Portland task force urges city to launch social housing program

[0:45] Mark Dion: Good evening everyone, I'm Mayor Mark Dion. I've called for a special workshop for purposes of receiving a housing report from the Social Housing Task Force. I wanna just take a moment to thank Councilor Kate Sykes and John Featherston, who co-chaired this process. And I appreciate the participation of all the individuals who were not only members of the committee, but may have supplied information and education to the committee during the process. This evening, I'll enjoy the fact that I can sit back and actually listen to these proceedings because both counselors have a run of show that will take us through the entire report. And I hope it's such that sometime they provide for any immediate feedback from the public that's in attendance. So with that, the chair will yield to Counselor Sykes. [1:44] Kate Sykes: Thank you, Mayor. Thanks, everyone, for being here tonight. Thanks to my fellow councillors and also to the task force members for all of the work that you've put into this over the last year. It's been quite a revealing and intensive process. And I'm really glad that we're here today to be able to speak with the council. So with that, I'm going to send it over to my colleague, Sarah. [2:05] Sarah Michniewicz: Sarah. Thank you, Councillor. So we are here to receive the final report of the Social Housing Task Force. And first of all, I wanna thank all the members who participated. We had folks from a wide range of categories. We had government officials, obviously, housing developers and finance professionals, housing service organizations, policy and consulting experts, and community representatives. representatives. And we were formed in March of 2025. The council unanimously voted to create the social housing task force. And we were asked to look at whether Portland could develop a government led approach to producing permanently affordable mixed income housing. I think the mixed income piece was extremely important to the group. We were asked to look at the gaps in our current housing system, the city's financing tools, public ownership partnerships, and what a workable model could look like here in Portland. There are examples in many other places, but obviously we have our unique needs and wanted to tailor it to those needs. And the need for more types of housing is very clear. Maine faces a housing need of about 80,000 homes by 2030, and based on Portland's historic share of regional production, that translates into roughly 700 to 750 homes a year that would need to be built here in Portland. Now, last year we permitted 548, and not all of those units eventually made it to production. So we're producing housing, but we're not moving at the speed we need or the scale that we need to meet that gap. And the gap is not just about the number of homes. We are also not consistently producing housing that working and middle-income Portlanders can afford. forward. This is your school teachers, your service professionals. And the gap isn't, oops, sorry. And over the past year, the task force looked at how other communities are approaching this, what Portland's own financial tools could make possible, and how public ownership could work, and where we could actually begin. And so tonight we're going to walk you through what we mean by social housing and why we think there's a role for it in Portland, and how it could be financed, and two practical models that we are looking at for getting it started. So welcome, and we'll let Councilor Sykes can take it away. Whoever's next. [4:35] Kate Sykes: Thank you, Councilor. Next slide, please. So it's important to understand that the concept of social housing is not a monolith. Other municipalities, other communities are talking about how they can bring the power of government to bear on the housing crisis as well. And they have defined social housing differently according to the needs of their own community. So for the task force, it was important for us to model something that actually works in Portland. We looked at our size, our housing tools, the housing production, limitations that we have, and the role of the state and regional partners in how we produce housing right now. So where we landed is we decided that social housing should be publicly owned, permanently affordable, mixed income for rental units, and that it should compliment rather than compete with existing programs. So I'm gonna take those pieces one at a time. So public ownership. Public ownership does not mean that City Hall becomes the developer or the property manager. That's really important to understand. stand. So the model we're proposing uses public financing, specifically municipal bonds, and I'll talk later about how that financing works in practice. But one important feature is that this kind of financing works best when the city owns the asset. So we would rely on experienced housing organizations to develop and manage the properties. So that means that we would not have to stand up an agency within the city to do that for us. Our role would be to provide financing to establish the public purpose and the fiscal safeguards to protect the taxpayers and to make sure that the value of the investment stays in public hands over time. And that's really important because it's retaining that ownership property that allows us to reinvest the financial returns over time and build more housing. And we'll talk a little bit more about the details of that as