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.
I was lucky that everything lined up for me to fulfill a dream of owning a home. This was important to me less because homeownership is part of the “American dream,” but because I had experienced the ups and downs of housing stability and access to rentals that came with being a renter.
I have received rent increases with little notice and have felt like I had to choose between food or health care and rent. Once, I delayed going to the doctor for a fractured wrist because I couldn’t afford the health care co-pay and my rent at the same time. I have pleaded with potential landlords to look over my past credit challenges. I have struggled with feelings of unworthiness when I didn’t sound like a rental listing’s ideal renter — sometimes including attributes that were against Fair Housing law. Anytime I moved from one rental to another, I went into debt. It might take me four months to get out of debt or as much as two years, once I factored in the application fees, deposits, moving costs and first and last month’s rent. I spent years chasing ever more affordable rental homes, which helped my immediate financial need but in the long term did not lead to more stability.
Since I became a homeowner six years ago, rents have increased in Portland by 43 percent, while Oregon incomes have only increased by about 6 percent. Rental vacancy rates were around 9 percent when I bought; although the rental market is seeing higher vacancies overall, rental homes that are affordable to lower income tenants have significantly lower vacancies, making it harder to find a home that is affordable to someone with a lower income. Rates for affordable housing now range from 0.5 percent to 4 percent. Today’s rental market of higher rents and low vacancies has been a hard reality especially for low-income renters and often leaves renters vulnerable to poor rental conditions or homelessness.
The importance of naturally occurring affordable housing
There has been a shortage of subsidized rental housing for a long time, but in recent years, there has also been a shortage of affordable private market rental homes. This is important because, in general, the private market has been housing low-income renters in naturally occurring affordable housing, housing that is offered by the market that is more affordable than the general market without subsidies. Since vacancies are extremely low in naturally occurring affordable private market housing, low-income households are experiencing higher housing uncertainty and becoming rent burdened, while the organizations working to help low-income renters find homes are needing to shift to fast-paced market conditions.
As a program officer working on Meyer’s Housing Opportunities portfolio, almost every community and nonprofit I talk to shares heartbreaking stories of families with children living in tents or cars; seniors and people with disabilities on fixed incomes severely rent-burdened; hard-working people not able to find homes in the same town or county where they work; and families doubled up in rental homes to avoid living on the streets.
This is not just a Portland problem. Hood River, Ashland, Roseburg, Salem, Springfield, Vernonia, Bend and more all share similar stories and need. The challenges of securing a rental home and finding a landlord willing to overlook low income has become infinitely harder for renters escaping domestic abuse, with poor credit histories, coming out of homelessness, who are immigrants, who have criminal histories, with past evictions, and from protected classes.
Meyer’s focus on private market rentals
Meyer’s Private Market Units strategy was developed in response to the rapidly changing housing market and nonprofit community partners’ call for Meyer to identify effective and replicable strategies to expand low-income renters’ access to safe, decent, affordable housing through existing private market units in urban, suburban and rural markets.
In past three years, Meyer has funded 14 demonstration projects, focused on trying a variety of approaches ranging from security deposit loans to landlord outreach and education, renter ready-to-rent classes, and placement and retention support. The demonstration projects tested assumptions about private market landlords’ engagement and risk mitigation, low-income renters’ needs and barriers, and traditional placement strategies. Demonstration projects that have generally been most successful engaged landlords early in the development of projects and made changes to their approach based on landlord feedback. Demonstration projects that were less successful often reached out to landlords late in the process after the project was developed and launched. Also, some grantees struggled working in communities that had extremely low vacancy rates with limited housing stocks. This was true for urban, suburban and rural communities.
Lessons learned with private landlords
Demonstration projects that responded to real-time challenges in the market and engaged private market landlords early in the project planning process were the most successful because they could ground-truth their assumptions and adjust their projects early in development. The Housing Authority of Jackson County (HAJC) launched a demonstration project offering security deposit loans to its Section 8 voucher renters (Housing Choice voucher) while its market had less than a 1 percent vacancy rate and skyrocketing rents. HAJC tested their assumption that many of their Section 8 voucher holders were struggling to secure rental homes not because they had a voucher but because they lacked the funds to move in once approved. Section 8 voucher holders who received a 0 percent interest security deposit loan with a 12-month repayment schedule could find and secure a rental home faster with less stress about having to return their voucher or where they would pull together the needed funds for their deposit. Landlords also responded positively to the loan recipients knowing that they could repay a loan. HAJC has since replicated its model in two other communities in coordination with the local public housing authorities.
Northwest Pilot Project (NWPP) partnered with Home Forward and Urban League of Portland to respond to immediate challenges low-income seniors were experiencing with displacement. They tested the assumption that private market landlords wouldn’t be willing to participate and that low-income seniors would not be able to stay in high-priced rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. Many of the seniors had been living in their rental homes for years and were barely keeping up with rising rents on their fixed incomes. This collaborative developed a demonstration project matching these seniors with Section 8 vouchers. The collaborative partners were able to educate the landlords early in the program about the Section 8 program and the benefits of keeping the renters. As they learned from each landlord experience they adjusted their approach for the next landlord as appropriate. Ultimately, all of the landlords approached through the demonstration project were willing to participate in the project and one-third of the landlords had never participated in the Section 8 program before. On average, seniors had a rent reduction of $663 by participating in this program.
