15:04:31 There are some folks I haven't 
15:04:34 met, so after I call your name unmute
15:04:39  yourself and say present.
15:04:42 
Ashley Miller.
15:04:49 
Is Ashley
15:04:53  here?
Okay.

15:04:56 Rachel Nessy.
>> Present.

15:04:59 >> Thank you, Rachel.
Lauren 
15:05:01 Waude.
>> Present.

15:05:04 >> Thank you, 
15:05:09 Lauren.
 Taylor
15:05:13  Smiley-Wolf.
Okay.

15:05:16 Ada Jimenez.

15:05:32 Lost my list for a minute.
Sorry there, folks.

15:05:35 There we go, okay.
Didn't hear
15:05:40  Ada.
Alan 
15:05:41 Lozzo.
>> Present.

15:05:44 >> 
15:05:48 Hi, Allen.
Thank you.

15:05:52 Barbara Guyer.
>> Here.

15:05:54 >> Thank you.
Becky Strauss.

15:05:57 >> Present.
>>
15:05:59  Thank you.
Bryn council.

15:06:01 >> Present.
>> Thank you.

15:06:04 >> Dung 
15:06:06 Ho.
>> Present.

15:06:09 >> Thank you.
Ellen 
15:06:14 Tolland.
Okay,
15:06:19  Holly Stevens.
Jay
15:06:24  Rutherford-Ty.
>> Present.

15:06:27 >>
15:06:29  Thanks.
Mara Romero.

15:06:32 >> Here.
>> Thank
15:06:34  you.
Marissa Espinosa.

15:06:37 >> Present.
>> Thank you.
15:06:38 
Vera Warren.

15:06:41 >> 
15:06:42 Present.
>> Thank you.

15:06:44 And May Cha.
>> Present.

15:06:47 >> Thank you, May.
15:06:49 
Okay, great.

15:06:53 This meeting is called to order.
The first
15:06:55  item on our agenda is to view the
15:06:59  last fair housing action plan.
We'll pasts
15:07:04   -- pass it off to Matt
15:07:07  Tschabold who
15:07:10  can start the presentation.

15:07:15 >> All right, good afternoon everybody.

15:07:18 For those I don't know, I'm Matthew
15:07:22  Tschabold.
Use he/him pronouns,
15:07:25  I'm the housing
15:07:31  planning manager.
I'm going to go ahead and take over
15:07:38  the screen share
15:07:52  function.
Okay so I'm going
15:07:58  to give folks
15:08:02  a little background on the fair
15:08:06  housing action plan process.
If you have any questions, feel free 
15:08:09 to interrupt.
I can't see the chat while
15:08:12  in the screen share so if 
15:08:16 Niki, if you can just interrupt me if people put
15:08:21  questions into the chat.
I'll give a little bit of
15:08:26  context about this.
So I'm going
15:08:31  to walk the committee through at a high level, not in detail, some
15:08:34  of the documents that we sent out for
15:08:38  context which are kind of the process and the components
15:08:41  of the Fair
15:08:44  Housing Action Plan.
The current one that was
15:08:48  adopted and that we were moving to 
15:08:52 renew in 2011.
So we'd like to get the
15:08:55  committee familiar with what was the general
15:08:59  structure of the plan itself and the process that we went through
15:09:02  and then Niki will be
15:09:05  sharing a little bit about the new
15:09:09  executive order from President Biden with
15:09:12  regard to the Fair Housing Act and affirmative
15:09:15  Fair Housing and Fair Housing Action
15:09:19  Plans.
And we are hopeful that this will be a 
15:09:23 prelude to a robust conversation amongst the committee
15:09:26  later this afternoon at the 4:00
15:09:33  agenda item.
And really so
15:09:36  folks can have some kind of context for what the discussion will be as
15:09:39  we're in a bit of a
15:09:42  tricky position.
The
15:09:47  2011 Fair Housing Action Plan is a
15:09:50  plan that was developed locally and
15:09:53  required by the
15:09:55  Federal Government.
It was required through the Department 
15:10:01 of Housing and Urban
15:10:04  Development, HUD, and required as a part of the
15:10:07  Fair Housing Act
15:10:13  implementation
15:10:17  requirements.
The Obama
15:10:21  Administration issued a final rule
15:10:24  on furthering affirmative fair housing.

15:10:27 And it was establishing the process and standards that local jurisdictions 
15:10:30 needed to go through when they updated their
15:10:33  fair housing action 
15:10:37 plans.
And so we were scheduled to need to go
15:10:41  through this new process in order to assure we were
15:10:44  affirmatively furthering fair housing locally to meet the federal
15:10:47  requirements, the new federal requirements that were enacted
15:10:50  under the Obama Administration around
15:10:54  assessing and advancing fair housing and our new
15:10:58  fair housing plan.
When the Trump
15:11:04  Administration came into office which was, we were scheduled to need to
15:11:07  implement these new fair
15:11:11  housing action plan
15:11:16  standards in 
15:11:20 2017-2018.
And so when the Trump Administration
15:11:23  came into office, they put a hold on the new affirmatively
15:11:28  furthering fair housing rule that was established by the Obama
15:11:32  Administration.
And they began a rule making process 
15:11:36 of their own to change the rule.
And where
15:11:39  they landed was the spot that we find
15:11:42  ourselves in right now.
It landed in this place
15:11:46  in early 2020 was that they were
15:11:49  no longer
15:11:53  requiring many of the components
15:11:56  of work under
15:12:00  the pre-Obama rule around fair housing actions, or the
15:12:03  Obama rule itself.
And for the most part it required
15:12:06  the local jurisdictions to do a little bit of data
15:12:10  analysis and then to self-certify that the
15:12:13  jurisdictions were committed to and
15:12:18  advancing fair housing work locally, to affirmatively
15:12:21  further fair housing.
So our
15:12:24  plan as a local jurisdiction
15:12:27  was to move forward with the development of a fair housing
15:12:31  plan in line with the Obama
15:12:35  Administration's affirmatively furthering fair housing
15:12:38  rule just on our own because we
15:12:42  felt it is important to have a plan that met that level
15:12:45  of standard and an assessment that met that level of standard
15:12:48  to develop actions that we should be pursuing locally.
15:12:52 
And so that was kind of the process 
15:12:55 that we were working toward and we find ourselves now in a little bit
15:12:58  of a
15:13:01  holding pattern because of the Biden executive order
15:13:05  on fair housing and fair
15:13:11  housing plans.
And what we would like to see
15:13:14  from this committee, what we would like to have at this
15:13:18  meeting is just a really honest conversation to give a recommendation
15:13:21  and guidance on how this committee would
15:13:23  like to proceed.
And really what the question will be 
15:13:27 and we'll come back to this
15:13:31  this afternoon is do we proceed with
15:13:34  developing a fair housing, an updated fair housing plan,
15:13:38  a fair housing action plan locally through a
15:13:41  process of our own design while we wait for any
15:13:44  changes that will be enacted by the Biden
15:13:49  Administration.
Or do we hold until we know what the
15:13:53  updated federal guidance will be since
15:13:57  we continue to be on this kind of pendulum back
15:14:00  and forth of guidance on how
15:14:03  we should proceed with regard to our fair housing
15:14:07  assessment and fair housing plan.
That's kind of the question
15:14:11  for discussion this afternoon.
Okay, so I am going
15:14:14  to go ahead and then for this portion
15:14:19  give you the background prior to Bimal's
15:14:25  presentation on 2011.
And then pass it over to 
15:14:28 Niki to talk a little bit about Biden's executive 
15:14:31 order.
So I sent these
15:14:34  documents over to folks prior to the meeting.

15:14:36 We sent this over.
We just wanted to give you a sample.
15:14:40 
Again I'm not going to
15:14:43  talk through the specifics here.
But the city council, the
15:14:46  housing bureau, with late Commissioner
15:14:49  Fisch went through
15:14:56  a process to develop its affirmative process fair housing plan.
15:14:58 
They adopted the Portland fair housing 
15:15:02 plan directing the city and city's
15:15:06  agencies
15:15:08  to implement moving forward in this fair action plan.

15:15:11 You can read through it, it gives some
15:15:15  nice background.
This is the
15:15:18  formal adoption in September of
15:15:21  2011 of the fair housing action plan.
I think before I get
15:15:24  into the structure, I'm going to go over to this.

15:15:27 This is, if you've read the action plan document,
15:15:31  it's a lengthy document, this is the table of
15:15:34  contents.
I'm just going to go
15:15:38  through this at a summary level to talk through the components so
15:15:41  I can share a little bit and answer any questions that
15:15:44  folks have
15:15:48  about those components.
And if folks
15:15:51  have questions
15:15:55  feel free to interrupt.
So this structure
15:15:58  is a structure that can be modified or
15:16:02  at the time could be modified locally to some degree but to a
15:16:05  large extent, the Federal Government put in
15:16:08  place some guidance on how to do the analysis, the
15:16:12  steps to go through in order to develop
15:16:16  the action plan itself and
15:16:19  there was some latitude obviously on what actions
15:16:22  the local jurisdictions wanted to
15:16:25  implement.
But there was some on the assessment 
15:16:29 but it was fairly
15:16:31  structured and we anticipate again kind of bridging to this discussion 
15:16:35 this afternoon, we 
15:16:38 anticipate that when the Biden
15:16:41  Administration eventually tackles their fair housing rule
15:16:44  in direction to local jurisdictions
15:16:48  it will be fairly structured as well.
As you can see
15:16:51  number two, there's a requirement that there's an amount of
15:16:56  demographic and socioeconomic analysis, as well as housing market
15:17:00  analysis for the various
15:17:03  affordability and other characteristics
15:17:06  of the market,
15:17:09  affordability, equality, access points.

15:17:12 There's a body of work around evaluating the fair housing status
15:17:15  within each jurisdiction so within
15:17:19  Multnomah County
15:17:22  and the City of Portland around what supplemental
15:17:25  state and local laws are in place
15:17:28  with regard to the fair housing act and antidiscrimination
15:17:32  laws specifically.
There's assessments around what data
15:17:35  and information exists around fair housing testing and fair
15:17:38  housing compliance and violations of fair housing.