well. But I do wanna make sure that we understand what we're talking about here in terms of the housing that we're trying to produce. So we would be looking at housing that's roughly between 61% and 120% of the area median income. So that means that for a single person, this would be housing that would be affordable to someone that earns 59,000 to $117,000 a year. So we're not talking about really deeply subsidized housing. We're talking about housing for the middle class. So for a two person household, that would be 69, I'm sorry, about $68,000 to $133,000. And for a four person household, we're talking about $85,000 to about $167,000. So in Portland here, that translates to teachers who earn about 51,000 at the low end and 105,000 at the high end. Starting salary for a Portland police officer is 69,000. A firefighter is about 50 to 60,000, depending on the certifications that they hold. So that's who we're building housing for with social housing. So it's important just to keep that in mind. And also that we would not wanna be competing with the housing organizations that build housing for below that. So this would be the Avestas, the Choms, the Portland Housing Authority. And in addition, we're not talking about building market rate housing. This is housing that is really solidly in the middle. So I'm gonna turn it over to Wendy, who's gonna talk a little bit about why we think housing should be considered and understood as public infrastructure and why local public investment in housing makes sense. Good [8:31] April Fournier: afternoon. noon. One of the concepts that supports social housing programs around the country and globally is the idea of housing as public infrastructure. Understanding housing in this way allows the city to consider creating publicly owned housing that the market cannot provide. We believe it's time for Portland to take this approach. Around the country today, we are seeing more cities define housing as public infrastructure, just like roads, sidewalks, bridges, and schools. Policymakers and advocates are looking at the local housing shortage and the inability of the private market to fill that gap. To help meet their need for housing, they are establishing locally funded social housing programs, viewing housing as a basic human need, not a speculative market commodity. Some of the reasons to define housing as public infrastructure are long-term economic stability because housing underpins community survival and productivity, just like utilities and roads. Nationally, economists estimate that housing shortages are costing the economy trillions of dollars a year in lost productivity and suppressed wages. Connection to essential services and economic productivity. Housing determines a person's physical access to jobs, education, and transit. Employers in high-cost, low-availability housing markets struggle to fill vacancies and recruit workers. Lack of affordable workforce housing adversely impacts productivity. Community stability and public safety. Long-term affordability reduces family instability and stress. People who can afford to live near their workplace have lower expenses, particularly for transportation, thereby reducing negative climate impacts. And finally, countering market failures. We know the housing market is unable to produce either the types or amounts of housing we need. At the same time, federal and state support is insufficient to meet that need. Public ownership with permanent affordability removes that housing from volatile, short-term real estate cycles. I want to close with a quote from a recent commercial development newsletter. When we call something infrastructure, we mean it's foundational for economic and civic life. Something so essential that its absence makes everything else impossible. Roads, water, power, and broadband aren't amenities. They're prerequisites. We must start thinking of housing in the same way. Thank you. I'm going to turn it over to Paul, who will describe some of the social housing programs we reviewed over the past year. [11:19] Speaker E (unidentified): Great. Thank you. So as part of our work, the task force examined around a dozen different social housing models across the United States. And while the concept of social housing was new to many of us on the task force, we learned that this is a model that many other cities and towns in the U.S. have already built or are actively building. So the most well-known program in the United States is Montgomery County, Maryland's. It started in around 2021. The county's housing authority used bonds to create a revolving loan fund, which now totals around $100 billion. Their housing authority keeps majority ownership, and every building is mixed income. The first building created around 300 units, and it opened to a great national press and fanfare, given how nice the mixed income units were. Over the past five years, cities such as Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Chicago have followed suit and created their own social housing programs. Atlanta and Chicago did it by issuing city-backed bonds, just as we're proposing. Boston recently created a $100 million fund, roughly, and here in Maine, Rockland voters approved the state's first municipal housing bond of around $10 million in 2025. In addition, around eight states, including Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Colorado, and Hawaii, now run state-level programs. After considering these models, we ultimately gravitated toward this upper right