Northwest Housing Alternatives (NHA) partnered with Legal Aid Services of Oregon and Portland Defender to test multiple strategies to increase housing access for low-income renters with barriers including low-level criminal histories. This collaborative tested assumptions about what barriers private market landlords would be willing to overlook and which ones they viewed as high risk and non-negotiable. Their tenant participants are not only low-income but often also have criminal histories, past landlord debts, past eviction rental histories and poor credit histories and lacked an identification card or a driver’s licence, etc. A number of tenants struggle with multiple housing barriers, making it difficult to identify which barrier is most challenging for a landlord. This collaborative worked to overcome several rental barriers through a variety of strategies, including expunging eligible criminal histories, paying past landlord debts, paying for participants to secure identification cards or a driver’s license, offering a landlord guarantee with participation and having eligible past evictions removed from tenants’ records.
Early in the project, NHA found that the barriers landlords were most averse to were past debts and fear of future debt. NHA’s most effective strategies to successfully house renters through this project have been to pay past landlord debts, offering landlord guarantees and to build a trusting relationship as an agency with the landlords. Many of the the landlords they worked with in this project were willing to overlook past criminal histories, limited incomes and past evictions as long as they felt that they could recover debt if the placement wasn’t successful. In the long run, NHA recognizes that removing the other barriers such as eligible criminal histories will be helpful for future long-term stability, but for now they found they were able to find several landlords willing to offer housing opportunities as long as their main concerns were mitigated. NHA’s ability to build relationships with landlords early in the process to understand their concerns and risks with renting to tenants with several barriers was crucial to success.
HAJC, Northwest Pilot Projects and NHA were successful because they engaged private market landlords early in the process to help inform the development of their demonstration projects and to ground-truth their assumptions. Some of the most impactful lessons Meyer learned through this funding strategy were how crucial it is to have buy-in and input from private market landlords in the project development, the need for grantees to be flexible and responsive to landlords concerns and open to their engagement, and to understand the needs and challenges of the specific renter population each group is working with.
When strategies no longer work in current market conditions
Some of the funded projects that were less successful taught us that strategies that were once effective when vacancy rates were higher are less effective now either because they no longer offered landlords a meaningful incentive in this market or they don’t meet the interests or needs of renters. For example, strategies such as a housing navigator were largely unsuccessful if the navigator was not able to offer immediate incentives to landlords, such as higher deposits or having an immediate rental start date. Also, renter readiness classes often did not seem to match to the needs of renters or landlords and proved less successful in getting placements. Projects that were a closer match to renters’ barriers and immediate needs had higher participation and project compliance.
Through this funding strategy, we noticed that projects were less impacted by geographical conditions than strategy and early buy-in from the local landlord community. In suburban and rural communities especially, engaging landlords early and and building an agency relationship was crucial to success. Landlords in many communities were open and interested in participating in these demonstration projects but were clear about needing to have their real concerns heard and addressed.
For plenty of folks, getting access to stable and affordable housing in the private market is a good step toward stability. Through Meyer’s Private Market Strategy, we have seen solid success for our partners that engage with and learn from landlords and renters, test assumptions and forge a wide circle of partners. And as funders, we can help renters increase housing access and stability by funding groups to test new strategies and being flexible when our partners need to adapt their projects to emerging landlord and renter needs. We are encouraged that private market strategies can help address Oregon’s housing crisis.
AHI program Officer Elisa Harrigan at home, in front of her "Latin wall," filled with ceramic home models, a nod to tradition in her home country of El Salvador.
More than a decade ago, I began a training regimen in Pilates with certified instructors. It started out with simple moves. After years of training sessions, I eventually added the Russian Split and the Snake and Twist on the reformer, advanced exercises that build on the basics of Pilates and require both patience and practice. With my newly acquired knowledge, I am now capable of carrying out advanced Pilates sessions on my own and helping others in their learning journey.
When we first began exploring equity at Meyer Memorial Trust around 2012, we started by training in racial equity, the most common catalyst for diversity, equity and inclusion work. Understanding DEI and operating within a DEI lens is complex work. Race intersects with all areas of DEI, so it is not uncommon to focus initially on race to help folks unpack the ways in which oppression works.
Our interactive anti-racism equity training has been grounded in the examination of racial and ethnic oppression through a framework that allows us to examine how the three expressions of racism (illustrated in the cardstack on the left) show up. White supremacy is at the root of historic inequity in the United States. It promotes monoculturalism and the disenfranchisement of communities of color.
Meyer’s trainings — I figure we’ve undergone just shy of two work weeks of daylong equity trainings so far — help to sharpen our skills, strategies and ability to address structural racism and to advance racial equity and social change. The thinking: Once people understand how everyone is harmed by those systems, we can work together to create change within them.
