Andrew Rice

Andrew Rice covers how Portland’s land use, housing and major real estate projects intersect with city politics, homelessness and public services for The Portland Press Herald. His reporting follows development decisions from policy debate to physical impact, tracking what large projects mean for residents as well as for the local real estate market. He brings long experience on the city hall beat to stories that explain complex projects in plain terms, often returning to the same sites over years as plans, partners and public sentiment shift.

City hall decisions that shape real estate and housing

Rice is a staff writer at The Portland Press Herald covering the city of Portland, with a brief to follow municipal government and its decisions on growth, housing and public services. A newsroom announcement described him as a longtime reporter who would cover Portland City Hall, underscoring that his primary frame is how council and staff choices translate into changes on the ground. Recent work includes reporting on the city seeking a partner to run a nightly warming shelter, where he focuses on how contracts, funding and operational decisions affect unhoused residents and nearby neighborhoods. Across his city hall coverage, he links budget and policy votes to concrete outcomes such as shelter capacity, neighborhood character and the use of publicly owned land.

He has been working in journalism since 2012 and joined the Sun Journal in 2017 before moving to The Portland Press Herald, giving him a decade of practice explaining local government and its impact on residents. In an introductory column as the new city hall reporter, he tells readers he will be covering the city’s decisions and their consequences, reinforcing that his beat is the intersection of public power, land use and daily life. That perspective runs through his housing and development stories, which consistently return to what elected officials, planning boards and housing authorities decide, how they communicate those decisions, and how they respond when projects stall or face opposition.

Midtown and Bayside redevelopment over time

Rice’s most distinctive thread is his long-running coverage of the “Midtown” project and broader redevelopment in the Bayside neighborhood, which he approaches as both a real estate saga and a test of city planning. In a 2024 deep dive on the project that “promised to transform Bayside” but became closely associated with Portland’s homelessness crisis, he traces the history of approvals, lawsuits, changing proposals and political fallout, including a plan that would add more than 800 apartments with a portion set aside as affordable units. A 2025 explainer on the failed housing project breaks down a settlement agreement under which the city council votes to buy key Somerset Street lots from the original developer, detailing the terms, the end of litigation and what it means for the neighborhood’s future.

As the city moves from settlement into planning and marketing, Rice follows each step. He reports on Portland hiring a firm to market the prime “Midtown” parcels, noting the long delays and describing a proposal for high-priced condominiums across from the city’s Oxford Street shelter, which highlights tensions between market-rate development and services for unhoused people. Subsequent stories cover the city’s draft request for proposals and council discussions that refine a vision built around mixed-income housing at maximized density, a standalone park, and neighborhood-serving retail and services at accessible price points. He closely reads the RFP language and survey data, pointing out that strong bids are expected to include varied housing types—affordable, workforce and market rate—across both rental and ownership units.

Public input and community priorities in development

A recurring feature of Rice’s work is the weight he gives to public input in shaping major real estate decisions. In coverage of the city’s outreach around potential Midtown redevelopment, he reports on efforts to solicit residents’ feedback through public meetings and online surveys, framing them as a chance to reset long-contested plans for civic value. He writes about more than 1,100 survey responses that call for balancing housing with open space on the vacant Bayside lots, highlighting the distribution of preferences and what residents say they want to see built. In later reporting on council debates, he shows how those expressed priorities—especially calls for dense housing and accessible public amenities—feed into the criteria the city sets for developers.

Rice applies a similar lens to other projects, such as a Portland Housing Authority plan that would raze four buildings and add 173 units in East Bayside. He explains how the affordable housing agency positions the project, the tradeoffs between demolition and new construction, and where residents’ concerns sit alongside the push to add units. By consistently quoting survey results, meeting testimony and neighborhood reactions, he situates every major project within a broader conversation about who the city is building for, and how public land and zoning can advance or undermine goals like affordability, equity and livability.

Homelessness, shelters and the use of civic space

Rice often connects land use decisions to homelessness and the provision of services, treating shelters, warming centers and vacant lots as part of the same civic real estate portfolio. In writing about the Midtown parcels, he notes their role as the “face of Portland’s homelessness crisis,” documenting how a stalled project leaves high-profile land in limbo while demands on nearby shelters grow. Coverage of the city’s search for a partner to operate a nightly warming shelter similarly ties operational choices to questions of location, neighborhood impact and the city’s responsibility to provide safe space in extreme weather.

This focus on homelessness extends into op-ed and commentary published by the masthead, including arguments that now that the city owns the former Midtown parcels it should move beyond conventional development and prioritize long-term civic value over short-term gains. While that particular piece is labeled as a letter, its themes mirror the policy and planning tensions Rice surfaces in his reporting: how to use scarce land, how to weigh market pressures against public need, and how to ensure that new buildings and public spaces serve residents who are often excluded from real estate conversations. Together, his work gives communications professionals a clear picture of how debates over housing, shelters and public land are covered in the local press—grounded in documents and data, but attentive to community sentiment and political context.