quadrant of the, or not quadrant, just part of the graph here that you see, given that Portland would need to find a source of capital for a social housing program, and bonding is the cleanest option that we saw. Others that you see there kind of used, you know, big one-time funds or direct taxes to fund their programs. We think that the idea of being a long-term owner and leveraging the city's low cost of capital, which we learned from bond council, is in good shape. Alongside the capabilities of existing housing providers, such as housing authorities, is the most compelling solution to the long-term problem that is housing affordability. And to talk more about the lived experience side of the housing affordability issue, I'll turn it over to Catherine. [13:35] Speaker F (unidentified): Thank you, Paul. So when we first started the task force, Mayor Dion pointed at the task force member, Kristen Leffler, who's a public school teacher and said, we're going to build housing for you. And that's what we want to do. We're looking at middle income housing. And so I want to share a little bit of Kristen's experience as a middle income person in Portland as to why were, for the first pilot project at least, wanting to look at this middle income bracket. So according to a 2026 Harvard National Housing Survey, rent burden is actually growing the fastest for middle income renters in Portland. 43% of renters in this income bracket in Portland and South Portland are spending over 30% of their income on rent. I don't need to overstate the housing crisis, so I'm just going to read some of Kristen's words. When she moved to Portland, she consistently found herself in this funny area of being just over income for many of the income-restricted units, yet unsubsized apartments cost more than 30% of her salary. She was trapped in the middle, too rich for affordable housing, too poor for anything else, and nearly priced out of the city whose children she serves. While she eventually found a spot with roommates, mates, she still observes that many of her students struggle with their families, too. Some are crammed five to six people in an apartment. They, too, are stuck in this affordability quagmire. Larger unit and homes are far too expensive for what their families actually make. And I see this in my everyday work with the immigrant community as well. We put so much time and investment into making sure that immigrant community members can gain economic stability, which many of them are. That's wonderful news. But as soon as they increase their incomes, they no longer qualify for our great affordable housing options like Avesta and CHOM and PHA, among others, and they face the challenge of trying to afford market rate housing. They are thrown right back into precarity, and all of a sudden clients I helped years ago are now back in my office looking for a second job because they're putting 70 to 80% of their income towards their housing to house the family of their size. I see families doing this math, and it can look extreme, like looking at cutting money for food so they can pay rent, or it can be smaller things, like thinking about should we buy a car, should we move to Wyndham. And that hurts Portland too, when we see people not using public transit, when we see people leaving a community where there are jobs and support systems that they've spent years building. And so those are just two examples of the missing metal that we really think is important to isolate, especially for this first pilot project. And I'm going to pass it to our next speaker, who I think is, it Colin? Great. [16:29] Speaker G (unidentified): Good evening. I'm here to speak about affordability and community inclusion. The task force prioritized both affordability and welcoming people of different socioeconomic and other backgrounds into this housing. Task force members decidedly did not want to compete or enter the fray of low-income housing tax credit development, or LIHTC, because a pathway and capacity for creating that already exists. We also did not want to compete with higher-end housing development because developers are readily creating that as well. What is rare in Portland is development focusing on people with incomes greater than 60% and less than 120% of area median income, often called the missing middle. The task force set its sights on helping to fill that void. The thinking was that people within that relatively wide variety of incomes could be included without rigid rules or complex qualification rules. This would just be housing added to our housing market with rents affordable to people in that range, housing that is currently in short supply. A lack of turnover tightens or even clogs the supply of affordable housing. Right now, there is nowhere for people to move when their income exceeds the limits of LIHTC affordable housing, and targeting people with incomes of 60% AMI or less. This means people remain there longer than necessary. A supply of housing with rents affordable to people above 60% area median income would open movement in Portland's housing market. People would be able to move, making room for people with lower incomes comes to move into the current housing. Filling in this missing middle will help our stuck housing market become unstuck. Housing without rigid qualification restrictions and a simple array of different rent points allows something natural to occur. People with a bit more socioeconomic strength would passively help boost people not yet there without