyed over 400 people experiencing homelessness, and 91% of them ranked rent assistance as their top need.
We need to slow the amount of evictions because once people are on the streets, it's exponentially more difficult to get them back into housing.
Skyrocketing rents make it harder for working-class people to thrive in our city.
Half of Portland renters pay over 30% of what they make on housing.
This is completely unsustainable.
I'm a proud supporter of the Renters' Bill of Rights.
I believe we should require a 6-month notice before all rent increases, protect children and education workers from eviction during the school year, and cap fees such as pet rent, late fees, laundry fees, and other excessive charges and deposits, as well as requiring that code violations be resolved before rent can be increased.
These protections are not included in this bill but should be in future legislation because all of us should be able to afford to live.
What is included in this bill is the legal counsel pilot program.
This is a vital piece to keeping Portlanders in their homes and ensuring that we can all live happy and fulfilling lives.
Evictions are violence against the working class, and they leave a wound inflicted on our community that is not easily healed.
We need to meet the moment.
Portlanders elected you to take bold action.
I support Councilor Avalos, Smith, and Dunphy's original Slow the Inflow bill.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jeremy.
Go ahead, Diane.
Okay.
As someone who in the past served on Portland's Housing and Community Development Commission, directed a local community development corporation which worked to create low-income housing, and has spent many nights working emergency shelters, I can say without a doubt that shelters have never been the answer to homelessness, and they will never be the answer to homelessness.
And Portland's housing problems will continue to worsen if we do not heed the research and recommendations put forward by the Welcome Home Coalition.
Right now, as state and federal governments slash funding, preventing evictions is the first stopgap measure that must be taken to prevent— to protect low-income renters from becoming homeless, and rental assistance is critical for helping those who are homeless obtain housing and stabilize their lives.
Thank you.
Housing advocates and concerned Portlanders have made it very clear that it's absolutely key to redirect funds towards eviction prevention, rental assistance, and peer support plus case management for pathways out of shelter and into housing.
And this is particularly true for families below 50% median family income.
Thank you.
I was very supportive of the original goals of the slow the inflow proposals, but I'm very disappointed and upset about the proposed amendments that would take almost $10 million out of those original goals.
Housing development is a long-term process, and we have a really vital crisis on our hands right now.
Councilmember Smith.
I oppose us— I really encourage you to go back to the, to the table and work through this, reinstitute that original intent.
I really am appalled by the idea of diverting these funds to the general fund.
That is just totally not acceptable.
And we really, really need— a lot of the housing development that's happening in Portland right now does not address the, the needs of our lowest-income families, and that needs to be our focus with very scarce public resources.
Thank you.
Thank you, Diane.
Jamie, go ahead.
Good evening.
I'm Jamie Partridge, retired letter carrier in District 2.
I've seen plenty of homelessness in my work On the streets of Portland, sweeps and temporary shelter do nothing to decrease homelessness.
Every one of my houseless friends wants the dignity and privacy of a home, not having to be stuffed into a room with dozens of strangers where harassment and abuse are rampant and where they can't bring their dog or partner.
And sweeps and criminalizing sleeping in public cause great harm, including physical and mental breakdown, addiction, and even death.
Thank you.
We need to slow the inflow into homelessness with rental assistance, eviction defense, and affordable housing.
Most importantly, non-market social housing.
The last-minute cuts to rent assistance in this resolution are deeply disappointing.
Why are we making cuts to dollars that keep someone in their home?
To invest in projects that are years out and will substantial— will have substantial waitlists.
These amendments will create homelessness today.
Out-of-control rents in the city make it harder for working-class people to live in today.
As many have said, 50% of Portland renters currently pay more than 30% of their income to stay housed.
In the past 5 years, the city has spent $325 million Renters living on low incomes deserve the same urgency with which the city rolled out shelter beds, or else our city will continue to push people into homelessness.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jamie.
And colleagues, I just want to very quickly note, uh, Jamie Partridge was our 19th piece of testimony.
