Laugh or cry—it all works

Courtesy Dermot O'Connor

When trees fall in an urban forest, do our leaders hear the sound?

Even the passerby interviewed by television journalists for the tree story on KOIN tonight notices the unequal requirements of tree protection for some developers over others. For years the city worked on a highly anticipated tree plan that was meant to solve Portland's deforestation trend; now it turns out developers only have to pay $1,200 per tree to fire up the chain saw.

 

This story came out the day I finally made the pilgrimage to see the huge trees awaiting the Remmers chopping block at 3646 SE Martins St., one block south of Woodstock Boulevard. We reached them close to sunset, when the neighborhood kids took to a bit of after-dinner ball next to the chainlink fence. The fence makes it hard to get close to, never mind touch, the three giant sequoias that took root there some 150 years ago. Since the Civil War era, they grew to more than 20 feet around and top out at around 150 feet.

Take a drone tour of the overstory here. Better yet, visit these impressive oxygen generators in person before they're gone. You hardly ever see huge trees like these in a city. If Remmers has his way, our kids never will.

If you decide to bear witness to, and document, their fall, sign up here.

While you're contemplating a trip to the trees, dash off a letter to your elected leaders about what a giant mistake it is losing these sequoias, along with the rest of the mature urban canopy that's been harvested to make room for mass-produced plan-book construction.

 (As an aside to buyers of this type of new housing, please plant trees! Consider heading up a tree-planting effort for your neighborhood to contribute foliage and privacy to the environs; most developers raze every green thing on a site to make way for new construction. It's hard to replace long-lived great shade trees that generations enjoyed, but here's a group that helps get people started.)

Why do we need trees? Because they exemplify beautiful living history, and we need to breathe.

Portlanders give a RIP!

Apparently there are at least 85 applications received for the approximately 25 spots on the city's nascent task force looking at new-construction guidelines as well as lot splitting, confirmations, and other factors that have incentivized many demolitions.

Plenty of Portlanders want to take part in building a better city.

Filmmaker tackles the hard questions

Longtime North and Northeast Portland journalist Cornelius Swart is wrapping up a film chronicling Portland's evolution—and needs our help. (He's not new to the topic: This second film picks up where the first left off.) Readers of this blog and supporters of responsible growth in Portland should consider taking part in the Kickstarter campaign to get this worthy project in the can and on the screen before more neighborhoods are plowed under.

Priced Out: 15 Years of Gentrification in Portland, Oregon 
looks at what happens when homes come down.
Photo courtesy Cornelius Swart.

This movement to curb demolitions, protect affordable housing, and prevent displacement has asked little of activists financially apart from the option to buy a sign or a T-shirt. Kicking in some bucks (pledge levels start at $5) costs less than $9 cocktails and it'll make you feel at least as good—if not better—and the results last a lot longer. Again, here's the link to be inspired, and to inspire others.

Meanwhile, in a sleek office building downtown

The Developers Review Advisory Committee, or DRAC, continues to meet monthly. Last week the entire meeting was dedicated to examination of DRAC's "role/purpose/work." I was pretty excited about this one! The august body, and its spin-offs, often come up with code and policy that do not seem to "implement[] the City's goals for ... neighborhood livability and the environment," as stated in its mission.

DRAC is overwhelmingly made up of developers, and underwhelmingly of the people who must bear the impact of that development. DRAC also has had trouble adhering to Oregon's Public Meetings Law, making it hard for Portlanders to learn what DRAC is doing, much less participate.

In the center of it all, DRAC vice chair Rob Humphrey of Faster Permits (in black), Bureau of Development Services
director Paul Scarlett (middle), and DRAC chair Maryhelen Kincaid (in blue) wrap an inconclusive
meeting on a mission.