any negative effects. Effects. The mixture of higher rents and lower rents counterbalance each other to create sufficient operating funds for the property. People of both ends of the income spectrum would simply be paying rent affordable to them for quality housing. A community of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds would be allowed to coexist. I'll now turn it over to Councilor Sykes who will talk about financing. [18:55] Kate Sykes: Thank you, Colin. Next slide. Thanks, Mary. So one of the central findings of the task force is that Portland already has a really powerful housing production tool that we're not using. And that's our ability to borrow money at lower interest rates. Housing development is extraordinarily sensitive to the cost of capital. Higher interest rates combined with the cost of construction materials, regulatory burdens, labor and materials costs are some of the reasons that we're not able to build housing for middle income earners. If we can lower the cost of financing, we can change that, and that's in our power. We looked at several different kinds of financing, including revenue bonds, taxable bonds, and general obligation bonds, and you can see a full explanation of all of these in Appendix C, and I really suggest that you read it because it's very telling. So for the two pilot models, we are recommending the clearest starting point is a tax-exempt general obligation bond. That's because it is the lowest cost of capital and it fits exactly the problem that we're trying to solve. So a tax-exempt general obligation bond is exactly the same familiar borrowing tool that the city uses for long-lived public investments like schools or libraries or fire stations. The city borrows the money up front and it repays it over time, which spreads the cost. So the council could choose to finance an initial project individually, or it could provide more substantial capitalization to a social housing revolving fund, or it could do some combination of the two. We're leaving that up to you. The final amount would come back through the normal city financing process, with financing providing the annual debt service costs and the impact on taxpayers. And in addition to that, our analysis says that the current council authorized general obligation borrowing threshold is roughly about $10 million. So above that threshold, the question would have to go out to Portland voters for approval, which is good because I think that this is a value statement. And I think we wanna ask the Portland taxpayers about that. That number would change of course, with the city's valuation, but that's what it is right now. So then there is the idea of the revolving fund, which is really important to the long-term model here. So the idea is not simply to build just one project and stop, the city would retain ownership, or at least an equity portion of that ownership. And as the project matures financially, any available revenues, repayments, and refinancing proceeds or other returns could flow back into either another project, the dedicated fund, or be used to provide rent relief to, in other words, it's lower the cost of housing. And that remains in our control because we own the asset. So the bottom line with the financing is that we use Portland's powerful borrowing capacity to address the housing shortage and create a public asset that's permanent. And we make sure that each project is responsibly underwritten, protecting the taxpayers. And then we preserve as much of that public investment as possible so that it can continue to produce housing. And I think we're now going to talk about, yes. [22:25] Speaker H (unidentified): So to speak to Councilor Sykes' point, in terms of the revolving fund, we did a hypothetical model early on in our work. And this looked at a model here with 50 units and around a little over $15 million mortgage and a four and a quarter percent interest rate over 40 years. Note, these are all hypothetical and favorable conditions. And one thing we want to call attention to is that the money is tight in the beginning. This is meant to serve 80% of households that this would serve or be at 100% AMI, only 20% would be at 80% AMI. So this is just to make the model work in the beginning. However, over time, as you'll see in year one, there's a little over 3% of money after once the income comes in and the expenses are paid, a little over 3% is left over for rent relief that could be used to reduce rent. That number grows over time to around 11% by year 10, 17% by year 20, 22% by year 30. That would be a little bit more of a steep increase if this was a 30-year mortgage. But all to say that over time, there start to be some different policy options where either the money can be put back for rent relief, you could reduce the rent, fortunately, by 22%, by year 30, or the money could be put back to the revolving fund to fund additional projects, and this could grow over time exponentially. I think the other thing that this does not show in our pretty visual is that, clearly, after the mortgage is paid, all of the money is available for either rent relief or the revolving fund, and that is the real power of the city's ownership, is that it can build time. time. I'm going to pass it now to Jonathan to speak about one of our options. [24:19] Speaker I (unidentified): Thank you. The Social Housing Task Force thought we'd best be serving the City Council if we provided a specific example of what a social housing project in Portland could