Apartment Choice

Leesha Posey remembers cutting across a vacant lot in North Portland on her way to Harriet Tubman Middle School . "It's been empty since I was a little girl," says Posey, 41. That was three decades ago. But the lot still sits empty—a rarity in a city where vacant land is coveted, especially in the red- hot North Williams Avenue corridor . Its emptiness is a reminder of what the city and its urban renewal agency , Prosper Portland , took from the black community . In the 1960s, the city-owned agency, then known as the Portland Development Commission , condemned vast tracts of inner North and Northeast Portland . The takings—including the still-vacant block at the northwest corner of North Williams Avenue and Russell Street—allowed urban renewal, including construction of parts of Interstate 5, the Oregon Convention Center and Legacy Emanuel Hospital . But in the process, the agency gutted neighborhoods and dispersed the black community . In a belated ef...

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler promised during his 2016 campaign that he would tackle the city's affordable housing crisis if elected. His second day in office, he took over the housing bureau , putting himself in charge of its big decisions on top of his already ambitious workload. But eight months into his term, the mayor has little to show for it. No groundbreakings. A single deal to bring an affordable apartment complex to Northeast Portland . A key policy position on his staff vacant five months after his housing expert quit . He has yet to tell developers what the city will fund if they work to put roofs over needy Portlanders' heads. Wheeler's insistence on painstaking public involvement and the lack of housing expertise on his staff have hampered progress on what he said was an urgent priority. The mayor has also made no decisions about how the city should spend the largest pool of money ever available to address Portland's affordable housing shortage . Wheeler ...