Sometimes someone just needs a little help with rent to weather a rough spell or a short-term emergency. But for many people and families, long-term housing success and stability can require connecting with other kinds of services, whether it’s support for physical health or behavioral health issues, employment services, or a long list of other possible services.
Seen from the other side, people receiving medical care, re-entering society after incarceration, or fleeing domestic violence are extremely vulnerable to the worst kinds of outcomes if they don’t have access to decent, safe and affordable housing.
Unfortunately, the systems that serve people who need help with those issues (and others) are often not connected to reliable support for housing and vice versa. That’s where Meyer’s strategy around “Systems Alignment” comes in. In July 2017 we invited proposals to better strengthen connections between affordable housing and various kinds of supportive services, and we are delighted to announce eight multi-year awards totaling over $922,000 for projects across the state:
Central Oregon Health Council ($60,000 over two years): To develop, implement and improve a “housing first” approach for people experiencing homelessness and high barriers to housing success in Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson counties
Cornerstone Community Housing ($150,000 over two years): To support a collaborative effort to build up the cadre of Traditional Health Workers in Lane County who help people with mental illness access and remain in housing
Corporation for Supportive Housing ($130,000 over two years): To support FUSE (Frequent Users Systems Engagement), a multi-agency pilot project focused on identifying housing and serving frequent users of Multnomah County’s health, homeless and criminal justice systems
The Klamath Tribes ($150,000 over two years): To develop and implement a housing support program to successfully transition and re-integrate members of the Klamath Tribes after serving time in prison
Lane County Health and Human Services ($93,438 over two years): To develop a coordinated community-wide approach to break the cycle of housing instability, homelessness and crisis among people facing complex behavioral health challenges in Lane County
Oregon Coast Community Action ($90,000 over two years): To stabilize housing for families in crisis and support the reunification of families involved with state child welfare services in Coos and Curry counties
Raphael House ($99,000 over two years): To expand housing stability services that support survivors of domestic violence in Multnomah County
Salem Housing Authority ($150,000 over two years): To develop and implement a “housing first” initiative in Salem to house people experiencing homelessness and facing high barriers to housing stability
As you can see, there are strong points of connection in this cohort, with several projects taking on the multi-sided challenges of helping people with some of the highest barriers to long-term housing success, as well as an impressive geographic diversity ranging from the South Coast to Central Oregon to the Willamette Valley and Portland. We’re also delighted to see the Affordable Housing Initiative’s first grant to a tribal nation and expect to continue to build stronger relationships with tribes around the state.
These grants represent Meyer’s second foray into Systems Alignment. In 2015, Meyer awarded nine grants to partners around the state piloting stronger connections between housing and systems such as health care, foster care, early learning and employment.
Our 2017 Request for Proposals (for one- to two-year grants of up to $150,000 total) built on Meyer’s experience with those earlier projects, and we invited submissions on projects with strong potential for broad impact in demonstrating successful, replicable approaches to better aligning affordable housing and related services. By supporting focused collaborative efforts engaging specific issues across multiple systems, Meyer hopes to assist the broader fields of affordable housing and supportive services by:
Highlighting replicable models of successful collaboration, identifying specific strategies to promote effective cooperation across systems or service providers;
Identifying and addressing significant policy or systems barriers to better coordination; and
Documenting the potential to deliver better outcomes (including cost savings or other opportunities to better leverage scarce resources) through effective collaboration.
This all sounds great — who could object to collaboration and coordination? But as we began to learn from the prior round of Systems Alignment grants, there are many obstacles to “alignment.” In a blog post later this year, look for more detail around what we’ve learned from grantees, both on barriers and challenges to greater alignment, as well as some strategies and key lessons about how to drive collaborations toward shared success.
Members of Meyer’s Housing Opportunities team recently sat down with Portland filmmaker Cornelius Swart, who has directed and narrated two documentaries about the drastic housing changes Portland has undergone over the past two decades. Swart’s latest film, Priced Out, offers context for the cycle of blight, gentrification and revitalization that has especially hit African American neighborhoods in North and Northeast Portland.
Their conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Lauren Waudé:
What would you want someone who’s new to Portland, moving into North and Northeast Portland neighborhoods, to know about housing here?
Cornelius Swart:
I think knowing the history is probably the most important thing. I think if people had a sense of the history, had a sense of the pain, the root shock, the feeling of invisibility that many residents feel, I believe that they would interact with people differently.
