Welcome

Jennifer M. Bragar, President, Housing Land Advocates * Chair Elect, ABA State & Local Government Section * Partner, Tomasi, Salyer, Martin

Keynote – White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality 

Break 

Up in Smoke: Affordable Housing and Wildfire Recovery

Moderated by Alexis Biddle, Great Communities Program Director and Staff Attorney, 1000 Friends of Oregon * Board member, Housing Land Advocates

Panelists: 

Heather Buch, Lane County Commissioner

Barry J. Long, Principal + President, Urban Design Associates

Representative Pam Marsh, Oregon House of Representatives, House District 5

Margaret Van Vliet, Senior Advisor, Social Finance, focusing on issues related to housing and homelessness

Recognition of the Ed Sullivan Affordable Housing Advocate

Lunch break

Exploring the Boundary Between Shelter and Housing

Moderated by Ariana Buchanan, University of Oregon School of Law 2022 * Fellow, ENR, Sustainable Land Use Project * Student board member, Housing Land Advocates

Panelists: 

Eric Engstrom, Principal Planner, City of Portland

Mark Fretz, Associate Director of Outreach and Research Assistant Professor, University of Oregon College of Design, Institute for Health in the Built Environment

Marc Jolin, Director of Joint Office of Homeless Services (A Home for Everyone), Multnomah County, Oregon

Break

Climate Resilient Urban Areas: Can They Be Inclusive?

Moderated by Victoria Whalen, University of Oregon School of Law 2023 * Fellow, ENR, Sustainable Land Use Project

Panelists: 

Professor Sarah J. Adams-Schoen, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Oregon School of Law * Faculty supervisor, ENR Sustainable Land Use Project * Board member, Housing Land Advocates

Aimée Okotie-Oyekan, Land Use and Transportation Planner, Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development

Closing

OSB CLE and AICP credits will be requested and have been granted for prior HLA conferences.

Since 2004, Housing Land Advocates has been dedicated to using land use planning, education, and law to ensure that Oregonians of all income levels can obtain adequate and affordable housing. We bring together policy makers, planners, affordable housing practitioners, and other community members to discuss how land use planning can support Oregon’s affordable housing needs. We serve as an advocate for thoughtful land use planning that aligns with housing policy, and as a watchdog to ensure that state and local governments fulfill their obligations under adopted housing policies, goals, and statutes.

In lieu of a registration fee, please consider donating $50 (or whatever you can afford) to support the work of Housing Land Advocates.

Interested in serving on Housing Land Advocates’ all-volunteer board or otherwise contributing your time or expertise to Housing Land Advocates?
Email housing.land.advocates.or@gmail.com.

Sheryll Cashin, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice, Georgetown Law

• Sheryll Cashin is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice at Georgetown University. She teaches Constitutional Law, Race and American Law, among other subjects. She is an active member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. She worked in the Clinton White House as an advisor on urban and economic policy, particularly concerning community development in inner-city neighborhoods. She was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
• Author of White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality (Beacon, 2021), Professor Cashin writes about race relations and inequality in America. Her new book is White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality (September 2021). It shows how government created “ghettos” and affluent white space and entrenched a system of American residential caste that is the linchpin of US inequality—and issues a call for abolition. Her book Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy explores the history and future of interracial intimacy, how white supremacy was constructed and how “culturally dexterous” allies may yet kill it. Her book Place Not Race was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Non-Fiction in 2015. Her book The Failures of Integration was an Editors’ Choice in the New York Times Book Review. Professor Cashin is also a three-time nominee for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for non-fiction (2005, 2009, and 2018). She has written commentaries for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Salon, The Root, and other media and is currently a contributing editor for Politico Magazine.
• Professor Cashin was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, where her parents were political activists. She currently resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.

Sarah Adams-Schoen

• Sarah Adams-Schoen teaches Land Use Law, State and Local Government Law and Ocean and Coastal Law at the University of Oregon School of Law. She also serves as a faculty supervisor to the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center’s Sustainable Land Use Project and the Oceans, Coasts and Watersheds Project. Her scholarship, applied research, and service focus on state and local government law, federalism, and land use, with an emphasis on environmental justice, fair housing, and climate resilience. She serves on the editorial board of The Urban Lawyer, as Chair of the Land Use Committee of the ABA State and Local Government Law Section, and on the board of Housing Land Advocates.
• She recently served on an agency Rulemaking Advisory Committee charged with recommending the implementing regulations for Oregon’s new middle housing law and housing production strategy. She currently serves on a Rulemaking Advisory Committee charged with implementing land use and transportation planning aspects of the Oregon’s Governor’s 2020 Executive Order on Climate Change and Environmental Justice. She has provided guidance related to housing justice and coastal resilience on by many entities. State and local legislatures, state and national bar committees, private foundations, and government agencies including the Environmental Protection and Federal Emergency Management agencies have called upon her expertise.
• Professor Adams-Schoen brings to her teaching and research more than a decade of law practice experience. Prior to embarking on her legal career, she received a master’s in economics from the London School of Economics and worked as a senior policy analyst for Portland, Oregon’s Metro Regional Government.

