I've had a few thoughts about gentrification stewing over in my head today.
1) Given that property taxes in Oregon don't rise with rising house values, no one in N/NE Portland is being pushed out of their home by rising property taxes. At least not any more than anywhere else in the state. And yet most of the $20 million the Portland Housing Bureau is spending in N/NE Portland is going to loans for downpayments and grants for maintenance. Personally, I believe that having a place to live is a human right; but owning a place is not. I can't help but think that $20 million would make a much larger long term impact if it was spent on the construction of new homes.
2) Portland mostly pays for affordable housing with money from Tax Increment Financing in Urban Renewal Areas, and this is a bad idea. In order for that money to exist, there needs to be a lot of development to generate the TIF money. But development lags demand, and there won't be any development unless there's enough demand in the area to support high rents. Compare the River District with Lents. One URA has generated lots of TIF money, and therefore the Housing Bureau has been able to finance lots of low income housing. The latter hasn't. This isn't really a problem in the River District, because no one lived there before and so no one was pushed out. It is a problem in the Interstate Urban Renewal Area though. There's a lot of development going on right now, but that's not what's pushed people out of N/NE (almost all the large buildings are going on vacant land). It was the large increase in demand (and rents) in the 2000s that pushed people out. So inevitably by the time the housing bureau has enough money to pay for new housing, it's already too late. We need a better way to fund low income housing (and inclusionary zoning isn't it). Unfortunately I don't what the answer is.
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