Rep. Cramer: Update on housing, homeless bills

Newsletter Excerpt from State Representative Tracy Cramer,

The legislature has begun debating HB 2001, one of the session’s housing and homelessness bills. Earlier this year, the Governor declared a homelessness state of emergency and has asked the legislature to approve a $130 million package to address it. The chair of the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness has said that HB 2001 will be seperate from the Governor’s $130 million request. As I have said before, I do not believe that spending more tax dollars alone will solve our hosuing and homelessness problem. We must have structural and regulatory reforms to lower the cost of building housing.

There are some good provisions in HB 2001, but there are some that concern me. There are negotiations happening now in the Housing Committee. I hope we can find a bipartisan way forward. Here are some of the provisions of the first amendment proposed to HB 2001:

• Extends the homelessness state of emergency statewide (currently, under Kotek’s executive order the only counties that were included were Mulnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Marion, Polk, Lane, Jackson, Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson counties.)
• Expands Youth Homelessness Services
• Requires landlords to give 10 day notice of eviction to tenets who dont pay rent and gives the courts the right to vacate the eviction if the landlord fails to give this notice
• Provides a $20 million in grant funding for the construction of Modular Housing
• Provides a $3 million subsidy of predevlopment costs for moderate income rental projects