Senator Merkley Recognizes MCCAC, Talks Housing, January 6th Insurrection at Wasco County Town Hall
Dennis Knox, Chief Executive Officer at Mid-Columbia Medical Center, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, and Phil Brady, Wasco County Commissioner at the Wasco County Town Hall. Photo Credit: Cole Goodwin
By Cole Goodwin
U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley held an in-person town hall at the Fort Dalles Readiness Center in The Dalles, OR on Friday, January 13th, from 1-2 p.m. Many community members were in attendance.
The Dalles Mayor Rich Mays led the pledge of allegiance.
Following the pledge of allegiance the Senator began the town hall by first recognizing Mid-Columbia Community Action Council for the good work they have been doing in addressing homelessness in the region.
“Thank you so much Senator Merkley,” said Kenny LaPoint, MCCAC Executive Director.
“We really appreciate that you’re here today. Your staff on the ground has been phenomenal to work with. So,much so that I stole one of them to come work for me,” joked LaPoint.
Kenny LaPoint and Senator Jeff Merkley at the Wasco County Town Hall. Photo Credit: Cole Goodwin
“I just want to give credit to my management team and my staff that’s here today because our agency wouldn’t be where we’re at today if it weren’t for them and their leadership and commitment to the community,” said LaPoint.
LaPoint invited his staff to stand and be recognized by the audience.
“These are the folks that make it happen on the ground everyday when it comes to 13,000 bednights, that’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week that folks are putting in time and commitment to the community.”
“Our work to provide shelter doesn’t end at shelter. We support folks in getting permanent housing and that is our goal. And since the beginning of 2022 we’ve been able to place over 70 individuals from our shelter into permanent housing here in The Dalles,” said LaPoint.
LaPoint also announced that MCCAC would be breaking ground on their Navigation Center in March on West 7th St in The Dalles.
“It will be a multi-agency service center along with a non-congregate shelter,” said LaPoint. “We’ll be housing around five different agencies at one location so we can provide wrap around services for folks who come in. So they don’t have to travel all around rural Oregon trying to access services. We were also fortunate enough to be included in CDS spending requests and we are partnering with the community college construction trades program, who will be building tiny homes for the project. So it has a workforce development aspect as well.”
“We’re super happy to be in your community, to lead on homeless services and I just want to emphasize that our mission is to build a better future for our entire community and that includes all of you,” said LaPoint.
Senator Merkley then presented MCCAC with a carefully folded American flag that had been flown over the U.S. capitol.
“This is a way of saying well done and congratulating you on this work and thanking you for doing it,” said Merkley.
Senator Jeff Merkley presenting a flag of honor to MCACC Executive Director Kenny LaPoint. Photo Credit: Cole Goodwin
The Senator then gave a brief overview of some of the legislative work he has been working on with a strong emphasis on housing, healthcare, education and good paying jobs.
Senator Merkley then spoke to the importance of Town halls and the fact that fewer and fewer town halls are occurring across the nation.
“I keep hearing from my fellow Senators that they are kind of suprised that Senator Wyden and I still do these town halls because across the county people have abandoned town halls becuase we have a lot of deep divisions about perspectives, divisions that are magnified by cable television, and social media. It’s cool that here in Oregon we have sustained this tradition and it’s a really important one in a republic,” said Merkley.
He then opened the floor for a public question and answer session.
Questions were asked by way of a lottery.
One town hall attendee asked whether the Senate was planning to pick up the investigation of the January 6th Insurrection and investigate some of the members of Congress that were involved in planning and developing the January 6th Insurrection
The Senator responded “The House has said they’re going to spend their time doing a lot of investigations. I don’t think that’s the plan with the Senate…Actually there was a lot of compliments to the House for having taken it to where they got to.”
“The sense right now (in the Senate) is really immersing ourselves in the substantive challenges in those worlds of healthcare, housing, education, and jobs rather than doing investigations. I think there’s a real appetite to try to just work on the real problems facing us and go forward at this point.”
Merkley also spoke a little to his own experience of the January 6th Insurrection.