Despite some DRAC members' support for sticking to the mission as codified, clearly other aspirations may trump any desire to stay the course. "We're the Supreme Court," Chairwoman Maryhelen Kincaid said in the July 16 meeting, and later, as justification for why DRAC should go bigger in scope and ambition: "We're the one well-rounded body." If this body's so "well-rounded" why the City Hall showdowns where the public protests how developers get to decide new rules for demolition delays, whether to protect neighbors from hazmat during demolitions, and so on, with little, if any, public input?

Claire Carder (right) is meant to represent "neighborhood coalition
land use committees" on DRAC but here she expresses concern
for developers having to pay additional fees in permitting. The fees
could help slow the trash-and-build bonanza or at least help stockpile
 funds for needed affordable housing. Maybe they just haven't figured
out how to shovel such city-sponsored projects to Humphrey's clients—yet.

After much discussion, DRAC decided to extend the monthly meetings by a half-hour.

It can be done

Returning to a more positive note, here's a pic of newer construction in Beaumont-Wilshire. I do not remember what was there before, if anything, but oh how I love this house. Let's count the ways:

• scaled to fit its surroundings, including adjacent homes
• provides plenty of off-street and useable parking
• designed with care and creativity
• built with quality materials
• makes smart use of space
• presents a friendly and interesting mien at street level
• allows neighboring properties access to privacy and light

You're invited, but not really

Keeping Portland weird all right. Photo by Heath Lynn Silberfeld.

Now that Oregon Senate Bill 705—which requires an accredited inspector to perform an asbestos survey before demolition—has passed both the Senate (April 30) and the House (June 9), Portland's Hazardous Materials Task Force has something substantial to talk about when it meets tomorrow.

The powers that be at the Bureau of Development Services (BDS) and its task force seem to be in the painful position of including the public when they discuss and decide on public policy. Witness this announcement of the meeting tomorrow, and its caution:

 "we have most of the seats spoken for by BDS and other agency staff, so I would request that you limit the number of people you send."

The meeting runs 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Thursday, June 11, at 1900 S.W. Fourth Ave., Room 6E. Feel free to stand up for your right not to ingest hazardous materials such as lead and asbestos emanating from the Great House Harvest of 2013, 2014, and now 2015, as Portland continues its run of record-breaking numbers of home demolitions.

The good news is that Senator Dembrow, who helped spearhead SB 705, has more in mind. Here's his update (with emphasis added) as SB 705 wended its way through the legislature, and before it passed the House:

"The bill passed the Senate on a 22-8 vote, and I expect similar strong support in the House next week. Once the session ends, we’ll start working on similar legislation regarding testing homes slated for demolition for lead paint." 

Dembrow and the other state leaders who helped make asbestos protection happen—Rep. Keny-Guyer, Sen. Shields, and Reps. Frederick, Nosse, and Smith Warner—are looking out for us even if city leaders won't or can't. Please thank these conscientious players in Salem and applaud their continuing work to protect neighbors and neighborhoods. Read here and the next post for more on hazmat fallout from demolitions and its dangers.

No protection: Toxic fallout shows where neighbors sit

I reported on another blog about the proposal by the city auditor and ombudsman to address barriers to Portlanders' ability to exercise their appeal rights, mainly by reducing fees to a nominal amount. In the rallying effort for the proposal there were frequent mentions to the highest fee of all, one that was over $1,300, an amount that not many of us can readily come up with (especially if nonrefundable).

That fee ($1,318 to be exact) is the newly instituted one that neighbors must pay to ask for an additional demolition delay if the subject house could be saved in some way. Since its institution in 1989, this delay has actually helped save some homes, and even after developers recently managed to halve the delay period, from 120 days to 60, it still can be a useful tool for neighborhoods hammered by the mounting costs of trash-and-build development.

City Council loved the proposal, citing the desire to offer all Portlanders, regardless of income, the right to an administrative appeal process. Watch the April 22 proceedings here, starting at 69:15.

