All liquor licenses North of Burnside within the Portland City Limits (East &West) will expire on January 1st, 2011, unless renewed by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC). As part of the renewal process, the City of Portland makes recommendations to the OLCC on renewal applications using information gathered from neighbors, community organizations, and public safety officials. The City of Portland is home to approximately 2,500 liquor license establishments, about half of which are coming up for renewal. Neighbors, Neighborhood and Business Associations, and Community Organizations have a very important role in this process.
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Category Archives: Crime prevention
Our United Villages to Sponsor Community Safety Conversation
Flyer--click to enlarge
Hello Northeast Neighbors! Please extend the following invitation to your networks, friends, family, and neighbors. This event is free and open to anyone interested. We would appreciate if you would post this event in community calendars, newsletters, websites, or on bulletin boards you may have (PDF and JPG attached). Thank you, in advance, for helping us get the word out!
Community Safety Conversation
Thursday, October 21st from 6:00pm-8:00pm
St. Andrew Church 806 NE Alberta Street Portland, OR 97211
You are invited to a Community Conversation sponsored by Community Outreach of Our United Villages. What does community safety mean to you? Come share your ideas for preventing violence and brainstorm ways we can work together to build safe neighborhoods for everyone. FREE. Open to anyone interested. Space is limited. Please RSVP by Monday, October 18th to outreach@ourunitedvillages.org or by calling 503.546.7499.
Light meal provided. Child care, transportation, and interpretation provided upon request. Community Outreach of Our United Villages is a local non-profit organization. For more information, go to www.ouvcommunityoutreach.org.
Precinct Commander Responds to King’s Request for More Police
September 27, 2010
Dear Members of the King Neighborhood Association:
Chief Reese received your September 9th letter to Mayor Adams and asked me to respond to you. First, I appreciate the fact that you are asking questions of your police department. It is important that we communicate freely and transparently, so that the Police Bureau can give our community the best service possible. We also appreciate the support given by the residents of the King Neighborhood. North Precinct has long enjoyed a productive and positive relationship with the King Neighborhood.
As to your concern about officer response times, the Police Bureau’s goal for arrival on emergency or priority calls for service is five minutes or less from the time a police unit is dispatched on a call. I asked our Crime Analysis Unit to look at response times in the King Neighborhood from January 2010 through September 2010. Overall, the numbers suggest that we are meeting that goal. For example, our average response time for emergency 911 calls for service in District 630 during that period is 3.5 minutes.
PCRI: Working for a Good Cause but Neighbors Question How Successfully
If you live in Northeast Portland, chances are that Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives is one of your neighbors. As one of the largest community development corporations in North and Northeast Portland with 700 rental houses and apartments, PCRI helps define what our neighborhood is like.
The non-profit organization was born from the housing discrimination scandals of the ‘60’s through the ‘80’s such as redlining and the abandonment of the area by traditional lenders culminating in the Dominion Capital case where aspiring homeowners were being bilked with excessive interest rates and contracts designed to prevent the accumulation equity. PCRI executive director, Maxine Fitzpatrick sat down with me to discuss PCRI’s mission, operations, and recent incidents at one of their complexes. Ms. Fitzpatrick explained how PCRI set out to keep housing in the long-term, mostly minority residents’ hands and slow the wave of displacement taking place due to gentrification:
“The Oregonian did the exposé that exposed Dominion Capital and their fraudulent practices. After that exposé they filed for bankruptcy so rather than let those 350 families that were living in those properties be displaced and the properties picked up by speculators, they formed PCRI to purchase the homes. At the time about 70 of those properties still had an active land sale contract so our goal was to work with those families to make them legitimate owners and keep the other 272 as affordable rentals because that’s what they were at the time. So that’s how we were formed—to purchase that portfolio.”
King neighborhood, once overwhelmingly African-American and mostly poor by the late ‘80’s, is now much more diverse ethnically, economically, and culturally. With diversity, often comes strain and misunderstanding. While residents generally value the improvements in the housing that has come with the influx of new, younger, residents fixing up older homes, community development corporations strive to provide the most housing for the very limited available dollars. Standards for housing construction, maintenance and upkeep, as well as resident screening and oversight are set by the CDC which has a primary mission to provide housing for the surplus of those who cannot afford market rate options. As a result, homeowners and subsidized housing residents’ dreams of living in safe and peaceful neighborhoods sometime intersect with the jarring realities of life.
NECN Endorses King’s Call for More Police
The Northeast Coalition of Neighborhood’s Executive Committee voted, at their meeting on Sept 14th, to support and endorse the KNA’s letter to Mayor Sam Adams calling for improved police staffing and response time at the North Precinct. Copies will be submitted to all city commissioners, lawmakers Lew Frederick and Chip Shields, and Chief Reese.
Read the letter at: