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Three things became clear when the Portland Housing Bureau presented its first-ever State of Housing in Portland Report to Portland City Council: new home starts are behind new apartment buildings, being able to afford housing in Portland is harder than ever for people with low incomes, and more funding is needed to create affordable housing.

Commissioner Dan Saltzman said the report was comprehensive and data driven and will be valuable to the city in making future decisions.

鈥淚’m pretty struck by the picture that if you are trying to rent or buy, many people can’t afford to rent in Portland,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t’s pretty sobering in its message and we must rededicate ourselves to affordable housing for those who are most vulnerable.鈥�

Traci Manning, outgoing executive director of the housing bureau, said the report is the first of its kind and includes information that the city didn’t have access to before. A second phase of the report will be issued in October when public and stakeholder comments are added, and the report will be updated annually.

鈥淭his is data to help the city set policy, and it looks at housing types and affordability for different types of households,鈥� she said.

Matthew Tschabold, the housing bureau’s policy and equity manager, said the report looks at 24 neighborhood areas and uses information from the U.S. Census, Metro, the city and private market sources. He said the 105-page report gives a clearer picture of housing in Portland than was available in the past.

鈥淭here had been a lot of under-counting of lower income and communities of color,鈥� he said. The report is divided into five sections, he said, including a summary; populations, households and income; city-wide analysis; neighborhood profiles; and methodology. The entire report is available at the .

Manning said the report gives hard data to support 鈥渨hat we know intuitively,鈥� that housing is a crisis for very poor people who live on 30 percent or less of median income levels.

鈥淐entral city is unaffordable (for poor people) and some people are being pushed out of the city altogether,鈥� she said. 鈥淪eparation by poverty has terrible outcomes, but we are not giving up on having a city where everyone can afford to live.鈥�

Tschabold said the report shows that while single-family and multifamily production development have increased in recent years, annual production has not yet reached pre-recession levels. However, multifamily (apartment) permits for 2013 and 2014, respectively at 2,619 units and 4,236 units, are at an all-time high. By contract, single family permits for 2013 (815 units) and 2014 (886 units) are still well below levels of the early 2000s.

The report states that multifamily production was concentrated around city central including the northwest, interstate corridor, in the St. Johns neighborhood, and along Belmont, Hawthorne and Division streets.

In the meantime, housing for communities of color is more difficult because incomes for those residents continue to fall, he said, and low-income people continue to have a hard time finding housing.

鈥淪ingle moms and seniors and communities of color continue to struggle and have very few choices,鈥� Tschabold said. 鈥淭hey often pay far more than 30 percent of their income for rent.鈥�

Mayor Charlie Hales said the city has spent $200 million through Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds during the last five years in nine urban renewal districts, and although the use of TIF is declining, more affordable housing units are needed.

鈥淲e need to build more units, but we need more money and need to find more public revenues,鈥� he said. 鈥淯rban renewal is not dead yet, but we need to avoid gentrifying our single-family base and I believe we should tax demolition.鈥�

The housing report’s executive summary provides more detail.

鈥淲ith disproportionately lower incomes when compared to white households, households of communities of color are faced with severely limited choice as they relate to housing,鈥� the report reads. 鈥淗ousing choice is also increasingly becoming an issue for families in need of more than a single-bedroom housing unit.鈥�

As housing stock is increasingly focused on multifamily housing, affordability of two- and three-bedroom units in or close to the city center 鈥渁re out of reach for a staggering number of Portland households,鈥� the report states.

The executive summary goes on to state that a decline in federal funding for housing over the last two decades 鈥渉as left the bulk of financing for home ownership and rental housing to local jurisdictions.鈥�

Between 2000 and 2011, according to the report, the number of regulated affordable units in the city increased from more than 12,700 to almost 20,000 units and 65 percent were funded by the city.