Transcript
Automatically generated transcript. It may contain errors and includes testimony in languages other than English that is not individually marked up for assistive technology.
Anna Plum
Did you know that everybody can become self-sufficient after 7 years of disability?
Alisha Jones-Dixon
Tired of waiting?
Candace Avalos
Oh yeah, I'm just starting.
Jamie Dunphy
Good afternoon.
I'm now calling to order the joint work session of the City of Portland and Multnomah County.
The subject of our meeting is our jurisdictions' roles and responsibilities in the homelessness response system.
I'm going to start by turning it over to Chair Vega-Peterson.
Jessica Vega Peterson
All right, is it— yes, good afternoon everyone.
Really appreciate the chance to convene here in City Hall.
Thanks again for hosting us, President Dunphy and council members.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Jessica Vega Peterson
I think that these joint sessions have proven to be really helpful for us as we are looking at how our 2 jurisdictions work together.
They've been really important for us as partners to respond to homelessness in our community.
And I think today especially, we're going to be hearing about and discussing our relative work in this area, which is a really crucial thing and also a really well-timed thing as we're both moving into our budget Uh, discussions, um, in the next month for both of our bodies.
We all received a preview of the slides from our Homelessness Response System team, so thank you so much for doing that.
I really am impressed with the level of work that staff did to create informative graphics on roles and responsibilities between the city and the county, and I think that gives us an excellent starting point for our discussions today, as well as the investments from the— that multiple jurisdictions have on our homelessness programs.
And I think this is especially important as we ensure that we are not duplicating any services or any systems, which we know is inefficient and it doesn't get us the results that we want to have.
We need to keep this front and center as we are developing budgets, especially in the constrained resource environment that we're in, that the state is in, that we know that many of our partners are in as well.
I'm glad today that also we're going to have a very brief presentation and then we're going to have 90 minutes.
For discussion and Q&A.
So lots of time for all of us to talk today.
So appreciate the chance for these remarks, and I'll turn it back over to you, President Dunphy.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm also going to turn it over to our Housing Chair, Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos
Thank you, Council President.
I am really excited to dive in today's, uh, dive into today's discussion.
Um, this is a topic that I've been leading, um, conversations on since I've held the gavel of Homeless List and Housing Committee.
Meghan Moyer
Hello.
Candace Avalos
So hello, everybody's trickling in.
All right.
Over the years, we have seen the city move into areas that have historically been our responsibility.
And in part, this is because the scale of homeless— the homelessness crisis put pressure on city officials to act, and because our old form of government led to a lack of long-term planning and siloed approach to policy.
So while that scattered approach wasn't as much of an issue when we had plenty of resources flowing in from Metro and the state and federal resources, recent cuts and funding shortfalls mean that we have to fundamentally realign our priorities.
The good news is that the work is already underway, and very grateful to all of the folks, especially the folks at this table, at the dais there, who have been leading that.
So last year I led the Unified Housing Strategy resolution with Council President Dunphy, which council overwhelmingly supported.
And the UHS is intended to create one comprehensive roadmap for our policies and programs across the homelessness-to-housing continuum, which will also clarify the city's responsibilities in our joint system.
Now, earlier in January, I facilitated a work session as part Thank you.
Councilor Smith, thank you.
So we had a public comment session as part of the UHS development where we spoke about where councilors see us leading in the wide world of housing policy.
Overwhelmingly, councilors agreed that our first priority as a city should be on bricks and sticks, increasing housing production and homeownership.
And as we see in the presentation graphic that will be posted here shortly, we're involved in a lot more than just housing production.
We're involved in things like eviction defense and rent assistance, landlord-tenant resources, public space management, outreach, crisis management, and shelters.
And so that gets to another major area of agreement among councilors.
Many of my colleagues expressed the desire to move away from the city operating shelters.
That's what I heard in that work session.
And the January 15th work session and the many conversations we've had about the unspent housing funds as a council give us a good starting point for today's work session with our counterparts at the county.
I wanna be clear that while funding shortfalls and major budget gaps at the city and county make today's discussion especially urgent, Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Mayor.
This is a conversation that we always should have been having regardless, right?
So Portlanders put us here with the expectation that we should be doing better at addressing homelessness.
And without alignment between our 2 governments, we will never deliver on that promise of a region where every person has a safe place to call home, which I know is all of our goal.
