250 people joined Portland Mayor Tom Potter and Multnomah County Commission Chair Diane Linn in a call for Housing Justice on Thursday, May 26 at Portland City Hall. Unified in opposition to budget cutbacks and policy reform that would reduce affordable housing for seniors, people with disabilities, families and veterans, the lively crowd responded strongly to the words of three Section 8 Voucher holders, all of whom received at least a 17% rent raise due to Federal cuts made last year.

Speakers Mary Latourette, Linda Ridings and Sue Cohen all delivered powerful testimony about the importance of stable, decent housing, and the frightening impacts that last year’s Federal cuts has had on their lives.  Latourette said her budget is so tight that she does not remember the last time she did something as simple as shop for new clothes—and that was before she received the rent increase.

“It is crucial that the voices of people like Mary, people who are directly impacted by these cuts, are heard”, said Ari Rapkin, Rental Stability Education Program Director at Community Alliance of Tenants.  “These are not abstract policy decisions; people lives are being seriously damaged.”

In addition to the speakers, the Rally was bolstered by the Portland City Council’s passage of a resolution opposing the Federal cuts to housing and the White House’s proposed State and Local Flexibility Act of 2005. Further, over 30 organizations and coalitions sponsored the Rally for Housing Justice, many of whom had not been active in last year’s Rally for Housing Justice.  

“The turnout and energy were excellent, and our speakers were amazing,” said Michael Anderson, Communications Coordinator with the Community Development Network.  “But this Rally is just one event.  We need to capture and grow the momentum to achieve the housing justice we seek.”

Oregon Affordable Housing Tax Credit Bill Moves to House Floor

The Housing Alliance’s bill that would increase the cap on the Oregon Affordable Housing Tax Credit (OAHTC) to $11 million passed out of the House Revenue Committee to the House floor yesterday, June 1, with a "do pass" recommendation.  The OAHTC bill, SB 996, would increase the cap on the tax credit program from $6 million per year to $11 million per year, allowing the program to serve more low income renters across the state. SB 996 passed out of the Senate in mid April.

The OAHTC allows banks to reduce interest rates on loans for affordable housing by 4% and claim a state income tax credit equal to the lost interest income caused by the lower interest rate.  Property owners must agree to pass through all of the interest savings to low income tenants in the form of permanent rent reductions.

Since the lenders and property owners get no direct financial benefit, the OAHTC serves low income and very low income renters very efficiently. Nearly all households that benefit from this program earn less than half of Area Median Income (AMI), and in many cases, they earn below 30% of AMI.

Lower rents provided by the OAHTC allow households to be financially stable and not be forced to choose between housing and food, medicine or heat. Considering that the Federeal Reserve Bank ranks Oregon 48^th in rental affordability, the OAHTC is greatly needed to provide more affordable housing across the state. Without the program, many projects could not be built.  Especially in rural communities where incomes are low, decent housing is unaffordable without this program. 

Though it is likely that the Oregon House will approve SB 996, the Housing Alliance encourages supporters to contact their State Representative and ask for their support of the OAHTC bill.  To contact your Representative, go to: http://www.leg.state.or.us/writelegsltr/

To learn more about the Housing Alliance, go to: http://www.oregonhousingalliance.org/

Cascadia Housing Provides Solution for Multiple Community Challenges

Three of the most pressing issues for our area are homelessness, the mentally ill being unnecessarily housed in jails, and the need to move people out of the state hospital.

More than 75 people, including state, county, and city officials, joined with Cascadia President and CEO Leslie Ford today in celebrating the opening of a 48-unit site at NE Prescott and 57^th Ave. that will serve people facing those challenges.

Residents, who have already begun moving in to Prescott Terrace, are chronically homeless, transitioning from the criminal justice system, or coming from the overcrowded, antiquated state hospital.

Ford noted the shortage of affordable housing, particularly for those with mental health or addictions, and how it “requires creativity and collaboration to make a project like this work.”

