PORTLAND, Ore. ( KOIN ) — Three Portland mayoral candidates spoke at a Forum Thursday morning, outlining their plans and sharing their priorities if elected in November.

The candidates, Rene Gonzalez, Keith Wilson and Carmen Rubio, each took turns answering questions covering topics like homelessness, taxes and crime within the city.

During opening statements, Wilson spoke on his goals of ending houselessness in Portland, calling attention to the fact that he comes from the private sector as opposed to the two other candidates at the forum who both work in politics.

“I have done the research, I’ve gathered the team, I founded a successful shelter and I created a roadmap for our city,” Wilson said. “I am the candidate who has the executive experience that the new mayor’s role will require to lead this project successfully.”

Gonzalez and Rubio followed both highlighting elements of their careers in politics that they said would make them suitable for the position of mayor.

When discussing the houselessness issues in Portland, all three candidates highlighted things that haven’t worked in the past and shared their visions for the future, with Gonzalez bringing attention to building more shelters as well as providing mental health support. Wilson spoke on his past experience creating Shelter Portland and his plans to make shelters more accessible. Rubio discussed the shortcomings of the city’s current systems and how she wants to move the city towards providing permanent supportive housing.

“When I took office, I knew that we needed more shelters so I changed city code to make it possible to stand up shelters and transitional housing that we needed to reduce houselessness,” Rubio said.

Revitalizing Portland was a hot topic during the forum. Portland police say that violent crimes are down 70% in the city, but there is still the issue of addressing open drug use within the city as well as unsheltered homelessness.

Rubio spoke first on the topic, once again calling back to her prior attempts to alleviate issues in the Downtown area. Wilson spoke about bringing back livability to the city, highlighting Portland’s high property crime rates, and how by reducing those rates and enforcing camping bans, livability in the city would improve.

Gonzalez shared his appreciation for Rubio’s work to restore the city but went on to call the city’s economic plan a failure.

“To be blunt, our economic recovery has been an abject failure in the city of Portland,” Gonzalez said. “We have pushed a lot of paper that’s not leading to new jobs, that’s not leading to new construction, it’s not leading to more capital flowing into the city, sorry to be blunt, but that is our reality, that is what we are dealing with today.”

In closing, Rubio and Wilson both shared that the future of Portland relies on electing competent leaders, while Gonzalez spoke about restoring the city’s core values, once again calling back to his time as a commissioner.

Gonzalez, Rubio and Wilson are among the 19 candidates appearing on the ballot for Portland residents.

Watch the full debate in the player above.

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