We have 72 people signed up tonight, and clearly we are not going to get through everybody.
It is my hope to get to our 30th person in line, and we will hold— we are going to be hearing additional remainder of testimony of folks who were unable to be heard tonight next Wednesday when we hear the remainder and move to council deliberation on it.
And Keelan, sorry to interrupt.
Could you please call the next panelist?
Yes, Councilor Wilson.
John Hollister, Michelle Alajmi, Lily Burnett.
All right, let's jump to Maddie Garrison, Justice Raji, Sungho.
Um, oh, sorry, I'm Justice Rodney.
I didn't know it would be— Oh yeah, sure, come on up.
Thanks.
Welcome, and go ahead, jump on in.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My name is Justice Raji.
I'm the Director of Advocacy at Urban League Portland.
Um, here tonight, uh, one, I want to share that public dollars are a precious resource that need to be maximized for the greatest impact, and they should be used in a timely manner, ethically prioritized, meeting conditions and future needs.
Um, we appreciate Portland City Council's work on moving to get these funds that were not put into action in the past or in the same manner that they were originally brought into the city's control.
And we appreciate the decision to focus on rent stabilization with a deep understanding that even where this current amendment lands is not where it started.
Circumstance where folks largely agree and have committed their Time and entity to make sure that folks can get everything that they need, um, are landed in a place where they're almost at odds with each other about doing the right thing, which is a very, very uncomfortable place that community constantly finds itself with government, that we have to fight a moral position and also an outcome position in the room.
And we landed in this place where some of those who are better resourced than us Don't have to deal with the stress and the strain of how this communication happened and ultimately may not face the people day to day that need these resources most.
So while we definitely 100% support passing this resolution, we want to see it as the agreement is presented to us today be the way that we move forward and that we do not experience circumstances where we are continuing to have a refight of a decision that has already put many People at odds and threaten and raise their cortisol levels when they're just trying to do the right thing to make sure people— they have— and we also make a way for the future.
Thank you for your time.
Hi, go ahead.
Hello, councilors.
My name is Yung Ho, and I am the Tenant Education and Support Director and also interim co-executive director at CAT, Community Alliance of Tenants.
I'm here to support the Slow the Inflow resolution, the original proposal.
I am, as many have said, disappointed to see the last-minute amendments.
Now more than ever, we really do need to prioritize these funds for eviction and homelessness prevention.
And landlord-tenant education as well.
Tenant education is tenant empowerment.
There are organizations such as CAT that have been doing this upstream work to help people stay housed and prevent evictions for decades.
CAT runs effective, well-established programs with longtime support from the City of Portland's Housing Bureau to help tenants on our Renters' Rights Hotline through our Tenant Protections Teamwork with— in partnership with SCI, Apano, ERCO, Legal Aid, Portland Defender, And many partner referrals and resources.
Many of our organizations have faced severe budget cuts this year, leading to reductions in our own services and staffing, meaning, um, layoff of highly skilled and compassionate workers.
We absolutely need to see this $20.1 million allocated to rent assistance, eviction defense, tenant education empowerment, housing vouchers, Um, during this type of crisis.
And thank you so much for allowing me to provide my testimony again.
Thank you.
Uh, next up we have Devin Ruiz, Barnaby Ruiz, Michelle Hornbeck.
Welcome.
Council President Dunphy, Vice President Clark, And members of council, my name is Devin Ruiz.
I live in District 2 in Cully, and I'm a registered lobbyist for Next Step.
We are a local nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, and we work to amplify the voice and leadership of diverse young people.
As an organization that supports young working-class people, we know housing is a human right, and we know firsthand because we see the struggle our young people are facing with securing sustained and affordable housing.
Thank you.
There must be urgency behind ensuring that all Portlanders have stable and secure housing.
As such, we urge you to pass Slow the Inflow as initially passed in the Housing and Homelessness Committee, and we do not support the last-minute cuts to rental assistance for this ordinance.
