The Portland City Council made two significant moves to address the housing needs of lower income Portlanders, unanimously passing the City’s 2005-06 Budget with $2 million in new funding for affordable housing and by creating a System Development Charge (SDC) exemption for affordable housing development for the Bureau of Environmental Services (BES).  The new funding and the new waiver both address the most significant barrier to meeting the City’s housing needs: The lack of adequate resources in Portland’s inflating housing market.

The new $2 million in funding allocated in the budget is earmarked so that $1 million will be used for 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness, and $1 million for other existing housing priorities such as preservation of existing affordable housing, No Net Loss, family housing and special needs housing, especially focusing on households with the lowest incomes. Commissioners Sam Adams and Erik Sten were instrumental in securing the new housing funding, an accomplishment in a budget debate largely focused on cuts. 

In the City’s past two budgets, two separate City Councils have committed $13 million in new funds for housing.  Affordable Housing NOW!, a coalition of over 40 organizations aimed at securing needed resources for housing for people at the lowest incomes, had asked the City in 2004 to fully fund a Housing Investment Fund at $30 million that could would be available by 2007.  With $13 million now allocated, an achievable $17 million remains to reach the goal.  Both Mayor Tom Potter and Commissioner Sam Adams pledged in their campaign to fully fund the Housing Investment Fund.

As important as the $2 million in new funds for housing, creating an affordable housing SDC exemption to BES may provide financial savings to new affordable housing development of an equal or greater degree. The new exemption, which went into effect on July 1, applies to the development of rental housing affordable to people at or below 60% of the median family income ($40,750 annual income for a family of four) and the development of home-ownership housing affordable to people at or below 100% of the median family income ($67,900 for a family of four).

SDC are fees required for development to pay for necessary infrastructure costs that result from new development.  Portland has SDC’s for the Bureaus of Water, Transportation, Parks and Environmental Services.  Prior to the City Council’s creation of the affordable housing SDC exemption for BES, qualified affordable housing development had exemptions to the Water, Transportation and Parks SDC’s. Commissioner Sten, who has long advocated for consistent SDC exemptions for affordable housing development, led the way for the SDC exemption for BES.

For more information about the BES SDC exemption, contact Brian Morisky at the Portland Development Commission at (503) 823-3270. To download a chart outlining the SDC exemptions for affordable housing, click here.

No Recreation in Sleeping Outside For 7,426 Clackamas Homeless

As summer begins, so does the annual pilgrimage of families flocking to campgrounds and outdoor recreation areas throughout Clackamas County looking for relaxation, adventure and an escape from the daily grind. But as many look to sleeping outdoors as an escape, a growing number of Clackamas County residents find themselves trapped outside, without a place to call home.

Clackamas County’s 2005 Homeless Count indicates that nearly 7,500 people living in the County are homeless, including 2,500 children, a dramatic increase from all prior counts of the County’s homeless.  For these families and individuals, the charm of outdoor recreation is lost to the trauma and challenges that come from the lack of the stability and comfort that comes with housing.

“7,500 people is more than the entire population of Molalla,” said Brian Redine, a member of the Clackamas Housing Advocacy Network. “We have a problem here that is bursting at the seems, and yet most people in Clackamas County do not seem to be aware how bad things have become.”

To make matters worse for County residents who are homeless, in late May 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. 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.  Now, these 7,500 people are not just homeless, they are likely to be cited for violating Clackamas County code.

“Criminalizing homelessness is a surface level, symptom-based response to the problem of poverty, a problem that is a growing reality for Clackamas seniors, people with disabilities and working families earning low wages,” said Nancy Yuill, director of Clackamas Country Land Trust. “The question should not be how do we prohibit people from camping on public roadways.  The question is why on Earth does anyone have to park on the street in order to find a place to sleep?”

The sky-rocketing cost of housing combined with stagnant wages is a huge factor in the increased number of homeless.  According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2005 Out of Reach study, the average cost of a monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Clackamas County is $717. For a single parent with two children, the wage needed to afford a two bedroom apartment and still have enough money to pay for groceries, medicine and other basic necessities is $13.79 per hour, significantly more than the wages paid in service industry jobs like working a mall or fast food restaurant.  Minimum wage in Oregon is $7.25.

“Children deserve an opportunity to succeed in school and in life, and that begins with a place to call home,” said Nancy Hungerford Levine, a homeless advocate from Milwaukie. “It is wrong that we allow children to grow up homeless.”