Last weekend, to celebrate Meyer’s 35th year as an Oregon foundation, our staff marched at the Portland Pride parade in support of Meyer colleagues, friends, relatives and neighbors along the identity spectrum: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and more. (For a glimpse at the diversity of the “LGBTQAlphabet,” take a look at this video from Equinox and The Center [the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center]) A few days earlier, we completed our second two-day staff and trustee LGBTQ equity training, with expert trainers from Pride Foundation, dRworks, Yee Won Chong Consulting LLC and Neola H. Young Consulting.
I have four young grandkids, two whose assigned sex is female and two male. In an effort to be a better informed grandfather, I walked into the training feeling an urgency to understand more about gender. It was a thoughtful, challenging experience. At times, I felt moments of uncertainty even as I was enlightened about deconstructing the gender binary, deadnaming and why the Oregon Equality Act of 2007 is such an important bulwark for the protection of jobs, housing and access to opportunities for the state’s LGBTQ community.
I learned much, and the trainers did what they do best: challenge firmly held beliefs. When the training wrapped up, I felt more emboldened and empowered to work against the discrimination of people who identify as transgender, gender-nonconforming, gay, lesbian or bisexual.
Our training has broadened to include LGBTQ issues for a few reasons. A key reason is to assure Meyer staff who identify as LGBTQ that our foundation believes this is important work. Its framework and construct echo the racial equity training Meyer staff and trustees have undergone, to help us understand the broad concepts, oppressions and discriminations that can shape the experiences of LGBTQ people.
When Meyer started equity training, I remember saying to a staff member, “Well, I don’t expect us to become a social justice organization.” Somehow, that felt a step too far for this organization. But with training, I’ve come to realize I didn’t even know what a “social justice organization” really was or why they have had to exist. Marginalized human beings encounter multilayered experiences of personal and structural and cultural -isms every day, at the bank, enrolling their kids in school, buying real estate. Before we began, those truths weren’t anything I, a cisgender white guy who benefits from white privilege, knew innately.
That’s the thing: Without training and education, I wouldn’t have a counter-narrative to the sanitized history that makes it appear that there is no reality beyond one through a binary gender lens or the myth that this country was not built on the bodies and blood of people of color. Time and again, those deeper dives into equity through a racial framework make clear that white people must educate ourselves about the history of racism in the U.S. and how it manifests at the individual, institutional and cultural levels.
Without training, even well-intentioned people don’t have the ability to identify cultural, structural and institutionalized racism. Or to shift their perspective so they can focus their efforts on dismantling oppression. Being progressive isn’t enough: If we care about making systems change, we must use our position, power and privilege to eliminate racism. As an institution born of wealth, unfettered opportunity and power, we must keep learning.
Why? Because we make mistakes, and equity training teaches us that when mistakes happen, owning the problem and offering a thoughtful remedy is a key step toward the flourishing and equitable Oregon that is our mission.
A great example of applied learning: last year, we were criticized for our terminology when referring to people with disabilities on our website, mmt.org. Our intent wasn’t to harm, but using the word ability to encompass people with disabilities did cause harm. Apologies without recompense don’t go very far.
For us to understand where we went wrong, we had to understand why our word choice was wrong. So we read books and we talked to experts and to people with disabilities. We haven’t done organization-wide training, that still lies ahead, but we will because training helps us to become smarter allies, more sensitive advocates and, frankly, better-informed accomplices.
As a Korean-American, there isn’t really a day when my racial identity is mistaken. My identity as a lesbian can be, though.
When I came out to my parents, my mom even pointed out that I wasn’t one of those lesbians who “cut their hair short and wore clompy shoes.” (My butch partner, Kris, however, looked down at her shoes and said, “I think I’m your mother’s worst nightmare!”) Unlike with my obvious racial status, I get a pass on my sexual orientation and gender identity. In some of my previous workplaces, the assumption that I was straight led to a significant amount of worry that my acceptance and safety hinged on that mistake.
I am fortunate to feel safe being “out” at Meyer. It’s not always so easy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people whose identities and gender expression do not match the binary male/female “norms,” particularly when they work in organizations rife with implicit or explicit homophobia and transphobia. LGBTQ people have shouldered the burden of these phobias: everything from the inability to be out in the workplace and lack of funding for LGBTQ organizations to significant inequities among the population, personal violence and even mass murder.
At two recent events hosted by Funders for LGBTQ Issues and the Pride Foundation, I was reminded that those of us in “mainstream” philanthropy (i.e. foundations that are not LGBTQ-specific) need to do more to increase safety for LGBTQ employees and to advance equity for the LGBTQ communities we serve. In a workshop titled “How Foundations Can Better Support LGBTQ Staff and Movements: Stories from the Field,” Tamir Novotny from Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy and Brian Schultz of the Foundation Center presented preliminary data from a survey of LGBTQ staff in foundations around the country and led an informal “data gathering” discussion about participants’ experiences.
The survey’s early findings were not surprising to the group. Remaining closeted and “navigating your workplace as your authentic self” resonated as ongoing challenges with workshop participants. Heads nodded as our discussion turned to the fear of being seen as biased should we bring up LGBTQ issues. Some noted that questions about personal life, family and home aren’t as frequently asked of LGBTQ staff, and both big wins, such as marriage equality, and terrible losses, such as the Pulse Nightclub massacre, can feel isolating when no one else talks about them. The underemployment of transgender employees in the workforce was particularly notable. And finally, the level of funding to address LGBTQ inequities sends a message to LGBTQ employees regarding awareness or willingness to take action.