That was a theme that was echoed by City Commissioner Erik Sten, County Chair Diane Linn, County Commissioner Serena Cruz, and Betty Dominguez from the state’s Housing and Community Services.

The speakers all singled out for praise Donita Diamata, Cascadia’s Director of Consumer Services, who spoke of her own experiences with mental illness and the importance of safe housing as an early step on the road to recovery.  Also praised was Neal Beroz, Cascadia’s Vice President for Housing, who has put together the complex arrangements to make projects like Prescott Terrace possible.

The advantage of such a project, aside from meeting an obvious civic need, is the ability to draw revenue from multiple funding sources.  This allows economies of scale, such as two property managers on site, as well as eliminating redundancies of service.  Cascadia has a broad range of mental health and addiction services available at sites in Multnomah, Washington, and Marion counties.

A mixed-use senior housing project planned for the Bertha Triangle site is two steps closer to reality this month, with an announcement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of a $180,000 Brownfield Grant, and a loan from the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department which allowed Bertha’s developer, Community Partners for Affordable Housing (CPAH) to purchase the site. According to Clark Henry, of Portland’s Brownfield Showcase Program within the Bureau of Environmental Services, “CPAH is the first nonprofit developer in the Portland region to receive direct funding under this program.”

“The Brownfields Program puts both property and people back to work,” EPA Administrator Steve Johnson said. “These grants will help communities across America convert eyesores into engines of economic rebirth.”

Craig Kelley, Bertha project manager noted, “This grant will help CPAH cover the cost of developing a soil management plan, contaminated soil and water removal disposal, monitoring during cleanup and final disclosure reporting.” Kelley works for the nonprofit Housing Development Center, consultants for this, and all of CPAH’s housing development projects.

CPAH closed a $365,000 loan from the state of Oregon Housing and Community Services Department to purchase the Bertha Triangle site at the end of May. With a $766,000 award from the Portland Development Commission, an $80,000 grant from Portland’s Office of Sustainable Communities, and a pending $50,000 grant from the Enterprise Foundation’s Green Communities program, the project needs just one more major funding award—Low Income Housing Tax Credits from the state housing agency this fall, to proceed.

The project is utilizing the name “Bertha Station” during pre-development, but sponsors will work with the local business and neighborhood associations in the fall to select a name which most accurately reflects the history, as well as the future vision, for this site. Plans currently reflect a mixed-use residential and commercial project with 2,500 square feet of ground floor commercial space and a 2,000 square foot community center. Fifty seniors of modest means will benefit from the rental units proximity to on-site services and close proximity to transit, shopping and services. The project will incorporate several innovative green-building techniques and building materials that minimize life-cycle costs, including a cistern to collect rainwater. Service partners will include the Veterans Administration, Neighborhood House, and Northwest Pilot Project.

The movement for a National Housing Trust Fund made an important step last week towards the goal of increasing federal funds to build more rental housing that is affordable for the lowest income people. The Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives approved the “Federal Housing Reform Act of 2005,” a bill to strengthen federal regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The bill also expands these government sponsored enterprises’ missions to provide more affordable housing.

The mission component of the bill includes a provision that 5% of the companies’ after tax profits be dedicated to affordable housing funds. The initial estimate is that 5% of their profits will be $400-$600 million in the first years and will go as high as $1 billion annually eventually.

The affordable housing funds are to be used to benefit extremely low and very low income families, though the bill does not prescribe how much should be used for each income group. The funds can be used for capital grants for the production, preservation, and rehabilitation of rental housing, as well as assistance for first time homebuyers. One eighth of the funds is set aside for a leverage fund to support housing and economic development. The funds may be used only for direct housing purposes and cannot be used for administrative expenses. At least 10% of the funds are to go for home ownership.  There is a preference for projects that will benefit extremely low income families.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will administer their respective funds, with strict oversight by an Affordable Housing Board based at the new independent regulating agency. This board will be composed of the director of the regulating agency, the Secretaries of HUD and Agriculture, and equal numbers of representatives from the for-profit and non-profit housing sectors.