What we most consistently hear from folks who have lived in the neighborhood for a long time, is that as these communities changed, that sense of community has evaporated. It’s been replaced by maybe a big city mentality, in which no one interacts with anybody, or just outright hostility to their presence in the neighborhood. There’s a feeling of being invisible, and that feeling of invisibility can be hurtful.
Lauren Waudé:
That was one of most heartbreaking elements in that film, hearing Abriana Williams talk about how kids don’t want to play with her son, and how people don’t look at her. That was really a powerful moment to see.
Theresa Deibele:
It really was for me, too.
Lauren Waudé:
In the beginning of the film you introduce yourself as a gentrifier. Why? Is there power behind acknowledging that space?
Cornelius Swart:
Yeah, I think it’s just important to talk real, have real honest, just call a duck a duck, and not be afraid of what that means or how it could implicate you. I think ultimately, what kind of gentrifier I am will be up for the audience to determine at the end of the film.
I’m not a house flipper. I’m not a developer. I’m not an investor. But those distinctions are not clear to the audience at the beginning of the film.
Theresa Deibele:
So in your research and your interviews, how have you seen people navigate those distinctions? Where can people buy and feel like they aren’t gentrifying and displacing or is that impossible to do?
Cornelius Swart:
Right. Yeah, I mean, I would say that when we talk to people in Albina, black folks especially, we’ve never talked to anybody who said, “People shouldn’t buy houses.” Nor did we ever talk to anybody who said, “People shouldn’t sell their house.”
I think where it comes to is how the individual treats other people once they’re there. How they engage with community organizations, institutions, businesses and other residents. Are you coming into the neighborhood to be a part of the neighborhood, or are you here for some other purpose? Investing, flipping.
Are you here and talking with your neighbors even though they may look, act, or seem different than you? Where are your expectations at? People need to…I mean, do you have suburban expectations, like, “Don’t park in front of my house!” “Turn your music down after seven o’clock at night!” “Your lawn should look like my lawn!” I think that’s really where people are having a problem.
It’s really not about the presence of white people on my block. I haven’t heard that one, as much as, “These particular people are treating me this way.” That’s where the problem comes in. It’s being motivated by the market, but the pain that people talk to us about is really, “You came in and now you’re treating me like this.”
Lauren Waudé:
Meyer supports organizations that have implemented housing preference policy that you mentioned in the film. That’s a preference for people who have roots in North and Northeast Portland to return there. How important do you think it is to invest in community as well as housing itself? Can you have one without the other?
Cornelius Swart:
So what I’ve heard about the housing preference is, it’s been mixed. Optimism and cynicism alike.
I’ve heard people say, “Well, they haven’t put enough money into it,” or, “It hasn’t really impacted anybody.” There are other people who, like Steven Green, who’s quoted in the film, say, “It’s not about where people live, it’s about how they’re doing wherever they live.” So there’s certainly people who have said goodbye to the neighborhoods, so to speak. Not Steven, but I’ve talked to other people who are like, “It’s never going to be the same.” That’s either a bad thing, or it’s fine.
I do think it’s important to invest in affordable subsidized housing so people have a choice, whether collectively, folks choose to come back, or want to, whatever, it’s up to them. Housing choice is what it’s all about, and that’s about making the mixed income communities a priority. But housing choice is language that was used a lot while doing the first film, NorthEast Passage, and now it’s kind of disappeared from city discourse, during the second filming over the last ten, fifteen years. We just don’t hear it anymore.
Theresa Deibele:
So it feels pretty clear that Nikki Williams in the movie, the film, feels differently about gentrification between NorthEast Passage and Priced Out. How did you find audiences react differently in that period?
Cornelius Swart:
When the first film came out in 2002, everyone knew Albina was a black community, it was not a surprise. Everyone always gets behind Nikki, right? They can always relate. The first film is about trying to improve a neighborhood that is dangerous and not healthy for anyone. Nikki is fighting for that.
I think the early reactions I’m seeing to Priced Out have been from people who didn’t know anything about the history, didn’t make the connection between the history of displacement in the neighborhood, and their presence in the neighborhood today.
So I think people are more upset, they’re feeling more moved by the history, as opposed to, the first time people were like, “Oh yeah Nikki, she’s just really nails it. She’s just really strong, and I appreciate her struggle.” Now people who are watching the film see themselves in the story. And they’re having, different reactions, you know: guilt, upset, frustration, anger. Now, it’s like, “It’s not over there anymore, it’s implicating me and I don’t know what to do.”
So the biggest thing is people always say, “What can I do?” The first time, with NorthEast Passage, that wasn’t an issue, it was more like, “Oh, yeah. I hope the changes keep happening.”
