Two candidates running in District 4, Mitch Green and Ben Hufford, have unveiled ambitious but contrasting plans to tackle the city’s housing shortage.
Mitch Green, an economist and army veteran running for a District 4 City Council seat, plans to introduce a “social housing” model that he believes could provide a long-term solution to the city’s affordability crisis.
Under Green’s proposal, the city would build and manage publicly owned, mixed-income housing. The funding would come from a revolving loan fund, which Green says would allow Portland to keep building new housing by reusing money from repaid loans. He points to Montgomery County, Maryland, which set up a similar $50 million fund in 2021 to finance social housing projects.
Plan Won’t Raise Taxes, Green Says
A key part of Green’s social housing proposal is tying rent to income, with a goal of capping it at 30%—a common standard for housing affordability.
When asked whether his plan would require raising taxes, Green says that may not be necessary. “I think it’d be very difficult to pass a new bond or raise taxes in this city right now. So I think the way to pay for it is to reallocate and reprioritize the funding that the Portland Housing Bureau already has,” he explains.
Green plans to start by auditing Portland’s inclusionary zoning (IZ) program, which he believes has primarily produced housing for those just below the median income, with limited options for those with fewer means.
“Is there a better use for those funds? My argument is yes,” he says, suggesting that IZ funds, along with state grants and tax increment financing, could be repurposed to help capitalize a revolving loan fund for social housing. Other avenues include selling equity positions to the community in the form of coop shares, or engaging private investors in limited capacities, he adds.
A Focus on Renters’ Rights
Green, who if elected would serve a two-year term because of Portland’s electoral reform process, acknowledges that implementing social housing in Portland might require a lengthy process and says the plan would need to go through a committee process to work out specifics.
In the meantime, he thinks Portland should focus on policies that keep people in their homes. Green is one of ten city candidates who have signed the Renters’ Bill of Rights, circulated by the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Renters Action Network, seeking to strengthen protections for renters.
“In the short run, let’s focus on keeping people from flowing out of housing and into homelessness through eviction protections and renter stabilization. That’s always going to be less expensive than dealing with it after the fact,” Green says.
Green’s campaign has drawn endorsements from multiple labor unions, the Working Families Party of Oregon, the Portland Democratic Socialists of America, and Home PAC, a political action committee focused on affordable housing solutions.
Hufford Emphasizes Private Development as Key to Solving Housing Crisis
Ben Hufford, an architect also running in District 4, offers a different vision for addressing Portland’s housing crisis that instead focuses on incentivizing private sector development.
“I respect that Mitch Green recognizes the scale of our housing problem, and that he is working on a very aggressive proposal to do something, not just talk about it,” says Hufford, who earned his Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University. Yet Hufford remains skeptical of the city’s ability to effectively manage housing construction.
“The City of Portland is not an expert in building housing and has a history of spending a lot of money with little to show for it,” he says, arguing that City Hall should instead focus on streamlining zoning and permitting processes to speed up housing construction.
Portland Must Respect State-Mandated 120-Day Permitting Deadline, Hufford Says
If elected, Hufford plans to introduce an emergency measure to simplify Portland’s beleaguered permitting and review processes. He proposes consolidating the city’s 28 separate housing-related reviews into four categories and requiring Portland to comply with a state law that mandates zoning and land use reviews take no longer than 120 days.
While Portland developers must often waive this right, Hufford believes housing development projects should instead be automatically approved if the city fails to meet the deadline. He also proposes that smaller housing projects—which he defines as those under eight stories or with fewer than 80 units—should receive a less stringent design review than larger complexes.
“Portland is falling behind on housing supply. We need to clear away the red tape that’s slowing down development,” says Hufford, who is backed by real estate and business groups as well as City Commissioners Rene Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio.
Incentivizing Affordable Housing Through Tax Breaks
Hufford also supports expanding tax incentives to encourage affordable housing construction and reducing the period developers must keep units affordable from twenty to ten years.
While his approach differs from Mitch Green’s, he says he looks forward to working with Green if elected and notes that the two may find common ground on promoting co-ops and condos.
“We are about to turn a point where more than half of our Portland citizens live in multi-family buildings, but we have rules that favor building rental apartments over condos and co-ops that allow people to own their homes. We need to work to change those, or we will end up shutting a lot of people out of home equity that’s been the core of the American Dream,” Hufford says.