Alexis Biddle, 1000 Friends of Oregon * Housing Land Advocates

• Alexis Biddle is 1000 Friends of Oregon’s Great Communities Program Director and Staff Attorney. He graduated from the University of Oregon with degrees in Law and Community and Regional Planning. Alexis sits on the Board of Housing Land Advocates and focuses on housing and transportation issues throughout the state.

Jennifer M. Bragar, President, Housing Land Advocates * Chair Elect, ABA State & Local Government Section * Partner, Tomasi, Salyer, Martin

• Jennifer Bragar’s practice is focused on land use, real estate, municipal and environmental law. She represents business, community, and government entities in matters unique to land use planning and municipal law. She has appeared before the Land Use Board of Appeals and Oregon Court of Appeals. She is a frequent lecturer and author on Oregon land use law.
• Jennifer assists in obtaining entitlements for a range of projects including affordable housing and negotiating development agreements for commercial and employment zoned properties in Oregon and Washington. Jennifer has been involved with several significant cases in Oregon. Her cases included advocacy for a coalition of private property owners who challenged a Umatilla County ordinance that would have severely restricted land available for commercial wind facilities in 2011, as well as cases protective of farm and forest land. She has represented multiple clients on hazardous waste cleanup actions arising under federal and state Superfund laws and represents firms developing natural resource mitigating projects.
• Among her many boards and committee work, Jennifer is the current President of Housing Land Advocates, bringing a land use lens to planning for affordable housing.
• Before entering private practice, Jennifer founded JB Associates (1999-2003), a land use and political consulting firm in the Monterey Bay area providing services to clients around the central coast of California. She has worked closely with government agencies, developers, and community activists to achieve balanced development proposals that satisfy the requirements of all participants in the review process.
• Jennifer is licensed in Oregon, Washington, and California.

Heather Buch, Lane County Commissioner, District 5 East Lane

• Commissioner Heather Buch was born and raised in Lane County and has spent her professional career running a small business to help people access and afford housing in the county. Commissioner Buch pursued this career path because, as the daughter of a single, working mother growing up in Veneta, she learned firsthand the effects of unstable housing. At the age of eight while her mother was at work, she read the classified sections of local newspapers, calling advertisers in a determined effort to find affordable, stable housing for her family. This vivid memory, along with her mother’s dedication and resilience, shaped the values and priorities Commissioner Buch holds today. She knows that success in life begins with stable housing, and that’s why she works every day to find housing solutions for individuals and families throughout Lane County. After several years in retirement planning, she decided to open her own small business in commercial real estate and property management with a specialization in affordable housing. She continually grew that company and oversaw multimillion-dollar projects and assets. Commissioner Buch also spent several years working as the Special Projects Director for St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County, Inc., Lane County’s largest nonprofit human services organization. She helped the agency work toward community-driven goals. She worked on many unique, innovative community-based projects and took a lead role in the nonprofit’s acquisition and rehabilitation of aging mobile home parks – a new approach and solution to the need for more affordable housing that the state and local governments are working to replicate throughout Oregon.

Eric Engstrom, Principal Planner, City of Portland

• Eric Engstrom is a Principal Planner with the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. He has been with the City of Portland for 25 years, working on land use, transportation, and strategic planning projects. He has a master’s in urban and regional planning from Portland State University, and an undergraduate degree from the Evergreen State College. Eric supervised the development of the 2012 Portland Plan and the recently adopted 2035 Comprehensive Plan.

Mark Fretz, Associate Director of Outreach and Research Assistant Professor, University of Oregon College of Design, Institute for Health in the Built Environment

• Mark Fretz is a Research Assistant Professor and Associate Director of Outreach in the Department of Architecture at the University of Oregon. In addition, he is the Associate Director of Knowledge Exchange at the Institute for Health in the Built Environment. He directs the Institute’s industry research consortium, Build Health, which leverages design thinking and transdisciplinary science collaboration to develop and apply innovative design solutions for low-carbon buildings that simultaneously promote healthier individuals, communities and planet. Mark received a DDS at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and an MArch from the University of Oregon. Prior to practicing architecture, Mark was a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service. As a designer, Mark has worked on projects ranging from product design to healthcare, single and multi-family housing, embassies, office buildings and district scale master planning. His research and teaching focus on exploring the unseen in the design of the built environment that affects human health across scales ranging from microbes and molecules to energy and carbon.