Theresa Deibele:
Many documentarians, my sense is, they choose subjects outside of their own time, or place, or experience, and yet in this story, North/Northeast gentrification also affected you as a person living in the neighborhood, albeit in different ways than your African American neighbors. So what changes do you experience reporting and documenting the issue and being a part of the community at the same time?
Cornelius Swart:
It has made me more aware. I don’t know if I had forgotten, but I’m more aware of my interactions with folks now. I go out of my way to greet people and just talk with people a little bit more, just shoot the breeze with folks. I’m excited about running into a stranger now.
I do feel a greater sense of joy, interacting with my neighbors, when I’m like, “Let’s just try to put a smile on someone’s face today.” So that’s been a nice part.
Lauren Waudé:
So speaking of neighborhoods, I was really surprised at what a strong role that neighborhood associations had played in the past with like stopping development. So what role do you see them having as we’re moving forward, or what do you think they could do as we look at development in the future?
Cornelius Swart:
I think neighborhood associations are a great tool, especially when they’re engaged on community organizing, and community building levels. At the land use level, and the reason why they exist is really for land use, like local home rule, or home influence, on land use stuff. That’s a more complicated thing and I think that’s where reform helps, and I know the city is struggling with that.
I would love to see neighborhood associations having, not a grading system, but you could look at an association and say, “Okay, this is the membership in a neighborhood that’s seventy percent renters, and a hundred percent of the board are homeowners.”
I always thought that when a neighborhood association goes to the city council and says, “This is what we want, this is what the community wants,” the council should be able to say, “Okay, but you’re all homeowners, representing a majority renter community. So I understand where your point of view is coming from, I appreciate it and I’m going to take it into consideration.” Rather than, at times, like in the 90’s, the government would jump up and say : “Oh, the community has spoken.”
As a reporter, when I ran a community newspaper, to reporters, I would always say, “Don’t just go off of what the neighborhood association says. Go to the schools, go to the churches, and canvas those communities, too.” Because often the churches and the schools have a broader representation of who’s actually in the neighborhood.
Lauren Waudé:
At what point do you think development becomes displacement? I mean, it might not become a point, but what could developers do to preserve the communities that they build in?
Cornelius Swart:
It depends on the developer, and the scale of development.
You obviously have the inclusionary zoning, a statute now that, according to Joe Cartwright, has killed off all permits for a certain class of buildings entirely. But I think the impulse is correct. Let developers do what they do in the marketplace, but have a systematized carve-out for folks who are not their customers so that the market can function in some way, and some social benefit can be transferred from market activity towards people who are not included in that activity.
In housing, new housing always goes to the wealthiest person it can go to. That’s just the way the market functions. I think you see a lot of conversation about, “Why can’t developers build for working class people? What’s wrong?” Traditionally, new housing was subsidized after WWII, through freeways, 30-year mortgages. It was made possible by industrial suburban tract house building techniques. And of course, it was exclusively for white folks.
The market does not produce housing for working class people unless the market is subsidized, or regulations favor it. So you do need to create a market incentive, in order to reach someone other than whoever’s going to create the biggest profit margin. But I am very hopeful on things like Land Trust. I don’t think there’s enough being done on Land Trust. I’m glad to see there’s conversation around affordable, subsidized, commercial homes.
Just getting rid of Measure 50 alone might adjust the marketplace organically. I don’t know why the libertarians and the progressives can’t get together and be like, “We both don’t like this policy.”
One group doesn’t like it because it distorts the marketplace, the other doesn’t like it because it creates all these social and equity problems. Why can’t they just agree to reset, the way opponents came together against the Columbia River crossing? The transit people didn’t like it because it was too much freeway, and the freeway people didn’t like it because there was too much transit. So they were able to join in their hate.
I don’t see why you couldn’t do the same thing with Measure 50.
Lauren Waudé:
One of the most moving moments was seeing all the names on the screen of people who had been displaced. Where did that come from? What’s the source material for those names?
Cornelius Swart:
Oh those came from the city department, the housing bureau. They had all the names.
Lauren Waudé:
Why was that important?
Cornelius Swart:
So that was a dramatic moment that I envisioned off of seeing another film which was called, The Fog of War, in which they show the names of the equivalent cities that would have been destroyed if the American firebombing campaign in Japan had been done on the United States rather than Japan. There’s like fifteen seconds where it goes, “Cleveland, Cincinnati, Saint Louis, New York, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Santa Fe, Albuquerque” — it’s just a frightening, horrifying — you’re like, “Oh, I get it now. The scale.”
