Councilor Avalos Statement on Vote to Postpone Slow the Inflow Resolution

Portland, OR - Today Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos (District 1) issued the following statement in response to the Council action to indefinitely postpone the vote on the Slow the Inflow resolution:

The Slow the Inflow resolution was always rooted in responding to the crises that fall the hardest on East Portland communities. Knocking on the doors, I heard from neighbors who were struggling to make rent, who were facing eviction, who were just one emergency expense away from ending up on the street. When my community organizer accompanied one constituent to eviction court, every single tenant she saw was a person of color, didn't speak English as a first language, or visibly had a disability. None of them had representation.

The data tells us that what my staff saw that day at eviction court is the norm - not the exception. It's why I pushed hard for the majority of the unspent Rental Services Office funds to go directly to helping renters and the Portlanders at greatest risk of falling into homelessness. But in the rush to get these dollars out the door, I saw the process get taken over by interests with the power and access to sway councilors to their priorities. Last-minute amendments and closed-door agreements were shifting the Slow the Inflow resolution away from our original intention.

To all the Portlanders who testified, called, emailed, and rallied in support of Slow the Inflow through multiple committee and council meetings: thank you. I'm grateful for your voices, and I want you to keep pushing us to be accountable to our communities. I am disappointed that we couldn't allocate these dollars quicker.

I share the urgency of Portlanders to put these dollars towards serving the people being pushed to the brink by our affordability crisis. However, the revelation of millions in additional unbudgeted housing funds should give us pause. The landscape is fundamentally different than where we started in November. We need to reorganize to win.

I remain deeply committed to slowing the inflow into homelessness and to ensuring renter stabilization remains central to our strategy. That urgency does not disappear because we are broadening the conversation - it simply means we need to build a process that can responsibly address the full scope of available resources.