Sal Peralta

Peralta Is a city councilor in McMinnville.

I have a great deal of sympathy for Portland. A 2018 survey found more than half of Portlanders were dissatisfied with how the mayor and city council are addressing homelessness, and over a third of residents had considered leaving the city.

As a city councilor in a rural community facing a similar crisis, I believe that both the mayor and city are being wrongly blamed for a statewide problem. State regulations and policies have contributed to a lack of housing supply and to our homelessness crisis. The governor and the Oregon Legislature should be leading the effort to address it.

There is a common misconception that homelessness is primarily a Portland or Eugene problem. Not true. McMinnville has seen the loss of hundreds of permanent and temporary housing options for people at the lower end of the economic ladder, especially those living in trailers and RV’s. Many work in or near the city and have had nowhere to go but the public streets.

In fact, rural regions in Oregon rank near the top for homelessness among rural regions across the country, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2018 annual report on homelessness. Oregon also leads other states in rural homelessness among veterans, families with children, unaccompanied minors and chronic homeless individuals. Unlike Portland, where 60 percent of homeless individuals have access to emergency shelter, only 30 percent have shelter access in much of rural Oregon, according to a March 2019 ECONorthwest report.

These problems are exacerbated by failures of state government. Oregon ranks first in prevalence of adult mental illness, according to Mental Health America, but fails to provide sufficient treatment or care. A Washington County judge recently held the state in contempt for violating the rights of mentally ill defendants in need of treatment and evaluation, as The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Problems in the state’s foster care system are contributing to homelessness: National statistics from the National Foster Youth Institute show that one in five who age out of the foster care will be instantly homeless.

Homelessness is not a Portland problem, it is an Oregon crisis. Yet, despite the broad impacts of this crisis, there is little direct support from the state to cities, especially smaller ones, struggling to address housing and homelessness. Indeed, policies adopted by the Legislature often create barriers for local governments.

For example, although the state’s recent rent control law will limit some predatory offenses, it does not address the underlying problem of affordability, which is a lack of housing inventory. Companies are already circumventing rent control by tacking on monthly fees for utilities and other services that they weren’t charging for in the past.

Many state policies to address housing affordability are built for Portland – not smaller communities. For example, the state allows cities to require builders to include affordable housing in buildings of at least 20 units. That doesn’t work in McMinnville, which hasn’t had a project of such size for at least 30 years. A bill in the current legislative session that would allow inclusionary zoning in smaller developments was derailed in the Oregon Senate after passing 51-8 in the House.

A bill that would help local governments direct local dollars to housing affordability has also stalled.Senate Bill 595, which is stuck in the Senate Revenue Committee, would let cities use a portion of the Transient Lodging Tax to address housing. It should be passed in this session. If legislators can’t or won’t help cities, they should at least untie our hands.

From an administrative standpoint, the governor should consider declaring an emergency to address both homelessness and housing affordability, like Hawaii’s governor has done. The declaration made it easier to reduce costs and regulations related to the siting of workforce housing and emergency shelter.

Oregon is currently second in the nation in unsheltered homelessness. We have no place to put people except the public streets. If that’s not an emergency, I don’t know what is.