I wanted to create that kind of a sense of seeing the scale, rather than just talking about the scale. I was like, “How do you make that connection? Visually.”
Theresa Deibele:
For me, it wasn’t just scale, it was people, and the families behind it.
Cornelius Swart:
Exactly.
Lauren Waudé:
Are there other screening opportunities in the works in Portland at the moment?
Cornelius Swart:
At this point, now that we’ve premiered, our part is to recoup cost, because production is expensive, even though everyone’s pretty much a volunteer, or volunteering. So we’re trying to get a theatrical screening, because we don’t receive any of the ticket sales from the festival showings. It’s being shown around the country, in Grand Rapids, Mich., Tulsa, Okla., Pittsburgh, Penn.
And in January and February, there are free community level screenings with Q&As planned in North Portland, Southeast Portland and Beaverton.
Lauren Waudé:
Thank you, Cornelius.
Get your tickets to local screenings of Priced Out, here. And stream Swart’s first film, NorthEast Passage, here.
Audiences packed the McMenamins’ Kennedy School theater in Northeast Portland on Dec. 12 and took part in a heated Q&A after the screening. "We had a great discussion," Swart said. "I start the film saying, ‘I’m a gentrifier.’ Even though this is a film a
This month’s newsletter spotlights a guest column by Alison McIntosh, deputy director of policy and communications at Neighborhood Partnerships and coordinator for the Oregon Housing Alliance, which is composed of 85+ member organizations and supporters from around the state.
Each year in February, the Oregon Legislature convenes to write or balance a budget, to pass laws to improve our state, and to address pressing issues. Each year, housing advocates come together as the Oregon Housing Alliance to present the Legislature with ideas, proposals and requests to help more Oregonians have safe, stable and affordable places to call home.
In 2018, as in all even-numbered years, the legislative session will be quick — only 35 short days. To meet the constitutionally imposed time limit, legislators focus on a small number of issues and impose strict deadlines for committees. To the legislators and advocates, each day may feel like a week, but the session will move incredibly fast. For housing advocates, this gives limited but important opportunities to advance our work this session.
The Oregon Housing Alliance has come together every session since 2005 to ask the Legislature to create housing opportunities for Oregonians. Our coalition talks about a range of topics, including homelessness, tenant protections, increasing access to homeownership, development of new homes and preserving existing homes.
In 2018, the Housing Alliance will be asking for one big step forward: to increase the document recording fee. This fee is used to ensure more of our neighbors can find safe and affordable homes. The fee is paid when someone buys a new home or property, and it goes to make sure others can have the same. Some of it goes to help our neighbors avoid homelessness through emergency rent assistance, another part goes to build and preserve critical affordable homes throughout Oregon, and a last part goes to help families to afford first homes through down payment assistance or to attend a homeownership education class.
Oregon is facing our biggest housing crisis to date, and we’re glad we have so many tools and partners to meet today’s challenges. We know how to successfully create housing stability and opportunities for families; more resources through the document recording fee will go a long way to address the crisis facing our state. Other priorities will be identified in early 2018, when the Housing Alliance releases its 2018 Housing Opportunity Agenda.
The Housing Alliance is organizing for Feb. 15 another Housing Opportunity Day, a chance for housing advocates and anyone who cares about finding solutions to our housing crisis to go to Salem to learn more about working together to make change. It’s fun and important! Read more here.
Oregon needs us to come together, calling on creativity and innovation, to create housing opportunities that will carry Oregon forward, make families and communities stronger and more vibrant, and build a more equitable foundation for all. Please sign up for our mailing list here to stay in touch with the Housing Alliance and get updates on how you can join this important work.
— Alison McIntosh, deputy director of policy and communications at Neighborhood Partnerships and coordinator for the Oregon Housing Alliance, which is composed of 85+ member organizations and supporters from around the state
Attendees at Housing Opportunity Day 2017 gathered in Salem to advocate to lawmakers for much-needed resources to meet Oregon’s housing needs, including a visit with legislative aides for Rep. Carla Piluso, D-Gresham, and a self advocate with the Oregon C
The cost of creating affordable housing continues to be a hot topic across the state. Caught between an urgent need to bring tens-of-thousands more permanently affordable units online and a relative trickle of public resources to make affordability possible, developers find themselves in the crosshairs of critics who, understandably, insist that we stretch every public dollar as far as possible.
This month, Meyer will convene more than 150 leaders and experts in real estate development, finance, construction, design and policy to explore genuine opportunities to deliver more housing for less.