15:17:42 And that's used to help draw conclusions
15:17:45  in order to help understand if there are
15:17:48  gaps or barriers or issues that need
15:17:52  to be resolved locally.
A big body
15:17:56  of work is called the identification of
15:17:59  impediments to fair housing choice
15:18:02  in regard to the 2011 plan.
Through this,
15:18:05  there's information collected, there's data that's 
15:18:08 analyzed, there's survey data, there's
15:18:12  assessing local fair housing violations, fair
15:18:15  housing testing, community meetings to kind
15:18:19  of source qualitative information.
So there's a whole body of
15:18:22  process that the agency went through
15:18:26  with stakeholders in a stakeholder committee
15:18:30  like this committee in order to start to look at
15:18:33  what impediments might be occurring here
15:18:37  locally to fair housing choice.
You can see here the
15:18:40  components around discrimination and enforcement
15:18:43  and education or the lack of education and various
15:18:47  screening and application review processes that are
15:18:50  going on in the marketplace
15:18:53  and the existence of minority home ownership
15:18:56  gaps in the marketplace.
And
15:18:59  then working to understand for the various actors
15:19:03  in the rental housing marketplace, or the housing marketplace,
15:19:06  providers of housing, property
15:19:09  managers, renters themselves, community based organizations
15:19:13  serving households, what is the depth of 
15:19:16 understanding, what is the accuracy of understanding in fair
15:19:21  housing law and how federal fair housing law is
15:19:25  translated into kind of local practices in the
15:19:31  housing marketplace.
There was a body of
15:19:34  work around access to opportunity and so one body of work
15:19:37  that the housing bureau does is
15:19:40  called opportunity mapping.
We map
15:19:43  various indicators of high opportunity around
15:19:47  jobs in transit, in 
15:19:50 schools, in
15:19:53  housing opportunity, and it allows us
15:19:56  to then look at how people in communities are living in the city
15:20:01  and the county and who has access, who lives in or who
15:20:04  spends time in areas of higher opportunity for
15:20:07  educational advancement or economic advancement and so
15:20:11  there's a methodology that was
15:20:14  created that is just part of our ongoing course of
15:20:17  business around what areas have higher opportunity and what
15:20:20  areas do not and whether or not
15:20:24  every community has access to the neighborhoods in the city or the 
15:20:27 county that do have high opportunity.
And if not
15:20:30  what's stopping that access and how
15:20:33  do we increase access so that people
15:20:36  have that choice that if they want to be in areas
15:20:39  in various neighborhoods in the city that we can maximize
15:20:44  their ability to do so.
There's a whole body of work 
15:20:47 around what fair housing data is available and not available
15:20:50  across the consortium, Portland,
15:20:55  Multnomah County, and around accessibility
15:20:59  of the housing stock itself, whether
15:21:03  or not it's accessible and what standard of
15:21:06  accessibility.
And various other characteristics 
15:21:09 about the stock itself, age, quality,
15:21:12  if there are mold or other health or habitability
15:21:15  issues and if they happen to be concentrated in one
15:21:19  neighborhood versus another neighborhood and if there are 
15:21:22 communities that are being forced to live in those neighborhoods and thus
15:21:25  there are barriers to housing
15:21:29  choice.
And then Portland also
15:21:33  took a keen look around 
15:21:36 gentrification, involuntary displacement, the consequences of
15:21:39  urban renewal policy that marginalized
15:21:43  and displaced different
15:21:47  communities.
And how
15:21:50  past city policy in those
15:21:55  realms has not affirmatively fair housing for certain communities
15:21:58  and how it has had the opposite effect.

15:22:01 And talking will you strategies about what the city could be doing, what
15:22:04  the consortium could be doing in order to advance that and rectify
15:22:07  the errors of the past and mistakes of the
15:22:09  past.
And then again as I said there's a 
15:22:13 whole body of work around the people and understanding what's going on in
15:22:16  different communities, what their needs are again with
15:22:19  respect to fair housing choice and
15:22:22  access and affirmatively furthering fair housing and
15:22:26  whether or not given what peoples lived experiences
15:22:29  are and have been whether or not they do actually have that fair housing
15:22:33  choice and fair housing access.
And so there's
15:22:37  a whole body of work that the consortium went through
15:22:39  at the time.
I have to acknowledge I was not part 
15:22:42 of the agency at the time, so I am speaking
15:22:45  to the process
15:22:49  secondhand.
But the consortium and stakeholders 
15:22:52 and decision makers went through this process and through these
15:22:57  various components of work they were able to and I'm just
15:22:59  going to scroll through this and you have these documents.

15:23:02 You can see the kind of data,
15:23:06  surveying, interviews, qualitative and
15:23:09  quantitative assessment that was done.

15:23:12 That through this process there's this
15:23:16  volume of information that was at the folks that were
15:23:20  putting the plan together on the desks and for folks to kind
15:23:24  of talk through and understand
15:23:27  and through this they were able to identify what are some
15:23:30  barriers to fair housing in our community and so
15:23:33  what goals and what actions should
15:23:37  we be taking
15:23:41  as a result of that.
So that's the overall process.

15:23:44 Looks like there might be some chats.
>> Matt, I was
15:23:47  just going to say, we have a question about
15:23:50  how much progress did we make between 2012
15:23:54  and 2018 was Jay's question.
Lauren had another question which I 
15:23:58 believe was answered in the chat and we will get to the executive order
15:24:01  in a moment.
But could you speak to the progress 
15:24:04 made between 2012 and 2018?
>> Yeah, we can
15:24:07  do a more
15:24:11  formal crosswalk for this committee.
I think that's a good question.

15:24:13 I didn't mean to close that, but
15:24:17  moving on to this other document, you can actually see the tangible
15:24:21  aspects of the 2011
15:24:24  action plan.
And I'm happy to work with the 
15:24:28 RSO team and we can put together a crosswalk of what actions were
15:24:31  taken, were not taken, and why and where we find
15:24:34  ourselves today.
I think that's going to be very
15:24:38  informative just to understand where we've been, where we've come and where
15:24:40  we're going.
So I'm happy to do that.

15:24:43 I do also recognize that I'm coming up
15:24:47  on time and I want to make sure that Niki gets a chance
15:24:50  to talk about the executive order.
I will
15:24:53  say I debriefed with Kim before she
15:24:57  moved over to the Community Alliance of
15:25:01  Tenants and her assessment she felt very good
15:25:04  that the city or the county or the consortium or the state
15:25:07  had enacted a number of the
15:25:10  actions that was possible for them to 
15:25:15 enact.
And it was time to regardless of what 
15:25:18 the Federal Government, so you think about this was the
15:25:21  end of 2019, beginning of 2020, regardless of
15:25:24  what the Federal Government was
15:25:28  doing with regard to their rules around affirmatively
15:25:32  furthering fair housing, then it was time for us to look at this
15:25:35  plan, because we had either implemented the
15:25:38  actions as best we can within assisting resources and legal
15:25:41  authority or there were just some that we just didn't have the
15:25:45  funding or the legal authority to implement and so we
15:25:50  needed to refresh and have those conversations.
15:25:55 
But I do want to flag that I think 
15:25:58 that's a good question.
And we can do the crosswalk and come 
15:26:01 back once we understand where the city wants to go with this fair housing 
15:26:04 plan with from this document and all of these goals and action steps,
15:26:08  what is the status and why is the
15:26:14  status what it
15:26:22  is.
Spend some time and
15:26:25  go through the document again.
You'll see this is the series of goals
15:26:29  and action steps that through the planning process that they identified 
15:26:32 that they thought would work toward
15:26:37  accomplishing the
15:26:41  goal.
Unless there are other questions about 
15:26:44 overall process and structure, we will take note of the desire
15:26:47  for a crosswalk and then I'll pass it over to Niki
15:26:50  to talk a little bit about where we are, why we're in a little bit of a
15:26:53  holding pattern to kind of set us up
15:26:56  for the conversation after 
15:27:02 Bimal's
15:27:06  presentation.
>> Okay, I don't
15:27:09  see any questions or hands raised.
A lot of
15:27:12  what I had down Matt did already
15:27:15  cover in that there were several rule changes in
15:27:19  2020 under that Trump Administration that reversed the 2015 rules and the
15:27:22  assessment of fair housing that we were set
15:27:25  up to roll out.
So there was a new executive order
15:27:29  that was issued on January 26th by President 
15:27:32 Biden.
And it instructs HUD to review the 
15:27:35 impact of those changes that were made
15:27:38  in
15:27:43  2020 to disparate impact in regards to the assessment of fair housing and how
15:27:49  that meets the statutory
15:27:53  obligations to affirmatively effect fair housing and to make any
15:27:56  of those policy changes accordingly.
It doesn't
15:27:59  instruct HUD to do this as soon as possible
15:28:03  but it doesn't give us a specific 
15:28:05 timeline or guidance.
Obviously we can anticipate new 
15:28:09 guidance coming out after HUD
15:28:12  makes that review.
And Matt, unless you have anything
15:28:15  to add, I think we can go ahead and pass it over to
15:28:18  Bimal for his presentation and Bimal is
15:28:21  going to cover the current demographic and housing
15:28:24  trends
15:28:28  in the Portland market.
>> Thanks, Niki.
15:28:29 
Thanks, Matt.

15:28:32 Thanks for the presentation of overlay of all of the plans that were
15:28:35  done.
I think that's really helpful for 
15:28:38 everyone.
Let me go ahead
15:28:43  and share my
15:28:53  screen.
Can you see my screen?

15:28:56 >> We can see the screen.
>> Okay,
15:28:59  great.
Thank you, good afternoon and thank 
15:29:02 you for giving me an opportunity to make a presentation today.

15:29:05 I was hoping to share with you the findings of the
15:29:08  state of housing report we do annually.

15:29:11 But unfortunately our report has not been
15:29:15  finalized yet so what I'm doing is I
15:29:18  am presenting
15:29:22  a high level demographic
15:29:25  trends like a current market at the city level.

15:29:28 So I will not be digging into any
15:29:30  smaller neighborhood geography at this point.

15:29:37 My name is Bimal RajBhandary for data 
15:29:41 records.
It is a little strange talking about
15:29:44  2018-2019 findings which happened before the Covid
15:29:48  hit the nation and the city, but I'll be
15:29:51  presenting the findings before the
15:29:54  Coronavirus followed
15:29:59  quickly by some of the trends
15:30:02  as a result of the COVID-19 in 2020.
Given a
15:30:08  short period of time, I'm thinking maybe I'll take questions at the end.

15:30:11 But feel free to put up any questions in the chat, I'll be
15:30:15  more than happy if I can
15:30:18  integrate it?
My presentation when I can.