I don't expect us to reach a place of final agreement by the end of today's work session, but I am grateful for the discussion and how you have structured the dialogue.
So I hope that we can have some clarity after today that will align our path forward.
That's all for now.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor.
So colleagues, I have 3 quick housekeeping things before we get started.
First, to our county colleagues, I'd like to introduce our new city administrator, Raymond Lee.
This is his first attempt— first meeting, joint meeting with you all.
So I wanted to make sure everybody sees him.
He's right there.
So second, because our county colleagues are not in the Zoom meeting, I'm gonna ask folks to raise their hand, just make eye contact with me if you wanna get in the queue.
I'll write you down and I'll call things out so you won't have So you don't have to worry about it twice.
Third, we have a tight 90 minutes for discussion, and that means it's only about 5 minutes per person to talk.
At the very top here, I'm going to really quickly run through the prompt— discussion prompt questions that we sent ahead of time so that you have those in mind as we start the presentation, and then we'll dive in.
The prompt questions were generally, first, does anyone have questions about the roles and responsibilities outlined here?
Anna Plum
Yes.
Jamie Dunphy
So we will have that opportunity to ask for clarifying questions.
In a post-COVID environment and with one-time ARPA and SHS funding largely expended, what should each of our roles be?
Given the fiscal constraints we both face heading into fiscal year '27, what shifts do you think we need to make in roles, in strategies, and in investments?
What does a more unified, balanced system look like?
And in the context of the recently approved revised HRS action plan and the key performance indicators, what does success look like to you?
So let's keep those in mind.
I'll turn it now over to Director Shoney to lead us through a brief presentation.
Olivia Clark
Great.
Jillian Schoene
Thank you, Council President, Chair.
For the record, my name is Jillian Shoney, Director of the Homelessness Response System.
Our goal here is to keep the presentation short, as was just mentioned, and use the 2 graphics before you to elicit a productive discussion amongst all of you.
As you all are well aware, our collective— the contributions to our collective response to homelessness are extensive and expensive.
The work requires a lot of coordination and collaboration, not just between the city and the county, but also Metro, the state, the federal government, and of course all of the public employees and the contracted providers that help us carry out this work.
We have been in partnership for decades, since 1983 to be exact, as I shared with y'all in the January memo I sent you, our relationship, the roles the city and the county have played, and the associated investments have varied over the years, and that's okay.
But the financial challenges and the shifting policy and investment decisions, particularly by the state and federal governments, require us to take a step back, look at the status quo, and use data to inform what will be a new normal.
We need to be realistic about what we can do and what we can achieve.
I hope that after today, this discussion doesn't end.
Please carry this forward in your one-on-one relationships with each other, into your respective budget discussions, and of course, your votes.
That said, I bring your attention to the first of 2 slides.
The goal of this graphic is to boil down all that the county and the city do in response to homelessness, and generally who leads and/or funds each piece of that work.
Thank you.
I'll hand it off first— oh, let's just say, sorry, I have here with me the leadership of all of those efforts.
They will walk you through the graphic at a very high level from left to right to describe the work so that we're all operating with the same baseline information.
So I'll first hand it off to Rachel Pearl, Director of the Department of County Human Services, to speak to eviction prevention.
Rachel Pearl
Thanks, Jillian.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Rachel Pearl.
I use she/her pronouns.
I'm the Interim Director for Department of County Human Services.
And yes, I will start because DCHS— what's that?
Closer?
Okay.
I was asking about these mics.
Sorry.
I was also told I had 2 minutes, so excuse the speed of my conversation here with you.
DCHS is— is that better?
Can you hear me?
Is that working?
Okay.
DCHS is tasked with the prevention side of the continuum.
So essentially we are supporting households who are at imminent risk of becoming homeless.
We're also the designated community action agency in Multnomah County.
So eviction prevention is our most effective tool that we have to slow the inflow into homelessness.
This intervention at the county is particularly for households who have an eviction notice or are currently in a court eviction process.
Before the pandemic, eviction prevention did not exist in the county.
So obviously ARPA funds allowed us to build a rapid response Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Mayor.
So we have seen a tremendous response of upwards of $101 million in fiscal year 2022 as a result of that investment.
But today we are running out of fuel, essentially, if you will.
And the evictions that we're seeing are the highest we've ever seen in the state at the same time as resources are dwindling.
