A candidate for mayor in the city of Portland is building his campaign around a promise that he can fix the city’s affordable housing crisis – by taxing the city’s millionaires and using the money to build more affordable housing.
According to a report from Portland’s KGW (spotted by Phil Hall at National Mortgage Professional), David Schor is currently running for mayor in Portland. Schor is an assistant attorney general for the Oregon Department of Justice and considered to be a “dark horse” for mayor.
But he’s making national headlines, thanks to his radical “Robin Hood” proposal, which would take from the 1% and give to the 99%.
From KGW:
“If we look at where new income has gone, more than half of the increase has gone to the top 1 percent of earners,” he said. “That’s an opportunity for Portland.”
Schor is proposing a local tax of around 8 percent for the city’s millionaires and hopes to get the proposal on a ballot. The tax, he said, would likely be collected in a similar fashion to the current arts tax.
He believes the tax could generate $200 million a year. That’s the same amount local housing advocates say the city needs to solve the current housing problem.
According to KGW’s report, Schor said that Portland is only adding a “small number” of affordable housing units each year, which is apparently not enough to keep up with the demand.
Schor told KGW that his program could fund 10,000 public-owned housing units within the first five years.
But at the bottom of the KGW article, it notes that Schor’s fundraising efforts have been dramatically dwarfed by the current frontrunner in the mayor campaign, Oregon State Treasurer Ted Wheeler.
Again from KGW:
Schor, who describes himself as a democratic socialist like presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, said he’s raised at least $750 for his campaign, and he hopes like Sanders he can collect small donations from the masses.
So far, Ted Wheeler has raised more than $100,000.
(h/t Phil Hall, aka @BizSuperstar)
