PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Portland City Council is set to consider a resolution exploring how the city could use social housing to address the homelessness and housing affordability crises.

The resolution -- introduced Tuesday by Portland City Councilors Mitch Green (District 4) and Candace Avalos (District 1) -- would direct the city to study social housing models in places such as Seattle, Washington, Montgomery County, Maryland and Vienna, Austria and submit a report on the findings in May 2026.

“The way that we have been housing our humans is just not working. We have to try something new,” Avalos said. “This is an opportunity to actually bring to the people an affordable model for housing.”

Under the social housing model, housing is owned and managed by the public or nonprofits with a focus on affordability -- opposed to traditional public housing in the United States, which is reserved for low-income tenants in spaces managed by federally granted housing agencies.

“To put it simply, it is housing that is non-market, and is permanently affordable,” Portland Housing Bureau Director Helmi Hisserich testified during Tuesday's Homelessness and Housing Committee hearing.

Under the resolution, Hisserich would lead the study -- bringing her near-two-year experience studying Vienna's social housing model.

The resolution comes amid Portland's ongoing housing emergency, which the city declared in 2015. Another 20,000 housing units are needed in Portland, where more than half of renters are rent burdened -- meaning more than 30% of their income goes toward housing costs, Hisserich said.

“The rapid escalation in housing costs in Portland is driven by a combination of many different factors, but the lack of sufficient affordable housing is a major problem that we need to address and the reason we are exploring alternatives to the current system," Hisserich said.

“To put it simply, it’s non-market and permanently affordable. Social housing is owned by the community or the public. It can be owned by mission-driven nonprofit agencies, it can be owned by a public agency, and it can be collectively owned by a land trust or by a housing cooperative," Hisserich explained. “Often, it is described or developed as mixed-income communities, where people of all incomes live together.”

According to Hisserich, Vienna's social housing model has been successful for the city and could be replicated in Portland.

“People often ask why I focus on Vienna, and it’s a pretty simple reason. In 1918, Vienna had a significant unhoused population of about 30,000 people. The reasons relate to World War I and the extreme poverty that was occurring at that time. But it was considered at the turn of the century to be the worst place to live in Europe, with rampant disease, eviction and poverty, with a large number of people unhoused," Hisserich said.

“Today, Vienna, Austria is ranked the number one most livable city in the world consistently for the last 15 years," the Housing Bureau director explained. "And it has a remarkably sustainable housing system. It is now considered the most affordable major city in Europe.”

According to Hisserich, Portland and Vienna are similar in size. However, Vienna’s population is three times greater than Portland’s population -- 650,000 people in Portland compared to Vienna's two million.

“Vienna shares Portland’s strong orientation towards maintaining parks and open space, so they live in a lot higher density neighborhoods than we do,” Hisserich said. “So, how can a dense city, such as Vienna, rank so high in livability is one of the questions I’ve asked myself many times. Vienna is simply very pro-housing. They understand how much housing is needed, they forecast very effectively how much housing is needed and they take very strong goals in delivering that housing.”

According to Hisserich, Vienna provides over 60% of the city's housing through municipally built and nonprofit housing. The European city also has more housing per capita at around one housing unit for every two people, whereas Portland has about one unit for every three people.

Pointing to Vienna's "pro-housing" approach, Hisserich noted Vienna's unhoused population is around 2,200, but is "functionally zero because they are able to rapidly shelter and provide housing to their unhoused population." Citing a 2023 Multnomah County Point in Time Count, Portland's unhoused population stood at 6,300 people, Hisserich said.

“The system in Vienna that is different, is that there’s – and actually in the Montgomery County, Maryland model – these are all predicated on more of the mixed income model that are open to a large majority of people rather than saying, ‘We’re only going to have the public intervene in the very deepest low-income housing.’ They have a model that says, ‘No, we need to provide stable-priced housing for a large number of people.’ What they’ll do is put a mixed income housing in place and then take it out of the market," Hisserich said.

As the resolution heads to the full City Council for consideration, Councilors Green and Avalos emphasized the need to incorporate a different approach to housing to quell the homelessness and housing crises.

“I also want to acknowledge that Portlanders are weary of the study, plan, study, plan cycle that generates reports that may sit on a shelf and never be used and that too many Portlanders are suffering from a housing crisis that burdens their household budgets, or worse, leaves them out in the cold,” Green testified during the resolution’s hearing. “But make no mistake, it is my intention that this City Council will be remembered as the body that looked at the dire state of housing affordability and said, ‘Enough. No more.’”

“The scale of the problem is too great for us to rely on passive, market-based solutions," Green continued. “It's time for Portland to go big and tackle our housing shortage head on. Social housing offers a real, sustainable solution by prioritizing people over profits.”

“My goal is to pass a social housing policy that will be the envy of the West Coast,” Green said. “And to do that, it's important to get the institutional design right. I'm excited to work directly with the Portland Housing Bureau to craft the program that works best for Portland.”

Green and Avalos have requested Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney to add the resolution to the Council Meeting agenda for Wednesday, April 2.