So, you know, why did we not need this method prior to the pandemic?
Well, obviously things have changed in our community, you know, as a result of rent increases, utility increases, Thank you.
So we've seen housing cost increases, food cost increases, income have flatlined, and that has resulted in a pretty serious problem for folks who are trying to keep themselves housed in our community.
So we moved from a peak from a budget perspective of over $100 million in ARPA funds primarily down to just $8.9 million for fiscal year 2026.
So that was in the height of this, we were able to serve over 3,500 households.
But with a lot of wraparound services and supports as well, which is something that we're often asked about is like, what are the additional retention strategies that we employ?
When we have only, you know, $8.6 million, we really are just preventing evictions.
When we have $100 million, we're able to do a lot more to support households with stability.
So as far as a current crisis that we're in, I think you're all well aware that evictions again are at an all-time high.
In the month of January, we saw over 2,500 evictions filed in this state.
That was the highest number that's ever been filed.
Wow.
Been recorded.
In February, we saw over 2,000 in the state as well.
Oftentimes in Multnomah County, we're seeing 40 to 60% of those evictions in the state are in Multnomah County.
So the need is significantly high.
The system that we have at DCHS is a no-wrong-door system.
We are partnering with culturally specific organizations who essentially are supporting households who come in with that eviction notification or in a court process and being able to help and navigate that, them getting able their rent to be able to be paid for them.
And we also have an internal county program, Bienestar de la Familia, who also provides that service.
We also, we don't just pay rent, we're also funding legal defense as well.
So our budget includes legal support through Commons Law and the Metropolitan Public Defenders to ensure that families have representation in the courtroom, which is really important so they can avoid that actual eviction going on their record.
We can't avoid evictions without paying back rent though.
So that's a really important distinction that we often find people are a little bit confused about.
Eviction prevention.
Eviction prevention is also our primary strategy for family stability.
It's our main tool for targeting and preventing childhood homelessness, which we often don't talk about, but is critically important to the long-term health of our community that we are absolutely prioritizing preventing childhood homelessness, and eviction prevention is critical to that.
And rent assistance works.
It's been proven effective throughout this country.
There's been many studies, but at DCHS, 92% of households receiving rent assistance remain stably housed 12 months after receiving that service.
And 85% of households avoid an eviction being on their record entirely.
And so until we solve the long-term housing affordability, rent assistance is going to be a critically important tool in our belt of slowing the inflow into homelessness in the county.
I'm not sure if I hit the 2 minutes.
I'm sure it was more, but that is my overview.
Jillian Schoene
Michael.
Michael Buonocore
Council President, Chair Vega-Peterson, councilors and commissioners, Michael Bonaccor, interim director of the Portland Housing Bureau.
For the record, I am dressed entirely in green today because Jillian insisted upon it, and I'm frankly a little scared of her.
That's okay.
The first thing I want to call your attention to in the orange box under eviction prevention, which is the city's services, it says rent assistance, which it also says in the county's box.
And that's an unfortunate miss on my part because I think it's worth distinguishing the phrases.
And really what we're talking about here is financial assistance associated with eviction legal defense, not ongoing rent assistance or vouchers as folks often conjure when they think of the phrase rent assistance.
So I just wanted to flag that as I go into this because I know this is a very energized conversation around sort of role, which role falls in which jurisdiction.
And as I said, I'll speak more about it specifically.
So first, the Portland Housing Bureau administers an eviction legal defense program through its Renter Services Office, and it provides legal advice and representation for tenants who are facing eviction.
In the first 2 quarters of this fiscal year, 235 households maintained their housing as a result of the program, and overall it has served about 4,000 households in total.
The eviction legal defense services are provided by Metropolitan Public Defender, Oregon Law Center, and the CLEAR Clinic.
In addition to legal services, the eviction legal defense program includes limited rent and other financial assistance intended to avoid eviction or mitigate the harms of eviction.
So this can be up to $6,000, and on average, Households receive around $4,500.
And so that gives you a sense of sort of the finite stabilization support that is provided as opposed to sort of ongoing payments to subsidize a person's rent.
On an annual basis, the budget is about $3.8 million, which consists of about $2.2 million in financial assistance that is contracted with the United Way.
So when our contracted legal defense providers are working with a client and determine that, say, a month of back rent is necessary to be paid off, they work with the United Way.