15:30:21 But I'll definitely get to that at the
15:30:25  end of my presentation.
So Portland
15:30:28  actually
15:30:32  continues to grow
15:30:41 .
So from
15:30:44  during 2013 to 2018, 5 year period, Portland
15:30:47  added close to like 45,000 new residents
15:30:50  at an annual growth rate of
15:30:54  1.5%.
Some of this demographic
15:30:57  data might be very quite obvious to all of you who are
15:31:01  involved in the housing and the things that's
15:31:04  happening in the City of Portland.
But I just
15:31:07  thought this is the most recent data we have so it would be
15:31:10  nice to share with
15:31:13  everyone.
So what has been clear by looking at 
15:31:16 this data is that Portland has
15:31:19  sort of like entered a period of
15:31:22  stable population growth and also like in the stable rental
15:31:26  housing
15:31:29  costs.
So if you look at the graph over here,
15:31:32  you'll see the population of City
15:31:36  of Portland grew by
15:31:40  7.5%.
So
15:31:45  639,387 and grew by 7.5%.
And what's
15:31:49  interesting is there's been significant 
15:31:52 increase for white, Asian, 
15:31:56 Pacific-islander, and Hispanic 
15:32:00 LatinX group.
But for the change for black and 
15:32:03 native Americans, we do not see any statistically
15:32:08  reliable change.
But one thing
15:32:11  you have to realize is that these groups have been historically 
15:32:14 undercounted and the data we are
15:32:18  looking at, they are in the fully represented and what the
15:32:22  Portland Housing 
15:32:25 Bureau, what we do with programming is we try
15:32:29  to see that we use what's a community
15:32:32  validated numbers.
So that will make us
15:32:36  like much more realistic.
15:32:39 
So other groups we see a significant 
15:32:42 increase that's happening is two or more
15:32:45  races, the people in the Category 2 or more races.
15:32:48 
So they are also 
15:32:52 increasing very rapidly.
Overall what's very
15:32:57  fascinating to see is that the
15:33:01  people of color increased from
15:33:04  28% to 29.5% which is a significant shift to
15:33:07  greater diversity.
This is from
15:33:13  2013 to 2018.
15:33:14 
And the same with looking at the 
15:33:17 number of households in the city of
15:33:20  Portland.
The number of households grew by
15:33:26  5.7% and what's really very remarkable is that the
15:33:29  households without children
15:33:32  grew by 6%.
And in households with
15:33:36  children grew by 
15:33:39 4.7%.
And whereas the single person
15:33:42  household which is also one of the major components of the city,
15:33:45  they grew only by
15:33:53  2.1%.
Now what you're looking
15:33:56  at is the median
15:34:02  household income by race
15:34:05  and ethnicity.
One
15:34:08  thing that's significant is that there's been overall
15:34:11  increase in income that occurred from
15:34:15  2013 to 2018.
So for the 
15:34:19 overall city of Portland 2018
15:34:26  it's like 65,000, $65,740.
And it
15:34:29  also increased both for the homeowners
15:34:33  as well as for the renters.
But you
15:34:36  can see that the homeowners are more than twice the
15:34:39  renters when it comes to income and also if
15:34:43  you look at the distance but in the income between the
15:34:46  whites and people of color, there is a
15:34:50  significant differences between the whites and the communities
15:34:53  of color.
But overall this data
15:34:57  shows that income has actually been increasing for all
15:35:00  of the race and
15:35:06  ethnicity groups.
This is the
15:35:09  data, a chart
15:35:12  showing rentership by race
15:35:16  and ethnicity.
Rentership has been growing
15:35:19  very slowly 
15:35:22 overall, but it seems to be increasing among
15:35:25  African American, white,
15:35:28  and also in the overall population.
15:35:31 
But what's significant, this
15:35:34  year's latest data is that the rentership
15:35:37  is actually decreasing
15:35:43  slowly for Asian whereas decreasing noticeably
15:35:46  for Hispanic-Pacific
15:35:49  islander, Hispanic Latino, and
15:35:52  native American.
On the other side of the rentership is 
15:35:57 the homeowners.
So it's exactly
15:36:00  opposite.
So home ownership in general have been 
15:36:03 decreasing a little bit, but we
15:36:06  see more significant decrease for the
15:36:10  white and black American.
But
15:36:14  whereas for the other groups Asian, Hawaiian-Pacific
15:36:17  islander, Hispanic LatinX, and
15:36:21  native Americanss there's been an increase
15:36:26  in home ownership
15:36:32  rate.
Let's see, are there any questions in 
15:36:34 the chat?
>> There's no questions in the chat.

15:36:37 But Taylor's hand is raised.
Taylor, if
15:36:42  you want to unmute.
>> I just had
15:36:45  a quick question about whether you have a sense of
15:36:49  what's driving those trends.
For example for white home ownership
15:36:53  decreasing is that an influx of white folks
15:36:56  moving here from other places
15:37:01  that are renting?
I'm just curious if
15:37:04  you have any information about what's driving the changes by race
15:37:07  and ethnicity and if the decreases in home
15:37:10  ownership for black Americans are due to displacement in the
15:37:13  city,
15:37:18  just wonder why those trends
15:37:21  are happening.
>> At this moment I haven't looked at 
15:37:24 the level of influx of different groups moving in and moving out.

15:37:27 And I think it's very likely for the white like you said
15:37:30  there's been an influx of people who are more
15:37:34  renters.
That could be showing the decrease in
15:37:37  home ownership.
And then there's also
15:37:41  like
15:37:45  significant data showing there's significant in the migration of 
15:37:48 African Americans to the east Portland area.

15:37:51 But we have much more
15:37:55  detailed information at the neighborhood level I
15:37:58  will be able to present once the housing report is complete but I don't 
15:38:00 have that information with me right now.

15:38:06 >> Thank you.
>>
15:38:09  Sure.
And also
15:38:12  it's very remarkable that home ownership has gone
15:38:15  up for Hispanic and native Americans.
That is like also trying
15:38:18  to figure out why it is increasing,
15:38:21  is it because there's more emphasis in those particular
15:38:25  communities towards home ownership?
That's possible.
15:38:28 
So I think I might have a little bit 
15:38:31 more detailed answer as to how things are really happening
15:38:35  at that level hopefully
15:38:38  in the next presentation which will probably dig into much
15:38:44  more neighborhood
15:38:49  geography.
So one other thing I looked at
15:38:53  is the current housing market
15:38:56  trends in Portland.
Like the housing
15:39:00  market was affected
15:39:03  by COVID-19 like all other aspects of
15:39:06  economy.
15:39:10 
And so we see some although different
15:39:14  impact on
15:39:18  renter and homeowner market.
I'll be
15:39:21  showing some slides to show what's happening in the rental market as well 
15:39:27 as the home ownership market.
Before I get in to look
15:39:31  at the current housing market, I thought it might be
15:39:35  interesting to show you that the impact
15:39:39  of the COVID-19 has not been uniform.
15:39:43 
It affected almost a lot of
15:39:48  Portlanders, but
15:39:52  COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted the 
15:39:55 BIPOC communities.
If you look at some of the data
15:39:58  for black American, they
15:40:02  only constitute 7% of the of the population
15:40:05  but in the cases it's 11%.
Same with
15:40:13  Hispanic-LatinX they populate 10% of the population, but
15:40:16  cases are 32%.
Same with native
15:40:20  Hawaiian or Pacific islanders, 1% of the population but 
15:40:23 3% of the cases.
Definitely you
15:40:27  can see that the COVID-19
15:40:29  has disproportionately impacted BIPOC communities.

15:40:32 This is really important to look at how this affects
15:40:36  the rental
15:40:40  market.
And also the forced lockdown,
15:40:43  loss of income has resulted in a dramatic 
15:40:47 increase in unemployment and under employment for
15:40:51  all Portlanders.
But if you look at this, the
15:40:54  unemployment claims
15:40:58  data which goes all the way to October, you can see that
15:41:02  BIPOC folks
15:41:06  were greatly affected compared
15:41:11  to the white community.
So
15:41:16  remarkable unemployment rate after March.

15:41:19 And native Hawaiian, black, and African 
15:41:23 American, and Asian, they were affected by
15:41:27  the COVID-19.
And the reason for why the 
15:41:30 BIPOC folks were greatly
15:41:35  affected were because they continued working
15:41:38  in lieu of being front line and service
15:41:45  related
15:41:48  industries.
When you look at the rental housing
15:41:51  market prior to the outbreak, the Portland rental market
15:41:55  was stabilizing in 2019
15:41:58  with many units coming
15:42:03  in because of the city's earnest
15:42:06  efforts.
The city
15:42:10  put a lot of emphasis on having more
15:42:13  units being built.
In 2019 it was
15:42:16  stabilizing.
Then Covid happened, 2020
15:42:20  has been a tough year for
15:42:23  rental market.
One thing it has done because after 
15:42:27 the offices closed and many workers started working
15:42:30  remotely, the renters preferences seem to be
15:42:35  shifting a lot.
When they can, people
15:42:38  started moving to bigger
15:42:41  apartment units.
They've started moving to suburbs and
15:42:45  neighboring cities and they've
15:42:48  started looking for 
15:42:51 less pricey apartments which gives them more space and
15:42:55  privacy.
And when they can afford start
15:42:58  looking for purchasing single family
15:43:03  homes.
There's no exact cause, it's not like 
15:43:06 the renters in the city are turning
15:43:10  and going to the suburbs.
But overall there's
15:43:13  definitely been a shift
15:43:16  in preference.
And this is the
15:43:21  chart that shows the asking rent for Portland, central 
15:43:24 city, and east
15:43:28  Portland.
So the blue line is 
15:43:31 Portland.
The orange line is the Central
15:43:35  City.
And the gray line is East
15:43:40  Portland.
So because
15:43:44  of the reduced impact in my
15:43:49  eye it is a subsequent
15:43:52  rent decrease.
In Portland if
15:43:56  you look at it from December 2019 to December 2020, the rent
15:43:59  decreased by 2.6%.
Whereas for the
15:44:03  City City
15:44:06  at the same time it was much more noticeable.

15:44:10 The rate decreased by 5.2%.
But if
15:44:13  you look at the da
15:44:16  if for east Portland --
15:44:20  data for East Portland, you'll find
15:44:23  rather than rate decreasing, they started 
15:44:26 increasing their rate from 2019 December
15:44:31  to 2020 December so market rate increase
15:44:37  by 2.1%.
15:44:39 
Very likely people started going 
15:44:43 eastward looking for more affordable units.
15:44:45 
But definitely there's much more 
15:44:51 demand in East
15:44:56  Portland.
It's the same
15:44:59  thing if you look at the vacancy, blue for
15:45:02  Portland, orange for Central City
15:45:05  and gray for East Portland.
And
15:45:09  for the city of Portland in
15:45:12  December 2019 vacancy rate was
15:45:15  8.3% and by
15:45:18  December 2020 it had reached
15:45:22  10.5%.
But this was
15:45:25  more remarkable for Central City where it all the
15:45:29  way from 11.2% to 16.8%.
15:45:31 
Increase of 5.6% in a year.

