Mitch Green

Did you read this story? It includes quotes from defenders and critics of the tax, most notably Andrew Hoan. It includes a table of the county data with a citation, as well as quotes from the county economist on that data. It’s good journalism.

I also think if you're going to go that hard in an editorial, you should have basic command over the facts yourself rather than rely upon a selective application of spurious correlates that confirm your priors.

I seem to recall that recently a local blogger or alt publication made the case that you can't have any economy deniers in government. Fortunately for us we have many elected officials and rank and file employees who understand how positive early childhood education and care is on the economy.

Great reporting and a good opportunity to reup for the public that my office has produced a series of reports, documents and letters that makes the economic case for why it's such a crucial program, while debunking claims or intimations that the tax was driving people out of the county.

All of it. It's restricted by the Set Aside Policy. Which can be amended, and would need to be to support things that are being contemplated in the social housing study. I think we need to have that conversation.

Excellent morning for a bike ride into work. A little wet but nothing good gear can’t solve. Far better than sitting in traffic imo

Action alert with text "ACTION ALERT!" Tell City Council: "We need an Inner Eastside for All!" with link to webpage https://portlandneighborswelcome.org/ie4a-resolution. The alert has bold colored text, the logo for the Inner Eastside for All campaign, and a graphic holding a loudspeaker.

ACTION ALERT: Support an Inner Eastside for All! We need your written testimony to support a resolution that would speed up the re-legalization of building apartments in Portland's high opportunity and amenity-rich Inner Neighborhoods! portlandneighborswelcome.org/ie4a-resolut...

It just means that there are both restrictions on use and preexisting plans for their use. So, Council could take those funds in a new direction but it would conditioned on legal appropriateness and whether we want to undo some plans underway.

Portland City Council Work Session-Unbudgeted Housing Funds 3/05/26 YouTube video by eGov PDX

Also, here's the link to the discussion itself from today

Addendum: There is $4.8MM in uncommitted TIF resources available to support housing production from the River District TIF. I think the Parcel 6 project at Broadway Corrider is a prime candidate for that money. More to come on that.

Anyway, it was a rich discussion and necessary reset. I want to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of the staff at the Portland Housing Bureau, who pour their souls into this work. We are richer as a city for them.

Throughout, I suggested that we should approach gap financing as a lender with a stake rather than a grant maker. We can support capital stacks with low-cost revolving loan capital, which keeps some skin in the game for the city and plants a seed for future yield.

I think it's important to act now to inject this capital into the market so we can make hay while the sun shines.

We are in a housing crisis, but we also have opportunities to engage in cost-efficient market acquisition and conversion to some kind of "social housing." Today I discussed this in the context of facilitating conversion of apt buildings to limited equity coops, but it's an open set of possibilities.

For Tier 2: There's roughly $30.4MM available to consider appropriating differently that currently planned in the housing bureau. While these funds are not committed, they are held in contingency as out-year resources for affordable housing production. We should pull that work forward imo.

E.g., rental assistance is critical for keeping people housed or rapidly rehousing them. It's a demand-side lifeline. But, we can also do supply-side interventions like buying down the balance sheet costs of affordable providers to lower rents or expand capacity. We should do both.

Under Tier 1: I suggested that we divide this between four buckets: 1) rental assistance ($9MM), 2) eviction defense ($1.9MM), 3) rent buydowns ($8.8MM, 4) additional flexible programming ($1MM).

This approach blends both demand and supply side interventions for renter stabilization

We offered that we should think of approaching our decision-making process in a two-tiered approach:

Tier 1: Immediate action / spending of renter services funds.
Tier 2: Consideration of the remaining balance for strategic investments appropriate for one-time use of funds.

We wanted the proposal framework to refocus the conversation on distinguishing between fund types subject to a range of council discretion. Of the $106MM, only $20.7M is subject to full council discretion without taking away from previously planned uses. The remaining funds have limited discretion.

Now that I have some desk time, I'm going to expand this into a brief thread to lay out the basics of the proposal that we discussed today for spending this unbudgeted housing money.

For those of you following on with the unbudgeted housing funds work session, we have been talking in reference to a one-pager* that mine and @councilormorillo.bsky.social offices developed ahead of this session. Here's that link.

* it's two sided

That’s a huge problem, yes

Routle - TriMet
03/04/2026
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www.routle.city/trimet

Futuristic world meme template

Oregon if we can elect a caucus willing to tax where the money is.

No, they should channel their anger into getting challengers lined up to primary incumbents who refuse to fight like our futures aren’t on the line.

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Not sure if the transit centers are numbered like that. I only know it by name

A transit center stop with views of the high roof enclosure

While I wish frequency and connections were better, I do like this transit center. Can you tell which one it is?

I put that in the alt text. Thanks for putting here.

Fair question. I guess it’s more precise to say we need mass movements, with strikes, boycotts and direct action as organizing objectives. We’ve been able to pour people into the streets and then little more for decades. Being part of orgs that focus on these in unison is essential imo