HAP, Columbia Villa, Ellmyer, Neighborhood ECONOMIC Diversity Is The Goal Hi Renee Mitchell: I am always impressed when you address public policy issues. There was a great deal of substance in your piece, Keeping Villa diverse requires special attention.* However, I am very wary of your injection of race as a factor in the Villa remodel story. This slant is unhealthy for our community and wrong in this case. The Villa story is about neighborhoods and public housing policy relating to low-income clients. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with economics, neighborhood stability and community balance. While I have probably been HAP's severest public critic, at no time have I ever even suggested that anything HAP has done was race based. HAP must be held accountable for many many things but racism is not one of them. I welcome to become new neighbors in my Portsmouth neighborhood every race, every ethnic minority, every sexual orientation, every gender, every person with or without a religious belief - including Arab Muslims, every height, every weight, even Republicans, in fact, absolutely any person or family, natural or extended, that can comfortably afford to buy a $200,000 and up house. The diversity I support at the Villa and throughout my neighborhood is ECONOMIC DIVERSITY. Rick Michaelson, Planning Commission VP observed my map which clearly shows my Portsmouth neighborhood as the number one of 117 neighborhood in Multnomah county with the highest number of low-income HAP clients. (The Villa is NOT a "neighborhood" as you wrote. For the twenty-eight years that I have lived eight blocks away it has been an isolated government compound. And since Don Clark was in charge it included a necessary, full time, on site police presence. The entire point of this $135 million remodel effort is to INTEGRATE Columbia Villa residents into Portsmouth, which is a neighborhood.) Michealson and other members of the Portland Planning Commission accepted the report of the Portland Planning Bureau which found that Portsmouth and surrounding neighborhoods could not attract businesses because there was a statistical "lack of buying power." Michealson publicly asked for and got ideas from me about how the Planning Commission could stop more low-income housing from being built in Portsmouth and how they could encourage more home ownership in the $200,000 and up range. Matt Hennessee, PDC Chair, thought a cap on the number of low-income clients in any neighborhood might be a good idea. Henessee, Michaelson and many others understand that concentrations of low-income public housing clients is an economic issue that is bad public policy. Dispersion of low-income public housing clients is the official housing policy of the City of Portland. It has nothing to do with race. The HAP board is run more like a private club than a public institution that has statutory authority to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars. I have already told Mayor Katz and the rest of the city council that I want access to every public document related to the next HAP appointment to fill the Nick Fish vacancy and I want to be notified of any public meetings which relate to that appointment so that I may testify. I hope you'll be there to cover the story. Thanks for your continuing interest. * http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/renee_mitchell/index.ssf?/base/news/1070456289175232.xml Richard Ellmyer Portsmouth neighborhood

Hi Renee Mitchell:
I am always impressed when you address public policy issues. There was a great deal of substance in your piece, Keeping Villa diverse requires special attention.* However, I am very wary of your injection of race as a factor in the Villa remodel story. This slant is unhealthy for our community and wrong in this case. The Villa story is about neighborhoods and public housing policy relating to low-income clients. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with economics, neighborhood stability and community balance. While I have probably been HAP's severest public critic, at no time have I ever even suggested that anything HAP has done was race based. HAP must be held accountable for many many things but racism is not one of them.

I welcome to become new neighbors in my Portsmouth neighborhood every race, every ethnic minority, every sexual orientation, every gender, every person with or without a religious belief - including Arab Muslims, every height, every weight, even Republicans, in fact, absolutely any person or family, natural or extended, that can comfortably afford to buy a $200,000 and up house. The diversity I support at the Villa and throughout my neighborhood is ECONOMIC DIVERSITY.

Rick Michaelson, Planning Commission VP observed my map which clearly shows my Portsmouth neighborhood as the number one of 117 neighborhood in Multnomah county with the highest number of low-income HAP clients. (The Villa is NOT a "neighborhood" as you wrote. For the twenty-eight years that I have lived eight blocks away it has been an isolated government compound. And since Don Clark was in charge it included a necessary, full time, on site police presence. The entire point of this $135 million remodel effort is to INTEGRATE Columbia Villa residents into Portsmouth, which is a neighborhood.) Michealson and other members of the Portland Planning Commission accepted the report of the Portland Planning Bureau which found that Portsmouth and surrounding neighborhoods could not attract businesses because there was a statistical "lack of buying power." Michealson publicly asked for and got ideas from me about how the Planning Commission could stop more low-income housing from being built in Portsmouth and how they could encourage more home ownership in the $200,000 and up range.

Matt Hennessee, PDC Chair, thought a cap on the number of low-income clients in any neighborhood might be a good idea. Henessee, Michaelson and many others understand that concentrations of low-income public housing clients is an economic issue that is bad public policy. Dispersion of low-income public housing clients is the official housing policy of the City of Portland. It has nothing to do with race.

The HAP board is run more like a private club than a public institution that has statutory authority to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars. I have already told Mayor Katz and the rest of the city council that I want access to every public document related to the next HAP appointment to fill the Nick Fish vacancy and I want to be notified of any public meetings which relate to that appointment so that I may testify. I hope you'll be there to cover the story. Thanks for your continuing interest.

* http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/renee_mitchell/index.ssf?/base/news/1070456289175232.xml

Richard Ellmyer
Portsmouth neighborhood