So the City of Portland is also not sort of in the business of administering those financial assistance funds.
And this— and the financial assistance is tied entirely to the eviction legal defense program and not available to tenants who are not facing eviction.
The Renter Services Office administers a host of other support services for landlords and tenants, including mediation services and a hotline for questions about landlord-tenant law.
Jillian Schoene
Now we'll move to Outreach and Public Space Management and Safety, and we'll start with Skylar.
Skylar Breading
Okay, thank you for having me.
Skylar Breckernapp, Director of Portland Solutions.
Chair, Council President, Mayor, City Administrator, appreciate you all being here.
I forgot to wear green after Jillian told me, so this is the closest thing I had in my office, but we're doing our best.
I'm going to go over just city outreach and then public space management, and Anna Plum and I are going to kind of go back and forth, as you see a lot of different colored boxes in these 2 sections.
So city outreach performs traditional street outreach, which includes case management, day center, shelter, and detox and treatment referrals.
I would say some of their unique roles have to do with overnight shelter outreach opening and closing, so providing that outreach, those services to folks who are entering or leaving the overnight shelter space.
They also coordinate with the Impact Reduction Program, which we'll go over, at hotspots or large encampments or sites that are flagged by a lot of city employees, the public, in 3 times a week meetings that we have.
Called the Street Services Coordination Center Coordination Group.
The outreach also sometimes joins PPB or IRP contractors— sorry, Portland Police Bureau or the Impact Reduction Program contractors at site removals to offer those services.
They also aid ODOT, the Oregon Department of Transportation, when they also are doing a removal and kind of request those services.
Services.
So trying to provide those outreach services to shelter or detox or day center services.
They also are in charge of our reunification program at the City of Portland.
So that's connecting folks to community, family, friends outside of the immediate area, that warm handoff program.
CHAT, which is Community Health Assess and Treat, is under the Portland Fire Bureau.
Many of you know what they do, but just a quick overview is light medical care, overdose response, reviving patients on the street.
They administer withdrawal management and connections to shelter and treatment.
They also coordinate really closely with all of the groups I just mentioned.
So I think there's a lot of different ways to put these different groups in different boxes, but they really are performing a street-level service to a lot of the same folks that our outreach teams are seeing every day.
Moving to public space management, that big orange box is going to include the Impact Reduction Program, which receives 100,000 annual camp reports from the community.
We assess all campsites with the Clean Start Program through Central City Concern, remove camps and also just adjacent kind of trash with the most risk to health and safety.
So lots of waste, hazardous waste, proximity to houses, schools, businesses, blocking ingress or egress.
There's a whole point system and matrix that's been established based on several settlement agreements from different lawsuits.
We also provide day storage through Central City Concern.
The Glitter Program, which is through Trash for Peace, is a trash pickup program and employment opportunity, as well as the Wash House through Trash for Peace.
So we partner with them to be able to launder textiles.
They do that for folks on the street, but they also do it with other service providers, shelters, etc.
Okay.
PBOT, so the Portland Bureau of Transportation vehicle inspection team responds to reports of lived-in vehicles.
That's cars or RVs.
Our team coordinates with them, so they're in those 3 times a week street service coordination calls.
Per state law, both camp removals and lived-in vehicles require a 72-hour notice, so they tag different vehicles and they let them know and warn them that that folks will be back to tow.
They also coordinate with the Impact Reduction Program to clean up the outside of vehicles as needed.
So if there's a lot of trash or things outside of the lived-in vehicle, they will help with that.
The vehicle inspection team offers referrals to services, so day centers, overnight shelters.
Again, they coordinate with those outreach teams, but they can also provide access and referrals to services themselves.
So that's been something that we've coordinated in the last few years just for the deep need that we were seeing on the street.
They also coordinate with city outreach and our team to refer RVs when there's space to the North Portland Road shelter, which allows RVs to be on site.
Portland Police Bureau, 24/7 emergency response, enforces city's camping regulations with outreach and IRP.
So that's a pretty limited scope, just because of the Neighborhood Response Team officers are— have a lot of things on their plates.
It's a smaller subset of the Portland Police Bureau, and they coordinate about a couple days a week on various kind of hotspots or recurrent kind of camping areas that we're getting repeated outreach from community or city employees.
The Behavioral Health Unit is also housed within the Portland Police Bureau.