15:45:34 But if you look at East Portland, you'll see that
15:45:38  over the same period of the
15:45:46  vacancy rate decreased by 0.5%.
So
15:45:50  when it comes to the rental housing market,
15:45:53  there's been a
15:46:05 an impact.
In rent consistency like east
15:46:09  Portland and
15:46:14  suburban apartments, because vacancies
15:46:17  actually were down.
So they
15:46:22  didn't offer any kind of concession rates.

15:46:25 Or if they
15:46:29  did, very small concessions.
If you look at
15:46:33  East Portland they have been
15:46:36  concessions.
Another thing we
15:46:41  looked at is that the downtown landlords
15:46:45  have slashed rates 7% from March.
15:46:51 
In the rental housing market, one 
15:46:54 thing one can see is that there's
15:46:57  been a rent nonpayment deferrals.
So
15:47:01  what's happening in
15:47:04  Portland is very comparable to national
15:47:09  trend.
So nonpayment rates have been
15:47:12  holds at roughly 
15:47:15 12% to 15% since May of 2020
15:47:21  in Portland.
So they started
15:47:25  estimating that all of the rent
15:47:29  areas per month to be between
15:47:34  $20 million to $25 million
15:47:39  a moment.
>> There's a question in the chat
15:47:43  from Becky, asking where is the
15:47:46  nonpayment rate coming 
15:47:49 from?
>> It's slightly older data from 
15:47:53 multifamily northwest.
And actually they were doing a new 
15:47:57 survey and that will probably, they're in the process
15:48:00  of doing the survey.
And hopefully that will give
15:48:04  us better data of what happened in
15:48:08  2020.
But that's
15:48:14  the best we have.
And one thing, I mean
15:48:18  like people are starting to ask
15:48:21  are people moving
15:48:25  to
15:48:29  suburbs?
We can't say for sure that people are
15:48:32  really moving to suburbs, but we can definitely say
15:48:35  that there's been a shift in suburban areas where
15:48:38  people are moving.
Like for example if you look at
15:48:41  the market asking rate, so what I
15:48:44  did was the
15:48:50  Portland asking rate with that of
15:48:53  Beaverton and Vancouver.
Asking rate has been
15:48:56  decreasing, but as for
15:49:01  our
15:49:04  neighboring cities the asking rent has been 
15:49:10 increasing.
And if people might move to suburbs 
15:49:13 but they also don't have
15:49:17  the capacity and so there's more demand and
15:49:20  asking rates are going up.
If you look at the vacancy
15:49:24  rate, you'll see that the vacancy rate is
15:49:27  higher in
15:49:32  Portland whereas they're
15:49:36  a little bit
15:49:39  steady.
>> So we see the suburbs are
15:49:42  seeing the rising demand
15:49:46  whereas the Portland and Industry
15:49:54  Business Direct continue to
15:49:58  struggle.
Now we'll start moving
15:50:02  to the home ownership market.
Home ownership
15:50:06  market was stronger before
15:50:10  COVID-19 and remains strong.
So it's partly
15:50:14  because of a lower mortgage
15:50:17  interest rate and pent up demand and
15:50:22  low inventory of units.
And what's happening again is
15:50:26  there's an increased performance
15:50:29  for 
15:50:32 non-apartment units
15:50:38  with space for work.
That's sort of
15:50:41  an increased preference for
15:50:44  apartment units looking for
15:50:49  a bigger space for privacy.
And what I
15:50:52  did is I
15:50:55  looked at the residential home sales in the city
15:50:58  of
15:51:05  Portland.
This orange is 2020
15:51:10  and the blue is 2019.
March of
15:51:14  020 is when the city
15:51:17  declared emergency.
So once the city
15:51:21  declared 
15:51:25 emergency, you see the decrease one time in May of the number of
15:51:29  housing units sold, these are home residential units.
15:51:33 
But after two months starting from
15:51:36  May, the number of transaction, number
15:51:40  of home
15:51:47  sales 
15:51:50 increased.
In 2020
15:51:57  December there were 909 homes sold compared
15:52:00  to
15:52:04  800 in 2019.
15:52:06 
I think comparing the number of home 
15:52:10 sales has been higher in 2020 compared to 2019.

15:52:13 Except for a dip in May of 2020.

15:52:24 I also looked at the Portland residential home sale price and it
15:52:27  follows the same pattern pretty 
15:52:32 much.
But you can see
15:52:35  the 2020 numbers have been
15:52:38  consistently higher than 2019 median income price
15:52:41  except for a one time dip in May.
So the
15:52:45  median home sale price has been consistently
15:52:49  higher in 2020 compared to the same
15:52:53  data in 2019.
15:52:54 
So what next?

15:52:58 What will happen with the rental housing market
15:53:01  as well as home ownership market?
A lot will
15:53:04  depend on the market and
15:53:08  overall economy in general.
So it
15:53:11  definitely depends on
15:53:15  what will happen there.
But
15:53:19  like so far, like the checks in hands, 
15:53:22 unemployment benefits, the
15:53:26  rental assistance, the
15:53:29  mortgage forbearance programs, and
15:53:32  federal and state moratorium programs have been effective in keeping people
15:53:36  in their homes.
So what will happen next will
15:53:39  depend upon what the government policies and
15:53:43  actions will happen.
So it
15:53:48  depends upon what happens in eviction
15:53:52  prevention.
What kind of rent payment arrangements 
15:53:55 will be made or not made.
What happens with the
15:53:58  foreclosure prevention and forbearance plans?
15:54:00 
What happens when 12 month forbearance 
15:54:04 plans end?
So those are still unknowns, but
15:54:08  I think there's definitely hope.
So it
15:54:11  ultimately sort of depends upon federal, state,
15:54:15  and local coordination.
How that affects the 
15:54:18 market, I think that will be another time
15:54:22  where they will be reporting the impact of the federal, state, and
15:54:25  local policy, and the
15:54:28  market in general.
So
15:54:32  looking at last year's data and 2020
15:54:35  data, we are in for like a very 
15:54:40 unchartered territory.
What you have in front of
15:54:43  you are the challenges for coming up with various
15:54:47  strategies that addresses economic,
15:54:50  pandemic, and substance issues at the same time.

15:54:53 So it's still up in the air, we don't know what will happen
15:54:56  next.
At this point I will be more than
15:55:00  happy to answer any questions or invite you
15:55:03  for
15:55:05  any discussion.
Thank you.

15:55:08 >> Thank you so much, Bimal.
Does anyone
15:55:10  have any questions for Bimal regarding the presentation?

15:55:24 >> I know there are lots
15:55:27  of numbers and numbers.
But hopefully in our next
15:55:30  presentation I can go more into details in like a more
15:55:35  smaller geography.
>> Great.

15:55:38 Thank you so much, Bimal.
We were asked if
15:55:41  we could get a copy of the
15:55:44  presentation.
We did not send this out before the 
15:55:47 meeting but I'm sure Bimal, if you could get that to me, we will
15:55:50  make sure that everyone does receive a copy.

15:55:53 >> Yeah, I'll be more than happy to share with you the
15:55:56  presentation today.
But I think what will be
15:55:58  more useful will be the state of housing report that will probably come 
15:56:02 out in a month or so.
>> 
15:56:05 Alan, sounds like you have a question, do you want to go ahead and
15:56:07  unmute?
>> Yeah.

15:56:10 Thanks, Bimal.
I had a question, is
15:56:13  there also data that is
15:56:17  available around segregation, especially racial
15:56:20  segregation in the city that we might be able to evaluate also as part of
15:56:24  this planning process?
>> Yeah,
15:56:28  definitely.
I didn't dig into those things but 
15:56:31 definitely as we move forward with our fair housing plan, we can definitely
15:56:34  get data on the segregation and lots of other
15:56:35  factors.
>> Thank you.

15:56:38 It's just not something you covered today then?

15:56:41 >> Not today.
Today I just wanted to stay on a
15:56:44  very high level so yeah.
>>
15:56:47  Thank you.
>> Sure.

15:57:02 >> Okay, great.
If anyone has any questions that come
15:57:05  up later, feel free to email us and we can get you some answers from 
15:57:09 Bimal and we'll send out a
15:57:12  copy of that presentation.
Thank you so much for your
15:57:16  time, Bimal.
We really appreciate 
15:57:17 it.
>> You're welcome.

15:57:20 >> We reviewed kind of a structure of the previous fair housing action
15:57:23  plans, where we're
15:57:26  at with the executive order from President Biden
15:57:29  regarding a bit of a holding
15:57:32  pattern as far as what we're doing moving forward and requirements from 
15:57:36 HUD.
The next agenda item is a discussion 
15:57:39 with all of you led by Matt
15:57:42  about developing a local fair housing plan and what
15:57:46  our next steps are given that we don't have a lot of guidance
15:57:50  from the Federal Government at this time.

15:57:53 >> Thank you, 
15:57:56 Niki.
And yes, my name is next to the agenda
15:57:59  item, but I want to strongly emphasize that this is a committee discussion.

15:58:02 So we have been talking about this internally as
15:58:05  staff and we want to know really what we'd
15:58:09  like to get to is via a discussion
15:58:12  of the committee members what does
15:58:15  the committee want to do given that the committee was put together and we 
15:58:19 started the process for appointments when
15:58:24  we did not anticipate any sort of change to the fair
15:58:26  housing guidance on kind of a quick pace.

15:58:29 And it does look like there will be.
15:58:31 
And so really does the committee want 
15:58:34 to hold, does the committee want to
15:58:38  do some interim work?
Does the committee
15:58:41  want to develop an interim set of 
15:58:43 actions?
Where are folks at in terms of 
15:58:46 developing the fair housing action plan given
15:58:50  all of the kind of changing pieces?
So with that
15:58:53  I am going to put someone on the spot to go first off I'm
15:58:56  going to ask our director of
15:59:00  our Fair Housing Council if
15:59:04  he has any thoughts or in any conversations
15:59:07  at your organization where your heads are at right 
15:59:10 now?
>> Yeah, thanks, Matt.