A recent report from Funders for LGBTQ Issues revealed that, while on the rise nationally, funding for LGBTQ issues and organizations in the Pacific Northwest dropped by nearly half between 2011 and 2015, from a high of $4.9 million to $2.6 million. Much of the drop can be attributed to a decrease in funding after marriage equality wins. But backlash to that decision is ongoing, and in today’s political climate, LGBTQ civil rights are increasingly at risk for a population that has long faced significant and persistent inequities. (see cardstack)
Here's a lesson for funders focused on providing resources to alleviate poverty, hunger and violence or determined to change systems to improve conditions by tackling issues such as criminal justice, health care and housing: Including LGBTQ populations in those frameworks, lenses and resource-sharing is not added work … it is the work.
The good news is that as mainstream Oregon funders develop more nuanced and evolved approaches to diversity, equity and inclusion — and our grantees have helped us recognize the inequities and intersectionalities experienced by the LGBTQ community — support for LGBTQ employees and community members seem to be increasing. Four mainstream Oregon foundations made the Funders for LGBTQ Issues 2015 honor roll by increasing their LGBTQ grantmaking by 25 percent or more: The Collins Foundation, MRG Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation and Meyer. And the Pride Foundation, with dedicated staff in Oregon, also provides 23 percent of the LGBTQ-specific funding in the Northwest. All of this suggests more LGBTQ-focused discussions are happening within local philanthropy, and that’s a very good thing.
Supporting staff to go to conferences focused on LGBTQ issues, establishing and sponsoring affinity groups, and creating gender inclusive bathrooms are other relatively easy ways to support LGBTQ staff. We recently installed new signs marking Meyer’s gender inclusive bathroom this spring, a simple move that makes visiting our offices somewhat more pleasant for any visitor. But the signs are on just one of the two bathrooms; we still have a ways to go.
So do Northwest funders when it comes to funding to address LGBTQ inequities. There really isn’t a choice: If we are committed to advancing equity, then increasing inclusive and safe workplaces and funding for LGBTQ issues must follow. That, too, is the work.
—Carol (with brilliant contributions by my trusted LGBTQ colleagues and our allies)
*Data sources: Federal Bureau of Investigation, socialexplorer.com, Census Bureau, Pew Research Center, Williams Institute, National LGBTQ Task Force.
In early June, the Oregon Business magazine handed its "Storyteller-in-Chief" microphone to Charles Wilhoite, the chair of Meyer's Board of Trustees.
Charles didn't drop that mic.
Instead, he linked together two incidents of racial violence in Portland, 27 years apart, racist bookends that drive home the central idea that each of us are obligated, always, to stand against intolerance and injustice:
"It should be unacceptable to everyone that two individuals died and another was gravely injured on one of our MAX trains last month because they chose to defend the unalienable civil rights of two teenage minority girls under racist attack.
Similarly, it should be unacceptable to everyone that high school drop-out rates, unemployment rates, and rates of homelessness and health disparity are double-digit percentage points higher for communities of color and the poor.
There is significant, tragic irony in the fact that I moved to Portland in 1990, smack-dab in the middle of the racial ugliness associated with the Tom Metzger trial."
You can, and should, read Charles' full story here.
Charles Wilhoite reflects on several decades of civic leadership and a Portland tenure bookended by racial violence. Here he is, in a personal photo, circa 1990.
As Portland rents relentlessly rise, seniors can face an impossible choice: pay rent or buy groceries? The situation, a familiar one in cities and towns across Oregon, leaves elders at risk of losing their homes when Social Security or disability payments no longer come close to covering the rent.
The Oregonian reported about the rent hikes and evictions that threaten some of the city's lowest income residents:
Over the past 12 years, Social Security payments have lagged significantly behind the rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Portland. They were about equal in 2005. Now, the same apartment is upwards of $1,000 a month while Social Security payments have increased to only about $733 a month, according to federal and county data.
That leaves many seniors finding that they just aren't going to earn enough to bridge the gap between what they make and what they owe until Portland's housing crisis wanes. Even those who live in tax-credit subsidized housing, which means the units rent at 60 percent of median area income, are struggling to stay in their homes.
There also are no shelters in Multnomah County specifically for senior citizens, though they and people with disabilities get priority in some shelters -- and are using them more than ever. In fiscal 2015, 885 seniors were housed in shelters. In the first three quarters of fiscal 2016, the number rose to 948 seniors.
Partly that's because the number of shelter beds across the county increased. Partly it's because more seniors are becoming homeless. Between 2013 and 2015, there was a 23 percent jump, according to the 2015 county survey of homeless people.
The article references a $90,000 two-year advocacy grant awarded by Meyer's Affordable Housing Initiative in 2015 to the Urban League of Portland to improve access to affordable, accessible, culturally-appropriate and safe housing Oregon's African American communities.
You can read the full story by reporter Molly Harbarger here.
