Not another one…

Portland Mayor Sam Adams has a plan for the University District. Depending on whom you ask, it’s called either an “urban renewal” or a disaster in the waiting.

Adams’ plan, unveiled in his January State of the City address, is to invest approximately $100 million into a new urban renewal area. The area selected was the University District.

A good amount of the money is meant to improve PSU. In particular, this is supposed to go toward affordable housing, which seems like a good thing at first. The Portland Housing Bureau has stated that the proposal could help them to keep housing in the University District affordable.

But if you look a little bit more closely, Adams’ proposal makes about as much sense as an Amish dating website.

Nobody at PSU could deny that there is a serious need for more affordable housing in the University District. Many students at PSU work for minimum wage and have to take out student loans just to afford rent. If housing became more affordable, wouldn’t that make life easier for PSU students in general? The answer is no.

In order for housing to be considered “affordable” at minimum wage, the rent paid monthly would have to amount to no more than 30 percent of the renter’s income. For a student working full-time and making minimum wage, this would amount to a maximum of $500.

The current average rent in Portland for a studio apartment is about $1,000 per month. A one-bedroom apartment averages $1,200 per month, and a two-bedroom averages $1,550 per month.

In order for someone making minimum wage to afford even a studio apartment in Portland, he’d have to either spend more than half his pay or work 80 hours per week for it to fall into the “affordable” housing range.

The urban renewal proposal would put $46 million in tax increment financing into the Portland Housing Bureau over the next 25 years. The PHB would then use this money to freeze housing costs in the urban renewal area at the currently assessed values. An apartment valued at $1,100 now would remain at $1,100 in 2013, 2018, 2025 and so on.

But this doesn’t change the fact that an apartment valued at $1,100 wouldn’t be considered “affordable” housing unless the person in question was making $3,600 per month. At the current minimum wage, that’s about 90 hours per week.

The PHB has attempted to get around this by suggesting that some of the funds be used to create new affordable housing projects in the University District. This would be good news for those genuinely in need.

Older people or those with disabilities would certainly benefit. People who have been put out of work by illness or injury could also qualify for these projects. And those who fall below the poverty line could also potentially qualify for affordable housing with the proper documentation.

That’s a lot of people, isn’t it? And considering that downtown Portland alone has lost more than 1,000 affordable housing units since 1994 (according to the PHB) that makes for a lot of housing that needs developing.

And it’s not as though this is the only urban renewal zone near PSU. The proposed urban renewal area actually overlaps another current urban renewal area in the park blocks. This area has been receiving funds and attention for 20 years, and it makes up over half the proposed area. If the already-existing urban renewal area hasn’t helped assuage the problem, what are the odds that the new one would?

There’s also the question of where this money would come from. The money is supposed to come largely from tax increment financing, which essentially means future tax increases would pay for the project.

In other words, the money going to create affordable housing in the urban renewal area would be a loan from future taxpayers. That doesn’t exactly sound very fair.

And, of course, it’s not as though improving the affordability of housing around PSU is going to help tuition any. In fact, with the future tax increases meant to subsidize this project, PSU could probably justify another tuition increase because of the property value-based tax increases that would follow in the area. Students would be footing the bill twice over.

Adams’ urban renewal proposal for the University District is poorly thought-out and relies too heavily on future tax dollars to be beneficial in the long run for PSU students. It fails to outline precisely how it will impact housing affordability or how it differs from the long-running urban renewal in the park blocks (which, by the way, will continue being subsidized by tax dollars well into the 2020s).

In short, the urban renewal proposal makes little sense. It should be thrown out altogether before someone decides to take it seriously.