15:59:17 This is Allan Lazo from the Fair Housing
15:59:20  Council of Oregon, I sympathize with you all.
15:59:23 
Over the time we've all been together 
15:59:26 it has been a whiplash back and forth on what the federal requirements
15:59:29  are and it's put you as a
15:59:32  bureau in a terrible position and our community in a terrible position, 
15:59:33 right.
And I think one of the things that we 
15:59:37 can look
15:59:40  at as a committee is asserting from what our values are around
15:59:44  how we proceed with this information?
Right, regardless of what
15:59:46  the Federal Government is going to require of us.

15:59:50 I 
15:59:54 agree, I really appreciate that the current administration is moving 
15:59:56 pretty quickly to put these changes in place.

15:59:58 But we don't really know where it's going to head.

16:00:01 There are a few different pathways to what's going to 
16:00:05 happen.
The hope is that at some point it all
16:00:10  reverts to the 2015 fair housing rule.

16:00:13 I think there will be some question about whether that means the
16:00:16  jurisdiction will need to do an analysis of impediments or an
16:00:20  assessment of fair housing.
To me though regardless
16:00:23  of that the trajectory
16:00:26  of this committee is such
16:00:30  that I think we ought to be solidifying what
16:00:33  it is we want to see in fair
16:00:36  housing in our community through this work right here
16:00:40  rather than responding to what the Federal Government is asking us
16:00:43  to do.
And I think to me frankly it
16:00:46  looks very much like the work we
16:00:49  would have been doing 4 or 5 years ago around the assessment of fair housing.
16:00:51 
There was a lot of data.

16:00:55 I think I shared it with folks
16:00:58  earlier in the committee work about the comparisons between those 
16:01:01 assessments of fair housing and analyses
16:01:04  of impediments.
That work really is focused, it
16:01:07  really
16:01:11  shifted to focus on what does racial segregation in our communities look
16:01:14  like, what do areas of
16:01:17  concentrated poverty look like, and especially
16:01:21  racially and ethnically
16:01:26  concentrated areas of poverty look like.

16:01:29 And the way the city and the consortium
16:01:32  actually overall did it was great.
I think it contained a lot more 
16:01:35 information than we might have seen in
16:01:39  other places that really didn't have an action plan.
16:01:41 
The action plan I think was really 
16:01:43 valuable.
So I think we can take those lessons 
16:01:47 and keep moving them forward.
That's what I would
16:01:52  hope that we do as
16:01:56  both a city and
16:02:00  a community frankly that we aren't waiting for the Federal Government
16:02:03  to tell us what we are required to do,
16:02:06  but rather we are holding our values
16:02:11  as a community that are really have
16:02:15  impact in our community.
I think over the period that
16:02:18  we've seen even in the last ten years since the fair housing action plan
16:02:21  has come about, we've continued to
16:02:25  see displacement, involuntary economic 
16:02:28 displacement of communities and lots of folks being locked out of
16:02:31  different places.
So I think that it's an opportunity 
16:02:34 for us here to move
16:02:38  that work forward rather than continuing to be bounced
16:02:42  around by the Federal Government.
>> Thank you, Allan.

16:02:45 Are there other committee members that would like to share
16:02:49  their perspective?

16:03:04 >>
16:03:08  Hi, I'm Jay.
I think it would be helpful
16:03:11  to know what has been done since 2011.

16:03:14 I think that would be really, really helpful.
16:03:17 
And then what are we capable of as a 
16:03:20 committee?
Because if we exhaust a lot
16:03:23  of energy then we can't move anything or we keep
16:03:27  hitting a brick wall, it would be nice to know what is expected of us
16:03:30  and what we're capable of, what are the barriers
16:03:33  to the work that we can do together before
16:03:37  we can move anywhere.
And
16:03:40  then for me it would be helpful personally to have
16:03:43  like some real honest conversations.
Like even in that
16:03:46  document I think it said unintentional gentrification, I mean it's
16:03:50  happened several times over the
16:03:54  last 50 years in Portland or Oregon, 100 
16:03:55 years.
It's not unintentional.

16:03:57 We know it.
So if we're not using clear language 
16:04:01 and knowing exactly what's happening and pushing up against
16:04:04  a system that is constantly pushing
16:04:07  black and brown people out of their own communities, then this body of 
16:04:10 work is not going to work, it's going to be yet another
16:04:15  way to cover up the system that keeps playing us.
16:04:17 
So like when we're speaking about 
16:04:20 what's happening currently and what happened in the past, it would be
16:04:23  helpful for me if we speak clearly and
16:04:26  honestly about why it's happened, even
16:04:29  if no one in this room knows the why that it is not 
16:04:31 unintentional, right, that it's happening on purpose.

16:04:35 It has happened on purpose.
So when
16:04:40  I got these, and time.
It would have been
16:04:43  helpful to have more time to look over those documents.

16:04:46 Three hours in the middle of a work day, was not enough time for
16:04:49  me to work out those.
But that for me felt like what are
16:04:52  we doing here, is this a real thing, or are we just
16:04:55  a figurehead committee to say we did this thing, we're
16:04:59  meeting quarterly and nothing is really going to
16:05:02  happen.
So if this is a serious thing, I'd 
16:05:05 like to know our capabilities, I'd like to have time
16:05:10  to look at documents and the entire
16:05:14  document so I know what's actually going on.

16:05:17 That would be helpful.
I'd read all 148 pages if I
16:05:20  had time to read it.
And then again
16:05:24  that was ten years ago
16:05:27  so you know, I just I have no time to
16:05:30  waste and this is very important to me so if we're here to waste
16:05:34  time, I would love to know now
16:05:39  so I don't come back.

16:05:47 >> 
16:05:50 Yeah, thank you, Jay.
To respond to one of
16:05:54  your questions, I can't, as mentioned, none of us were
16:05:57  here when that plan
16:06:00  was put together as far as PHB staff.

16:06:04 To some of the questions about that, it's just what information has been
16:06:08  passed to us.
As far as what the
16:06:11  capabilities of the committee are, this
16:06:16  committee is tasked with assessing fair housing in Portland and
16:06:20  Multnomah County and with the city of
16:06:23  Grisholm as jurisdictional Portlanders at this
16:06:27  table and to recommend actions that the county and the 
16:06:31 city should be taking in order to affirmatively further fair
16:06:36  housing and increase access to
16:06:40  areas of opportunity for communities across the 
16:06:43 region.
And so that is what is the
16:06:47  charter of the committee, those recommendations go to the
16:06:50  housing bureau director and to
16:06:53  city council.
And this committee once it has
16:06:56  identified the impediments to fair housing, it has
16:07:01  developed recommended fair housing actions, this committee can choose
16:07:04  to spend as much time, energy,
16:07:07  working to advance those and advocate for those and we're here
16:07:11  to be supportive as staff.
And
16:07:15  hopefully that will answer that question as far as what's
16:07:21  the authority of the committee.

16:07:34 Are there other committee members that would like to share their thoughts
16:07:37  on how the committee should proceed given
16:07:41  all of the moving
16:07:43  pieces?
>> I would.

16:07:45 This is Barbara.
Can you hear me?

16:07:48 >> Yes, we can.
>> Hi,
16:07:52  Matt.
Hi, 
16:07:55 Niki.
I have a lot of thoughts in my head 
16:07:58 and I hope I do kind of an okay job with some
16:08:01  of them.
I did try and go over the report.

16:08:05 I agree with Jay, that
16:08:08  there just wasn't enough time and I
16:08:11  had a particularly stressful day.
However I did
16:08:18  take some notes and I have read
16:08:21  that impediments to fair housing documents, I think
16:08:24  last year I
16:08:28  got it from the 
16:08:30 committee.
I have several thoughts.

16:08:33 I also have kind of a concern like what is our
16:08:37  committee actually going to be doing in terms of
16:08:40  any kind of initiating of work or are we
16:08:43  just advising, what are we advising 
16:08:45 on?
We will be handed something like the 
16:08:48 action plan that's been written by other people and then
16:08:52  we just advise on it?
16:08:55 
Because personally I would like to be
16:08:58  more involved with the action plan.
And actually I'm not clear
16:09:05  why we need to
16:09:08  wait?
Why the Biden Administration is going
16:09:12  to ask things that would actually require
16:09:15  us to wait.
I see a lot of
16:09:19  areas that are not covered.
One of the things is when
16:09:23  you do your audit
16:09:26  testing, you only test
16:09:29  rentals that advertise and so you've
16:09:33  got a huge amount of the rental community and these
16:09:36  are the people that I'm most concerned with as
16:09:40  a real estate agent, you've got a huge number of
16:09:42  people that never, ever respond to an ad.

16:09:45 They're on a list and this
16:09:49  might be public housing, this definitely is
16:09:52  subsidized housing, the real
16:09:55  lower income type housing.
But they come through on lists,
16:09:58  you've heard of three
16:10:01  yearlong lists.
16:10:03 
Well those people also experience a 
16:10:06 huge amount
16:10:10  of barriers to
16:10:14  housing and are subjected to
16:10:18  discrimination.
And I would personally certainly
16:10:21  being a woman of color, but I would personally like to
16:10:26  explore that more
16:10:29  and have those people included in the
16:10:32  report called impediments to
16:10:35  fair housing.
16:10:39 
I think especially here in
16:10:41  Oregon.
I have a company in California as 
16:10:43 well.
But California is a different place.

16:10:46 Oregon I think really needs this.
So
16:10:49  when I talk to these 
16:10:52 people, the people with the least resources, the
16:10:56  lowest assets sometimes, certainly the
16:11:00  lower income, they also experience racial
16:11:04  discrimination.
They
16:11:08  may have gone into
16:11:11  their unit because their name came up on the
16:11:14  list and so they're in.
But that's not the end of it.

16:11:17 It's not you're in, you're 
16:11:20 okay.
There's just actually something on the 
16:11:23 radio this week that
16:11:27  had to do with I think -- a man was being
16:11:31  evicted.
It was a property
16:11:35  that's owned by Home Forward and managed by
16:11:39  IPM.
And the reason
16:11:42  for the eviction that were given were really strange to
16:11:45  me.
And it didn't seem like this man had
16:11:48  an opportunity to even address
16:11:51  the reasons why he was being
16:11:53  evicted.
It was just okay this is what 
16:11:55 happened.
So it almost seemed like a trap.