look like. So we set out to identify a site and provide a rough sketch of a potential pilot project. We started this work by reviewing a list of over 30 city-owned parcels and reviewed these parcels with consideration to location zoning street and utility infrastructure and more most were disqualified for various reasons we did identify one parcel known as zero Cornell Street in the Morals Corner area the property is roughly three acres and is in the city's RN3 zone this is a medium density zone due to recent state legislation known as LD 2003 and the city's good work in adapting to this law The Cornell Street partial could accommodate up to 40 apartment units across four buildings. The proposed project would be to build a range of one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments and rent them to households earning around 80% to 100% area median income. The ability to create two- and three-bedroom apartments was an important consideration in that the task force determined that those family-sized apartments in an area where the private market is less likely to meet the demand And, oh, sorry, I thought I did that. We felt like a 40-unit project in an off-peninsula location in wood-framed construction represents a project that's big enough to make a meaningful difference to our housing crisis, but not so bold as to be overly daunting or prohibitively expensive as a first project. The challenge with a Cornell Street project is that the site is likely contaminated. It was the former location of the Burt Company, which made billiard balls, among other things. A report from 2008 indicates both arsenic and lead contamination exists at the site, so any future redevelopment would require environmental remediation. There may be federal brownfields funds that could be used to address the contamination. Our recommendation would be for the City to pursue additional environmental due diligence to assess the viability of social housing at Cornell Street. If this work provides a path forward, we would suggest working with the Portland Housing Authority to devise a development approach, budget, and funding strategies. The total cost of such a project would likely be in the $12 to $15 million range, but the vast majority of this could be supported by collected rents. If executed well, the cost to taxpayers could be fairly small, particularly when compared to the benefit of more affordable homes for families. Financing sources could be primarily city-issued general obligation bonds, perhaps with a contribution for the Jill Doosan Housing Trust Fund to bridge any funding gaps. While further evaluating Cornell Street, we would encourage for continued prospecting for additional sites that could be available for social housing now or in the future. For example, the Franklin Street redesign could yield significant buildable land in the future that could be well-suited to social housing. And now Tim will provide a second pilot project opportunity. [27:37] Speaker J (unidentified): So 879 Congress Street is a project that Portland Housing Authority just purchased some land right across from the main medical center. And they're currently have gone through approval and they're lining up financing. Why we highlight this option? Obviously, as you know, there's a lot of synergies with using PHA with the city for the social housing task force. I mean, we've already got a development arm. PHA has a development team, and they've already got the infrastructure to support development. They've got the infrastructure to do the property management. In this case, we're looking for different creative opportunities to use land and resources more effectively and efficiently, and this is an example of a possibility of where you conduize not every unit, but some would be owned as part of maybe a LIHTC project by PHA, and then you would add additional units that would be part of the social housing task force. You'd reduce land costs, you'd reduce some of the development costs because all of these would be shared in the same thing. So on top of this, maybe you put 20 units that are part of the social housing task force on top of this project. There are complications. Obviously, there's a lot of rules when you're developing affordable housing, subsidized housing. And you have to line up the timing of all that financing. It's not easy. It takes a lot of planning and thinking about those timelines. At the same time, it could perhaps make some projects pencil both from the PHA side as well as the Social Housing Task Force side. So there's some good synergies. This wouldn't necessarily have to work I mean if we start getting more creative let's say a Vesta is doing some of Vesta could do something similar other developers it's a possibility that could be work too and the reason why you conduize it obviously is so that the city maintains ownership of those units that are added on but it is a synergy that you know does make social housing more viable it does make it more cost-effective and it accelerates the ability to get homes built in portland so i think i'll be followed by cadence here thank [30:33] Kate Sykes: you okay so next steps we're asking the council to move from a study phase to an implementation phase we've done everything we can as a task force we would really love to spend your money but we're not allowed to do to do that. So we'd like to ask that we establish the social housing program, create the revolving fund and direct staff to develop the first pilot projects, at least