Think Out Loud

Like other federal agencies, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is facing possible cuts to staffing and funding. The federal agency’s green and resilient retrofit program is intended to upgrade aging affordable housing. The program would also help fund proposals that reduced energy use.   But as the Associated Press reported, funding is being terminated by the Department of Government Efficiency and links to the program on the housing department’s site are no longer available.  Nonprofit leaders in the affordable housing industry say they’re still waiting for federal dollars that were promised. Managers of Smith Tower, an apartment building in Vancouver, say they were awarded funding but haven’t received the money. The construction is currently in limbo, The Columbian reported.    Margaret Salazar is the CEO of REACH Community Development,  a nonprofit affordable housing provider. She joins us with more on how this affects Oregon’s housing crisis and what it means for low-income residents.   

The for-profit prison company GEO is doing very well financially. It runs 16 facilities around the country including the ICE detention center in Tacoma, and its stock price doubled after Election Day.  With the number of ICE detainees now at a five-year high under President Donald Trump, how people are being treated and compensated for their labor is as much an issue as it ever was. The company was paying detainees a dollar a day to do cleaning and other jobs that it would otherwise have to pay contract workers at minimum wage to do. Washington state sued the company for not paying the state’s minimum wage, and won in federal court in 2021, a decision that was affirmed earlier this year by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The company petitioned last month for a rehearing of its appeal by all 9th Circuit judges. McKenzie Funk is following this story for ProPublica and joins us with the details.

A proposed utility project in Forest Park has caused a monthslong clash between environmental groups and Portland General Electric. The Harborton Reliability Project would remove roughly 400 mature trees on 5 acres of parkland to make way for new power lines. PGE says the grid upgrade is necessary to meet the region’s growing demand for electricity, but conservationists say it will damage one of Portland’s most important ecological assets. City permitting staff recommended against the project in January, but a hearings officer determined earlier this month that it should be allowed to proceed. The Forest Park Neighborhood Association and the Forest Park Conservancy have appealed that decision to the City Council. Randy Franks is a senior project manager for PGE. Scott Fogarty is the executive director of the Forest Park Conservancy. They both join us to share their perspectives on the plan and what it could mean for Portland’s largest park.

After joining the Big Ten Conference, the Oregon Ducks basketball team has traveled more than 27,000 miles. That’s more than the circumference of the Earth. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Oregon players are not alone as dramatic increases were seen for all of the 10 schools that left the Pac-12, ranging from 47% to 222% more miles. Laine Higgins is a sports reporter for the WSJ and reported on this trend. She joins us to share more.

When public radio reporter Anna King first heard that ranchers in remote areas of rural Oregon were finding the bodies of cows and bulls drained of blood and mutilated, she immediately began to investigate. What she found could have provided the script for an episode of "The X Files." Various arms of law enforcement had investigated this phenomenon, but the mystery remained unsolved. The NPR story she filed in 2019 drew more than a million hits. She ultimately teamed up with two New York-based documentary filmmakers, Jackson Devereux and Lachlan Hinton, who found the story compelling and wanted to collaborate with her to explore a full-length feature film. After an intense three years of research, interviews, filming and editing, “Not One Drop of Blood” premiers at the Treefort Festival in Idaho this week. King joins to tell us more about what the documentary reveals about the bizarre and as yet unexplained phenomenon.

Earlier this month, Oregon joined nine other states in meeting a goal to get 3.3 million electric vehicles on the road by 2025. That number is set to grow under a rule that requires all new passenger cars, SUVs and pickup trucks sold in Oregon to either be fully electric or plug-in hybrid electric by 2035.  But adopting cleaner, more fuel efficient vehicles also means that Oregon and other states are grappling with reduced revenues from gas taxes. Electric vehicle owners also don’t pay any gas tax, which have led states like Oregon to explore launching programs which charge motorists a fee based on how much they travel instead of how often they refill at the pump. The Oregon Department of Transportation has operated a voluntary, pay-by-mile program since 2015. Roughly 800 people are currently enrolled in OReGO, which charges participants 2 cents for every mile driven in Oregon. Joining us to talk about what’s been learned after a decade of this pilot program is Travis Brouwer, assistant director for revenue, finance and compliance at ODOT.  

In Oregon and the rest of the country, Black infants are more likely to be born underweight, and both they and their mothers have a lower chance of surviving that first year of life than white and Hispanic ones. A package of bills in the Oregon legislature seeks to support perinatal health by expanding access to doulas, protecting young families from housing loss and eviction and expanding the Oregon child tax credit, among other things. Kaylee Tornay, investigative reporter with InvestigateWest, recently wrote about Black maternal and infant health and joins us to explain.

Oregon lawmakers are crafting a budget for the next two years. They're facing a lot of uncertainty since nearly a third of the state’s funding comes from federal dollars and budget committee members have mapped out several scenarios. Meanwhile, hundreds of bills failed to meet a legislative deadline last week.  But one proposal that narrowly passed the Senate would give public workers who go on strike access to unemployment benefits. We get an update on what’s ahead for lawmakers from OPB political reporter Dirk VanderHart.  

Oregon Health & Science University began its Long COVID-19 clinic in 2021, a year into the pandemic as the first vaccines were just becoming widely available. We talked with doctors in the clinic in 2022, and we wanted to check back in to see what clinicians have learned after treating thousands of long COVID patients. Aluko Hope is a pulmonologist, critical care doctor and the medical director of OHSU’s Long COVID-19 program. Jen Arnold is a lead nurse with the program. They both join us to tell us what they’ve learned about caring for patients with long COVID in the last four years and what they hope to learn more about from the research that’s currently underway.

 Portland’s own junior ice hockey team, the Winterhawks, commemorate their 50th anniversary playing on the ice this season. With over 15 divisional championships, 13 conference titles and more than 135 alumni now playing in the National Hockey League, the team is the second-oldest professional team in Portland after the Trailblazers - and one of the best teams in the Western Hockey League’s U.S. Western Conference. Mike Johnson is the general manager of the team. Griffin Darby plays defense for the team. They both join to talk about how they're celebrating the team’s anniversary and their hopes for the future of the team.