16:11:58 But then he was bemoaning the fact that he worked
16:12:01  so hard to get into a home and now
16:12:05  he's going to be back out on the street and he's got to
16:12:09  live in his car.
What are his
16:12:14  barriers?
He did have an accent and I
16:12:17  wondered about that.
So there are all of these people
16:12:20  in all of these buildings that are not being heard, not being
16:12:25  counted, not being test, I don't know how you would test that.
16:12:28 
But that's something that I would like
16:12:32  to see included if possible.
I'm
16:12:35  rambling, I'm sorry.
I hope I'm not
16:12:41  rambling too much.
16:12:44 
But there are many things.

16:12:47 On the education side, I remember last year in fair housing meetings 
16:12:51 Allan especially was talking about
16:12:54  the education piece.
And I have
16:12:59  been working with the real estate
16:13:03  agency here in Oregon to
16:13:06  require fair housing training, post license fair housing
16:13:09  training didn't exist, doesn't
16:13:12  exist.
16:13:15 
It does in California because the real 
16:13:19 estate agency in Oregon, the department of real estate in 
16:13:21 California, these are consumer protection agencies.

16:13:24 And in California there's a 
16:13:30 requirement that licensees participate in continuing education of
16:13:33  a certain type.
And so now
16:13:39  before the legislature there
16:13:43  is something, I'm not sure the process so there will be a 
16:13:45 requirement.
But in my opinion it's very little.

16:13:48 And Allan, I know that you did go, or
16:13:51  I think you testified or you did
16:13:54  something on this issue.
And I wasn't able to to go but I 
16:13:57 really want and wanted and I'm not sure if it's too late to increase
16:14:00  it because I had asked for a full course
16:14:04  that would be three hours.
And the commissioner wanted to 
16:14:07 put it in with this other
16:14:12  three hours so that you maybe were only required
16:14:15  to take one hour every two years on fair
16:14:18  housing.
And I just didn't feel it was that 
16:14:22 much.
But those are areas I think that
16:14:25  need to be included in this impediments to fair
16:14:31  housing rather than just saying tenant education or landlord
16:14:34  education.
But there's also licensee education
16:14:37  and many, many
16:14:41  licensee
16:14:44  property managers as is IPM.
16:14:47 
So anyway I see a lot that actually 
16:14:50 can be done.
I saw some reference in the action
16:14:54  plan to a review committee, a committee that 
16:14:57 worked with, where are my notes?

16:15:05 That combined a number of
16:15:09  different agencies and I thought it would
16:15:13  be great if our committee could do
16:15:16  something like that.
I think it
16:15:21  mentioned legal aid and was it the AG in
16:15:24  Oregon was included
16:15:26  in that.
I'm not sure.

16:15:30 I know I worked with the 
16:15:35 Multnomah County Health Department on a committee a
16:15:38  couple of years ago.
Part of what I was
16:15:41  interested in was fair housing
16:15:47  addressing health issues.
And we had a presentation from 
16:15:50 Boley, and it was really, really
16:15:56  interesting how they take someone's claim of
16:15:59  housing discrimination based on disability or whatever,
16:16:02  how they take it through the steps and
16:16:05  what happens.
It was actually quite enlightening.

16:16:08 So maybe we could do something like that
16:16:12  which would move us more forward.
That's all.

16:16:15 I've spoken enough.
Sorry.

16:16:19 If you have any thoughts, I'd appreciate it.
16:16:22 
Otherwise I'll just let my
16:16:25  rambling stop.
Thanks.

16:16:33 >> Thank you very much.
And again
16:16:36  thoughts on what you shared, I would again 
16:16:40 encourage the committee members to talk to
16:16:42  each other about how they want to move forward with this.

16:16:45 Whether they want to be working on
16:16:48  how they want to move forward.
We as staff are here to support
16:16:51  the goals of this committee in the realm of providing advice
16:16:55  and recommendations to city council and the housing
16:16:58  bureau on fair housing
16:17:04  actions.
>> I can go
16:17:08  next.
I support the idea of the
16:17:11  group moving forward
16:17:14  regardless of federal inaction at this
16:17:17  point about addressing and affirmatively furthering fair
16:17:19  housing.
So I support us doing something.

16:17:22 I like the idea of doing something better than 
16:17:25 AFFH as opposed to preparing to do the
16:17:29  old model because I think there's a lot of wisdom in
16:17:32  this room about how the maybe old model
16:17:35  wasn't sufficient to actually just explicitly address
16:17:39  systemic racism and the way that it 
16:17:42 impacts who has access to communities of, I don't want to call them
16:17:45  communities of opportunity, but
16:17:49  racist segregation patterns.
I think having a local model
16:17:53  we can more explicitly center that and work together on something that could 
16:17:56 maybe inform what the next federal 
16:18:02 iteration looks like would be exciting.

16:18:05 And the point that
16:18:09  Barbara made about including forward housing
16:18:12  providers for greater transparency about the
16:18:17  policy that folks need to be doing.
Greater 
16:18:21 transparency, and then the greater policy work that
16:18:25  owl folks who distribute those funds including
16:18:27  home forward need to do.
I'm excited about that recommendation 
16:18:31 and would love to work on Home Forward being
16:18:34  a better partner in that analysis, so we could be
16:18:37  included in the
16:18:41  recommendations that are provided.

16:18:45 >> Mara, you're there.
I know that you've
16:18:49  been unmuted a couple of times if you're there
16:18:53  to jump in.
>> Thank you.

16:18:58 My name is Mara.
I use she/her pronouns and I
16:19:01  work at Independent Living Resources.
I've 
16:19:04 agreed with a lot of what's been said on the committee so far so I'm really
16:19:07  excited to continue to work with you all.

16:19:11 I am also really geared towards action and don't like to sit
16:19:14  around and talk about things for too long without
16:19:17  trying them out.
So absolutely and I just get the
16:19:22  feeling that y'all are really wanting to tackle
16:19:25  this very large problem that's really impacting so many of
16:19:28  our community members.
My one thought was 
16:19:31 yeah, just to I think Jay just wanted to
16:19:34  give a shout out for your tremendous advocacy and
16:19:38  I agree with so many of the things you said about language and then also just
16:19:40  about making sure that we fully understand what we're doing and that 
16:19:45 our time is respected
16:19:48  and that also that more voices of those impacted
16:19:52  are included in any of the
16:19:55  assessments that we do moving forward.

16:19:58 I did look through that document a little bit and I think
16:20:02  there were actually some things on there I liked in the recommended 
16:20:05 action plan.
It wasn't obviously as comprehensive
16:20:09  as I think we could produce but it had some good places to start
16:20:12  on there and that's my recommendation maybe is
16:20:16  to sort of pick that apart to see what the original
16:20:18  recommendations are and kind of fully understand that now that we have more 
16:20:22 time to review it.
And then yeah, lastly,
16:20:25  I just noticed in my role working with
16:20:28  individuals with significant disabilities that a lot
16:20:31  of times it's put on them to understand, to do
16:20:34  the work, so I really like Barbara's suggestion of
16:20:38  potentially making sure that the people who are on the other side of 
16:20:41 this conversation in housing also know what their
16:20:44  rights and responsibilities are and that's part of an action plan that
16:20:47  we come
16:20:52  up with.
Thank
16:21:02  you.
>> I guess I'll
16:21:05  jump in.
This is
16:21:08  Marisa.
She/her pronouns.

16:21:11 I'm with Northwest Pilot Project.
A couple
16:21:14  of things that stood out to me, I
16:21:18  appreciated what Jay said about wanting to get a better
16:21:21  sense of what has been done as we kind of ponder this
16:21:24  decision of how to move
16:21:28  forward.
Another thought around including 
16:21:31 affordable housing providers in the analysis as Taylor
16:21:34  was talking about.
I think there's a couple of ideas
16:21:38  that stand out to me so just to kind of throw them
16:21:41  out there although I know this would probably delve
16:21:45  further into the discussion, but I would be really interested in
16:21:48  seeing some way to figure in some of the
16:21:51  newer policies that I know advocates had really
16:21:55  supported as a means to kind of mitigate
16:21:59  housing barriers of the FAIR
16:22:02  ordinance at the city level.
I've been really curious to
16:22:06  see how that's being implemented and what kind of 
16:22:09 impacts that has had.
What kind of
16:22:12  improvements could be made there and also what it looks
16:22:15  like to enforce such a policy.
16:22:19 
And then another aspect of figuring in
16:22:23  affordable housing providers and even
16:22:26  subsidized housing providers I think would be to look at the role
16:22:29  of a service provider so traditionally we often see that role
16:22:32  I think as one that simply connects folks
16:22:35  to housing options
16:22:39  or housing opportunities.
As we see a lot
16:22:42  of growth in a few different areas
16:22:45  one of which being our support of housing services
16:22:48  measure with infusion of resources into homeless
16:22:53  placement services, I feel like that's an area we really need to look at
16:22:56  more closely is how service providers can
16:23:00  play a really significant role in connecting
16:23:03  folks with
16:23:06  the racial equity lens with an eye on fair housing, with an
16:23:09  eye on spotting discrimination and taking
16:23:14  steps to address that.
I'll call out specifically some
16:23:17  of the work that Ellen has been doing with Fair
16:23:20  Housing -- Allan has been doing with Fair
16:23:24  Housing Council.
I think legal aid has been a
16:23:27  part of that too.
So yeah, I think that's something that 
16:23:31 would just be really exciting to look at because obviously the plan
16:23:34  we see from 2011 is within the
16:23:38  context where some of the things going on that we see
16:23:42  now have significantly changed.
16:23:45 
And so I just kind of wanted to flag 
16:23:48 those for
16:23:52  future
16:23:58  discussion.
Thanks.

16:24:01 >> Okay so it sounds like there is
16:24:04  consensus from the committee that the committee wants to proceed regardless 
16:24:07 of what the feds are doing
16:24:09  right now.
Unless there's somebody on the 
16:24:13 committee that strongly disagrees, I think we as staff are going to move 
16:24:18 forward with that assumption.
I'm not seeing any hands or 
16:24:22 hearing anybody strongly disagreeing with that.

16:24:24 So kind of the next question we have then looking forward to
16:24:28  our next
16:24:32  meeting is what do we
16:24:35  need to as staff bring back to the committee, what is the committee 
16:24:38 looking for in terms of deliverables
16:24:41  or information or data?
I've heard kind of the
16:24:45  crosswalk of the 2011 plan and what has been done by
16:24:48  the feds or the state or the city that was in that and
16:24:51  what has not been done and to the best that
16:24:54  we can our assessment as to why.
What other
16:24:57  kind of deliverables or
16:25:00  information does the committee need to
16:25:03  help the committee move
16:25:07  along the process in developing this assessment of fair housing and
16:25:10  a fair housing action plan
16:25:21  recommendations?
>> Hey, Matt.

