The last time a member of Portland's City Council had the authority but neither the personal knowledge nor anyone on his staff with sufficient competency in computer technology to successfully deal with the power of that authority was when city commissioner Erik Sten had responsibility for managing the Water Bureau. His failure to understand or hire someone on his staff who understood the role of computers cost Portland rate payers about $30,000,000. Today we have a mayor, Tom Potter, who is in the same position.

Mayor Potter has been conned by HAP's Chair, Kandis Nunn, into believing that it will take from nine months to a year to add a neighborhood field to each of HAP's client records in its computer database. Total Crap. But, Potter being ignorant of computer technology - like Sten - and without computer literate staff - like Sten - disregards outside professional advice and takes the easy incurious road buying whatever story is being sold without realizing the resulting consequences. Potter, like Sten, appears incompetent to handle the situation. Which, relative to the Water Bureau and HAP's computer status, turns out to actually be the case.

The goal is to put on the public table a discussion and debate of the necessity to quantify Portland/Multnomah county's public housing policy. The current policy ostensibly supports the distribution of public housing clients throughout Multnomah county's 117 neighborhoods not concentration of public housing clients into a few select neighborhoods. However, in practice just the opposite is true. [There is a high probability that HAP et. al. have for years assiduously prevented the publication of public housing data by neighborhood to conceal the dichotomy between policy and practice.]

This goal CANNOT be accomplished without public housing data by neighborhood from HAP, HCDC and PDC.

What Did They Know And When Did They Know It?
On September 7, 2004 HAP Chair Kandis Nunn and the entire board of the Housing Authority of Portland were informed that WHOEVER became mayor on January 1, 2005 would require HAP to provide public housing information by neighborhood. That data could have and should have been on the mayor's desk the day he arrived at city hall.

[See complete interview here: *http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/MayoralInterview.html ]

On January 3, 2005, during inauguration festivities, mayor Potter tells Richard Ellmyer that he has already spoken to HAP about providing public housing data by neighborhood as he had promised in September of 2004.

On January 26, 2005, during a city council meeting, mayor Potter, most certainly for the benefit of Richard Ellmyer who was present in the council chamber, instructed Housing Authority of Portland Chair Kandis Nunn, who was also present, to provide public housing data by neighborhood.

On February 28, 2005, during a public budget hearing in North Portland, mayor Potter asks Richard Ellmyer if he has received the data he instructed HAP to provide the previous month. Potter seems puzzled when Ellmyer tells him that he has received nothing and has had no communication from HAP whatsoever. It was obvious that the mayor assumed, and rightly so, that the project had already been completed.

On May 2, 2005, an email from Sara Culp, who presumably is taking the place of the former "disappearing" public housing policy liaison, Jamall Folsom, informed me that public housing data by neighborhood would not be available until September of 2005.
[See http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/WhatDidTheyKnow.html]

The Process of Address Conversion - Three Methods
Method 1 - Manually
A person given the singular task of editing database records by entering a neighborhood into a group of records sorted by street address could comfortably repeat this task at least 368 times a day. Starting on January 26, 2005 the task of editing database records by entering a neighborhood into a file of 35,000 records would have been completed by June 8, 2005.
[See http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/ConversionProcess.html]

Method 2 - Looping Computer Script
A professional computer programmer writes a small script which takes HAP's database file and runs a loop into the already written address to neighborhood conversion program. The loop does this: If this is a valid address then give me the neighborhood attached to this address and write it in this field. Save record. Next record until done. This could be accomplished in a matter of hours.
[See http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/ConversionProcess.html]

Method 3 - Geocode Database
A professional computer programmer adds a link between an address field and a neighborhood list which will automatically gather a neighborhood designation from a fixed set of already established address parameters. This could be done in a matter of hours.
[See http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/SecondOpinion.html]

Portland's mayor will most likely find it IMPOSSIBLE to find a computer professional inside (including programmers in the water bureau) or outside of city hall that will publicly accept the argument that using any of the three methods for address conversion, manual-looping script-geocode, would take nine months to a year to add a neighborhood field to every HAP client record..

When Asked To Produce Potter's Public Housing Data By Neighborhood HAP Says, We don't have it. But if we did, you want data you PAY for it.

HAP has been told on three occasions, 40, 24 and 20 weeks ago that they would be expected to produce public housing data by neighborhood. When asked on June 1st for a copy of this data or a progress report on whichever of the three processes were being used or an explanation of why none of these processes has begun*, HAP replied on June 14th, "As you know, we are participating in a collective effort to map where affordable housing exists in the metro area, by neighborhood.We would be happy to treat your additional request as a public records request.  Under our public records policy, there would be costs associated with this request, that the requester must bear, to comply with the formatting and level of detail requested."

First, I didn't ask for nor do I care if HAP is "participating in a collective effort to map where affordable housing exists." Affordable housing is NOT necessarily public housing. I, and several others, have asked for public housing data by neighborhood in the form of, "a tab delimited text file containing approximately 35,000 HAP client records each with only two fields, one with a neighborhood, one with a HAP designation of median income." 

Second, it's obvious that HAP has not yet begun ANY of the processes which would accomplish the task mayor Potter asked for 40, 24 and 20 weeks ago.

Third, I didn't ask for any special "formatting and level of detail." I asked for the same public housing data by neighborhood that Potter promised to deliver to the public many months ago free of charge.
*[See http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/AnswersDueJune1.html]

So Tom, HAP kisses you off 3 times in 40 weeks, gives me - and every citizen of Multnomah county - a bureaucratic gobbledegook brushoff answer that includes an outrageous requirement to charge any citizen who requests the data you told HAP to provide to the public. What are you going to do about it?

Richard Ellmyer
President, MacSolutions Inc. - A Macintosh computer consulting business providing web hosting for artists and very small businesses.
Writer/Publisher - HAP Watcher commentary* - Published on the Internet* and distributed to 3500 readers interested in public housing policy in Multnomah County.
Portsmouth - formerly the 18%, currently the 6% solution neighborhood, North Portland
* http://www.goodgrowthnw.org