Podcast: Get to know Portland mayoral candidate Keith Wilson

As I listened to Keith Wilson give a speech at Bike Happy Hour last night it occurred to me his life has been sort of like Forrest Gump. He’s got an interesting and diverse background and set of life experiences you’d never expect from a trucking company CEO. If you knew that his company, Titan Freight Systems, runs and all-electric fleet and that just before coming to the event last night he gave invited testimony on decarbonization in the freight industry to the State of Washington Transportation Commission, or that he was once so poor he spent nights in LaGuardia Airport, or that he takes 12 at-risk Black youth camping once a year, you might begin to understand what I mean.

Wilson spoke to a rapt crowd last night about growing up poor in north Portland and being the first person in his family to go to college (Portland Community College), then moving from home to take a job as a sales intern at NBC in Manhattan. When he didn’t land a job, he ran out of money and spent nights in LaGuardia Airport. “I thought to myself, if you’re homeless, where do you go? You go to the place with carpet, because Newark Airport had tile.”

These days Wilson divides his time between his company and his nonprofit, Shelter Now PDX. He said he found himself pulled toward the homelessness problem because — despite building Titan Freight into a success and being named national “Innovator of the Year” two years in a row — “Six, seven years ago, I started looking around and I didn’t recognize my city anymore,” he shared last night. “If I’m operating in the backdrop of a community where my neighbors can’t live, where livability is compromised, we’ve got a problem.”

Wilson dove head-first into getting people off the street. He shared the story of how he called TriMet GM Doug Kelsey to ask if he could make a shelter at Gateway Transit Center. “They let me borrow the parking garage, ’cause I said to them: ‘If we can shelter cars better than people, what sort of humanity are we?'” (That line got a big applause.) The idea didn’t work though (it was way too cold and volunteers nearly froze), so Wilson started to use churches and community centers. He says his organization is currently sheltering about 45 people in a church near I-205 and Powell Blvd at a cost of $16.36 per person per night. “A [city of Portland-run] Safe Rest Village tonight is going to cost us as a community $189 dollars per person,” Wilson boasted. “I can shelter Portlanders for a 10th of the cost our city is currently doing it.”

Throughout the night, Wilson referred to his objections to handing out tents to homeless Portlanders like Multnomah County and others do. “What sort of community are we when we allow our neighbors to live and die on the street and we’re handing out tents instead of providing the basic need of a shelter?” he asked rhetorically. When I asked if he supported Commissioner Rene Gonzalez’s move to end tent dispersal by Portland Street Response, he said, “That was all politics.”

“What was ‘all politics?’, Gonzalez’s move or the policy of handing out tents?” I responded. He answered:

“You have a city elected leader saying, ‘I’m going to take away tents’; but what else? I mean they, we, still need to provide care… We shouldn’t have people camping on the street. Why would you give out tents? Which means that you’re supporting the behavior, you’re enabling the behavior — when we should just be supplying basic shelter for that person. It was a half-measure. It was all politics. But the reality, if you peel that away, Jonathan, it showed we’re failing our community.”

Why were we [giving out tents] in the first place? We shouldn’t be. And if I were Rene Gonzalez, I’d be saying, ‘I want shelter available for every single person because nobody should be on the streets.’ … I would come out and say, I’m not gonna hand out tents, but I am going to set up enough shelters to care for my neighbors.”

Another person in the audience pushed back on that answer and he explained it further. Then someone asked how he’d deliver services to people in shelters (and not just put a roof over their head). It was a good conversation and I recommend listening to it for yourself. The audio of that exchange is below:

Here are a few other excerpts…

Wilson is a nationally-recognized high speed rail advocate and is working to bring a line to Oregon. Here’s a clip where he describes what he experienced riding HSR in Europe:

Wilson garnered recognition in the trucking industry for installing AI-assisted anti-distracted driving tech in his vehicles. Listen to him share the story of how he fought pushback from drivers, weighed their concerns with his commitment to safety, and ultimately won them over:

Listen to the full episode above, or wherever you get your podcasts.