Our City Issues
Homelessness
Unregulated camping has been a disaster for both Portland and the homeless population. Unpredictable movements of people experiencing severe addiction or mental health issues through neighborhoods is a recipe for disaster. Letting people who can’t care for themselves sleep on street corners in the rain is cruelty.
Doing nothing was never a solution. We must immediately provide sufficient emergency space in shelters or designated regulated campsites. By providing sufficient space we overcome the legal barriers to enforcing camping, sanitation, and litter rules. By registering these spaces by name to homeless campers we create the capability to track needs, offer continuity of support, and work toward long term solutions.
Public Safety
We need to correctly size our public safety apparatus. Portland had 180 police officers per 100,000 residents in 2002. Today we have 120. We let the Police Bureau and our public safety sector slowly decline while the city it served grew, effectively starving the agencies. Decisions like the disbanding of the Gun Violence Reduction Team had a hand in the unprecedented spike in homicides in Portland. Doing nothing is never the answer. We must embrace proactive policing.
The Police Bureau and the Bureau of Emergency Communications have amazing employees. At the same time the public is not receiving the service it needs and deserves. We have to reinstate appropriate capacity.
Accountability
I’m happy to pay taxes that drive great services, but I don’t believe Portland is achieving good returns on our investments. Consider that this city spent approximately $700 million over the last two years on housing and homelessness and achieved no reduction in the number of people sleeping on the streets.
We need to think carefully about how the city government uses the money entrusted to it. Each dollar squandered is a lost opportunity to do something meaningful for the people who live here and our community’s future.
Business and Building
We cannot increase the tax burden on Portland residents any further. We are already seeing an exodus of families and businesses. We have to shift from being an obstacle to a partner. No community can thrive without successful businesses and we cannot achieve our goals on housing, homelessness, or revitalization if we have the most difficult permitting system in the region.
Reducing permitting timelines, working with instead of against developers to get to yes, and increasing our housing supply benefits all of us. I support the adoption of pre-approved ADU designs to reduce cost to Portlanders who can help us build and believe this program could be scaled to multi-family units.
Revitalizing Downtown
To restore our downtown as an economic hub we have to end the chaos that plays out on our streets and then bring in positive new activity to replace it.
Ending street camping and increased enforcement can make our downtown a better place to live, work, and do business. We also need to shine a spotlight on Oregon’s failure to provide adequate space at the State Hospital for people clearly in need of long term stabilization who wander our streets.
We need to bring exciting and new opportunities into that environment. It is time to start thinking about downtown as a tourism hub and not just office space. We need to reimagine the waterfront as an attraction for locals and visitors.
We can use a portion of hotel tax revenues to create the Portland Pass. Anyone who stays in a hotel within the city limits should receive a voucher for free public transportation for the duration of their stay. We can be the first city in the U.S. to provide a car free tourism experience that is environmentally and business friendly.
Our Mission
At the core of Eli’s approach is a belief that you must know a problem to solve it. He believes that his hands-on experience with homelessness, crime, policing, and livability issues is a needed perspective. He wants to help repair the damage and be an agent of change to restore the Portland we all know and love.