An exhibit about the history of Japanese American internment in Oregon is making its way around the state, 75 years after white Oregonians pleaded with state officials to incarcerate their Asian neighbors. The exhibit, created by Graham Street Productions, includes a moving collection of internment camp blueprints, proclamations by then-Gov. Charles Sprague, and correspondence in favor and against the displacement of Japanese-Americans during the build up to U.S. intervention into World War II.
The Argus Observer reported about the opening of the analogue exhibit:
About 120,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry were forcibly removed and imprisoned in America during the months after the Japanese Imperial Navy Air Service bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
The move to do so, according to a new exhibit on display through July 27 at Four Rivers Cultural Center’s Harano Gallery, was “built on widespread racism,” along with a “commonly held belief in supremacy of white people, pursuit of profit and exploitation of labor, resentment of Japanese-American success and a desire for political gain.”
The exhibit on display is aptly named Architecture of Internment: The Build Up to Wartime Incarceration.
The Regional Arts & Cultural Center helped fund the traveling exhibit, along with a $75,000 grant from Meyer. The grant was made through a fiscal sponsorship by Western States Center in 2016.
Residents from Ontario and surrounding communities peruse an exhibit on Japanese-American internment during its opening night at Four Rivers Cultural Center's Harano Gallery. Photo credit: Hunter Morrow
The crimes that took place on a MAX train Friday afternoon in Portland have consumed me and my Meyer colleagues this Memorial Day weekend.
Friday afternoon, on a crowded MAX train in Portland, a white man screamed racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic slurs at two teen girls, one identified as African-American, the other identified as Muslim and wearing a headscarf. When riders intervened to protect the young women, three Good Samaritans were stabbed in the neck, two of them fatally. When the train stopped at the Hollywood Transit Center in Northeast Portland, the suspect ran, and other passengers followed and pointed him out to police, who arrested him nearby.
The attacker — whose name I won't mention because he does not deserve the attention — has been identified as a white supremacist with a criminal record of robbery and kidnapping. Photos and interviews from a rally in April show the man brandishing an American flag, making Nazi salutes and hurling assorted insults at counterprotesters. He has been charged with aggravated murder, attempted murder, intimidation and felony possession of a restricted weapon.
The stabbings, which happened on the first night of Ramadan, made international news. But here's what strikes me: Most of the initial attention has focused rightfully on the terrible violence that happened Friday and the heroes who stepped up to protect strangers. But I find myself returning again and again to the words that prompted heroic intervention.
In our time, the cultural and institutional racism that underpins our country and our Oregon — which was founded as a “no-blacks-allowed” state — is more and more often laid bare. Individual acts of racist, white nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Native and anti–LGBTQ hate speech, threats, terror and violence are also rampant. The Southern Poverty Law Center collected more than 1,300 reported bias incidents in the three months following the 2016 election. That’s an astonishing volume of pain. (You can report acts of hate here.)
I'd wager that those two teens targeted Friday have endured such vocalized hate before, young as they are, and in a town idealized as Portlandia. That's something that should trouble us deeply.
Our Muslim-American, African-American, Native American, Asian-American, Latinx, Jewish, LGBTQ and immigrant communities stand on the front lines of hate and bigotry in this country. They pay the ultimate price for just daring to be, contributing to the social fabric of this country.
All of us have it in us to be heroes. We can be brave in the face of bias and bigotry. We can and must make our voices heard to drown out the insidiousness of hate speech.
My heart breaks for the families of the men who stood up to hate and paid a terrible price, and also for the families of the teenagers. Those young women may well feel traumatized for the rest of their lives. I've said it before and it bears repeating again this Memorial Day weekend: The commitment of Meyer's staff and trustees to work with and support nonprofits working for equity in Oregon, and to voice our opposition to the hatred, bigotry and bias that underlies the #PortlandStabbings, is unwavering.
We are not alone in our determination. Groups and individuals have stepped up to care for the survivors and the families of the murdered men. More than 15,000 have donated to show they support heroism over hate.
Meyer grantee Muslim Educational Trust, and Celebrate Mercy, a national organization aimed at teaching about the life of the Prophet Muhammad through programs and social campaigns, launched Muslims Unite for Portland Heroes on Saturday. As of noon Sunday, the campaign had raised more than $250,000 in 24 hours.
A GofundMe page on behalf of the slain men, coordinated by Portland restaurant owner Nick Zukin, had raised more than $300,000 by noon Sunday. And another GoFundMe campaign, earmarked for the hospitalized victim, had raised $95,000 by noon Sunday.
There is deep-seated hatred among us, but we are better than the worst among us. We are also compassionate neighbors. And that’s what keeps me in the fray.
—Doug
Editor's note: An additional YouCaring account was set up Sunday to raise money for the families of the 16- and 17-year-old girls who were verbally harassed by the suspect. As of Tuesday afternoon, the fund had raised $33,000 to help the teens and their families with safe transportation, mental health services and more.
Hundreds gathered at a vigil at the Hollywood Transit Center on the evening after the Portland stabbings. Here, one young man comforts another during a moment of silence. Photo credit: Beth Nakamura/Oregonian Publishing Co.
Recently, Meyer invited the founding members of the Oregon Immigrant and Refugee Funders Collaborative to sit down for a conversation about what prompted their support.
