Portland's mayor, Tom Potter, is headed for an embarrassing failure of HAP scholarship and elected leadership. Without your help it is likely that by the Potter administration's six month anniversary and deadline for his Public Housing Policy 101 final exam, June 30, 2005, what little credibility Tom had with respect to his role as Multnomah County Public Housing Policy Czar will have been squandered.

In order to help Tom you must leave the bleachers and get down on to the playing field.

To help mayor Potter, <tpotter@ci.portland.or.us> , he needs to hear your voice: [Please copy and paste whatever parts of the short note below you choose and add any additional comments into your own email to the mayor. Don't wait or the game will be over before you get a chance to play. Time is of the essence.]

Dear Mayor Potter:
In September of 2004 you said that if elected you would order HAP to provide public housing data by neighborhood. On January 26, 2005 you ordered HAP to provide public housing data by neighborhood. On June 6, 2005, almost 19 weeks later, you appear inexplicably and indefensibly powerless to control public housing commissioners that serve at your pleasure because there is no available public evidence , http://www.hapdx.org/ , to prove that your instructions have been carried out. You must immediately assert your authority and make good on your promise by demanding the public availability 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 (0-30,31-50,51-80%). Since this data will be in constant flux it is also necessary to instruct HAP to provide updated versions once a month which can be downloaded from HAP's website by any member of the public.

It is not possible for any mayor of Portland to succeed in their statutory role as Multnomah County Public Housing Czar without a staff person whose portfolio includes liaison duties with HAP, HCDC and PDC. As of June 6, 2005 there appears to be no available public evidence, http://www.portlandonline.com/mayor/index.cfm?c=38511 , that you have assigned these crucial responsibilities to any single member of your staff. Without a highly competent staff person to regularly brief you on their behavior there is no one who will believe that as mayor of Portland you could possibly fulfill your obligation to guide, monitor, supervise and coordinate the activities of the twenty-nine public housing commissioners who are responsible only to you and who serve at your pleasure. In order to establish your fundamental baseline credibility it is essential that you immediately post on your staff web site a person with responsibility for interacting with all the housing commissioners at HAP, HCDC and PDC.

There is no better way for you to demonstrate that you have established the necessary authority with your twenty-nine public housing commissioners than to gather them all together for a chat while breaking bread over a light meal. You tell them what your public housing policy goals are, they tell you what they intend to do as appointed public housing commissioners and the public gets a sense that you are in charge and providing responsible oversight of the annual spending of $200,000,000 of their money on public housing in Multnomah county. There is very little effort required for a very big credibility payoff. You should do this before June 30th. 

Tom, you need to do at least these three things to lay the foundation for future success with your public housing policy responsibilities. Good luck.

Tom Potter supporter