Some Of My Best Friends Are Porcupines 11/3/03

Renee Mitchell, Oregonian columnist, continues to renew our american faith in the value of a free press. Mitchell does her homework, gets the facts right, shows insight, demonstrates a genuine commitment to the well being of our community and tempers a sharp style with humor. Her recent column regarding Richard Ellmyer's role in bringing the issue of public housing policy to the public agenda, If you dismiss messenger, you miss the point, is an excellent example. *

* http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/renee_mitchell/index.ssf?/base/news/106769134736900.xml

Politics is always a contact sport. Sometimes a blood sport. If you are not prepared to bleed or draw blood you must get off the field.

To all of those publicly elected officials, candidates to be publicly elected officials, appointed public officials and all of their staffs who find being publicly challenged on issues of public policy "annoying", stop whining and get over it. You asked for the jobs you hold. You get prestige, power and pay - so stop complaining. The practice of democracy is a tough, messy business.

Over the last thirty-three months a growing list of around two thousand Oregonians have received HAP Watcher email reports. With the exception of publicly elected or appointed officials, those who are not interested can opt out at any time. Yet very few have chosen to stop. Why? Because neither the political establishment, nor the press have chosen to even acknowledge the issue of public housing policy much less display a willingness to discuss it in a public forum or write about it. HAP watchers are Oregonians, voters who are interested in how we govern ourselves. HAP watchers are interested because no one else is telling this important story.

Perhaps the most intriguing revelation in Mitchell's column * was the repeated comment that officials involved with public housing policy wouldn't publicly acknowledge their support for a public policy of distribution versus concentration of low-income public housing clients and support neighborhood based accounting as evidence because Richard Ellmyer advocates for that position. Since when does publicly supporting an established public policy have anything to do with what some individual citizen you find "annoying" has to say? Has anyone ever heard the old saying, "politics makes for strange bedfellows?" What do you think that means? And some of these people aspire to public office. Just what we need, more ego based public policy makers.

So, Where Are We Today? - A Public Policy Progress Report

One the one hand:
1. HAP arrogantly continues to refuse to provide evidence by neighborhood statistics that it is neither overtly, covertly or inadvertently housing its clients in a few select neighborhoods AND is steadfastly delusional about its claim that "no one but Ellmyer seems interested in the information." *

On the other hand;
1. Renee Mitchell has unearthed a city of Portland public housing policy statement of enormous importance. "In 1993 Portland adopted a location strategy that discourages low-income housing from being clustered in any one neighborhood." Andy Miller, acting housing program manager for the city's Bureau of Housing says "the intention of the city's location policy and Ellmyer's crusade to decentralize poverty are one in the same." Excellent. So now the same question arises for the city as for HAP: How does the city of Portland know whether it is overtly, covertly or inadvertently complying with it own policy of low-income housing client distribution? The answer is the same as for HAP, without data and a map by neighborhood it doesn't know either.

2. At a Planning Commission meeting reviewing the St. Johns/Lombard Plan, after seeing a map identifying HAP clients by neighborhood ** and hearing a report from the Portland Planning Bureau that identified "lack of buying power" as a major negative component in attracting businesses to certain neighborhoods in North Portland, Rick Michaelson, VP Portland Planning Commission, asked for and got ideas about how to stop concentration of low-income housing clients in North Portland neighborhoods. Most, if not all, of the members of the Portland Planning Commission discuss, acknowledge, and make decisions based on values and testimony from neighborhoods. No member of the commission acknowledged being influenced by zip codes or zip code groups.

3. In a private meeting, Matt Hennessee, Portland Development Commission Chair, was shown the same map as Rick Michaelson and the Portland Planning Commission. Hennessee noted the importance of neighborhoods, supported distribution rather than concentration of low-income housing clients and, significantly, offered the idea that perhaps establishing a cap on the percentage of housing clients allowed in any neighborhood would be worthy of public discussion. He was right on all counts.

4. "Nick Fish says he agrees with Ellmyer's philosophical point. But he would like to see all the housing-related agencies -- including the Portland Development Commission -- contribute their information to a neighborhood-based map, too. "As a matter of policy," Fish says, "I think it makes perfect sense." * I don't know where Nick Fish has been the last couple of years as he warmed a seat on the HAP board but apparently there is nothing like running for public office to focus one's positions. Nevertheless Nick Fish is an exceptionally bright and talented politician. If he maintains his newly minted public position on neighborhood based mapping of low-income public housing clients I'll be throwing bravos not boulders in his direction. [See my comments above about politics and bedfellows.]

5. Willamette Week recently castigated HAP for censoring communications between citizens and HAP's board members. ***

6. Renee Mitchell, Oregonian columnist, asks the question, "Is the city's 10-year mandate to stop clustering low-income people into only a few neighborhoods having an impact? "Let's see the evidence," says [Ellmyer] the North Portland resident, "to see if they do or they don't." Ellmyer has a valid point." She closes her piece with a hint of poetry, "this city can no longer afford to listen to the echoes of accumulated silence. If we're wrong, let's make it right. But we'll never know by just pushing a delete button."

** http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/Map.html
***
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/WWRogue.html
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/WWletter.html

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