start to develop them with Portland Housing Authority, also Cornell Street, in terms of the environmental feasibility study. So what that means is not actually issuing a bond right now. It just means doing the government work that it would take to set this up. So in the packet, in the final report, there is an appendix that outlines a potential ordinance. Obviously that would need work probably through the Housing and Economic Development Committee and obviously through Corporation Council. There is also a sample draft of a resolution just to put into the bloodstream that this is something that the council agrees that we wanna do. And then there will be a lot of other staff work that's involved. We need to have finance, corporation council, do the financing, the ownership and partnership structures, and then consider capitalization through either the next budget cycle or a separate bond authorization process. So this is not a request to move a bond right now, it's a request to stand up the program and bring back implementable projects for council action, but also to be ready for any public land that might become available. I think we've gone through significant amount of public land. We found a couple instances where we could do this on public land, but I think having a program established to be prepared for that for either Midtown properties, Franklin redesign or anything else would put us one step ahead. So that is, can you do the next one? you. So that's the end of the presentation. And I'm just going to have my co-chair John come up and add a few words. [32:55] Speaker K (unidentified): Well, I get the fun job tonight. First, Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you for having the vision to form this committee. You quite obviously put some immense talent on this committee. We didn't always agree, but I think that's the importance of this committee is that from good, healthy debate and disagreement comes good government policy. And as I said to you in the mayor, and I said to Kate at our first meeting, my hope is that this doesn't just end up on a binder on a shelf and gets dusty. This can be a defining moment for the city of Portland because housing is not buildings. Housing is people. And having a teacher on our committee here telling us about the importance that she wants to be an educator in the city of Portland but she can't afford to live here is a real should be a real wake-up call to everybody on the city council. I talked to police officers, they tell me that as well, too, and public works people. It's a defining moment for Portland. So this is a big deal to have a social justice housing task force. So I just want to thank one, you probably need to give Mary a raise because she's an asset to the city. I mean, she's been unbelievable. She's been our rock, and we can't and we wouldn't have been able to do this without Christian, and the fact that we had two great easy to work with city counselors on our team here has made this an enjoyable experience. I hope you don't take this as a final report, but you take this with what it truly is, it's a new step in a new direction, and that will define Portland for the years to come. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Core Chair, for your [34:27] Mark Dion: Comments on, no, I'm not a fan of putting things on the shelf. I knew when I put the two counselors in charge of the task force that something was going to happen. So that's the least I can do is to ensure the process continues. There'll be questions as we move forward, but I think Councilor Sykes outlined some of the policy areas that have to be resolved. But that teacher drove my thinking. When I was looking at potential nominees, I repeated to myself, this is who we should be working for. And interestingly enough, I received an email today that was somewhat critical of an unrelated city policy, and the critic took to saying in it, well, you can't trust staff because none of them live in the city. So I usually get an email like that a waited day before I respond, so I can do so without passion. And I just want to note the fact, well, they don't live in the city because they can't afford to live in the city. There's no malice in that decision on their part. They'd like to live in the city. I was fortunate when I joined the city, I could afford to live here. And I've never had to look back. So for all teachers and police officers, firefighters, the CNAs at the hospital, the barbacks in the old port, they need to live here in order for us to make it as a city. So we'll take next steps. I hope the council will digest the report. I know it'll go to HECD for disposition, but it'll also have conversations on the finance committee, and I'll be talking with corporation council about how we move forward. I'm always a little reluctant about bonding because I see that as the city's credit card. It should be used with great caution. But we are in a great contest now on behalf of the residents of the city. We need to win. So we might have to reconsider. I might have to reconsider my discomfort with debt if it actually moves something forward. So thank you again, all of you. You proved that not all the best ideas will reside here on this horseshoe. We needed citizen participation so we get some honesty into the conversation. So are there any comments from the council? Seeing none, any, wait, go ahead, Councilor Grant. No, whatever you'd like. You have the floor. [37:12] Speaker L (unidentified): Maybe I missed it, but the