The bill was voted out of committee by a vote of 65 to 5 and now heads to the House floor, as early as the second week in June. The White House wants more restrictions placed on Fannie and Freddie and objects to the affordable housing fund, so considerable advocacy is needed to assure smooth passage out of the House.

Similar legislation is in development in the Senate. The Senate Banking Committee took up a bill to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie last year in the 108th Congress. The overall bill was voted out of committee on a partisan vote and was never taken up by the full Senate. However, a provision to set up an affordable housing fund with 5% of Fannie and Freddie profits had unanimous support.

The affordable housing fund is not everything housing advocates want, but this is a HUGE victory for extremely low income families who need decent and affordable housing. There will be opportunities in the Senate and in the conference committee to improve the bill. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), the Ranking Member of the Financial Services Committee, has publicly pledged to work to target the entire fund to extremely low income families.

Supporters of the National Housing Trust Fund consider enactment of this legislation to be just the first step in this campaign to achieve the goal of 1.5 million new units of housing affordable for extremely low income people in ten years.

House Considers OMB Evaluation of CDBG But Avoids Attacking PART

In the wake of the White House's attempt to put the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program on the chopping block, a House subcommittee held a hearing to determine whether a program as diverse and flexible as CDBG could be evaluated using the Office of Management and Budget(OMB)'s one-size-fits-all performance measurements.

Factors Influencing the Hearing

The hearing focused on CDBG in isolation from other programs that fared poorly under OMB's performance measurement process, but the hearing did not address the systematic problems of that process. The popularity and importance of CDBG do not alone explain the form the hearing ultimately took. Instead, there are political factors at play that prevented the hearing from addressing these larger problems.

Political Context

Foremost among the many heated disputes inspired by the White House's fiscal year (FY06) budget submission was the proposal to eliminate CDBG in its current form and to combine it, at significantly reduced funding levels, with several other programs to be administered by the Department of Commerce rather than Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The White House justified its proposal by claiming that CDBG failed to produce results, as measured by the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). Although Congress ultimately rejected that proposal, the problem remains that the White House failed CDBG in the FY 06 PART and could do so again in the future.

The consolidation proposal proved controversial for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, because CDBG is an enormously popular program. Administered by HUD's Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD), CDBG gives federal money to state and local governments to support a variety of activities aimed to assist low- and moderate-income communities. State and local governments are given great flexibility in developing a program that best meets the needs of their given community. CDBG money has been used to enforce housing codes, build sidewalks and sewer systems, clean up and redevelop brownfields, and build affordable housing, among other activities.

The proposal to cut CDBG based on its supposed ineffectiveness put Republican lawmakers in a difficult bind. On the one hand, constituent pressures prevented them from agreeing with PART's assessment of CDBG. On the other hand, PART is a powerful tool that enables this administration to use the notional objectivity of quantified performance measurement to justify predetermined political outcomes; Republican lawmakers were thus constrained from attacking PART in its entirety. Moreover, a Republican member has sponsored a bill, recently reported out of committee, that would essentially codify the PART. When the House Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census held its May 24 hearing, GOP members resolved this tension by seeking inputs on improvements to PART that could allow it to accommodate the special characteristics of CDBG, while ignoring the larger problems of PART.

CDBG and the Broader Context of PART

Although the House hearing focused entirely on CDBG, that program fared poorly in its PART assessment for the same reason that many other block grants -- and, for that matter, many programs important to the public interest--also fared poorly.

PART is, by design and in practice, a one-size-fits-all test focused less on meaningful assessments of actual effectiveness than on the political whims of the budget examiners conducting the assessment. The White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has used PART since 2002. Under the guise of a neutral scientific tool, PART evaluates programs using questionable criteria, some of which conflict directly with programs' authorizing statutes. Although OMB purports to have specialized sets of questions for different types of programs (research and development, regulatory, block grants, and credit programs), in practice the questions for each type of program are essentially indistinguishable. Within each type of program, OMB does not even pretend to particularize its performance inquiry depending on the specific characteristics of a given program. After conducting these problem-ridden assessments, OMB then uses the PART scores to justify changes in program budgets.