For people with disabilities and seniors who are unable to work, the housing market is simply too expensive for them to afford.  A typical social security disability monthly assistance check is for $571, not even enough to pay for the rent of a studio apartment in Clackamas County. Many seniors and people with disabilities have been further hurt by cuts to the Oregon Health Plan, federal housing programs and state disability service programs that used to provide crucial supports needed to maintain housing stability.  Medication that was once covered by the Oregon Health Plan is now an added expense burden for people whose budgets are already stretched passed the max.

Diana Morris spent 6 months living in her car in 1991 after an injury on the job left her without work, without income, without family and with no other resources. 

"Without being able to live in my car, I would have had no safe place to stay.  Thank God there was no harsh law at that time which would have made me pay a $15 ticket to sleep in my car.  I could not have afforded it. At that time there were no shelters that would accept families.  To take advantage of them would have required me to put my daughter in a foster home.  At least now there is Annie Ross House". 

Annie Ross House is a family shelter in Milwaukie. However, Annie Ross usually is full and typically has a waiting list.

The Clackamas Housing Action Network (CHAN) is a coalition of activists, service providers, faith groups, community organizations and interested people working collectively to support adequate housing resources for all community members.  To get involved with CHAN, contact Martha McLennan (503) 654-1007 or via email at mclennan@nwhousing.org.

Federal Update: Many Victories for Housing in House Appropriations Bill

(From the National Low Income Housing Coalition) The Transportation, Treasury, HUD, Judiciary and District of Columbia (TTHUD) Appropriations Bill, H.R. 3058, was considered in the House of Representatives on June 29 and 30. Building on the success that housing advocates had at increasing FY06 HUD funding at both the subcommittee and full committee levels, a number of housing programs received additional funding during consideration of the bill on the House floor.

Representative Joseph Knollenberg (R-MI), Chair of the TTHUD Subcommittee once again declared his support for housing programs. In his opening statement on H. R. 3058, Chair Knollenberg said, “In the making of this bill, the first priority was the protection of all extremely low income people receiving Section 8 and public housing.”

The largest increase to the HUD budget was in an amendment offered by Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) and Barney Frank (D-MA) to add $100 million to the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program. The amendment, which passed by a vote of 225-194, including 30 Republicans, will keep approximately 15,000 Section 8 vouchers in the program.

The Fair Housing Initiative Program (FHIP) and the Fair Housing Assistance Program (FHAP), which had been cut from $46.5 million in FY05 to $38.8 million in the FY06 request, also were increased by $7.7 million with an amendment by Representatives Al Green (D-TX), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Alcee Hastings (D-FL). Mr. Green argued for the increase by pointing out that more than 3.7 million fair housing violations still occur annually. The amendment passed by a vote of 231-191.

Chair Knollenberg and TTHUD Subcommittee Ranking Member John Olver (D-MA) offered an amendment to increase the Community Development Block Grant program budget by $67.5 million. The amendment was accepted by voice vote. $50 million of the funds are to be used for Youthbuild, which was zeroed out in both the President’s FY06 request and the TTHUD subcommittee and full committee markups. The remaining $17.5 million was added to the CDBG program. Representative Gary Miller (D-CA) offered a successful amendment to include $24 million for Brownfield Redevelopment, a program that was zeroed out by both the President’s FY06 request and the committee.

Representative Artur Davis’s (D-AL) amendment to provide $60 million for the HOPE VI program, which had received zero funding from the Administration’s budget request and the committee mark, was approved by a vote of 248-173, including 59 Republicans.

The lead-based paint program was increased by $47.6 million in an amendment offered by Ms. Velazquez. This would bring the program’s total funding to $166.6 million, an amount that matches the funding provided in FY05.

Through efforts by Mr. Nadler and Representative Chris Shays (R-CT), the Housing for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program received a $5 million increase to $290 million in H.R. 3058, which brings the program back to the funding level of FY03.

An amendment by Representative Mark Kennedy (R-MN) to take $100 million from AMTRAK to increase the Homeless Assistance Grants was defeated. The votes against the amendment were not directed against the grant program, but were viewed as taking funds that would facilitate the scuttling of a national transportation program. An amendment, offered by Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) to prohibit funds from being used to implement community service requirements in public housing, was defeated by a voice vote.