costing now that i see from the zero cornell street is that the same amount of money that was envisioned for the 879 congress proposal like is it that same like to get your 54 units is it a different amount of bonding or is it 's not does someone do you want to talk [37:35] Mark Dion: About that, if you want to answer the question, just come to the mic. That's all I ask. I'm not [37:39] Speaker L (unidentified): going to do the Socratic method here and like, yeah, so whoever wants to give me the information [37:43] Speaker J (unidentified): that's fine. It's the funding and the capital stack is totally different between the two projects. One is a just a social housing task force project. One is a PHA LiTech project combined with that, so very different needs, different capital stack in different. Let me [38:02] Speaker L (unidentified): let me try to make it even simpler that I'm just looking for a number. The Cornell Street is listed as like a, I know this is all very theoretical, 14 to 15 million dollars. What's my number for the [38:13] Speaker J (unidentified): other option? We didn't need, we on that project, we have the PHA has a definition of what they submitted for a project. We didn't even go into if we're going to add 10, 20, 30 additional units and price it out, but you could just take, let's say, you know, for one or two bedroom unit, it's 350,000, let's say per unit, so you can sort of multiply that out. So, [38:46] Mark Dion: as I said earlier, there's still work. I think this report provides guidance, but it doesn't shorten the fact that we have to do work. I'll quote one of my favorite politicians who wrote, mile into the woods, I can guarantee you'll take us two and a half miles to get out. So I always try to live by that standard. It's never failed me. So I think we need to look at it square footage. I'm kind of interested with the idea that it'll be wood rather than more typical construction materials. I'm hoping it's going to use main pressure wood just as a demonstration project. Council Bullet, thank you, and thanks to [39:31] Speaker M (unidentified): to everyone who spent the year working on this. It's been really, I know a couple of you on a personal level, so I've been a little sneak, like finding out what's been happening in the meetings in the back end. So it's great to see it official. My question is, you know, given that the Cornell suggestion is in District 4, which is the area I represent, my question is if anyone walked the site or talked to any of the neighbors. [39:57] Speaker I (unidentified): Visit the site, but didn't talk to any of the neighbors. I thought it would be premature to do that. But the site's actually gated right now. So you actually can't go in there. There's a chain link gate that's locked. So I sort of peeked through the chain link gate. [40:11] Speaker M (unidentified): It means you didn't ingest any lead. [40:13] Speaker I (unidentified): It would be a site walk for people who wanted to participate. Great. [40:18] Mark Dion: Don't go away. Was this the site that Staubenshop was going to make use of? [40:22] Speaker I (unidentified): It's near there. It's behind the Portland Boxing Club. Okay. All right. [40:26] Kate Sykes: Mayor, we also discovered that there's an escrow account that contains some money that is designated specifically for an environmental site review. And that is something that the council could use [40:38] Mark Dion: going forward if they want. Who possesses the escrow? The city. [40:42] Kate Sykes: We're just not allowed to. [40:43] Mark Dion: Which part of the city? Oh, I don't know. Mary, can you tell us? [40:48] Sarah Michniewicz: Michael? Through the finance department, [40:52] Kate Sykes: but corporation council has been working on that with our office, freeing up that money for the use. Any future use at that site. We tried to spend that money but they told us we couldn't. We'd need the council to say yes so [41:06] Mark Dion: yeah you know now you're living my day all right then council phillips [41:14] April Fournier: Thank you Mayor. Thank you everybody for all this work. This looks terrific. My question is I don't know so we want to create a social housing revolving fund. Can somebody tell me the difference between that and why we wouldn't just put that money into the JLC Doosan Housing Trust Fund? [41:31] Kate Sykes: We went around and around about this as well. The Jill Doosan Housing Trust Fund was established by ordinance and it's very specific in what it can be used for. It's basically a pass-through for money that goes out to private development. Social Housing Task Force would need to have a dedicated fund to actually look at, make sure that we're, you know, that the balance, that the books are balanced, right? So it has to be separate because it would be public ownership as opposed to a pass-through that just goes out to private development. [42:00] April Fournier: Thank you, Councilor. We couldn't just change. You wouldn't say that? [42:03] Kate Sykes: We could, but I do think that it may be clearer to keep them separate. They just perform really different functions and we don't want the social housing project to interfere with what the Doosan Fund is actually doing. [42:21] Mark Dion: Any other questions? Councilor Sykes or Councilor McNavis, who was your point person on finance so [42:31] Kate Sykes: matt peters was really helpful he's a developer knows a lot about bonding and financing we also had george o'connell come in and speak with us as well unfortunately