HAP, Columbia Villa, Ellmyer, The Term "Institutional Arrogance" Comes To Mind

In a mood approaching jubilation the Portland Development Commission was about to proceed to vote to award the Housing Authority of Portland seven million dollars. The joyousness of this institutional public love feast was shattered when a voice in the back of the room shouted, "excuse me, but there are citizens who would like to be heard on this matter." Dead silence.

Despite introductory handshakes and a request to sign up to testify made before the meeting, neither executive director, Don Mazziotti nor the PDC staff secretary choose to alert the commissioners that there was at least one citizen who had been patiently waiting three hours to testify. In their ebullient self-congratulatory mood not a single PDC commissioner remembered that they were conducting a PUBLIC hearing, presumably to aid in their decision making process, not a private deal making session. In stunned silence the PDC, commissioners and staff, sat with the thought that had it not been for a citizen intervention they would have voted to pass seven million dollars in taxpayers money to HAP without the required due process of asking uninvited players to participate. This omission is considered a serious NO NO in the democratic process.

Commissioner Noell Webb challenged the huge map of estimated HAP clients by neighborhood with her perception that more pockets of low-income HAP clients could be found in NE Portland. When confronted with the fact that she was merely speculating and, like HAP, had no evidence to support her conjecture she withdrew into silence.

Commissioner Doug Blomgren would have astounded his fellow lawyers at Preston Gates Ellis and the entire legal community had they heard his response. Bloomgren argued that prominent facts of the matter were of no consequence to him. HAP's bullying and deceitful gerrymandering of the Interstate Light Rail Corridor Urban Renewal District and HAP's refusal to divulge basic accounting information would not influence his vote. Tucked away on the 7th floor of a downtown building, with no press, no electronic media, surrounded by paid staff, Mr. Blomgren can get away with ignoring the facts sitting in his comfortable commissioner's chair. However, I strongly suspect this cavalier attitude wouldn't do him, his firm or his clients much good in a courtroom or a public debate where dealing with all the facts does make a difference.

None of the other commissioners or staff refuted my testimony. For a group that seems to pride itself on its professional business acumen the PDC showed no signs of interest in compelling their sister agency into divulging basic accounting information which would have been a requirement for any other ordinary business transaction. One has to ask, would these people have made similar decisions with their own money and businesses at stake? Conservative professional business practices collapsed under the weight of political expediency.

The Portland Development Commission wrongfully handed over seven million dollars to HAP. It had no business rewarding HAP for strong arming its way onto the map of the Interstate Light Rail Corridor Urban Renewal District. It had no business rewarding HAP for lying about its motives to only seek leverage with HUD not Urban Renewal funds. It had no business destroying the trust citizens of Portland might have in the legitimacy of any future Urban Renewal programs administered by PDC.

Should the PDC have "forgotten" to put a tape in their recording machine as they "forgot" to call for public testimony I include my public comments made before the PDC on June 11, 2003.

In June of 2001, without fanfare or serious public discussion, the Portland City Council, without identifying the funding sources, committed $20 million of scarce public resources to a highly controversial project in social engineering at Columbia Villa. Two years latter we can identify the sources. One of them is the Portland Development Commission. The PDC has committed 7 million tax increment dollars taken from the Interstate Light Rail Corridor Urban Renewal District .

Boundaries for Urban renewal districts are typically and justifiably created in generalized shapes such as squares, rectangles or circles reflecting the need to extend additional economic development opportunities to the area most affected by some new project. This mapping concept is easily understood and supported by the public. The boundaries for the Interstate Light Rail Corridor Urban Renewal District should have roughly corresponded to a corridor shape perhaps as much as half a mile on either side of the tracks. Instead, it turns out that the boundaries for the Interstate Light Rail Corridor Urban Renewal District were extended almost three miles west of Interstate Avenue in a giant irregular balloon shape under pressure from HAP with the understanding that the clearly gerrymandered district would be used only for leverage to secure a grant from HUD and not to access urban renewal dollars.

Columbia Villa has nothing whatsoever to do with support for economic development along the Interstate light rail corridor. A letter written by the North Portland Business Association identifying HAP’s breach of faith by asking for funds almost immediately after reluctant inclusion into the Interstate Light Rail Corridor Urban Renewal District has been on the public record for two years. The Portland Development Commission will permanently scar its reputation with citizens in our city the moment a single dollar of Interstate Light Rail Corridor Urban Renewal District funds shows up in a HAP bank account.

Behind me is a map of HAP client distribution throughout its jurisdiction, Multnomah County. This map was created with the help of the Portland Chapter of the NAACP, the Arbor Lodge neighborhood association, Metro’s data resource center and the community geography project at Portland State University.

Next to it is HAP’s map of client distribution throughout its jurisdiction. [point to blank poster board]
Here is a table which lists the costs to house similar clients on HAP owned property and Section 8 private property for all 117 neighborhoods in Multnomah County.

Here is HAP’s table with similar information. [point to blank poster board]

If I tell you that HAP spends four times as much to house clients on their property as opposed to private Section 8 housing would you or could you challenge that? In times of budget shortfalls, in fact any time, would you vote to fund a program that costs four times its alternative for the same results?

When I say that your yes vote for HAP funding will support HAP's policy of maintaining Portsmouth as the neighborhood with the highest number of taxpayer-supported low-income Housing Authority of Portland clients not only within HAP's jurisdiction but also among all the neighborhoods in the state of Oregon, what evidence will you use to dispute that claim?

If you do not know the answers to the following five basic accounting questions then what evidence and research will you use to justify your support for the Housing Authority of Portland’s Columbia Villa remodel project? Those questions are:
1. How many clients does HAP serve and where are they located by neighborhood?
2. Will the Portsmouth neighborhood still have the highest number of low-income HAP qualified clients in the City of Portland, Multnomah County and the state of Oregon after the proposed Villa remodel?
3. What is the difference in cost to house similar clients in HAP owned housing versus section 8 vouchers?
4. What is the true market value of the property and the land HAP plans to demolish and sell at Columbia Villa?
5. Does everyone agree that HAP's plan to sell public land below market rate is a good idea?