The Cost Efficiency Summit will build on Meyer’s past engagement with these issues. In 2014 we convened a group of experts on real estate development, construction, design and finance, and issued a report summarizing more than a year of detailed explorations of the factors driving the cost of affordable housing development and possible ways to bring those costs down.
The report illustrates that many cost-related challenges are out of our hands. The price of land, the shortage of skilled labor, and the complexity of publicly funded projects set some parameters no one can ignore or work around. At the same time, there are some decisions that could be made differently, so long as we don’t lose sight of other important goals such as long-term durability, lifecycle costs and help for tenants with low incomes or special needs.
The discussion is not a simple one, but we hope to help create a larger shared framework to evaluate these tradeoffs. The summit is built around a series of wide-ranging but grounded conversations, focused on specific problem-solving strategies for getting the most out of our collective investment in affordable housing. We also look forward to sharing the progress so far (and lessons learned) from five pilot projects that Meyer has supported to test new approaches to lowering costs.
We will also share what we learn from this Cost Efficiency Summit later this year. The afternoon plenary session on Friday, January 19 event will be streamed live via Facebook (feel free to follow us, too!) and will be available afterward for viewing there.
The Housing Opportunities portfolio recently hosted a panel presentation and discussion among three nonprofit partners of Meyer’s Affordable Housing Initiative (AHI) work on manufactured housing and our trustees to provide awareness and context for why Meyer works in this space.
The hour-long presentation was a compilation of people’s stories, pictures and data focused on the manufactured housing repair and replacement work these organizations do to help preserve some of Oregon’s most “naturally occurring” affordable housing, housing that doesn’t require government subsidies to retain its affordability.
The presentation, informative as well as emotional, caused me to reflect on what is being done beyond Meyer's effort to support manufactured housing replacement both locally and nationally.
There’s no dispute that manufactured housing has an important role in the affordable housing market in Oregon, accounting for nearly 8.2 percent of the overall housing stock. In some counties — especially rural counties — it is a much larger percentage of the housing stock. Manufactured housing offers more low-income rural individuals the opportunity to buy an affordable home.
However, many more could be served with access to manufactured homeownership, yet are unable due to specific barriers. The lack of access to fair and competitive financing (conventional mortgages) and lending policies that don’t lend themselves to manufactured housing present clear barriers, as do state manufactured housing titling policies.
Titling of manufactured homes is based on state law and thus varies from state to state. Some manufactured homes are titled as real property by default and offer a definite advantage for owners, while others are titled as chattel or personal property. Oregon uses both titling descriptions, and depending on where a home is located or placed, the property description (fee owned property), and the date a home was manufactured, they can be titled as either conventional or chattel. There are notable disadvantages of chattel titling and associated financing:
Shorter loan terms – on average 20 years;
Higher interest rates;
Fewer rights when in default;
Limited pool of lenders/reduced opportunities to shop for competitive loans; and
Chattel mortgage lenders do not provide ample opportunities for manufactured homebuyers to comparison shop for best loans prior to purchasing the home, whereas conventional lenders do
Manufactured homes titled as chattel offer an owner little if any benefits associated with homeownership, specifically the ability to earn equity, even though anecdotal evidence proves many manufactured homes are in essence real property and just as permanent as traditional homes once they are placed on private land and the axles are removed. Today the practice of titling manufactured homes as chattel is being challenged, and financial institutions are shifting toward encouraging financing of manufactured homes with conventional mortgages.
Another “roundabout” way to increase conventional financing for manufactured housing lies in the finance industry’s willingness to increase the pool of lenders who originate chattel mortgages. The increase of chattel mortgages increases the number of folks who can buy a manufactured home. With new lending policies supporting conversions of chattel loans to conventional mortgages, the number of manufactured homes financed with conventional mortgages increases.
As more lenders originate chattel loans, more individuals have access to these products. A demonstrative change in finance practices provides occasions for chattel mortgages to convert to conventional mortgages for manufactured homes set on foundations or slabs. The Oregon Housing and Community Services Department has committed to making its single-family financing program available to manufactured homes affixed on “acceptable foundations.” The push for more commitment to serve rural communities in this space is evident on a national level as well.
The agency that oversees the nation’s large federal mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has urged both to meet their obligations or their “duty to serve” three underserved markets: manufactured housing, affordable housing preservation and rural housing. The new law, aptly titled Duty to Serve, has been in place since January 2017 and requires Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to create plans that develop a secondary market for mortgages that serve very low-, low- and moderate-income families. Each has proposed Underserved Markets Plans, plans that describe activities they will undertake from 2018 to 2020 to meet their obligations in each market. This is a huge win for rural manufactured housing and could not have been accomplished without the support of many key players.