During the bill’s lengthy debate on June 29, Representative Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI) offered an amendment to improve the Housing Voucher funding formula. Ms. Kilpatrick offered the amendment to bring attention to the need to develop an adequate funding formula for the program. Ms. Kilpatrick suggested a formula, which has support from a number of advocacy groups including NLIHC, that uses a 12 month window rather than the current three month window (May-July of the prior year) when distributing the Section 8 funds and makes other improvements. Mr. Knollenberg responded, “I will do everything I can to work with her.”

The amendment was subsequently withdrawn because of a point of order as this type of amendment is considered authorizing, or setting policy, on an appropriations bill, a process that is against the rules of the House. The authorizing committee, the Financial Services Committee, has the State and Local Housing Flexibility Act (H.R. 1991) currently pending, which calls for major changes to Housing Voucher and public housing programs. While the Committee is not expected to consider this particular bill, it is expected that take up reforms to Housing Choice Voucher program later this year.

With the passage of the TTHUD appropriations bill, Appropriations Committee Chair Jerry Lewis (R-CA) makes good his promise to complete the appropriations process before the Fourth of July recess.

The appropriations process now shifts to the Senate. The TTHUD appropriations subcommittee and full committee are scheduled to mark up the Senate bill on July 12 and 14, respectively. It is not yet clear whether the full Senate will be able to pass its TTHUD legislation before Congress breaks August 1 for the summer district work period. Advocates will continue their efforts in the Senate to ensure that at least the increases in the House bill remain in the final package.

(By Michelle Chen, New Standard News)

Community organizations and government agencies working to dismantle barriers to housing opportunities may soon be forced to stretch already meager budgets even tighter. Proposals in the federal budget bill pending in the US House of Representatives would gut programs to combat housing discrimination against minority groups.

Opponents of the budget cuts say that private groups and non-federal agencies already have too few resources for the enforcement of federal, state and local fair housing laws. They argue that at a time when segregation and discrimination are steadily eroding American communities, sapping resources from fair housing enforcement activities will undermine civil rights and heighten barriers to economic stability and opportunity for underserved populations.

The 2006 House appropriations bill proposes to carve $3 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Fair Housing Assistance Program, which provides training and technical assistance to state and local agencies that help enforce fair housing law.

More controversially, the bill would also cut the Fair Housing Initiatives Program, the main HUD allocation devoted to the fair housing work of private groups, shrinking the total allocation by 20 percent to $16.1 million.

According to a letter sent Tuesday to the House Committee on Appropriations, signed by 40 members of Congress who oppose the cuts, this proposal would effectively bring the program’s funding to a historical low.

The co-signers of the letter also stressed that at this level, an estimated 40 percent of eligible private organizations would be barred from funds for enforcement activities; another 20 percent of groups would be shut out of funds for community education programs. Last year, the federal government disbursed $17.6 million in grants to 106 private organizations across the country, with awards ranging up to $220,000.

Drawing a connection between housing rights and economic advancement, the co-signers argued, "Fair housing education and enforcement play a pivotal role in increasing minority homeownership… without the benefits of homeownership and integrated neighborhoods, minority populations must bear the high costs of segregation."

In an analysis of housing trends from 1980 to 2000, the US Census Bureau found that residential segregation in metropolitan areas remained highest for blacks, though the rate of segregation has declined over time. Meanwhile, segregation of Asians and Hispanics has tended to rise.

A 2000 HUD study, in which agents were sent into the housing market as undercover "testers," showed that in rental transactions in urban areas, blacks and Hispanics, compared to white testers, received "consistent adverse treatment" at rates of 22 and 26 percent, respectively. White testers were frequently presented with more available units than minority testers in the same situation, who were sometimes falsely told that the apartment they sought was unavailable.

Other HUD research indicates similar trends for Asians and Native-Americans, along with discriminatory patterns in home buying and financing transactions.

"We still see strong evidence of discrimination in all kinds of housing-related activities," said Sara Pratt, a housing policy consultant and former director of enforcement at HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. "Everything from the pants-down, overt discrimination … to much more subtle kind of corporate, policy-driven discrimination -- sometimes inadvertent, I think, sometimes conscious."

To read the full article, please go to: http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1948

Emergency food providers throughout the country are reporting more and more working families requesting assistance.  One of the key reasons households with workers are facing food shortages is that so much of their income must be spent on housing.

