Councilor Candace Avalos defended the trip, saying that social housing, which is prevalent in Vienna, may be the solution to housing affordability in Portland.
PORTLAND, Oregon — This week, about 20 people, including three city councilors and their chiefs of staff, are heading on a taxpayer-funded work trip abroad to see how social housing works in Vienna, Austria.
Social housing, or public housing, is housing owned and operated by government or nonprofits rather than developers and property managers and where rents are set at an affordable rate. Sixty percent of Vienna’s population lives in social housing.
“We’re not planning the trip; we are joining a bunch of other civic leaders who want to learn more about Vienna’s social housing program,” Councilor Candace Avalos said Tuesday. “They are known worldwide for their social housing. This is an opportunity for us to see it in person and to experience the things that are hard when you read it on paper; it’s one thing when you can see it and talk to the leaders and talk to the people that the residents that are experiencing it to just better understand how they implement it as local government.”
Councilors Jamie Dunphy and Mitch Green are joining Avalos, along with their chiefs of staff and three people from the Portland Housing Bureau. There are also non-city employees going on the trip.
Avalos said she did not know off the top of her head how much in taxpayer dollars is going towards the trip, and a spokesperson for her office said they can’t speak to questions about the cost.
But why go so far away to learn strategies to bring back home?
“I’ve actually talked to a lot of leaders about this: that sometimes we just get really stuck in our ways because we don’t open our minds to other opportunities,” Avalos said.
As to people who don’t see the trip as a good use of money, Avalos disagrees.
“At the end of the day, we have budgets, and we have discretion over them, and I use my budget as a way to enhance my work. I see this as doing exactly that,” she said. “I’m not going on vacation. I’m going on a study trip to learn about a policy area that I think is important to Portlanders. I understand how that might feel and look for people. I stand by my justification that this is an opportunity for us to expand what we know and make sure to apply good best practices in Portland and that costs money sometimes.”
This trip comes after councilors Avalos, Green and Dunphy presented a resolution back in March to study bringing social housing to Portland. That resolution, which also directs the city administrator to deliver a report on social housing by next May, passed unanimously in April.
In Portland, most housing is dependent on private developers. Because of that and rising costs to build, the price of rent fluctuates with the market. Avalos said she believes social housing could keep housing in Portland more affordable.
“This is the No. 1 thing we talk about, is the lack of affordability and the fact that we are seeing that in our unsheltered homeless population, so it feels urgent,” she said.
The councilors and other city staffers leave soon for Vienna and will be gone for about a week.
They won’t be the first people in the city of Portland who can draw on experience studying Vienna’s social housing. The director of the Portland Housing Bureau spent two years in Vienna for this exact reason while she was working in her previous job at a housing policy organization.
When councilors return, they are going to a local housing conference, where they will talk about what they learned in Vienna, as well as create a report based on what they learn.
“It’s like class,” Avalos said. “We’re going to be learning, hearing from a bunch of different presenters all day, going to visit some sites, but a lot of it is going to be them bringing leaders to us to teach us these different concepts.”