The original Slow the Inflow resolution addresses the root issues of Portland's homelessness crisis.
Each month, 1,400 people lose housing while only 1,100 people are able to find it again, presenting a gap of 300 people per month who are— who may be left unhoused.
Over 90% of evictions in Multnomah County are due to, to missed rental payments.
The ordinance passed in the Finance Committee and the amendments presented today seem to be responding to a reality where we can meet the needs of Portlanders by predominantly building our way out of this crisis.
The amendments do not achieve the original goal of this resolution, to immediately stop people from falling into homelessness.
Our state and federal governments have slashed funding for rent assistance and other services that would otherwise keep people in their homes.
We must use our local funding to fill this critical gap while investing in our future.
Using rental service office dollars to keep people housed is urgent and evidence-based.
Data shows that young people are disproportionately impacted As those under 35 make up the largest percentage of renters in Portland.
Please fund rental assistance, fund rapid rehousing for people evicted from their homes, fund emergency housing vouchers.
Please support Slow the Flow as written without cuts to rental assistance, and I will submit my full remarks as written testimony.
Thank you.
Thank you, Devin.
I am Barnaby, and I'm a person with lived experience.
Um, in the late 1980s, the 1990s, I used to work in agriculture, but nearly 2000, I lost my sight.
Because of that, I fall in depression, and I can't pay my rent anymore, and I become homeless.
I remain homeless for the next In 2014, I come to Portland.
3 Years later, in 2017, I get rent assistance and I start living in a place that I call home today.
And, uh, I remember that I used to sleep under those Portland bridges alongside train tracks, on the sidewalks, under the cold Portland rain.
I'm sorry.
And tonight I'm just finding favor of, uh, this slow resolution because I don't want nobody to sleep under those bridges alongside those train tracks on the sidewalks under the Portland Corridor, right?
Because that's fucked up.
I am— And thank you for listening to me.
Thank you, Barnaby.
Um, Amon Rutherford Green.
I got a piece of paper.
My name is Amon Rutherford Green, um, with Wong Wong, but I got a piece of paper because they're I'm not here to tell you things, but I'm actually— live experience.
I think I'm the only one who's going to actually go to a shelter tonight.
That's about a year and a half of, uh, being here.
I heard one, one of the ladies said that she woke domestic violence for women.
Well, I'm a victim of domestic violence, and my baby's mom came here and got funding to be able to have a place.
I didn't fight it because I didn't want my kids to be in a situation.
I don't want to be in a situation.
All right.
3 Jobs.
I'm actually going to go work with the homeless at Hygiene for All tomorrow.
Worked yesterday, just got off of work from the Blazers today.
Shouldn't be homeless.
And I, I agree with the first initial thing.
I was one of the people that testified before, and, um, I'm just hoping that people actually get housed.
I've been in 3 shelters, ain't nobody getting housed.
They even— they getting kicked out of the shelters.
They're fighting in the shelters.
I'm in the Nobody's getting homeless housed.
That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Uh, Michelle Hornbeck, uh, Lorena Mora is joining us online.
Lorena, go ahead and unmute.
Good evening, City Council members.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak in support of the Slow the Inflow resolution.
My name is Lorena Mora, and I'm the Programs and Partnership Manager at Division Midway Alliance, and we're also a member of Welcome Home.
We are a place-based nonprofit committed to building a socially and economically resilient, safe, and healthier East Portland, delivering services through our 5 community-driven programs in District 1.
One of the core areas of our direct assistance program is supporting low-income immigrant and refugee renters through rental assistance and housing stability support.
Between 2022 and 2024, Division Midway Alliance supported 248 households, and 81% of those households received services in languages other than English, including Arabic, Chinese, Nepali, Burmese, Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
During the pandemic, we worked with families experiencing job loss and eviction risk.
I want to share one example.
We supported a current family with 5 children and another household led by a single mother with a disabled child.
Both families were just a few days from being evicted and had no income.
