Metro Chief Operating Officer Michael Jordan shared his ideas on the development of a Community Investment Strategy with the Portland Policy Council of the Oregon Opportunity Network. Oregon Opportunity Network is a statewide association of non-profit affordable housing and community development organizations that provide housing and economic opportunity for working families, people with disabilities, seniors and others struggling to meet their needs. The Portland Policy Council is made up of 14 representatives from community development corporations and other non-profit organizations serving the greater Portland area.
The discussion at the Sept. 1 meeting focused on how to make affordable housing a stronger component of the Community Investment Strategy. Last year, Metro issued an analysis of the region’s housing needs which indicated that, without changes in policies and investments, the number of renter households that pay more than half of their monthly incomes on housing and transportation will double by 2030. The study also found that urban centers and transportation corridors have the greatest variety of housing and transportation options and are often the most affordable areas in the region.
Martha McLennan, executive director of Northwest Housing Alternatives, urged Metro to call for stronger measures to provide more affordable housing throughout the region. "It is incumbent upon Metro to use the bully pulpit to ring alarm bells about cost-burdened households," she said. "There is an increasing awareness in the region of why affordable housing matters."
Throughout his presentations on the Community Investment Strategy, Jordan has stressed the need to achieve greater efficiencies in how limited public dollars are invested to leverage greater private investment. Cathey Briggs, the interim executive director of the Oregon Opportunity Network, cautioned Jordan that, "Sometimes the word 'efficiency' raises issues; it brings up least-cost transportation. Discussions around equity do not have minimal transactional costs. The transactional costs are high. Siting affordable housing has not been an affordable or cheap process."
A central point of Jordan’s presentation is the finding of Metro’s Regional Infrastructure Analysis, completed in 2008, that indicates the region will need to spend between $27-41 billion in the next 25 years to build public structures to serve new growth and replace aging sewers, sidewalks, schools and other facilities just to serve the population that is already here. Jordan also emphasized that the region might be able to raise half of that amount through existing revenue sources and that the federal government is not likely to provide large amounts of money to support infrastructure development as it has in the past.
Jesse Beason, executive director of Proud Ground, questioned how Metro can make the case to the public about the need for additional money. “"f we get to a plan of wringing out efficiencies [in existing public investments], will the public know we must look to ourselves [for new money]?" Jordan stressed that the effort to adopt a Community Investment Strategy will be as much of ongoing political dialogue and engagement process the public about what it wants to invest in—and what it will take to make those investments—as it will be a policymaking framework.