PART is particularly ill-suited for all block grant programs, not just CDBG. The basic purpose of block grant programs is to send funds to the states with minimal strings attached. Imposing nationwide performance measurement requirements would force the states to gather uniform data, whether or not their specific programs were designed with those data end-points in mind. In contrast with the states' rights agenda that drove the development of many block grants, federal performance measurement (in particular a one-size-fits-all test like PART) aggressively trumps the states' own performance measurement processes and could have the effect of holding states accountable for consequences beyond compliance with basic legal requirements. Holding the block grant program itself accountable for failing to gather uniform performance data counters Congress's intent for the program.

In fact, the evidence indicates that the White House has used PART in a systematic attack on block grants, including CDBG. Grant programs rate significantly lower than in PART reviews than all other programs on average. For example, in the FY05 PART reviews, OMB scored no block grants as effective even though it gave that rating to 11% of all programs, and it rated only 5% of all programs as ineffective but gave that failing score to 43% of all block grants. This trend continued in the FY06 PARTs, in which only 27% of block grants were deemed effective while 47% of all other programs received the highest score.

The Hearing as a Balancing Act

Although CDBG was not alone in being slated for deep cuts justified by a failing PART score, the May 24 hearing focused on CDBG in isolation. The House has already rejected the controversial proposal in the White House's FY06 budget submission to combine CDBG with 17 other programs from five different agencies as the new Strengthening America's Communities Initiative, which would be relocated to the Department of Commerce and funded at $3.7 billion -- a 34 percent cut, without adjusting for inflation, from the programs' FY05 $5.6 billion budget. As to be expected from the political context, the hearing avoided the deeper systematic problems of PART and instead attempted to find a middle ground between saving CDBG from the ax while not rejecting PART altogether.

Disputing the CDBG PART Assessment

Instead of addressing the larger problems of PART, participants in the hearing disputed the basis for the program's rating of "ineffective." Critics within the agency and in the hundreds of communities served by CDBG have argued that the performance measures used by OMB do not adequately capture this flexible and dynamic program. Witnesses at the hearing focused in particular on OMB's decision to score CDBG a zero for clear programmatic purpose, based on the argument that "the program does not have a clear and unambiguous mission. Both the definition of 'community development' and the role CDBG plays in that field are not well defined."

HUD deputy secretary Roy Bernardi refuted OMB's PART rating and defended the performance of CDBG, saying the program has a purpose clearly outlined in the Housing and Community Development (HCD) Act of 1974, which established CDBG. Bernardi further asserted that HUD follows the intent of the law in its administration of the program. Congress intentionally designed the law governing CDBG to minimize HUD's role and allow communities to develop programs that meet their specific needs. In fact, in 1981, Congress specifically modified the act to reduce HUD's role from making qualitative assessments of grantee programs to simply assuring that grantees complied with the governing statute. In its hands-off approach to administering CDBG, HUD is following the directive from Congress.

Neither Bernardi nor the other witnesses used this occasion to emphasize that CDBG was not alone in being penalized under PART for following Congress's stated intent. For example, OMB penalized the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and Mine Safety and Health Administration for failing to use cost-benefit analysis in rulemakings, even though these agencies operated under statutory authority and, in the case of OSHA and MSHA, Supreme Court precedent forbidding the practice.

Also not discussed is an additional constraint on HUD's ability to collect performance information: the Paperwork Reduction Act. The PRA limits an agency's ability to collect any information from 10 or more people -- in other words, almost every occasion that an agency would be collecting information -- by requiring OMB approval. Agency information collections, no matter how important to the public interest, are collectively subject to a fictional budget of "burden hours," or the estimated time required to complete information collection. That budget in turn is subject to periodic reduction goals. The PRA mandates an annual reduction in burden hours, putting pressure on agencies to minimize the collection of information notwithstanding the need to gather more information about performance.