With short-term rent assistance, we covered past due rent and several months of future rent, giving them time to stabilize, find work, and avoid homelessness.
Thank you.
This rental assistance funding ended early 2024, but the need did not end.
We still receive around 45 to 50 requests for support monthly, and now many immigrant families are losing income due to ICE activity impacts, putting more households at risk for eviction.
In 2024, one elderly Spanish-speaking lady lost her apartment and became homeless just 3 days before Christmas.
After many calls, we were able to secure shelter placement, but she still has not found stable housing.
These are preventable crises.
That is why we strongly urge the council to vote yes on the original Slow the Inflow resolution today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Naomi Vigos.
Right, Council President, that is number 30.
Would you like me— Colleagues, I would like to ask, uh, and if anybody has any objections, I'd like to ask for 10 more minutes, um, to try and see if we can get any additional people, especially folks who have hung around in person tonight.
Uh, okay, so I think Anyone in the room in person, um, if we could just have you come on up.
Oh, thank you.
Um, why don't we go up then?
No, this is like an hour 15 from— Oh, ready?
My turn?
Yeah, you can sit here.
So go ahead and, uh, State your name for the record and you may begin.
Thank you.
My name is Mitch.
I'm Vice President of AFSCME Local 1790, representing behavioral work, health workers, and shelter staff.
City— I came here to speak to the original unamended resolution.
I worked today and did not have time to change what I was going to say, so I'm going to have to improvise on the fly.
Yes.
So today at work, I had a number of people on my caseload.
I'm a case manager at one of the city's alternative shelters.
Um, I had a number of people on my caseload express the desire to end their lives, um, if they're not able to find placement up shelter.
And a number of these people are income constrained on SSI or SSDI, meaning their income does not even come close to the minimum thresholds for these so-called low-income buildings.
Thank you.
Um, in light of that, I'm disgusted, appalled by the decision to give the money that is intended for the people I serve and people like them, or people at risk of falling— all this money continue to— that suggestion is honestly disgusting.
And to me, you must not do You must not do that.
What are the people on my caseload supposed to do?
What are they supposed to do?
They make $1,100 a month at maximum.
If they work, their, their income will offset those benefits and it will net $1,100 a month.
What are they supposed to do about these buildings that might exist in the future?
What are they supposed to do?
And this is without getting into the, the large number of people who were exited from shelters, um, in the first week of January for alleged non-engagement.
What were they supposed to do?
What were they supposed to do?
That's all I got.
Thank you.
All right, good evening, councilors.
Uh, my name is Lauren Armony and I'm with Welcome Home Coalition.
However, I don't think I got this message approved by my boss, so I can represent myself here.
I support the initial intent of the Slow the Inflow resolution to keep people in their homes and exit them out of homelessness.
But I'm going to be very frank with you.
As you've heard, after 6 weeks of waiting for this resolution to hit council, To have an amendment come in 12 hours ahead of a scheduled meeting is inexcusable.
Y'all gotta get your stuff together.
And to hear you, Councilor Novick, propose eliminating all rental assistance is frankly appalling.
How dare you say that in front of this room of people who sacrificed getting into shelter, going home.
We're gonna be going out into freezing temperatures.
All right.
Thank you.
We see who of you tried to divide us with these individual appropriations.
I want you to know it did not work.
It will not work.
We will not be divided.
We are united in knowing that the biggest barrier for people in Portland staying housed is affordability.
All right, do not play with us.
This $21 million was not going to end homelessness in Portland.
However, it can be much better used than what is currently proposed in this amendment.
What I'm hearing you propose Councilor Novick.
It can fill these gaping holes.
Government cuts.
All right.
Until you are all together to make housing affordable for all, invest in rent assistance.
All right.
It is the best, best to keep people in their homes.
It is not a Band-Aid.
It creates stability so people can create the lives that they want and contribute to our community.
People can't afford these affordable housing units without this rent assistance.
However, I still urge you to approve this.
