City spent $46K on Europe trip to seek car-free cities, mega-gov’t housing

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

As a taxpayer organization, we don’t mind when elected official go on fact-finding trips … we just ask they come back with ideas that SAVE TAXPAYERS DOLLARS or ideas that help government IMPROVE EXISTING SERVICES.

Instead, three Portland City Councilors went on a taxpayer funded political junket to Vienna Austria, on a “social housing” mission.  Social housing is government-speak for finding ways to massively expand government involvement in housing.

It cost taxpayers $46,108 for these councilors and their staff to go to Europe. 

This comes as it was recently announced that the City is $93 million in debt and is under a hiring freeze.

The Oregonian reports that the councilors were greatly impressed with their “car-free” cities.   Portland is three times the size of Vienna and Oregon is three times the size of Austria — we need cars.   Portland has some of the biggest, costliest transit/bus/light rail systems in America.  The end result is that transit ridership is way down, transit crime is up, operational expenses are high and taxpayer subsidies for each ticket are through the roof (80% of ticket cost).

Why has Portland/Oregon seen homeless spike when the rest of America were witnessing decline in homeless? The answer = social housing.  Politicians unloaded hundreds of millions on free shelters, free food, free needles, free tents, free clothes, free tarps, free debit cards.

Homeless expert, Kevin Dahlgren, estimates that 40% of Portland’s homeless are imports from other states.   We are spending millions building housing for other state’s homeless.

Portland and Oregon unloaded millions on converting hotels into free housing which turned them into drug and crime hell-holes.

Instead of admitting their social housing failure, City Councilor Jamie Dunphy says we need MORE when he said “The city should not be selling off public property and should instead be looking for opportunities to purchase developable land”.  The more land government buys the more scare land becomes and therefore the more unaffordable housing becomes.  You also remove the tax revenue from private land when government snatches it up.   Nearly 60% of all land in Oregon is already owned by the Federal, County, or City.   Will Oregon land become more affordable if it is 70% government ownership?

City Councilor Jamie Dunphy admits Portland has failed on housing, “The city of Portland has spent literally almost a billion dollars building affordable housing that right now we have hundreds of affordable units that are sitting empty because we can’t find tenants to fit them. And we have units that are in disrepair because the rents are so low that the that we can’t maintain them.”

Then the same councilors on this trip are pushing for new social housing units to be net-zero.   

This means when government builds a home or apartment unit it will be the among the most expensive homes because net-zero homes are costly.  They will require large solar panels, extensive layering for heat retention, heat pumps, EV charging stations, and the most expensive net-zero home appliances.   So, government aims to make housing more affordable by building super-expensive housing.

None of their ideas help save taxpayer dollars.  Rather, they only increase cost.  We repeat, the city is already $94 million in debt.

None of their ideas make government better, but only add layers upon layers of new government projects, rules, regulations, expenses, responsibilities.

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