Public comment: Offer incentives for temporary sustainable communities

Presenter: The Springfield City Council is asked to allow temporary shelter communities on vacant commercial property. At the council’s Sept. 2 meeting, sustainable designer Curtis Blankinship:

Curtis Blankinship (Sustainable designer): Hi, I’m Curtis Blankinship. So, I recently talked to you about using tax incentives to encourage the vacant commercial properties in Glenwood to be used for temporary shelter for the homeless.

[00:00:22] And you referred me to your development plan so I went through that. I’m a sustainable designer; I have an AA degree in sustainable design. I’ve studied it for over 30 years.

[00:00:31] I just went down to LA for three months and I can tell you that your plan—through no fault of yours, but since the pandemic—the brick-and-mortar businesses have changed to online businesses.

[00:00:41] So there’s a bunch of malls—the Century City Mall down in LA is practically empty; the Burbank Mall—they’re empty and there’s a glut of commercial property in all these cities. San Diego too is having problems with funding this stuff. These models aren’t working anymore, and as you know, your funding is being cut.

[00:00:59] So that’s why I’m saying: Can we just change that area into a temporary community with community gardens and an art space and some temporary shelter in the Glenwood area while you guys are—you know, it’s going to take you five years to get this thing even if you have a buyer it’s going to take you five years and you’re more likely to get an investor if you show them that you’ve managed this area that has been like that literally since I’ve been coming up here since in 1985, it’s been that way.

[00:01:28] And you know your reply to me was the last time I said this that, ‘You can’t tell property owners what to do,’ and that ‘In capitalism you can do whatever you want with your property.’

[00:01:38] And I’m sorry, but that’s not true. And you can go to the U of O and find this out. What you would do in capitalism is you would lower your rent until those vacancies are filled or you would do something like I’m saying right now until the economy changes.

[00:01:53] Thanks for your time and all your great work. Thank you.

[00:01:56] Presenter: Curtis Blankinship suggests incentives for the owners of underutilized commercial property. He asks Springfield to encourage temporary communities based on sustainable design.

You can hear Curtis Blankinship every Saturday afternoon at 4 with Talk Is Cheap on KEPW 97.3 Eugene’s PeaceWorks Community Radio. Image courtesy Tdorante10, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.