At Minute 157 things get interesting with Commissioner Fritz, once a champion for neighborhoods, raising a red flag about whether the reduction in appeal fees would allow more neighbors to attempt to save homes in their neighborhoods, by requesting the additional demo delay for a nominal fee. There is blustering, there are crickets (161), there is wink-wink "Is there a public purpose in dissuading [citizens] from appealing a demolition permit?" (161:30). With "public" seemingly in the eyes of our leaders becoming more synonymous with "developer-driven," the answer would be yes based on what happened at the final vote.

On May 20, City Council unanimously approved the proposal, reducing all appeal fees citywide to a nominal amount—except for one. Guess which one? When asked, Ombudsman Margie Sollinger said the exception of the demo-delay fee (the highest charged by the city for any appeals process, then and now) was demanded by Commissioner Fritz. Never mind that the city seems intent on bungling all details of the new demo-delay rules discussed for close to a year now and instituted last month—neighbors get no relief. Even when well-meaning city staff such as the auditor and ombudsman try to bring justice within reach of all Portlanders, powerful interests will insert a significant exception that strives to keep business as usual, unfettered by those seeking to protect their neighborhoods.

Pictures of a demolition a few days ago in Northeast Portland show no one's in control, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which claims to enforce rules on protection for workers releasing uncontrolled hazmat in to the air and surrounding yards (click on last two pictures to verify lack of protection). Federal studies show demolition dust can travel up to 400 feet, or about the width of eight standard-size residential lots in Portland. Here Metro Homes Northwest clears the way for another particlebarn, endangering everyone and accountable to none.

Deconstruction would do a lot to solve many problems associated with mechanical demolition, if demolition must occur. This important issue heads to City Council this week, and deserves your study and support.

City may pass the hat ... for developers

Actually, it's better than that. It's possible the city will propose that you and I—as city-funding taxpayers—pay the developers to deconstruct the homes they intend to demolish. Apparently it is not enough that neighborhoods lose their stock of affordable housing full of quality materials and character, mature tree canopy, and access to solar, among other irreplaceable items; now we're supposed to pay the people exploiting our neighborhoods to allow the reuse of old-growth materials?

It's almost as if I hadn't heard it right, but yes that was the report from United Neighborhoods for Reform's rep to the deconstruction advisory group (DAG), Barbara Kerr. Long a champion of reuse, she agreed to attend meetings of the group that was formed to present a deconstruction program to Portland City Council early next month. There are some strong pro-environment leaders on that committee, but neighbors' voice in favor of a deconstruction mandate is being overwhelmed by the numbers and power of developers showing up at the table. (If you are free tomorrow (Wednesday, May 20) from 2:30 to 4:30, please grab a seat at the table in conference room A on the 17th floor of the building at 1900 S.W. Fourth Ave. and ask for mandated deconstruction—paid for by the property owner—if demolition must occur. Developers representing out-of-town business interests are increasingly taking seats at that table and shaping local policy against Portlanders' interests.)

By way of explaining how the idea came about to pay developers to deconstruct, Kerr reported after the last DAG meeting that the developers "stated that if society wants them to do something, society needs to pay them and that if deconstruction is made mandatory, there will be pushback."

Cousin, can you spare a dime? Vic and Wally Remmers can't afford to do the right thing
deconstructing houses instead of throwing them in our landfill, so they want
Portlanders to pay them to do it. Maybe relative Dennis Sackhoff, who's finishing up
his latest so-so Soviet project in Hollywood, can help out the family.

Why is it every time antidemolition activists successfully ask for change, the developer-determined proposal that comes back makes things worse for neighborhoods, and City Council nods along and calls it a compromise?

Every single neighborhood association voting in favor of United Neighborhoods for Reform's resolution supports a deconstruction mandate—as the city likes to remind us, Portland loves to recycle! One neighborhood backed the resolution for the deconstruction element alone. UNR knows that some homes will be demolished; the only way they should leave the landscape, for all sorts of public and environmental health and safety reasons, is by deconstruction. So what if it costs more and takes a few days longer? Call it the price of admission for access to Portland's real estate gold mine.