“I could never have imagined in a million years that the capital would be stormed. To be in the Senate chamber and to suddenly have the Vice President whisked away and suddenly see capitol police appear trying to lock the doors…It’s symbolic of the divisions we have to overcome in this county and go forward,” said Merkley.
You can watch our livestream of the town hall here or on facebook.
An Interview with Senator Jeff Merkley
What projects are you currently involved in?
Well, firstly, the challenge of housing, and certainly renewable energy. And with those goes, trying to take another run at our democracy bill, to make our country work a lot better in terms of gerrymandering, and make sure everybody has access to the ballot box and getting rid of the dark money in campaigns.
The Senator has also recently secured funding for 145 community-initiated projects across the state, and is fighting to pass his End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act. The bill seeks to ban hedge funds and private equity investors from owning large numbers of homes by establishing a $20,000 federal tax penalty for each single-family home owned by a single company and its affiliates over 100 homes. This bill is getting buzz in Oregon and around the country as a way to take on the housing affordability crisis.
According to last year's point in time count we have just under 200 houseless people in our region alone. My understanding is that you're working on a bill to address the issue of hedge fund ownership of residential housing. Can you tell us a bit about that?
So, in this past year, about 20% of the individual homes were bought by hedge funds. This goes back to 2008-2009 when the foreclosures were sold in big packages and no ordinary person could buy a single home because they were selling them in packages of like a thousand homes.
So, hedge funds got into this business and discovered that hey, rather than all that wealth going to the middle class, let's let the wealth go to the already wealthiest people who, you know, invest their money and hedge funds. And so 20% is the best number we have for Oregon right now but we have numbers for places such as Phoenix area in Arizona and Atlanta that are close to 40% of houses being bought by hedge funds And so, can you imagine? You're going out to buy a home and you're competing against an all cash billion dollar fund. It’s raised the prices and it's raised the rents. So it affects everybody, whether you're hoping to be a homeowner, or you're hoping to find an affordable rent. The markets, really been damaged by hedge fund involvement.
So we need to get them out of that world. You know housing needs to be homes for people, not a profit center for Wall Street.
On a related note to housing we got the Mid-Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation project funded in Hood River for 129 units of affordable housing.
Over 5,000 families in our area depend on the Oregon food bank for food security. What is being done to address inflation and rising food costs in Oregon?
It's really, it's really a challenge because we've seen food prices jump on a lot. Kind of find it almost shocking. I would say, when I go to the store. I mean in the past, I have been doing a lot to help fund the food bank, in terms of its cost for moving food around the states, they can move it from place to place where it's needed most. And I think we're going to have to find more ways to invest in the food banks because they are a critical part of the foundation for a lot of struggling families.
People in our region have very limited access to reliable, health care, physical, mental, and behavioral health, right now/ What is being done right now to bolster health care across the state?
Well, one of the big things is to make sure that we keep expanded Medicaid operating. You might recall that that was on the agenda by the Republicans to get rid of the expansion of Medicaid, which would affect a ton of people particularly in rural parts of our state.
We did get that funded and we had a lot of folks who were able to pay bills at rural health centers, rural hospitals. So that helped a little bit. But we also invested a lot more directly in rural health clinics and we need to keep doing that.
It's certainly the case that we also have to take on the absurd amount we pay for drugs. Because that's a huge part of the health care bill. It’s outrageous. We pay sometimes twice, sometimes ten times as much as people and other countries do for the same drug and we should be getting this the single best price because we invest more in the R&D to develop these drugs.
We should get the best price than developing. And the reason we don't is because we have a federal law that doesn't allow us to negotiate the price of those drugs. We finally, in this last year, as part of the inflation reduction act, got a beginning, a very small beginning on the ability to negotiate the price of drugs. We need to expand that to the entire field of pharmaceuticals.
The news deserts of Oregon are expanding, everyday local newspapers are folding and this contributes to issues of increased hostility along political divides, increases of public health and safety issues, lack of connection to community, and lack of government accountability and civic engagement. What can be done to support local news?
It’s really discouraging to see how many newspapers have folded. And I think it was really healthy when towns had two or three newspapers, and that's an almost completely unheard of thing now, unless it's maybe New York. This is a perfect title to talk with your state house member because they're going to be proposing bills.
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