Yet, there’s more work to do.
Duty to Serve only serves manufactured homeowners with homes titled as real property, and therefore Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will invest only in states that title manufactured homes as such. There’s an effort through the Uniform Manufactured Housing Act to standardize titling of manufactured homes to real property nationally. Oregon is well on its way to reforming its titling laws, which will increase investments in manufactured homes for the many Oregonians who need an affordable and safe place to call home.
In addition to financing/titling barriers, high poverty rates and lower incomes endemic to rural Oregon exacerbate issues surrounding manufactured homeownership. In 2015, Oregon’s rural median incomes were around 20 percent lower than the national average and its urban counterparts while poverty rates in rural Oregon were higher than those in Oregon metropolitan areas. Both poverty and income issues alone are enough to impact an individual’s ability to access affordable homeownership. Antiquated financing and titling policies makes the quest nearly unimaginable for many rural Oregonians.
An article published in The Atlantic magazine in 2015 caught my attention. It was titled “Rural America's Silent Housing Crisis.” But what kept me reading wasn’t the title, it was the last six resounding words of the subtitle: ”Accounting for only 20 percent of the population, residents of more isolated areas struggle to find a safe, affordable place to live — and to make anyone else care.”
“With thoughtful giving, even small sums may accomplish great purposes.”
Those are the final words of the will established by our founder, Fred G. Meyer, in 1976. As Meyer Memorial Trust makes grants to help move our mission of a more equitable and flourishing Oregon, we take that philosophy to heart. We know that the investments made in our Annual Funding Opportunity process are just a fraction of the support provided by our public and private sector partners.
How, then, can we make the most of limited funding to meet our mission? For the Housing Opportunities portfolio, it means looking for the pressure points — “acupuncture philanthropy” as described by Rip Rapson of The Kresge Foundation — that will launch, test, propel, deepen, leverage and evaluate efforts to bring safe, decent and affordable housing to all Oregonians.
Rather than investing in a single building or a single approach, we deploy our housing funds in a way that addresses a variety of needs across the state, in close collaboration with our nonprofit partners, public funders and leaders from other sectors, and in a way that improves conditions so that all people can reach their full potential.
In this year’s annual funding round, the Housing Opportunities portfolio received 78 applications, down from the 106 received last year. We moved 43 to the second step of the application process and ultimately awarded 39 grants (a 50 percent funding rate).
Digging into the details of these Housing Opportunity grants, we see:
Funded projects are spread across the state, with the majority serving rural regions, another 16 serving non-rural regions, a handful serving tribes and tribal reservations and other grants serving diffuse statewide efforts.
Some grants serve multiple purposes or regions
Seven projects are led by collaboratives
Organizations that have never applied to Meyer, or never previously received a Meyer investment, comprised 20 percent of our portfolio grants
A majority of grants were made to large-budget organizations (over $1 million budgets are not uncommon in the housing world) and 10 percent were to smaller organizations with budgets under $200,000
The grants total just over $3.5 million for the first year and about $5 million over three years.
Meyer has publicly committed to improve conditions where all people can reach their full potential — what we call “equity.” Using this lens in our grantmaking involves tracking outcomes and disaggregating data to understand inequitable systems and practices, prioritizing underserved populations, and lifting up the voices and leaders of communities working to overcome bias and oppression.
In this batch, equity shows up in many different ways, highlighted below:
Clearly, there is no “one size fits all” approach to dismantling barriers to opportunity, even in the housing sector. Yet these 39 grantees share a common vision of housing stability as a foundation to reaching one’s potential and a commitment to advancing equity in their organizations and communities.
We encourage you to review the list of Housing Opportunities grants here for more details on these grants, and we invite your observations and feedback on our work to address housing inequities with this slate of grantees. Are we achieving “thoughtful giving” that will allow our partners to achieve great purposes?
After 12 years of working with homeless and low-income families in the Pacific Northwest, I am excited to join the Housing Opportunities portfolio team as the Philanthropy Northwest Momentum Fellow. The fellowship, developed by Philanthropy Northwest, is designed to prepare professionals from underrepresented communities for successful careers in the philanthropic sector. Over the next two years, I will be collaborating with and learning from my portfolio teammates through every aspect of the grantmaking process, and I look forward to meeting with many of the grantees and community partners along the way.