Some rental assistance.
All right, please reappropriate the funds from the Broadway Quarter Redevelopment Project back into the emergency housing vouchers for Home Forward residents losing theirs.
Many thanks to Councilor Green highlighting how social housing will create more housing stability and community wealth over homeownership so that I don't have to.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
All right, Miss Lori, take it.
Take it.
Oh, ready?
Yes, I'm just going to read right off here.
Good evening, um, Council President and councilors.
Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight.
My name is Lori Palmer.
I am the founder of Go Get Your Child Community Violence Prevention, and I'm on here on behalf of Welcome Home Portland I'm asking you to please vote yes to pass the resolution.
Rent assistance is powerful.
It's a powerful tool to stabilize households that are close to homelessness, are trying to exit homelessness.
We need our local funding to prevent households from falling into homelessness because right now Our current system is currently not working.
It's not working at all.
Prevent eviction before they occur is the most cost-effective way to address low-income reality.
When someone misses rent, It's often one crisis, loss of hours, medical bills, a family emergency that pushes them over the edge.
Rent assistance is the bridge that keeps families stable and prevents a preventable eviction.
The data also shows who is being hit the hardest.
The 2025 tri-county point in the Thank you.
The time count shows that number of BIPOC community members experiencing homelessness has almost doubled since 2023, and it also found that 38% of representatives said that last year was the first time experiencing homelessness.
This is not a coincidence.
State and federal governments have slashed funding for rent assistance and other services to keep people in the home.
And local government has to fill this gap while we build.
In 1994, a Portland Metro survey found that 91% of the people experiencing homelessness said rent assistance is the need to get housed and stay housed.
And our community needs mandated action.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Action now.
Um, how many other people?
One, one more.
Okay, come on up.
Okay, these will be our last testifiers.
Thank you all for being here so late with us.
My name is, uh, Ben Gilbert, and I'm a volunteer lobbyist for the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and a tenant industry District 4.
Yesterday, as I marched to protest federal ICE overreach, I saw, like I do every day, our fellow Portlanders sleeping on the sidewalk.
We're experiencing a crisis in the city, a crisis of rising rent— of rising rents and wages that don't keep up, and false solutions like overnight shelters and sweeps.
Portlanders deserve more.
I support slow the inflow.
However, the last-minute The proposed cuts to rent assistance in this resolution are deeply disappointing.
I was looking forward to testifying in support of this proposal because of its immediate relief for the people who are most at risk of homelessness today.
These amendments do not help us achieve the original goal of this resolution to immediately stop people from falling into homelessness.
Out-of-control rents make our city harder for working-class people to live in.
50% Of Portland renters, um, are rent burdened, paying more than 30% of their income to stay housed.
Councilmember And in the past 5 years, the city has spent $325 million solely on sweeps and shelters.
Yet there remains a persistent refusal to give everyday To get money out, um, help provide housing to our citizens.
And as the president of the Williams and Russell CDC, a nonprofit committed to reparative development We know the value of affordable affordability in both housing rentals and homeownership.
Throughout our process, we have talked to hundreds of our community members who were displaced by the expansion of MaineHealth Hospital.
A common refrain that we heard from the community was the importance of housing for both those struggling to afford rentals as well as rest.
Wealth restoration and building for those in our community who were displaced by the city through urban renewal actions and who are struggling to afford homeownership.
For a long-term solution to the housing crisis, we need to emphasize both rental and homeownership affordability.
We greatly appreciate the council's consideration of support for us and many other great organizations as we try to bring more affordable housing to the city.
Thank you.
The Williams and Russell housing projects will provide 20 affordable townhomes, 85 affordable apartments, and we're working on a future project that will provide some more affordable homes for people to purchase.
Our projects will provide housing to folks who make between 30% and 100%.
The first housing project will be completed around this time next year, and this funding will support that.
Self-Enhancement Inc.
Thank you.
And I support funding for Housing First.