The following is the edited transcript of their conversation. You can listen along here:
Roberto Franco: My name is Roberto Franco. I’m the director of the Latino Partnership Program, with the Oregon Community Foundation. The reason that the Oregon Community Foundation is involved in this is that this is part of the work that we’ve done for many years now. Finding ways and supporting the integrations of the immigrant and refugees in our communities is part of what we do, and I think this specific collaborative is just an extension of that.
Cynthia Addams: I’m Cynthia Addams. I’m the chief executive officer at The Collin’s Foundation, and we have been in some form of collaboration with the Oregon Community Foundation and the Meyer Memorial Trust, and with the MRG Foundation, too, around the deferred action for childhood arrivals program for the past few years, and so this opportunity to come together again, at a time when national policies are changing so rapidly and dramatically, it just felt like a really important time for us to work together.
Roberta Phillip-Robbins: I’m Roberta Phillip-Robbins, executive director of MRG Foundation. MRG chose to be a part of this collective effort because we have traditionally supported immigrants and refugees in our state, and recognize the importance of supporting folks who bring this richness, and who really carry our economy. We couldn’t turn away and not be part of an effort to support immigrants and refugees in our communities.
Sally Yee: I’m Sally Yee. I’m a program officer with the Building Community portfolio at the Meyer Memorial Trust. Like my colleagues here, Meyer was interested in the integration of individuals into our communities and immigrants and refugees are an important part of it. They have a long history; Oregon has a long history of immigrants and then refugees coming to this state and contributing to this state. And showing their full integration in our community benefits all of us.
Moderator: Why was a coordinated and collaborative funding process necessary to support organizations working on immigrant and refugee issues in Oregon?
Cynthia Addams: Whenever we’re thinking about immigration, we’re talking and thinking about systems, and how those systems affect so many people who are either entering in the country or living the country. All of us are affected by systems in so many ways, and when a systemic action and actions are taking place, affecting so many, it feels like systems on the ground are also really important, and coordinating and collaborating in a much more robust way is the only thing you can do when you are working to respond to very big systems that are so pervasive and difficult, troubling.
Roberta Phillip-Robbins: I believe in a nutshell, that you really increase your impact if you’re able to work together. If the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, the result is usually a stronger result. And that’s why we wanted to join the effort.
Roberto Franco: Well, it’s also at the very basic level that no one entity can support all the work that can be done. But I think there is, I mean, as the saying goes, “There is force, there is power and there is strength in the numbers.” And also at a very basic level, we often ask our nonprofit partners to find collaborations and coordinate with others. So in some ways, doing a collaborative in this fashion is leading by example, as well.
Sally Yee: I think that I’ll step back a little bit from where we are at the moment and say that when President Obama, then President Obama, released his executive order that established DACA it created an opportunity, that first opportunity, for us to get together on this particular issue. It’s not that we haven’t worked together before as funders but it created that opportunity, and allowed us to model for the community and other states what I think is an appropriate response to insuring that people who are here have every right to be here and should have full access, as anyone else, to being able to thrive where they’re living. And so, in the last few years we were working towards…we were hoping we were working towards a full rollout of DACA.
Cynthia Addams: And then even the expansion of DACA.
Sally Yee: And the expansion of DACA with DAPA, which extended the protections to the families of childhood arrivals. So that was our anticipation and hope in this last election. And in the election that all changed and it all changed very suddenly. And so the work that we’re doing now seems even more important. For all the reasons that my colleagues mentioned, us working together is smarter. It’s better service to our clients; the groups and the people out in the field doing the work. We think it’s the appropriate responsiveness of philanthropy.
Roberto Franco: Someone said something about the large impact of policy and actions, which really requires a collective action as well. And that’s what this is about: the issues and actions that impact thousands of people, and that’s why it requires a collective response.
Cynthia Addams: I think one other consideration too is the last round of grants that we made as a group, we made in the fall in November, and by the time we had reached that date, our grants to the organizations serving immigrants in the state were shifting a little bit, more toward capacity building and not quite as focused on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program. And we recognized in November, as those grants were going out, that things were changing really seriously. Which also prompted us to get everybody together shortly thereafter, everybody getting the grantees and the foundations to talk about how they were responding to the rapid changes that were happening and beginning to formulate a response on how to address those changes, and how to respond to them. So I think that really, collaboration and our ongoing conversations, and the many shifts occurring right now, certainly call all of us to work together.
We’ve also had great support from Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees for the last few years. And they have continued to provide matching funds for the work we’ve been doing which has been a great inspiration for us, too.
Roberta Phillip-Robbins: I’d like to add a little piece about this question. You know, why did we need to coordinate? There’s something about the funding process that is kind of mystical for organizations and this effort is to help demystify some of that. To create the “no wrong door” approach to funding access; to really allow grantees to be able to knock on whichever door they’re most comfortable with and have the same level of access to funding is really important. And creating an open communications system between our organizations so that we can get in touch openly and we can move the ball for grantees really efficiently.
Moderator: What larger message do you hope Oregonians take away about the idea of supporting organizations that are doing this work?
