Thoughts at the Water's Edge
Homelessness Inc. gathers the troops--just a coincidence they also make election endorsements. Our lame-duck mayor quacks.
Sometimes, the U.S. Supreme Court’s actions actually translate from the dense pages of legalese down to the places where actual people live.
Then again, sometimes they don’t. Prime example: the decision known as City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson. It’s been hashed out ad infinitum, as lawyers say, since the decision dropped a few days ago.
It was, as SCOTUS decisions go, not exactly earth-shaking; it simply overruled the Supremes’ favorite nutty punching bag, the Ninth District Court of Appeals, headquartered in San Fransisco, where tents, dopers, and excrement line the approaches to its gray courthouse. The decision was a no-brainer: telling bums not to set up house on public spaces isn’t “cruel and unusual punishment,” given that the founders wrote that in an era when drawing and quartering was a common punishment for crimes against the state.
To listen to the folks in Homelessness Inc.™ the decision was even worse. Here’s the official response from the Oregon Housing and Community Services Executive Director Andrea Bell (who made a measly $154,925 in 2022)…
“For many, we knew this day was coming, and yet it is still devastating. This is a wake-up call for all of us—cities in particular. We cannot succumb to cynicism or confuse this ruling as a mandate…”
It couldn’t possibly be a wake-up for the state’s metastasizing bureaucracy which—it’s obvious to anyone not on the state payroll— needs clients who will be served, hopefully for the rest of their short, ugly, desperate, nonproductive, degraded lives.
That’s because, accoding to our soon-to-depart (thank god) mayor..
“Unless the legislature decides to revisit the law that HB3115 enacted, no one in Portland is going to see sweeping policy changes…”
Back when GuvTina was manhandling the state House, the measure called HB 3115 was designed to do two things: get local machine pols off the hook in terms of dealing with the street psychos in any real way and as a sop to Homelessness Inc.™ and its cut-outs in the building trades, developers, and nonprofits.
Short version: we need the homeless, so suck it up.
None of this SCOTUS nonsense will prevent the devastated state bureau from finding more people to hire. F’rinstance we have, among their eight current job openings…
Equity and Racial Justice Impact Analyst PA4
…which could top out at $116,124 a year. Plus PERS.
What will this person do?
Plans, coordinates, and promotes efforts to track and report on the impact of OHCS policies and strategies promoting equity and racial justice, in close collaboration with a range of internal and external partners.
As for the OCHS, it might be helpful to recall this passing bleat from the state auditor in January…
…which offered this glimpse of the agency…
…an audit released Thursday by the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office says the agency’s handling of the emergency rent assistance program was full of flaws, chief among them a failure to track the money and make sure the funds went to eligible landlords and tenants.
…which was promptly filed by our dinosaur media under, “The dogs bark and the caravan moves on…”
Meanwhile, the head of the state senate’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, Kayse Jama, let fellow members of the progressive machine know that the Supreme Court can go pound sand…
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling does nothing to solve the housing and homelessness crisis in Oregon. The legislature remains focused on addressing the root causes of homelessness, increasing the housing supply, and funding programs that get people on a path out of houselessness.”
Not bad for a guy who learned his first civics lessons in the wildest, most anarchic non-nation on earth and who arrived as a refugee in the US in 1998, then climbed the nonprofit ladder, and wound up running Unite Oregon, a garden-variety progressive money cutout. In 2022 (last federal form 990 available) it had net assets of $4,502,405 and paid staff salaries and perks of $2,878,840—do the arithmetic.
This is the same refugee who had a few kind words for the nation that took him in…
For many of us, the American Dream has been deferred from the begining because our policies have been designed to work only for those who wield money and power…
Being a ranking member of the machine, thus one of those who wields both “money and power,” Sen. Jama can do nice things for his constituents in the building trades unions, homebuilders associations, and state bureaucrats. More pals with money and power—which we’ll get to in a moment.
Funny thing about the whole “increasing the housing supply” idea as a way to solve homelessness: back in June, the Tribune ran this item…
…which pointed out some things that, given a moment’s thought, are obvious…
Tom Brenneke wants Portland area residents to understand that government-supported affordable housing projects will not end homelessness.
Brenneke is not a conservative anti-tax activist. In fact, he is an affordable housing developer, the president of Guardian Real Estate, which is completing two projects in Portland.
…and…
He thinks stories about the affordable housing projects funded by Portland and Metro voters are especially unintentionally misleading, in part because a limited number of their units are reserved for those who need social services—including addiction and mental health treatment—to remain housed.
Mr. Brenneke should know what he’s talking about: his two projects in town were made possible by a bag ‘o’ government handouts. Whereas other developers court bankers and private equity and race to complete projects before the bridge loans run out…well…
Tiller Terrace is a $68.3 million project that was supported by Portland System Development Charges credits, a Metro Transit Oriented Development grant and an Oregon Housing Community Services award.
Note those System Development Charges, which anyone else wanting to build anything has to pay, and which makes anything even remotely affordable impossible to pencil out. (Take my word for it, folks; I once gave up doing a modest project when faced with the city’s opaque, avaricious building charges. The builder who took up the challenge put up a McMansion.)
Yes, there’s a “crisis” in building apartments, affordable or otherwise. It’s due to the vagaries of the hyper-complex construction market, which is now in a cyclical bust. Quoth the Wall Street Journal…
No wonder that mega-corporations such as Reliant (biggest private developer in the nation) are doing grim, Soviet-style projects, such as the one we dubbed “the whale” in my Montavilla neighborhood.
No muss; no fuss. Easy-peasy. Just get to know your local bureaucrats, who are much easier to hornswoggle than beady-eyed bankers. Which brings us to this recent WillyWeek story…
…which WillyWeek’s ace headhunter Sophie Peel treated as just another day at the office, with no mention of what the unions want in return for running their bugs on Candace Avalos’s mailers.
Three guesses.
Meanwhile, you’ll be glad to know that our current mayor is enjoying his lame-duckedness. In response to semi-local guy and New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff’s surprising column…
…which we wrote about here, our mayor fired off a letter of…well, protest might give it too much credibility. It was classic Ted stuff, nicely cherry-picked for the folks back east who might have seen a few too many pictures of riots, bums, druggies, thefts, and other urban carnage.
Nicholas Kristof’s recent critique misses the mark. He should spend more time in Portland, Ore., where results-focused people are effectively addressing a homeless and behavioral health crisis on our streets every day.
…and…
Thanks to these concerted efforts, innovative policies and strong partnerships, crime rates are down 43 percent year over year downtown. More than 5,000 people in the Portland region have been placed into housing. This isn’t about ideological purity; it’s about clear, empirical progress.
Golly! If things are so hunky-dory, how come he didn’t run for re-election?
Why don’t any of these people allow the homeless to pitch tents in their yards or live in their homes? I mean where is your compassion?
Housing will end homelessness?
Its a new day! And bears use toilet paper when they shit in the woods!!
"Housing now" is a non-starter. Kudos to Tom Brenneke for saying it. And no blame for using the system.
Put a bum in an apartment without "supportive social services" and the bum will likely trash the place and invite fellow bums over to help him.
We are on a societal slippery slope and I'd like to live long enough to see how it turns out.
Personal accountability is history. Give a tent, tarp, money from canning to buy blues, free meals, and shelter if it gets really cold and rainy, and I fear for the future.