 In a recent six year period, the number of American working families paying more than 50 percent of their income for housing increased 76 percent, according to a new study released on April 29, 2005 by the Center for Housing Policy (CHP) in Washington, D.C., a research organization affiliated with the National Housing Conference.  CHP noted that in 1997, 2.4 million working families spent more than half their income on housing.  By 2003, that number had grown to 4.2 million.

The study, titled The Housing Landscape for America’s Working Families 2005, found that one in every eight households – or 14.1 million families – had critical housing needs in 2003, meaning they paid more than half their income and/or lived in physically dilapidated conditions.  The problem was particularly acute for immigrant families; six in 10 immigrant working families had critical housing needs.  By region, housing needs were most critical in the West and the Northeast.

“These new findings shed light on a troubling trend across America – working a full-time job does not guarantee families a decent, affordable place to live,” said CHP research director Barbara Lipman.  For additional information, see the news release and study at:  http://www.nhc.org/index/chp-newsroom-events

Bruce Warner Appointed as New Director of Portland Development Commission

The Portland Development Commission’s board early today picked Oregon transportation director Bruce Warner to be its executive director, saying the embattled city agency needs a leader who can help it “heal” and grow.

The five-member panel voted unanimously to pick Warner to replace Don Mazziotti, who announced his resignation in March.

According to PDC commission member Janice Wilson, Warner is the best person “to help us heal and help us move on. The agency we will be in the future is not the agency we are today or the agency we’ve been in the past.”

The PDC has generated controversy in recent months over disclosures of no-bid contracts, a planned review by the city auditor and public concern by City Council members that the agency is not accountable enough to the public. The PDC board’s pick for a developer of a $200 million project at the east end of the Burnside Bridge went against neighborhood activists and prompted an intervention by Mayor Tom Potter.

The PDC board had identified four finalists for the executive director job: Warner; David Knowles, vice president at David Evans and Associates of Portland and former city planning director; Karen Williams, a partner at Lane Powell Spears Lubersky law firm and former top lawyer for the PDC; and Gil Jimenez, director of the Arizona Department of Commerce.

Two days after the announcement of finalists, Jimenez dropped out, citing recently discovered medical issues.

Mayor Tom Potter said that his office was involved in the selection process.

“His job has to be done in a transparent and inclusive manner,” Potter said of Warner. “We fully support his appointment.”

If you are 17 – 24-year-old woman and do not have a GED or Diploma, Portland YouthBuilders (PYB) has a great opportunity to for you to learn construction while completing your high school education. PYB is a non-profit organization providing education, training, and leadership development to young people ages 17 to 24.  We now have a WomenBuilders program to support women who want to enter the trades. 

WomenBuilders is a week-long building academy for women.  At WomenBuilders young women get free instruction, support, and skill-building in preparation for the PYB construction program.

PYB students in construction build houses for low-income families, earn their GED and/or High School Diploma, get paid, and learn how to find, get, and keep a job.

For additional information, please call Sara, (503)286-9350 ext.219 or go to www.pybpdx.org.

With generous support from United Way of the Columbia Willamette, TACS will offer its 3rd annual Fund Development Capacity Building Program to help ten community-based nonprofits build their individual donor fundraising capacity. If your organization is located in Multnomah, Clark, Washington or Clackamas County and is a small to mid-sized human service nonprofit, you may be eligible to apply.  Click here for guidelines and application.

Microsoft Office Software Donation Program: Your Corner Office With a View

If your office contains mismatched chairs, chewed pens, and a teetering stack of to-dos, why not treat yourself to a virtual office that's sleek, organized, and highly efficient? Even if your desktop is already well-appointed, how could you pass up an opportunity to update your animated paperclip?

Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition is a comprehensive software package for common business tasks, including word processing, e-mail, presentations, data management and analysis, and much more.

The Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition starts with the same package as Office Standard: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. The Office Professional edition includes three additional programs: Microsoft Publisher, to create documents for print and the Web; Microsoft Access, a database program; and Microsoft InfoPath, to manage forms-based data.

This product is available through the Microsoft Software Donation Program at TechSoup Stock for an administrative fee of $20. The retail price for this product is typically $499.

Learn more and order product:

http://ga0.org/ct/Pp16yKS1ymuZ/

New for Mac users: TechSoup Stock is now offering Office 2004 for Mac Professional Edition (in addition to the Standard Edition)

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Learn more about the Microsoft Software Donation Program:

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