16:25:24 This is Allan again.
I think a couple
16:25:27  of folks have sort of addressed the agency of this
16:25:34  committee.
And I want to just maybe have you
16:25:36  speak to that a little bit.
Because my sense is that I'm really 
16:25:40 grateful that you all have reformed this committee and I've been on it a 
16:25:43 couple of iterations of it.
So I think
16:25:46  this is an opportunity for us to in a sense have
16:25:50  a clean slate of really opening up the
16:25:53  possibilities of what this committee can
16:25:56  do.
And I guess it would be interesting 
16:25:59 hearing if you agree with that or are there 
16:26:01 sideboards.
I think one of the things we recognize 
16:26:04 is that from that 2011 plan, there's just
16:26:08  a very, a greater
16:26:11  understanding overall around some of these issues is
16:26:14  what I would say.
And I think
16:26:17  we can really start to infuse some
16:26:20  of that even in the language that's there.

16:26:22 We think about what's happened
16:26:26  over the last ten years.
I think that there's just a lot
16:26:28  of movement we can make in moving that forward.

16:26:31 So are there sideboards that we need to consider as
16:26:34  a committee, Matt, or how would you frame
16:26:36  that?
>> Thanks.

16:26:39 That's a good question.
Part of our role as staff is to
16:26:42  help the committee through it, kind of through those questions and they'll 
16:26:46 come up as we go through the process.
16:26:49 
You know the city, so this is a
16:26:52  consortium body so I speak on behalf
16:26:55  of the City of
16:26:58  Portland.
The City of
16:27:02  Portland has a number
16:27:05  of committees like this and most are
16:27:09  advisory and developing recommendations for
16:27:13  a particular agency or a city government or even
16:27:16  recommendations for other entities that are
16:27:19  not, like could be maybe Home Forward for instance that are
16:27:22  not the city but that committees have
16:27:26  recommendations.
This is not a decision making body, I 
16:27:30 do want to be clear about that.
There's very few decision making
16:27:33  bodies that can only be enacted by city council.

16:27:36 City council is the decision making body for the city on regulations
16:27:39  and funding and there's only a couple of committees where they've
16:27:42  delegated that decision making power.
16:27:45 
So the product of this process for the 
16:27:48 committee would be recommending fair housing
16:27:52  actions for the city to consider
16:27:55  implementing.
The committee could also make 
16:27:58 recommendations to other
16:28:01  jurisdictions or entities.
I think
16:28:04  keeping it within Multnomah County just
16:28:07  given the scope is probably a good idea.
16:28:10 
Beyond that committees can be
16:28:13  really as active or inactive as the
16:28:17  members want.
So just in the last few
16:28:20  remarks from committee members, there's been a couple of things
16:28:23  that have come up.
People have
16:28:27  talked about the metro supportive housing measure that's
16:28:30  moving forward and they've talked about
16:28:34  Home Forward and they've talked about, let's just go
16:28:39  with those two.
So part of our job as staff
16:28:42  is to make sure that everybody on the
16:28:45  committee understands if they don't already and we've got a lot
16:28:48  of experts on this committee but if there's an 
16:28:51 instance where folks aren't sure and this committee says hey as a
16:28:55  committee we really have some perspectives on the
16:28:59  implementation of the metro supportive housing measure,
16:29:02  right.
It's our job, obviously this committee 
16:29:05 is not the committee that reviews the metro supportive housing measure plan, 
16:29:08 but it's our job to help facilitate this
16:29:12  committee being able to plug into that
16:29:15  process to that implementation in the best
16:29:19  way.
And so we have other committees
16:29:22  before that have directly engaged with city council
16:29:25  members, they've scheduled meetings with city council members or
16:29:28  county commission members and we staff you
16:29:33  as you do that.
And you would go
16:29:37  representing the
16:29:40  Fair Housing Advocacy Committee,
16:29:43  Allan, I was looking at you.
And we've analyzed
16:29:46  this issue and have some recommendations and I am here to 
16:29:50 present them on the committee's behalf or 2 or 3 of us are here to
16:29:52  present that on the committee's behalf.

16:29:55 In a similar fashion, we've had committees that will send a
16:29:58  representative or a delegation if you will
16:30:01  to the home for everyone coordinating board which is the advisory
16:30:05  body over the city county homeless
16:30:08  services work.
And because there's a particular fair
16:30:11  housing lens that this committee has decided
16:30:14  to look at that the membership feels is
16:30:17  important to convey to the body
16:30:21  that does oversee the implementation of
16:30:24  stabilization and homelessness prevention 
16:30:27 services.
And so our job is to kind of help you
16:30:31  navigate that as you see your analysis of what's going
16:30:34  on in Portland and Multnomah
16:30:38  County and as you develop your recommendations to
16:30:42  say okay, these are the agencies or the individuals or other
16:30:45  committees that you'll want to bring these recommendations
16:30:48  to and we will help facilitate setting that up so you
16:30:52  can have that dialogue with the decision makers
16:30:56  or advisory entities and so
16:31:00  on and so forth.
Does that make sense?

16:31:02 >> Yeah.
Great, thanks, Matt.

16:31:05 And it's some sideboards.
But I think the other thing I take
16:31:08  from that is it doesn't put restrictions on us as members of this 
16:31:12 committee, members of this
16:31:15  community, to be bold.
We 
16:31:20 can, this is a space where we know there are some very significant issues
16:31:24  that need to be addressed and approached and we
16:31:27  ought to be doing that work here
16:31:31  to bring bold solutions
16:31:33  forward and it's unfortunately not up to us to make the final decisions 
16:31:36 about what gets implemented or 
16:31:39 funded, but we certainly can bring that voice to those
16:31:43  issues and concerns and I think this is
16:31:47  the space for that.
>>
16:31:51  For the next meeting I'm wondering it says 
16:31:54 enforcing fair housing laws.
I'd like to know what 
16:31:59 enforcement looks like.
When is the last time we enforced 
16:32:00 anything?
Is there a complaint list?

16:32:03 How are those complaints being addressed?

16:32:06 So really just like what does enforcement
16:32:10  look like?
And then how are we
16:32:13  addressing partners?
It says partners will work to address
16:32:16  practices, programs, and behaviors
16:32:19  that have affected restrictive housing.

16:32:22 How are we doing that?
What does that
16:32:25  even look like?
And what are the partners and
16:32:30  programs implementing that's
16:32:35  counter to the norm?
>> I'll jump in for a second 
16:32:38 too.
This is Becky with Oregon
16:32:41  Law Center.
I agree with everyone who said that 
16:32:44 the most important thing is getting some sort of update or get a sense
16:32:48  of where we are on the last time that this group
16:32:52  did this and what progress has been made on those
16:32:55  items.
But I also want to underscore 
16:32:58 something that Marisa Espinosa said because
16:33:03  I was thinking of it too is related to the FAIR
16:33:06  ordinance and just taking a look at obviously
16:33:10  the FAIR ordinance was developed and
16:33:13  passed with an eye toward addressing a really significant
16:33:17  fair housing issue.
But we don't have any data on how
16:33:20  it's working and so to
16:33:24  answer Matt's question, I don't know if the deliverable for
16:33:27  next meeting is just some staff input on whether
16:33:30  there are things we can do now or ultimately
16:33:33  where we're going to get at that is to include a
16:33:37  recommendation in our action plan about doing some
16:33:41  sort of audit or 
16:33:44 evaluation.
I guess without
16:33:47  any data I'm not sure what we could do in anticipation
16:33:50  of putting that in the action plan.
But if there is something or there's 
16:33:53 kind of a perspective on that,
16:33:56  I'd love to hear that at the next
16:34:09  meeting.

16:34:21 >> It does sound like we have some
16:34:25  tangible things that the committee needs to kind of start down this 
16:34:28 process.
I think the last question and we may 
16:34:31 end up getting out of here early, the last question
16:34:34  is did you get a sense that the committee wants
16:34:37  to proceed, we have some next steps in terms of information and
16:34:42  analyses that the committee needs.
So I'll put
16:34:45  this question out there for folks that have thoughts on
16:34:48  it now or just to be thinking about it for the next meeting, but
16:34:51  what does your process look like, outside of just the 
16:34:54 committee?
So what does your process look like to 
16:34:58 do this assessment work, to
16:35:01  gather the information and
16:35:06  assess whatever data or I don't want to say keep it
16:35:09  just to the data, but to compile the information and knowledge
16:35:14  you need as a committee.
What are your thoughts on
16:35:16  how you're engaging the community
16:35:20  at large, impacted individuals
16:35:23  beyond just our quarterly 
16:35:26 meetings.
If folks need time to think about that 
16:35:30 or folks need to think about their own capacity and how much time they can
16:35:33  commit to outside of the meetings, there's definitely
16:35:39  a piece of this where depending on where the committee wants to go, 
16:35:42 there's probably some process work to do outside of just the
16:35:46  quarterly committee meetings.
So if folks have 
16:35:49 thoughts, jump in.
Otherwise it's definitely a question 
16:35:51 we'll need to answer as we start down this path.

16:36:08  
>>
16:36:11  This is Mara from ILR.
I like
16:36:15  the idea of us being able to use the authority of the committee to
16:36:20  influence decision making.
Has that
16:36:23  been successful in this committee or has
16:36:27  it never really gotten to a place
16:36:34  where we could test that?
>> So I can't speak specifically to 
16:36:38 FHAC although I think there are others here at this
16:36:42  meeting who might be able to.
I can speak to, I've staffed
16:36:45  a lot of committees both with the
16:36:47  city and in other jurisdictional jobs.

16:36:50 And I've seen committees that it has not been
16:36:54  successful and I have seen committees where it is very
16:36:59  successful.
And the key, the 
16:37:02 cornerstone to it really is the time and energy of the committee
16:37:05  members themselves.
Staff are employees of the government 
16:37:08 and part of our job is to
16:37:12  staff this committee.
I'll give you a
16:37:16  really tangible example with a job with the city,
16:37:19  there was one of our other advisory bodies, the
16:37:22  Portland Housing Advisory Commission was 
16:37:26 reviewing the city's tax increment financing set aside policy.
16:37:28 
It was a very technical policy about 
16:37:31 how the city uses its urban 
16:37:34 renewal money and it made a decision that it
16:37:37  wanted to advance a recommendation to increase the amount
16:37:40  of the money that was going to affordable
16:37:43  housing and to reduce the amount of money that was
16:37:47  going to economic development.
And they worked with a coalition
16:37:50  of community members and there were a whole series of joint meetings
16:37:54  between
16:37:57  the housing bureau and
16:38:00  Prosper Portland when they were still the
16:38:03  Portland Development Commission, the committee members themselves
16:38:07  engaged with city council to talk about why they were recommending this
16:38:10  item.
And in the end city council ended up
16:38:13  changing the policy to allocate more money to
16:38:16  affordable housing which did reduce money
16:38:20  for economic development.
16:38:22 
And that was in 2015-16.