I am also excited to bring my experience and perspective as a direct service provider. I have managed a wide array of programs for low-income and homeless families and individuals. I began my career as a counselor at a shelter for homeless and refugee youths. Most recently, I managed several site-based and scattered-site transitional housing and rent assistance programs, established a resource center for the homeless community in Southwest Portland, and oversaw the conversion of a 20-year housing program from transitional to permanent supportive housing. I have also developed trainings on housing market navigation and landlord/tenant rights, collaborated with community agencies to provide Rent Well education, and advocated for low-income renters in both private market and governmental settings.
The challenges that low-income and homeless families face in Portland’s housing market have left an indelible mark on me, and I look forward to giving a voice to that experience as we work toward more equitable housing together.
When I’m not working, I volunteer with the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and various community art projects in Portland. I also love to travel, read, watch hummingbirds in my backyard, hike, forage for mushrooms, explore the Oregon outdoors and bake when I can. So please share your favorite recipes or hiking spots when you see me!
As a program officer working in Meyer’s Housing Opportunities portfolio, I‘ve been asking myself what will it take to triage the housing crisis for Portland’s most marginalized homeless populations: people with disabilities, seniors and people of color.
A recent groundbreaking goes a way toward answering my question, one of a handful of new affordable housing developments to break ground in the Portland region.
Last week, on a sweltering summer day, I joined housing advocates, nonprofit leaders, community members and elected officials to celebrate the groundbreaking for a new housing development along North Interstate Avenue in Portland’s historic King neighborhood. And though I’m not a native of this historic African American community, the event touched me deeply. I listened as community members recounted what happened to the King neighborhood and community they called home for 50 years before urban renewal leveled bungalows and family businesses alike.
This new affordable housing complex — Charlotte B. Rutherford Place — reflects an effort to amend decades of gentrification and the subsequent displacement of residents from historic neighborhoods in North and Northeast Portland.
Named after the Hon. Charlotte B. Rutherford — community activist, former civil rights attorney and retired judge — the 51-unit housing development, guided by the City of Portland’s Right to Return housing policy will offer affordable 1- and 2-bedroom units for families who have been displaced by gentrification.
“Hopefully people who wanted to stay in the community would be able to stay in the community,” said Judge Rutherford, who retired in 2010 after serving for 18 years in Oregon’s Office of Administrative Hearings.
Rutherford’s family settled in North Portland to work in the shipyards in the 1940s and over time became one of the leading African American families in Portland during the civil rights movement. Her parents, Otto G. Rutherford and Verdell Burdine, were major figures in Portland’s NAACP chapter in the 1950s and helped shepherd passage of the 1953 Oregon Civil Rights Bill.
Rutherford said she hoped the new building of 34 one-bedroom and 17 two-bedroom units, set along Interstate Avenue steps from a Head Start school and the MAX light rail, would “restore a sense of community to North Portland.”
Charlotte B. Rutherford Place is one of a trio of housing developments in Central City Concern’s Housing is Health Initiative that will provide 379 new units of affordable housing to Portland residents by 2018.
Another building in CCC’s initiative, the Stark Street Apartments, will provide 155-units of critically needed permanent housing for people exiting from transitional programs. Repeat patients who enter local emergency departments often they don't have stable housing, said Dave Underriner, regional chief executive, Providence Health & Services.
“We know that stable housing has a profound impact on health,” Underriner added.
The third CCC project, dubbed the Eastside Health Center, an integrated housing complex that will serve people in recovery from addiction, medically fragile people and people with mental illness. The Eastside center will house 176-units of affordable housing, contain a two-story clinic and offer 24-hour clinical support. A $500,000 grant from Meyer’s Housing Opportunities portfolio supports the Eastside development.
“This housing will remain affordable for generations and it couldn’t come at a better time,” said Ed Blackburn, president and CEO of Central City Concern, Portland’s largest provider of supportive housing and health services targeting homeless adults.
Hon. Charlotte B. Rutherford and Sharon Wade Ellis discussed the importance of community at the groundbreaking of the Interstate Apartments in North Portland, named in honor of the retired administrative judge.
Ground broke this spring on a homeless village in North Portland, a controversial idea aimed at providing homes to those who might otherwise live on the streets.
The concept, which is gaining traction in Oregon, got a boost last year from Meyer's Affordable Housing Initiative:
"I think there's a widespread sense that if we keep doing what we've been doing, we're never going to meet more than a sliver of need," said (Michael) Parkhurst, program officer for the Meyer Memorial Trust, who helps lead the trust's $15 million, five-year Affordable Housing Initiative.