Cynthia Addams: Gosh, what message? How important it is for all of us to work together? I just want to say too, that with everything happening at the national level and with so much rhetoric around immigrants and, you know, the linkages between immigrants and the word “illegal” and “undocumented” and just all of that public rhetoric, has created a lot of fear and anxiety among people who are part of our community.
And that anxiety hasn’t just landed on people who might be undocumented; it’s affecting everyone. It’s affecting people who have lived here, and are citizens and have been for their entire lives. It’s affecting so many people, and we all need to work to make sure our friends and families and colleagues are welcome. To make sure that everybody knows they’re welcome. And that this isn’t us; this is something that’s happening but it doesn’t reflect how we feel and it doesn’t reflect our appreciation for immigrants and refugees in our communities, who are so important to all of us. So, I hope by our working together we can share the message of inclusion and appreciation.
Roberto Franco: Yeah, I have to really think this. At the very basic level of communities, people want to be part of their communities. And I think what philanthropy and the role that we have as representatives of all this philanthropy is creating that sense that people are welcome. That people have the opportunity to be a part. So the work that we’re supporting, with our resources and the collective resources, is in some ways hopefully making those opportunities more available. It’s, I think, at least at the Oregon Community Foundation, it’s people’s good will coupled with their financial resources that are put into use. So that good will that we’re transmuting…that good will with financial resources is, again, hopefully making those opportunities more available for kids, for adults, for workers, for the larger community. I think that’s the message that I would carry as part of the Oregon Community Foundation.
Roberta Phillip-Robbins: So, an additional point for me is that philanthropy represents power and privilege distilled. And for this sector, for us as representatives of the sector, to stop and to find a way to more efficiently and immediately address the needs of the community, I think says a lot about how we choose to use our power and privilege in philanthropy.
Sally Yee: I think that when we use the words immigrants and refugees, it — as we’ve had to, as we’ve been forced to, with the policies that have come out — we depersonalize and dehumanize people. These are our neighbors, our friends; they’re our colleagues. They’re family members and they’re individuals and people who, as Cynthia was saying, who — and all of us have been saying — just want to be part of this community. They want to be here and they want to be part of this community and to be able to live. So the more that we can share or communicate with folks that we’re talking about people, people you know, people you see everyday. And it’s not this, whatever this image of immigrants and refugees is or has been painted as by either the media or policy, that that’s a job, if we could take on, is part of our responsibility. To make sure that we know that these are people.
Cynthia Addams: I would also like to add that we would love to have other people join us in supporting this work, because there just isn’t enough funding out there quite yet. We are hoping that some other folks, whether they’re foundations, individuals, or organizations will join us in the work happening on the ground and helping to address the many needs that are out there. We’ve got a whole host of opportunities that people could be thinking about, in the way of grant opportunities or funding opportunities. From on the ground work, to organizing, to legal services; there’s just a wealth of things to do.
Moderator: I want to add, before we get to the last question, I wanted to throw in an additional thought- earlier you mentioned the funding that you’ve been doing as relates to DACA particularly, and how in the fall, organizations were working in capacity building and would one or all of you want to talk a little bit about how organizations, like the ones we’re gonna be supporting through this collaborative, sort of the health of those organizations? So there’s the program need, but there’s also showing that the organizations can weather unexpected storms like changes in federal policies. I mean their capacity needs to grow because the needs around them are gonna grow exponentially. Can you give me just a little thought about that? You kind of mentioned it; I realize that will be really helpful and help people understand why this matters?
Roberta Phillip-Robbins: So leading up to the election in November, it was certainly already on our radar that the need would be there, in the community, if the election were going to go one way. And on November ninth, when we realized that it went that way, there was certainly…the alarms were sounded. I think organizations had already taken inventory of what they could do with their existing capacity. And so in light of this new administration and the climate that changed in twenty-four hours for immigrants and refugees in our communities, those organizations, our local organizations, really understood that they did not have in place already what they needed to meet the onslaught. And that’s certainly what we’re trying to work within, so I think they have identified, very capably, what the need is.
Cynthia Addams: One of the things we noticed, or have noticed in the last couple of years, is how challenging it is for the number of organizations we have, and the size they are, to fully cover and serve the entire state of Oregon. And there’s been a challenge there from…it was obvious when we first started making these grants in 2012, just how difficult it is to get the resources necessary into rural Oregon to provide the clear level of service that’s needed. So the grants that we were making in the fall of 2016, it was very clear that the organizations who were seeking those grants were challenged by limited staffing, reaching the entire state with their resources, and we were hopeful that we were gonna be able to start making a difference there. I think that then, as Roberta mentioned, the huge shift that occurred certainly magnified everything. And today that brings us to an opportunity to provide even more resources and to do whatever we can to help build the system that we need to insure that our immigrants and refugees are protected and safe and contributing in the ways that they want to in our communities. Hopefully we’ll be able to make a difference. But we have a long way to go.
Roberto Franco: Yeah, and I think added to that is also the uncertainty of things, of the environment, meaning that policies could change from one week to another or from one day to another. So in a way, our collaborative approach remains nimble and flexible, to adapt to what community organizations need. And that’s one of the main elements of how we like to structure our work. As policies change, we can respond immediately in that flexible moment. So we do rely on the community organizations to let us know what they need. We have an idea of what their general needs are, but ultimately it’s the community organizations that have to educate us how best to support their work. In some cases, we might not be able to support everything or anything, but in many cases, I think, collectively we can cover a larger scope of services than if we worked as only one individually.
