Why affordable housing is in crisis. “There’s a disconnect between waitlist administrators and the homeless”

Photo above - 178 new constructed affordable apartments in Portland. Read below to find out why places like this are vacant . . .

How many unhoused people does Portland have? At least 7,800. Many are from out of state, lured by the promise of easy living and drug access. Those folks are either living in tents, or their cars, or under bridges.

Thousands of subsidized and rent capped units are empty. See link at bottom.

It would be easy to say “rent caps don’t fix everything.” Especially if someone has zero income and is a current – or recovering – addict. In fact addicts can't qualify for rent assistance at in Portland if they're still using. Something about landlords have bad experiences with copper pipe and fixtures being stripped from units. Well, that would be a reasonable concern, right?

The entire program is a maze of ever-changing restrictions, subsidy levels, waitlist time periods, and landlord certification. And then there are the flood repairs, which take forever to fix.

What the link below doesn’t address is the (cinematic) truism: “if you build it, they will come.” If a city has drug tolerance, a police force which has been ordered to stand down, and a cornucopia of programs which might – someday – give you a free apartment, who could resist buying that lottery ticket? If you’re a homeless addict Portland might be a better bet than Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City . . . even though some of those places vow to cap rents on millions of additional apartments.

Government didn’t create the drug crisis. (Well, in a way it did, through failure to secure our borders and arrest cartel traffickers). But it hardly seems fair to expect a bunch of well meaning kids with BA degrees in sociology or English lit to move millions of homeless addicts off the streets and into free apartments.

Attacking drugs might be a first step. Then, how about constructing apartments with PVC pipes, instead of copper?

I’m just sayin . . .



Portland affordable housing is in financial collapse. Can it be salvaged?