Blogtown, PDX: Meet the Contenders - Question #10

The Portland Mercury's Blogtown, PDX site has been producing a weekly series of questions for the various candidates running in the Portland mayor and city council races. This series is a great way to meet the candidates and learn about the issues affecting the public and Portland city government. We're reproducing (with permission) Chris's responses here, while also providing links to the original Blogtown posts.

Question #10:

(Original Post from Feb. 21, 2008)

Stakeholders in Old Town Chinatown—homeless advocates, the Chinese community, residents, business owners, developers, the PDC—have been at odds over where to site a homeless day access center, raising issues about process and power as they debate future development in the neighborhood. How would you, as city commissioner, handle such a hot button issue? What’s the solution for siting the homeless day access center?

Chris's Response:

It’s important to recognize that there are multiple threads of conversation going on here.

The Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood has historically been supportive of the social service agencies located within its boundaries. It’s disheartening to see that as the demographics of the neighborhood change, this support is diminishing, and something that looks a lot like NIMBYism seems to be emerging.

But there are also legitimate questions being raised about whether Block 25 is indeed the right site within the neighborhood. Alternative sites have been suggested, and as Commissioner I would be careful to distinguish legitimate and thoughtful questions from NIMBY sentiments. My experience is that all too often the press and sometimes our leaders fail to distinguish between the two, labeling anything other than immediate support as NIMBYism.

My belief is that the day access center is a key part of the plan to deal with homelessness in our City, and this neighborhood is the location where the center can be most effective. My job as Commissioner would be first to listen, then to sort through the community response, teasing out the meaningful issues from the reactive noise and working to build the broadest possible base of support for an effective location.