Cynthia Addams: That’s too, why we would love to have more people supporting us.
Roberto Franco: Yeah, well, we have reached out to our donors at the Oregon Community Foundation. And there have been responses there so people do see not only the need but the value to be a part of it. Absolutely.
Sally Yee: You know what we’ve heard in the field is that there has been a response to the policies where lawyers who are not involved with this work want to help in defense. They need training and support to do it, but they’re interested. There are people in the mental health field, organizations that do that, that are seeing a need in the community.
And so there is that kind of response and it’s not just the funders coming together. I think that there are some opportunities to allow the communities across the state to come together in response to this. Which really, we hope, shows a strong message about why this effort is really important. This is not the first time that this has happened in this country or in this state. We’ve experienced massive sweeps from ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which was called something else at the time, in the 70s, where people were just swept up out of the field and deported. The community responded at that time as best they could — they weren’t as organized as they are now. But I think it’s worth mentioning, just so that people know that these groups are really resilient. They’ve experienced setbacks and issues like this before and while it’s sad that they have to bring back the response to that, they have been very nimble and have done that and we feel grateful that we are able to be in better response to them this time than I think the first time around.
Cynthia Addams: I think so, too. We’ve become more accustomed to working together and more comfortable over time, in responding more rapidly to opportunities than maybe we once did. We’re all a little bit more nimble.
Roberta Phillip-Robbins: Isn’t there an old African proverb that said, “if you want to go fast, go it alone, but if you want to go far, go together?” And I think we’re embodying that.
Moderator: What would success look like? And I know this is the first round. Do you want to talk further in subsequent rounds, or do you want to kind of stick to this round now? But if so, what would success look like at the end of this chapter? The end of this year?
Cynthia Addams: I guess if I were to identify some success it would be around organizations having the resources they need to respond to the current realities.
Roberto Franco: I think I’d say when one individual or when one family says, “I had the information I needed to know what to do in this situation,” or one individual says, “I had the legal information and the legal representation that I needed,” then that’s what success is. Again, it may come in different ways, but if there’s anything in that world less tangible, it’s those examples.
Cynthia Addams: Yes. People have the information and the resources and the access they need.
Sally Yee: I think that saving even one individual and a community from experiencing the trauma of being deported after having been here and been part of a community, or been part of this community, I think that again, even just saving one individual would be success. We hope for much more than that. We expect that there be much more than that. If we could begin to reset or reframe the narrative around immigrants and refugees, and their importance to all of our communities, if we could just begin to do that, that would feel like something.
Roberta Phillip-Robbins: I think success would look like fewer barriers for community groups to access funding, and to really build relationship with grantees that we’re working with so that this could be even better every year, so that our collaborative functions more smoothly and can meet the needs more closely.
Roberto Franco: We probably wouldn’t be able to measure it, because the feeling of uncertainty and the feeling of confusion is real. There’s no way for us to measure that degree of it going up or down, but it is our hope that with some of these resources we can provide, that people can find the information and resources to ease some of those uncertainties that they face. But recognizing that they are real. Money probably couldn’t solve it, but if money is part of the solution for resources, then that’s a role that we play as philanthropists.
Moderator: Thanks for joining us today in this conversation and stay tuned for more in the future. Cheers!
For the people doing the muddy, demanding physical labor to restore the floodplain forests of the Willamette River Basin, a typical day goes like this:
You wake up hours before dawn and get dressed in waterproof clothing from head to toe because you’ll almost certainly be working in the rain.
You head to “the cooler,” a massive refrigeration facility near Salem, to load your truck with a few thousand cottonwoods, dogwoods, thimbleberries and other native Willamette Valley trees and shrubs.
Just after sunrise, you arrive at the riverside farm or public park where you’ll be planting. If winter rains have flooded the access road, you lug all those plants into the site on foot, unwrap the twine that secures each brown paper parcel of bare-root saplings, drop a few dozen into your knapsack, and start digging holes.
The best planters have a strong back and a distinct rhythm to their work. Dig-two-three … plant-two-three … stomp-two-three … dig-two-three …
Before sundown, you’ll have planted across hundreds of acres, preparing a future forest where native Oregon fish and wildlife will thrive.
An experienced worker can put more than 1,000 saplings into the ground in a day. By the end of the winter planting season, Willamette River Initiative grantees will have planted more than half-a-million native trees and shrubs this year along the river and its tributaries.
The planting is just one facet of a massive, basin-wide effort to achieve meaningful, measurable improvement in the health of Oregon’s largest and most heavily populated watershed with support from this Meyer initiative. Since its inception in 2008, the initiative has awarded $14 million in grants to fund restoration as well as science, advocacy and organizational capacity for groups working on the Willamette.
Learn more about the initiative, including profiles of some of the projects we’ve supported, here. And if you come across a planting crew during your next nature walk, be sure to thank them for making tomorrow’s Oregon a greener place for all.