Saving Face for PART

All the participants in the hearing walked a political tightrope when the hearing shifted its focus to question of applying performance measures to CDBG. The performance measurement movement has been so successful in altering the mindset of many in government, the nonprofit sector, and elsewhere that there is little critical thinking about the underlying assumptions of performance measurement - namely, that it is possible to think of "performance" as a discrete set of activities susceptible of measurement in politically neutral, quantified data, and that these performance measures should be central rather than subsidiary to high-quality fiscal and management decisions. Moreover, the political context constrained any in-depth discussion of the problems of PART itself.

Accordingly, Bernardi and state and local groups at the hearing argued that performance measures can be established for CDBG and that PART simply used the wrong measures. For Bernardi and many of CDBG's proponents, the solution is that performance measures should be developed by the local communities rather than handed down by OMB. The "genius" of the program, as one state group called it, is its flexibility; it can cater to the specific needs of a given community. Since programs are developed by the community and tailored to community needs, that community knows best what the outcomes of the program should be and how they should be measured. As Bernardi stated in his testimony before the subcommittee, "because the CPD formula block grant programs promote maximum flexibility in program design and since the use of these funds is driven by local choices, HUD believed that performance based measurement systems should be developed at the state and local level."

In fact, HUD has been working with OMB and stakeholders since 2003 to develop better performance measures for the program. In September 2003, CPD issued a notice to all program grantees outlining its efforts to improve performance measures and encouraging grantees to develop their own local systems for measuring program outcomes. In response, 43 percent of grantees reported using performance measures or that they are working to develop such systems. Since that time, a working group of representatives from an array of national housing and community development associations came together to develop performance measures that reflected the objectives and outcomes of their programs. The resulting system allowed grantees to determine their own objectives "based on the intent of the project and activity. While program flexibility is maintained, the system offers a specific menu of objectives, outcomes and indicators so that reporting can be standardized and the achievements of these programs can be aggregated at the national level," according to Bernardi's testimony.

The witnesses sidestepped the systematic problem built into PART itself: namely, that the OMB budget examiners applying PART look only for a couple of measures applied across the board in a program. Despite HUD's work on developing performance measures that reflect the diverse objectives of the program, OMB still chose to evaluate CDBG using the one-size-fits-all PART measurements that not only failed to capture the intricacies of the program but also evaluated CDBG grantees on criteria that fell outside the scope of the authorizing statute. The one-size-fits-all reductiveness of PART cannot accommodate the multiple, project-specific outcome measures envisioned by the witnesses. Forcing PART to accommodate these program-specific concerns for CDBG alone, moreover, would do nothing for all the other programs suffering under the crudely mechanistic rigidities of PART.

The witnesses also danced around the problem of using such a flawed tool in making management and budget decisions. OMB budget examiners appear to launch PART assessments with predetermined political outcomes in mind, and the White House then uses the good government rhetoric of "results" to justify slashing the budgets of programs that fail the assessment. Though even CDBG's advocates noted problems with the programs, none of the witnesses suggested that cutting the budget was a solution. In fact, Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, argued that HUD is often crippled by lack of proper resources. Over the past decade, HUD has continued to administer the same public services with an ever-diminishing budget. PART is, naturally, oblivious to these resource constraints.

The witnesses argued for an alternative role for performance measurement: using performance measures as a management tool rather than a guide to budget decisions. Subcommittee Chair Michael Turner (R-OH) asked witnesses repeatedly if and how performance measures can be used not just to prove the effectiveness of a program but also to improve program effectiveness. Turner's questions prodded the witnesses to find a role for performance measurement as a vehicle for determining best practices and quality case examples to be circulated among CDBG grantees (but not imposed upon them). In Turner's alternative vision, HUD would gather project-specific performance information and then share the success stories of one grantee with others.