16:38:25 And so that's just a really tangible example of
16:38:29  a committee where the committee members themselves
16:38:33  coalesced around their recommendation and took really active steps to
16:38:35  advance what their recommendation was.

16:38:38 But again being transparent, I've seen other committees where people
16:38:42  have shown up to the committee meetings and
16:38:45  folks definitely have strong
16:38:48  sets of knowledge and experienced thoughts and recommendations, but
16:38:52  they haven't really coalesced as a committee around some
16:38:55  action they were trying to influence and
16:38:58  then invested the time.
And I know you all are volunteers,
16:39:02  but the decision makers when that city
16:39:05  committee can coalesce around a recommendation and they want to meet 
16:39:09 with those decision makers and talk about it, it can
16:39:11  be a powerful moving force
16:39:14  in actions, in
16:39:19  tangible actions.

16:39:23 >> This is Allan from Fair
16:39:26  Housing Council again.
I would 
16:39:29 100% concur with that, Matt.
I would say two 
16:39:32 things.
One is I greatly appreciate the staff 
16:39:36 of the bureau that are here because I think they aren't here
16:39:38  just to sort of check a box to staff a committee.

16:39:42 I think they are genuinely interested in hearing what all of us have to
16:39:45  say and how they might help us move things forward.

16:39:48 And I also think that's true of city council members.

16:39:51 I think exactly what Matt said.
16:39:53 
I think there's the possibility to 
16:39:56 advocate at those levels in the city
16:40:00  for things that we feel are important.

16:40:04 It is a little tiny bit interesting though to think about
16:40:08  where we are with city council and the transitions right now.
16:40:10 
We've got new commissioners at several 
16:40:13 bureaus, we've got new commissioners.
I can tell you
16:40:16  from the work we've done previously that there were some commissioners who 
16:40:18 were extraordinarily engaged in this work.

16:40:22 If you think back to how this all started in
16:40:25  2011, it was Commissioner Fisch
16:40:28  who really brought this work forward and was greatly committed to it over
16:40:31  his time with council.
I think that's
16:40:34  been true of other commissioners, but there is a shift on
16:40:38  council right now.
And my hope
16:40:43  is that those folks are committed to how important fair housing
16:40:46  work is to creating opportunity in our city.
16:40:48 
But it's early, right.

16:40:51 And so that's what I would say
16:40:54  and so it's both a challenge and an opportunity from where
16:40:57  we are at
16:41:01  the moment.
>> Thank you for that,
16:41:05  Allan.
And you reminded me of something I did 
16:41:08 want to share.
We have a new housing commissioner and 
16:41:13 that's Commissioner Dan Ryan.
And his lead person for the housing
16:41:16  bureau, her name is
16:41:19  Charity Montez.
She is
16:41:22  meeting with our five
16:41:25  permanent advisory bodies.
She is coming to those meetings and 
16:41:28 introducing herself.
We wanted to check in with this 
16:41:31 committee, we didn't want to just bring the person to
16:41:34  this meeting.
But when the right time to have
16:41:37  her come and introduce herself and you as a committee get a
16:41:40  chance to engage with her.
So just also keep
16:41:44  that in the back of your mind whether
16:41:46  it's the next meeting or the meeting after.

16:41:49 I think the other thing I would add is we are already
16:41:55  doing some planning for fair
16:41:59  housing month.
And the program that we'll be
16:42:02  taking to
16:42:05  city council, Niki is working on developing what that looks like.

16:42:09 But a part of it is always some of members
16:42:12  of this committee engaging with city 
16:42:14 council.
That's also going to be an opportunity 
16:42:17 for this committee to be in front of a new city council and
16:42:20  talk about the things that you want to talk about in terms of what direction 
16:42:23 you're heading in.
And so that's something to also
16:42:26  keep in mind that we will be taking that
16:42:28  proclamation in April, beginning of April.

16:42:31 We don't have a date yet but we will likely ask some of the
16:42:34  members of this committee to come and speak on behalf of the
16:42:38  committee or just speak on behalf
16:42:41  of the work of the Fair Housing
16:42:44  Advocacy Committee and the
16:42:47  developing the recommended fair
16:42:53  housing actions.
>> Hi, this is
16:42:57  Dung.
I have a question in regards,
16:43:00  I'm coming here
16:43:03  from chat with regards to what Becky had
16:43:06  mentioned.
Because at first I initially thought 
16:43:10 great I want to meet and get to know all of the
16:43:13  new committee folks but there are some restrictions
16:43:16  around that.
Can you remind us what those
16:43:22  restrictions are and how we can still get to
16:43:25  know each other and connect and
16:43:28  meet and find out how we can work more
16:43:31  collaboratively outside of this space?

16:43:34 >> Sure.
We're definitely here to help support 
16:43:36 you.
We don't want you to violate the law 
16:43:39 in any way.
As members of a city committee, you 
16:43:42 are public
16:43:46  officials when you are conducting the business of that position.

16:43:49 So what that means is
16:43:53  when you are working on business of the fair housing
16:43:57  advocacy committee then you are acting as a public official.

16:44:00 And so in that regard you are subject to
16:44:03  public records and so email
16:44:06  communications, text communications, anything in writing is
16:44:10  technically
16:44:14  subject to public records as well as 
16:44:16 quorum.
I don't remember off the top of my 
16:44:18 head what quorum is for this committee.

16:44:21 >> Eight.
>> Thank you, Niki.

16:44:24 So if eight of you were to get together in a social setting it's not
16:44:28  violating any sort of law.
It's if eight of you get together and 
16:44:31 start talking about the work of the committee and in that case we haven't
16:44:34  noticed the public that a quorum of the committee is convening
16:44:38  and talking about the business
16:44:41  of the committee.
And so that's kind of the lens to
16:44:44  think about it through which is if at least eight of you are together and 
16:44:47 you're talking about the business of this committee then it should be a 
16:44:51 public meeting so the public has access to your
16:44:54  discussions and deliberations which will lead to the
16:44:57  recommendations you inevitable make as a part
16:45:00  of the plan.
Is that
16:45:04  helpful?
>> Yes, thank you.

16:45:07 >> And so a key piece this is where some folks get tripped up,
16:45:10  do not do reply
16:45:14  alls to email about the business of the committee.

16:45:17 I know it's really easy to start an email thread and start
16:45:19  talking about something or asking questions.

16:45:22 That constitutes a
16:45:26  public meeting because you are, the entire committee or
16:45:29  a quorum is on an email thread and because
16:45:32  there's no way for the public to participate in that unless
16:45:35  I suppose we were doing some sort of live
16:45:40  stream chat, or the Oregon attorney general's guidance is that there can't 
16:45:44 be email meetings of public bodies.
So if it's
16:45:47  a reply all to like a question about a meeting of
16:45:50  this is we're meeting at 3:00, in general don't 
16:45:53 reply to all.
But it has to do with where these
16:45:57  threads start to go and sharing information and then asking
16:46:00  questions and then suggesting actions and
16:46:04  then we have an issue with the attorney general's guidance.
16:46:08 
Yeah, Jay,
16:46:11  groups of seven.
>>
16:46:15  I think also to note that this committee switch to a quarterly
16:46:18  meeting schedule and this was before it was handed to me.

16:46:21 But we could also put together some meetings that we
16:46:25  do properly notice I think if people decide that they want to focus
16:46:28  in on a certain subject as long as we get everything set
16:46:31  up I don't see a reason why we wouldn't be able to meet in between
16:46:35  those quarterly meetings as well to focus
16:46:38  if folks are concerned about the
16:46:42  time between these
16:46:46  meetings being quarterly.

16:46:51 Okay.
We have a public comment on the 
16:46:53 agenda.
And as it is a noticed public meeting, 
16:46:56 we want to make sure that anybody who is here to give public
16:47:02  comment can do so.
I'm going to go ahead and check our
16:47:05  list.
I had
16:47:09  one indication on registration that they'd like to provide public 
16:47:12 testimony.
I do not see them on the
16:47:15  list but just in case it is the phone
16:47:18  call Stephen Went.
Stephen, are you on the meeting?

16:47:26 Okay.
Are there any other members of the 
16:47:30 public that would like to give public
16:47:32  testimony or make public comment?
Feel free to unmute yourself.

16:47:44 Okay.
I guess we don't have any
16:47:47  public comment.
So we can go ahead and resume that 
16:47:50 conversation or we can end a little early if folks feel like we've covered
16:47:53  everything.
I've taken some notes.

16:47:56 The crosswalk came up obviously multiple times so we'll follow up with 
16:47:58 that.
Making sure that you guys have some 
16:48:01 more time to review the materials before you come in and the
16:48:05  materials that were sent out from
16:48:08  this meeting before the next quarterly
16:48:11  meeting.
Questions around what does enforcement 
16:48:14 look like, how are we addressing partners,
16:48:18  putting a pin on the FAIR ordinances
16:48:21  and any data or a conversation about that for the
16:48:25  next meeting.
And thinking and maybe discussing next 
16:48:28 time as well what does engagement and process look like outside of
16:48:30  meetings and what are folks capacity to do that.

16:48:36 >> Can I add one other thing to the list?

16:48:38 >> Yeah.
>> Could we get a list of the partners 
16:48:42 that have historically had recommendations made to
16:48:45  them and then maybe those that staff feel like
16:48:49  should be included but haven't been.
So partners that have 
16:48:52 impact on housing justice but have not historically received
16:48:55  recommendations from the committee.
I think that would just be really 
16:48:58 helpful in terms of
16:49:03  scoping as a group.

16:49:08 >> Okay.
With that then I think we can go ahead 
16:49:12 and end the meeting.
Thank you everyone for your time 
16:49:12 today.
We really appreciate it.

16:49:16 It's good to meet everyone.
And we will be sending out
16:49:19  materials to you as well as an event for next meeting shortly.
16:49:22 
>> Thanks everybody.

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