Claire Rish News Today

Gov. Tina Kotek criticized city of Portland and Multnomah County officials on Monday for not answering basic questions when it comes to how they would spend state dollars to address the homeless crisis.

Democratic leaders in California and Oregon are becoming more open to using involuntary psychiatric commitment to combat homelessness, drug abuse and untreated mental illness.

Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, has called on the state to play a more aggressive role in building housing. Kotek issued an executive order immediately after taking office last month calling on Oregon to produce 36,000 new housing units a year, up from 22,000 or so builders now create in a year. That aggressive goal — and the ongoing statewide homelessness crisis — has shifted the political calculus in Salem.

Cities will receive “new resources in April, not August,” Rep. David Gomberg, a Democrat from the central coast said on Wednesday morning, “and that’s significant.”

Gov. Tina Kotek’s housing goal and the homelessness crisis have changed the political calculus in Salem when it comes to housing and development.