Climate change is here and the wrong people are paying for it. Every summer it gets a little harder to pretend we don't know what's coming. The heat that traps you inside for days. The smoke that turns the sky orange. Treeless neighborhoods without shade or relief become heat islands, while other parts of the city stay breezy, green and comfortable. This is not the future we were warned about, this is the present we endure. And it’s hitting some Portlanders much harder than others.

The system was rigged against you.Your rent went up, again, and it was no accident.

Corporate landlords like Greystar Management were using software technology to secretly coordinate rent hikes across the city, essentially colluding to charge you as much as possible. This wasn't the market working, it was the market being rigged. You had no way of knowing, and most people still don't.

When people can't afford to stay housed, we all see what happens next. Portland's homelessness crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It is the direct result of a skyrocketing housing market that has failed working people for years. Rents artificially driven up. Not enough affordable housing built. A city permitting process that’s so slow, expensive, and complicated that even people trying to do the right thing get bogged down by overwhelming red tape. Honestly, our city government shouldn't be this hard to work with.

Portlanders deserve a public safety and crisis response system that is effective, accountable, and responsive to the real needs of our community. For far too long, our city has relied on a one sized fits all approach to public safety. That meant sending armed officers into situations that require medical care, mental health expertise, and/or social services. Oversight and transparency have too often taken a back seat, eroding public trust and leaving important questions unanswered about how public resources are being used. 

We can do better. Public safety works best when it is built around prevention, care, accountability, and community trust.

There are things a city owes its people – not a favor or a reward – but a basic obligation of government to the people it serves.

Safe streets are one of them. Reliable transit is one of them. Roads that are maintained, lights that work, sidewalks that don't swallow you whole. These are not luxuries, they are the floor. They are what you are supposed to get in exchange for living and paying into a city, trusting it will hold up its end of the deal.

For too many Portlanders, for too long, that deal has not been honored.

Have you ever tried to figure out what your city government is actually doing everyday? Not from a press release. Not from a social media post. The real day to day and ins and outs of the city’s leadership, systems and governing. Most people give up,– not because they don't care, but because it feels like you need a political science degree and a decoder ring just to get started. Meetings scheduled at 9:30am on a Monday when everyone is working or in school, documents written in wonky language nobody uses in real life, and decisions made behind locked doors in rooms most people don't even know exist. That's no accident. That’s exclusion. And it's not okay.