Currently, HUD gathers performance information only to ensure compliance with laws and regulations. In the mid-1990s, HUD introduced the Integrated Disbursement and Information (IDIS) reporting system, which allowed grantees to input data about program activities. While IDIS tracks the financial status of CDBG grantees, it does little to integrate that information with the various performance reports required of grantees. Turner seemed to see HUD's emphasis on compliance not as the result of the HCD Act and the 1981 follow-up minimizing HUD's role but, rather, as a missed opportunity for this kind of best practices consultation. HUD is currently working to improve the IDIS system in a way that will make aggregating data possible.

This interesting alternative approach is not possible in the current performance measurement climate. PART itself still demands an over-all assessment of the performance of CDBG and other programs in their entirety, without regard for the separate successes of individual projects or even the block-grant philosophy that the states themselves, as the fabled laboratories of democracy, should be experimenting on a state-by-state basis. The stated purpose of PART and the larger government performance movement is that budgetary and management decisions should both be determined by a shared universe of "performance" data; the alternative approach of performance measurement that determines neither but results only in nonbinding suggestions runs counter to that purpose. Finally, a bill pending in the House, the Program Assessment and Results Act, would give OMB a blank check to continue with its current approach and would do nothing to reshape performance measurement in the more palatable ways suggested by Turner and the witnesses at the hearing.

Despite the impossibility of Turner's alternative approach, the hearing concluded on that note. Several witnesses stated that, with better performance data, HUD could provide this kind of best practice information to grantees. Further representatives from state and local groups said that they would benefit from best practices guidelines and technical assistance from HUD.

The number of units produced using tax credits for new and rehabilitated rental housing for low-income people is steadily growing, according to a recently issued analysis of the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program; the nation's principal effort to encourage production of this housing type. Between 1995 and 2002, the annual production of LIHTC-eligible housing averaged 90,000 units, up from 56,000 units from 1992 through 1994, the preceding study period. The number of projects remained about the same, however, reflecting an increase in average project size from 42.1 to 77.7 units.

These and other trends are reported in a new study Updating the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2002, published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The full text of the study is available as a free download at http://www.huduser.org/Publications/HSGFIN/UpdateLIHTC.html

The LIHTC program, created by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, replaced tax provisions favoring rental housing with federal tax credits issued to the states, which in turn allocate them to developers of low-income rental housing. Developers can use the credits to offset taxes on other income, and often sell the tax credits to outside investors to finance the projects. To qualify for the LIHTC, a project must set aside a portion of its units for low-income households, which pay rent limited to about 30 percent of their income.

The study shows that nearly two-thirds of the LIHTC units placed into service from 1995 to 2002 were newly constructed, almost half were located in central cities, and nearly two-fifths in suburbs - a distribution similar to that found in the overall distribution of rental units. Nearly one-fourth of the units had three or more bedrooms, compared with 17 percent of all apartments built during that period.

Almost one-third of the projects had a nonprofit sponsor, a proportion that rose over the study period. The projects tended to be located in areas with relatively low development costs or high development costs relative to incomes. More than 40 percent of the projects' residents received tenant-based rental subsidies through the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

HUD maintains data on the program because of its national importance for meeting the housing needs of low-income individuals. The new HUD report represents the fifth update to its LIHTC database, which was designed by Abt Associates, and now includes LIHTC projects developed from 1987 to 2002.

Clackamas County Commissioners Prohibit Car Camping

In response to complaints from County residents, last week the Clackamas County Board of County Commissioners approved a code amendment to prohibit people from sleeping or camping in their car, trailer or other vehicle on a county roadway or highway in residential, commercial or industrial areas.

Specifically, the amendment states:  No person shall use any vehicle or trailer to camp in or live in while parked upon a County roadway or highway in a residential area, commercial area, or industrial area.

"The County has seen an increase in people living in their vehicles and parking in county rights-of-way during the day and night," said Clackamas County Traffic Engineer Joseph Marek.  "As a result, nearby residents have reported problems such as harassment, littering and human waste." 

In April, the Clackamas County Coordinating Council for the Homeless released information from a January homeless count that confirmed that at least 2,484 people living in Clackamas County without a place to call home. Of the people counted, nearly 1000 were children.

