We've got enough empty density already

Let's fill 'em before we tear down anything else.

Local NAACP President E.D. Mondainé tells it like it is Jan. 5 at City Hall. 

In the meantime, write your leaders (info in margin at right) to repeal the mandate for placarding and deed encumbrances on 1,640 Unreinforced Masonry (URM) buildings, which threatens some 8,000 housing units (many, if not most, affordable), churches, music and arts venues, and businesses (usually small) throughout the city. Already the mostly noncorporate, local landlords are getting calls from the teardown crowd (one observer likened it to "sharks in the water").

A strong coalition shows to protest a land grab
bad for Portland, its artists, local business and believers.

Perhaps because developers notice the sinking saturated residential market (see above), they mean to go bigger and free up more prime, larger sites elsewhere? Who better to pick on than buildings with public housing, where artists and musicians meet, where the faithful gather—in other words, those whose owners have little commercial voice and power in contrast to the out-of-town interests that increasingly dominate our landscape and City Council through astroturfed groups such as 1000 Friends of Oregon, Portand for Everyone, and now Up with Growth.

Get informed, and get active; learn more URM details from a KGW news report, and here (mandate explained).



While we gear up to continue fighting the RIP-off of the doomed and despised Residential Infill Project, educate yourself about Portland housing history at free screenings of Priced Out, one of the best local land use movies you'll ever see.