Cynthia Fisher, Jo Ann Hardesty (center), and Tony Jordan.
(Photos courtesy Tony Jordan)

Tony Jordan is a long-time BikePortland reader and founder of Portlanders for Parking Reform.

I’m Tony Jordan and I support Jo Ann Hardesty for Portland City Council Position 3.

I’ve been active in the housing and transportation political scene for many years and I think Jo Ann has the integrity, resolve, and lived experience to help Portland earn its celebrated position at the vanguard of progressive and sustainable cities.
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The Tess O’Brien Apartments on NW 19th and Pettygrove, built with no on-site parking, are the largest project that would have been illegal under a proposal going before city council tomorrow.
(Photo: Ted Timmons)

Portland’s City Council will meet Wednesday to consider a new mandatory parking requirement that, if it had existed for the last eight years, would have illegalized 23 percent of the new housing supply in northwest Portland during the period.

The Tess O’Brien Apartments, a 126-unit project that starts pre-leasing next week and will offer some of the cheapest new market-rate housing in northwest Portland, couldn’t have been built if they’d been required to have 42 on-site parking spaces, its developer said in an interview.

“Do the math,” Martin Kehoe of Portland LEEDS Living said Friday. “The apartments at the Tess O’Brien are between $1250 and $1400 a month. If we were required to build parking, you’d be between $1800 and $2000 a month. … It probably just wouldn’t have been built. And then what’s that going to do to the existing project that’s out there and has been built? It’s just going to drive the rents of those up.”

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Memorial for 10-year-old boy who was struck and killed by someone driving on East Burnside at 162nd in Gresham yesterday.
(Photo: Cory Poole)

This essay was written by Portland resident Tony Jordan. He wrote it before yesterday’s tragic crash on East Burnside that resulted in the death of a 10-year-old boy.

Traffic violence is a big problem. More than 30,000 people die every year on American roadways with many many more injured or maimed. The cost of this carnage is tremendous, nearly a trillion dollars a year in social economic harms.

So what do we do about it?
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