Because counting people who are homeless is very difficult, the nearly 2,5000 people counted are only a portion of those actually homeless in Clackamas County. Using a federal formula to extrapolate actual numbers from homeless counts, the Clackamas County Coordinating Council for the Homeless estimates the true number of people who are homeless as over 7,500. To find out more about the homeless count, go to: http://www.cdnportland.org/CDN_news_052005.html#Clack_Homeless_Count

With this amendment, the Sheriff's Office now has the option to cite people under the county code and issue a $15 citation, which will go into effect 90 days from the adoption date.  The Sheriff's Office will also provide information about resource options for homeless people, as needed.

"Without the ordinance, Clackamas County Sheriff's Office deputies had few options to deal with the issue," Marek said. "Now they will have one more tool in their toolbox to use if necessary."

The amendment was first heard by the County Board and public input was invited on May 5, 2005.  The Board approved the code change May 19.

For more information, contact Sgt. Paul Steigleder at the Clackamas County Sheriffs Office or Traffic Engineer Joe Marek at 503-655-8650 or paulste2joem@co.clackamas.or.us.

YOU’RE INVITED! Portland Habitat for Humanity Ground Breaking June 15

The plans have been laid. It’s time to break ground!

Please join the future Portland Habitat for Humanity homeowners as they break ground on their new 16-home community.

Wednesday June 15^th, 2005

6:00-7:00 PM

8309 SE Lambert Street

(North of Johnson Creek Blvd, just off 82^nd Street)

Food and socializing will begin at 5:30.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to meet the Habitat for Humanity International Board of Directors who will be joining us from around the world for the celebration.

A special thanks to Cathy’s Texas BBQ and Bon Appetit for providing food.

While the news headlines have been dominated by the issues faced by one utility, there have been quiet discussions about the creation of a new utility that could fundamentally affect all of Portland.  The City of Portland, Portland Development Commission, TriMet and the Portland Public School District are on track to potentially building a new high-speed Internet infrastructure for our community.  There are a couple of reasons why your attention is deserved: 

1.         Potential for affordable Internet access for low-income families.

2.         Significant savings for affordable housing developers by getting free or very low-cost Internet service into their buildings.

3.         Use of public assets each year to build the network (access to street lamps, buildings, etc.)

4.         Future telecommunication applications that could change the way community development does business – mobile computing, voice over IP (VOIP), etc.

Over the past two years a group called the Portland Telecommunications Steering Committee has been meeting to steward a process that would result in an RFP for a private provider to build a wireless network for the City.  PDC has been staffing this effort. The public has been represented by Erik Sten and Sam Adam’s office, the Personal Telco Project and now One Economy.  Intel has been providing technical assistance.

The process is leading to the issuance of an RFP in the next several months.  Here is a quick breakdown on the thinking at this moment:

·       Private provider builds a network in exchange for free or very low-cost access to public assets, such as rooftops or street lights.  This may include PPS and TriMet assets as well.  In return they get preferential pricing on Internet service.

·       The initial phasing looks to building wireless Internet service in the downtown core only, along with service being beamed to  ‘fixed assets’ (i.e. a school) around the city.   Eventually a new technology – WiMax - would cover the entire city.

·       There would be some limited public benefits, such as free access to certain websites – Portland Online, TriMet, PPS, Oregon Helps, etc.

·       The builder of the network would have to open the network to different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who may be interested in providing service to other clients, such as small businesses, or residents.  There would be the problem of building additional wireless access points in, say North Portland, if an ISP would wants to serve this community.

Currently, the Portland Development Commission and the project’s Core Team have determined that we are drawing close to a time when public input would be needed. It is important that housing agencies have an interest and opportunity to comment on the project.  Just as you are now required to create a third network in your housing, there is the distinct possibility for the creation of a new data network for all of Portland.  For more information, contact Robert Bole at rbole@one-economy.com or 503-282-2824.