David Schor’s got novel suggestions about how to tackle Portland’s housing problem. Why doesn’t the “mayoral industrial complex” want to hear them?

David Schor is frustrated. The 36-year-old Department of Justice lawyer is sitting in a coffee shop next to the Hollywood Library, prepping for an interview where he plans to request a union endorsement. But his mind keeps returning to the buzz his mayoral campaign hasn’t been enjoying.

“One of the first things I did as a candidate was, I called all the [debate] forums and asked them what their policy was regarding who they’d host,” he said. As of December, many forum organizers hadn’t yet decided what criteria could get a candidate in their doors. And when organizers did have a policy, it generally came down to money: candidate could debate if he or she had raised five or ten thousand dollars. “They find people credible because people have money,” Schor said.

(One exception to this rule came from the man who organized The Northwest Examiner’s debate: He said that the question of what candidates to invite was his own personal decision — basically, that he knew a real mayoral candidate when he saw one.)

This issue — the question of what qualifiers should allow a political candidate to speak in public forums — was notably tested in February, when threats of disruptive protest caused The Oregonian to cancel a planned two-person debate at Revolution Hall, and in March, when a blond woman jumped on stage at a mayoral debate about environmental issues to protest the fact that three mayoral candidates were sitting on stage while three others, Schor included, were relegated to sitting in the audience.

“There are three other candidates here!” she shouted after wresting the microphone from the moderator. “It’s about democracy!”

“The [environmental] forum is like an ad, put on by the Sierra Club [and its partners], for their chosen candidates,” said Schor. Refusing to host multiple voices limits the ideas the public is allowed to entertain, he added. “We need to have a broader conversation, not just Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”

And indeed, Schor’s contribution to the conversation is unique, particularly his proposal that the city assess an 8% income tax on the richest 1% of its inhabitants to fund a massive new city-wide push for affordable housing. Schor estimates that a tax of this sort would generate $200 million a year, which he would like to see spent on the creation of city-built, city-owned, mixed-income housing. (The city has the right to assess income taxes — a right it got when the arts tax bill was passed in 2012 — and if Portland were to enact one it would join the company of cities such as Washington DC, Philadelphia and New York City.)

“I don’t know that we have a great model” for mixed-income public housing, Schor said. “But that’s what Portland is great at, dreaming up the next big thing.”

But Schor believes the next big affordable housing innovation is going to cost big money, and he says that his “Millionaire’s Tax” is the only suggestion that could generate enough revenue to tackle the problem properly.

The housing-related suggestions made by the other candidates (and which Schor also supports, such as enacting just-cause eviction code and starting an Office of Tenant Affairs) don’t cost much money, says Schor, “but everybody knows that [money’s] what we need to solve the problem.”

“When we identify something as a public good, [like housing], we take steps and make sure it is not subject to those same market forces. You can see that process reversed in Flint, Michigan,” said Schor. “[It’s] a great poster child for what happens when you take a public good and hand it over to private industry.”

Another novel suggestion of Schor’s is the creation of a city municipal bank. At present the city’s money is kept in private banks, which decide where to invest the money, and which profit from the interest. Schor thinks Portland could choose its own investments and make its own profits, much of which could be invested in city projects like affordable housing.

But Schor doesn’t want to impose top-down policies on the city, saying he wants to present these ideas to communities and then do what the people want. He thinks the people do want greater distribution of wealth and investment in the public good, though, saying “the best way to create socialists is to subject them to capitalism.”

Ted Wheeler “has very good rhetoric…he wants to do the stuff that’s easy,” says Schor, who believes he is the only serious mayoral candidate not in the pocket of big business and developers. “The reality is, the market isn’t going to solve this problem [of the housing crisis], because the market is the problem.”

It remains to be seen whether Portland’s media will give Schor much opportunity to present his arguments to the broader public.