Last year, the Meyer trust gave Eugene's Square One Villages $148,200 to support an unconventional housing alternative: a homeless village. Emerald Village, which broke ground in May, is a permanent, cooperatively owned settlement. Each of its 22 tiny houses, ranging from 160 to 280 square feet of living space, will have its own kitchenette and bathroom and will rent for $250 to $350 per month. Construction on the village began in May.
"If you'd have asked me a few years ago, would Meyer Memorial Trust be putting money into that, I'd have been skeptical," Parkhurst says.
Check out the Portland Tribune's full story, by Thacher Schmid, here.
Michael Parkhurst, program officer for Meyer Memorial Trust's Affordable Housing Initiative, says we need more models, including homeless villages like the Kenton Women's Village shown here. Photo by Jaime Valdez
The 2017 Oregon legislative session started with big promises. The business community, advocates and legislators had hoped to develop a revenue package that would avoid massive cuts to safety net programs.
Unfortunately, those hopes were dashed due to party politics and the lack of political will in Salem to address Oregon’s ongoing housing crisis.
Saying that, there was good work to addressing housing issues that we all collectively accomplished this legislative session.
“The Oregon Legislature said addressing our housing crisis was one of their top priorities heading into the 2017 session,” said Alison McIntosh with the Oregon Housing Alliance. “We made progress in some areas, including investments in emergency rent assistance, development, and preservation.”
“However, the Legislature failed to pass legislation that would have provided basic protections for people who rent their homes,” McIntosh goes on to say. “While we are grateful for the leadership and investments, we know the Legislature has more work to do so that all Oregonians have safe, stable, and affordable housing. We know that together, we can solve our housing crisis. People in our communities don’t need to sleep or die on our streets.”
This Session’s victories
The Oregon legislature delivered on some important revenue options to support affordable housing and homeless services.
The following investments were made in Salem.
$80 million in general obligation bonds to build more affordable housing for the biennium
$25 million in lottery bonds to preserve existing affordable housing for the biennium
$40 million in emergency rent assistance and shelter for the biennium
$25 million a year in tax credits to help build or preserve affordable housing
These investments were absolutely critical to go to support our most vulnerable residents in Oregon.
Other important victories on the housing front include small investments for a land acquisition program for affordable housing, legislation that allows churches to build affordable housing on their land and tools to help local jurisdictions understand what housing is being lost and what housing is needed for future planning.
Giving churches the opportunity to build affordable housing on their own property is huge. With a coordinated faith and affordable housing strategy, Oregon could be looking at some amazing projects on the horizon.
Saying that, in order to begin to address the housing crisis statewide the governor and state legislature are going to have to start prioritize housing in a more intentional way.
This Session’s misses
Street Roots estimates that Oregon should be investing an additional $250 million annually in affordable housing projects and tens of millions more for emergency homeless services.
Of course, the biggest loss for Oregonians was the lack of action on tenant protections and the ability to move legislation to avoid subsidizing wealthy homeowners through the mortgage interest deduction program.
By not creating any restrictions on landlords for rent increases or no cause evictions the Oregon legislature is more or less helping contribute to homelessness and gentrification.
People on social security, elders, single parents and others will continue to be faced with hard choices, displacement and homelessness.
Let’s not forget that many elders and people with disabilities have monthly incomes of less than $750.
It doesn’t take a mathematician or an economist to understand that that’s not going to pay for a safe place to call home on the private market.
The reality is without government intervention Oregonians will continue to be evicted from their homes without having any housing alternatives.
The legislature also walked away from more than $300 million of ongoing money that could be going to support people in poverty and affordable housing by not reforming the mortgage interest deduction program. Oregonians making more than $200,000 or who own two or three homes in Oregon are currently being subsidized for housing while thousands of Oregonians are sleeping on our streets or in emergency shelters. That’s not even close to be equitable.
We have work to do
The Oregon legislature for too long has gotten away with managing the issue of affordable housing, instead of making it a priority. Housing should be every bit as much of a priority for Oregon Democrats and Republicans as jobs, transportation and schools.
The housing crisis in Oregon is not going away. In fact, given the current political climate in Washington D.C., growth speculation around the state and the loss of living wage jobs — we fully expect the problem to continue to get worse before it gets better.
It’s up to all of us to work together to help create political will to help end people’s homelessness and to invest in affordable housing. We know that without housing, it’s impossible to have a healthy society. Let’s do better together. Let’s find a way to continue to support an affordable housing movement in Oregon.