Marc Jolin, Director of Joint Office of Homeless Services (A Home for Everyone), Multnomah County, Oregon

• Marc Jolin is the Director of the Multnomah County - City of Portland Joint Office of Homeless services. The office serves as the lead agency for the continuum of care and oversees implementation of local ending homelessness strategies. Over the past 25 years, Marc has worked as a case manager, a program manager, an organizer, a legal services attorney, and the executive director of a street outreach program that worked to house people experiencing chronic homelessness. He has a master’s degree in sociology and JD degree from University of Chicago.

Barry J. Long, Urban Design Associates

Barry Long is the President of Urban Design Associates (UDA), an international urban design, planning, and architecture practice. He is recognized as a design leader and visionary of city planning and urban design projects across the United States. His approach is rooted in UDA’s core values of engaging residents, designing in context, and creating community.

After the Camp Fire, UDA was asked to prepare the Long-Term Recovery Plan for the Town Paradise and Barry served as UDA’s principal-in-charge. The Town-led process resulted in a blueprint for rebuilding. Paradise and the unincorporated communities of Concow and Magalia continue to adapt after the most destructive and deadliest wildfire in California history.

Representative Pam Marsh, Oregon House of Representatives, House District 5

• Representative Pam Marsh serves residents of southern Jackson County, which includes Ashland, Talent, Phoenix, the southwest corner of Medford, Jacksonville, and Ruch.
• Representative Marsh is the Assistant House Majority Leader. In the 2021 Legislative Session, Representative Marsh served as the Chair of the House Committee on Energy and the Environment and the Vice-Chair of the House Special Committee on Wildfire Recovery, which was charged with supporting fire-impacted communities as they rebound from the devastation of the 2020 wildfires. She currently serves as Chair of the House Environment and Natural Resource committee, and as Vice-Chair of the House Special Committee on Wildfire Recovery. In addition, she serves as a member of the House Committees on Agriculture and Land Use, Revenue, Housing, and the Joint Committee on Information Management and Technology. Representative Marsh continues to advocate for policies and funding to help reduce wildfire risk and respond to the devastating impacts of smoke and fire made worse by the climate crisis.

Aimée Okotie-Oyekan, Land Use and Transportation Planner, Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development

• Aimée Okotie-Oyekan is a Land Use and Transportation Planner for the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. She works in the Department’s Transportation and Growth Management Program to develop equitable land use policy and disseminate financial and educational resources for local transportation and land use planning work that boosts walking, biking, and transit use. Broadly, her work rests at the intersection of environmental science, planning policy, and storytelling to advance environmental health protections for frontline communities and broaden representation of historically excluded communities in environmental narratives. Most recently, she worked as the Climate Justice Strategist at Breach Collective, successfully urging the Eugene City Council to pass motions that support a just transition to electric buildings. As the former Environmental and Climate Justice Coordinator for Eugene-Springfield Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she organized to advance equitable energy, land use, and transportation policy and worked to successfully pass Senate Concurrent Resolution 17: An Environmental Justice Framework of Principles for the State of Oregon. She earned a BS in Biology from the University of Georgia and holds concurrent master’s degrees in Environmental Studies and Community and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon. At U of O, she wrote her thesis, “Place-Making and Place-Taking: An Analysis of Green Gentrification in Atlanta, Georgia”, exploring how urban greening projects contribute to displacement in Grove Park, a low-income African-American community in Northwest Atlanta. Her other writings and multimedia storytelling in service to intersectional justice has been featured in Places Journal, Register Guard, Eugene Weekly, and Vogue Italia.

Margaret Van Vliet, Senior Advisor, Social Finance

• Margaret Van Vliet is a Senior Advisor with Social Finance, focusing on issues related to housing and homelessness. She is an accomplished affordable housing executive with roots in commercial banking and significant performance improvement achievements in state and local government. From 2016 to 2019, Ms. Van Vliet served as the Executive Director of the Sonoma County Community Development Commission. During her tenure, she led the team that created the housing recovery and renewal plan after the 2017 wildfires. Her organization tripled the amount of new housing financed in two years and garnered new funding sources to sustain the county’s production agenda. Ms. Van Vliet also spearheaded a redesign of the County’s homeless system that has increased the pace at which people are moving from the streets to permanent housing.
• From 2011 to 2016, Margaret directed the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department. Working under two governors, she succeeded in securing $60 million in new funding from the legislature, a then-record accomplishment in a single year. She also turned around a troubled federal program that became a top performer in two years.
• Her past leadership posts also include service as the director of the City of Portland’s Housing Bureau; chief operating officer of the Housing Authority of Portland; and executive director of Network for Oregon Affordable Housing, the first and largest statewide CDFI.