matt couldn't be here today okay i just wanted to know if there [42:45] Mark Dion: was conversation in drawing a contrast between the proposal you've kind of outlined here and those occupying cooperative housing like we're seeing on Lambert Street. Al-Sara Ali. Thank you, Mayor. [43:02] Speaker H (unidentified): I want to thank members of the task force [43:05] Kate Sykes: for the work that they put in this. [43:07] Speaker H (unidentified): This is amazing, and I've seen it happen elsewhere, [43:11] Kate Sykes: So I'm glad to see it happen here. [43:14] Speaker H (unidentified): And once it comes to the committee, [43:17] Kate Sykes: We'll try as much as we can [43:20] Speaker H (unidentified): To move it forward as soon as possible. It's not going to be on the shelf. I [43:29] Mark Dion: Just want to get back to my question. Was there any work done [43:32] Kate Sykes: On cooperative housing financing? Is yes, there was. It's just a very different animal. One of the requirements for bonding, if the, if the city were to bring its ability to bring low-cost financing to housing production, the city has to own it. So to have a cooperatively owned project, it would fall out of the category of a tax-exempt municipal bond. [43:56] Mark Dion: Thank you, that's helpful. Councilor Bullard. [43:59] Speaker M (unidentified): Thanks so much, Mayor. I share your trepidation a bit with bonding, not necessarily because I don't want to bond. I like swinging big. I'm a, I mean, I'm like a, you know, build it the right way the first time kind of person. Where I'm curious is to hear Director O'Connell's overall vision of what we might need to bond for, big projects coming down the pike. I'm thinking, I hate to say it, but I'm thinking about schools. So I'm thinking about what's going to come out of the facility process with the school department. I'm also thinking about what's going to come out of what we need to do for the police department and the emergency dispatch center. And so I guess my question is, and I know Director O'Connell's not here, but if there's ever, when we do have to issue a bond that goes to the voters, if it's possible to issue it all together for like a bunch of different projects or if you need to do individual referendums for each big ticket item that we have to bond for. Corporation counsel. [45:01] Speaker I (unidentified): I do not know the answer to that off the top of my head, but we could certainly check in with our bond counsel. We do use outside counsel for bond matters and that's something we can be prepared to look into at the next meeting. Yeah, thanks so much. [45:15] Speaker M (unidentified): I just have this sense that a lot of these things are going to come up all at once that need to be handled, and they're all going to be big-ticket items. So I'm not saying we shouldn't do it. I want to be prepared. [45:25] Mark Dion: Everything you said, I agree with. I do have concerns because we have other potential projects that will require a significant public investment, period. We need a new police station for sure, the Expo building, all those things. A lot of our facility assets have run their life, so we have to balance that. But I'll be even more candid. When Councilman Sykes and I first started discussing about social housing, I was really reluctant to think about bonding, period. I didn't see that as an appropriate vehicle. And this is the beauty of a task force. I'm not always the smartest guy around the room. A lot of smart people got together and had consensus. Census. So the lesson I take is I've got to take a look at it and figure out the right balance that there might be, there is merit according to the minds that are sitting across from me today to using general obligation bonding as a vehicle. The lawyer tells me all the details will be what matters, but the principle I have to pay attention to now. So that's, so I agree with you without rejecting the principle being advanced by the task force, that this could be a key financial instrument to realizing these objectives. [46:47] Sarah Michniewicz: Councilor McNavish. And then we'll just note that bond council did specifically come and talk to us. And that was part of how we worked through the options. [46:56] Mark Dion: All right then. Any final comments from the public or members of the task force? [47:04] Kate Sykes: Councilor Sykes. So I see we have representative from PHA here, and I just wanted to specifically thank the Portland Housing Authority for attending so many of our meetings and for being willing to think about a renewed partnership with the city. It makes a lot of sense that our housing authority would be an important arm of this. And so I just, I really just wanna thank Jay and staff for being there and talking us through this. [47:35] Sarah Michniewicz: Awesome, Michniewicz. And I just really wanna thank GP Cogg. Christian was, he was amazing. And did a lot of due diligence for us [Speaker J (unidentified): and] fed us really well. [47:49] Mark Dion: It's tough to be the staff. I appreciate it. All right, then. If there's no further comments from the council, I'll conclude this workshop. I heard Councilor Ali says he's welcoming all this work to arrive on his table soon. I'll collaborate with him to see what kind of timeline we have all right then because you're on the task force I'm not going to dismiss you can retain your status because that way I can order you back in here for additional information all right then with that this workshop is now closed