And I think that Housing First Inc. is another great organization that provides rental and homeownership support, knowing that stable housing environment is necessary for successful students and stable families.
And as an attorney, and in my role at Williams and Russell, I've seen the good work that the Commons Law Center does for people that our legal community struggles to adequately serve, and I support funding their services.
Know that the money that you are considering allocating to these organizations will go to house our community members and will help provide an avenue to make rents, restore lost wealth, and maintain housing stability.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here.
Good evening, Council President Dunphy and members of the council.
My name is Saham McKelvey, and I'm a member of the Wealth Home Steering Committee and the Director of Advocacy and Engagement at Self-Enhancement Inc.
I'm here to support the amended resolution put forward by Councilors Avalos, Smith, and Dunphy, and would like to thank the councilors who worked collaboratively on these amendments.
My hope is that this level of collaboration is a foundation for the future to serve this city with the excellence that comes from all of us contributing our ideas into the pool of shared meaning.
The reality is that our city faces significant needs with regards to housing access, availability, and affordability.
I testified before the Housing Committee when this resolution was introduced.
I do not want to debate the weight of our various needs.
However, when we are put in a position to weigh the merits of multiple council proposals, then we are forced to minimize one need to uplift another.
My hope would be that we move beyond this dynamic in the future and are able to collectively partner to execute the business of addressing needs and not debating them.
I've sat in front of this body multiple times and said that housing is a housing problem.
I've also sat in front of this body and called for eviction prevention and rent assistance to create alignment in our housing system.
I know we have limited resources to address our challenges.
I also know that the only path to maximizing the impact of our limited resource is to work together, not just within the city but with the county, With Metro and with the state.
We have to be intentional in building a system that is greater than the sum of our limited revenue.
I speak to you today as a representative of the communities that we are all called to serve.
SEI provides a huge array of services that meet a multitude of needs.
We know that every need of every community member is vitally important.
Speak from the partner which— with each of you to create a housing system that can meet this moment.
So please vote to approve, but please remember the missteps and the positive steps that brought us here so that we can all be better going forward.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for being here tonight.
Colleagues, I— if that concludes anyone who's physically in person who is Interested in testifying.
I believe I'm just gonna look at Keelan.
Okay.
Colleagues, it is my intention to— we have only made it about halfway through the list of folks who are signed up to testify on this.
We have already scheduled this to continue this hearing over to next Wednesday, which is a daytime session that starts at 9:30.
Test— new testimony signups are now closed, but we will do our best to try and follow up with the folks who have signed up but did not get a chance to testify.
We'll hear from them, and then we will, as a body, move towards conversation around the amendments.
Before we adjourn for the night, I see a couple of hands in the queue from my colleagues.
I would like to— Councilor Maria.
Thank you.
Council President Dunphy, I just wanted to address the folks who are in the room and the folks who are still online right now.
I apologize for having to be off camera a bit.
I'm not feeling super well today, and then my signal was kind of bad and I wanted to make sure I could hear people's testimony.
I just want to say that I am eternally grateful for you coming out tonight and for sharing your testimony and for being here and foregoing possibly a shelter bed for some of you tonight to come and tell us what you need.
And I am extremely frustrated with my colleagues that we have proposals that are being brought forward that you're testifying on that are being changed last minute due to— I don't even know what I would call it, probably not something I can say and maintain my decorum, but it's a measuring contest of sorts.
And I think that people need to be prepared to justify the amendments that they are— they have brought forward next time.
Councilor Loretta Smith.
Because I will be pushing for the original proposal.
That is what the community asked of us.
That was what originally was brought forward.
And I don't approve of this watered-down proposal.
It's just, it feels wrong in my spirit to push that forward.
So I really hope that the people who did make those negotiations to change it last minute are prepared to defend it next time because I have a lot of questions about how that went down.
Thank you.
Okay, with that, I will— I am adjourning this meeting of the Portland City Council.
Thank you all for your patience with the bizarre night we had.
Thank you all.
Council adjourned.