It's smaller.
A lot of folks aren't— don't totally know all the ins and outs of it, but it's a specialized team for behavioral and mental health care on the street, which includes emergency response and service referrals.
They also have some transitional housing through the service coordination team.
I like to think of it— it's like a LEAD program in other cities.
So those folks who have high rates of recidivism, have been in and out of the criminal justice system extensively, they really focus on working with those okay, uh, day centers.
Yes.
Um, so we also, um, recently, um, have, under the mayor's plan, um, coordinated with different day centers and, uh, stood up one of our own within the city of Portland.
Um, so we coordinate and give funding to the JOIN Day Center.
We were able to expand, um, their center on 82nd, um, and allow them to operate 7 days a week and for more individuals at that we also stood up the Oasis Day Center, which is an outdoor day space that's in Old Town.
I will stop there.
Jessica Vega Peterson
Great.
Anna Plum
Good afternoon, everyone.
Welcome.
Thank you for having us, not welcome.
My name is Anna Plum.
I use she and her pronouns, and I'm the interim director for Multnomah County's Homeless Services Department.
Nice to see you again.
So the Homeless Services Department does also fund day centers.
This is one of the things we do, we support in partnership with the City of Portland.
So we have day centers that we fund across the county.
We have ramped up some of those during some recent unanticipated revenue we got a few fiscal years ago.
So examples include the Marie Equi Center, which is a day center for our LGBTQIA2S+ folks who are experiencing homelessness.
We do focus our day services where we can on priority populations.
We also have day centers for youth at both Nafi and Outside In.
In some cases at these day centers, we are able to fund case management and housing support that folks can access at those day centers.
In some cases, that's assigned to that day center itself.
In other cases, it's via an in-reach model where folks are visiting that day center to meet people when they're there at the center.
I can transition to our outreach.
Yes.
So I'm going to back up to the top of the visual to talk about county outreach.
Again, this is another place where we partner with the city.
So Multnomah County funds 3 major kinds of outreach and then in-reach, which is similar but different.
So within outreach, we have 3 focuses.
The first the first is survival, so helping folks survive out on the streets.
We also focus on service navigation, helping people get referrals to the services that will help them, and then housing placement-focused outreach.
These are outreach workers who have access to housing assistance and can help people move directly into housing.
As we have experienced more and more resource constraint, we are focusing more on that housing placement-focused outreach to the extent that we can.
We have 8 zones across the county, and our providers are assigned to zones so that we have full coverage across the county.
With the exception that our culturally specific outreach and our health-related outreach, those are not assigned to a zone.
Those go across the whole county.
We have 9 providers, culturally community providers, who are providing outreach in the community right now.
And we also have recently launched a new outreach data collection method that is allowing us to get better information on what our outreach workers are doing and what they're accomplishing.
We're looking at engagements and referrals to services and other data.
So we're doing a better job in-reach is a similar model in that it involves people going to where folks are to help them get services and access housing.
But in-reach means you're going to a place.
So a lot of our in-reach is folks who are going to shelters or day centers where folks are and helping that person start their housing journey there.
So that's another sort of mobile service that we fund at the Homeless Services Department.
Jillian Schoene
Shelters.
Candace Avalos
Okay.
Skylar Breading
Thanks, Anna.
Another part of our coordination and collaboration is our outreach efforts.
Is the shelter space.
So I'm going to go over the overnight shelter program, our newest program as of the last year.
We have over 1,500 adult shelter beds.
So that's 900, over 900 that are available tonight, and then almost 600 in flexible beds that could be open tomorrow if we need.
They serve adults, families, and our recovery needs.
So different kind of aspects that we saw a deep need for on the street.
These are providing immediate care, so safety off the street, a safe place for someone to sleep tonight.
Hot off the presses, we've provided over 100,000 nights of safe sleep in the last 11 months.
We've promoted stability and engagement with services kind of through those efforts.
We're really excited about further partnership with different services at those sites and with those providers.
We just brought somebody on to really deepen those relationships and those service connection points.
For 24/7 shelter, we have 8 sites with 705 different units representing 600 and— or 867 total beds, an additional 550 congregate shelter beds at Bybee Lakes as well.
So those are providing beds for about 1,000 different individuals every night, providing on-site amenities like laundry, bathrooms, showers, kitchenette services, meals, and on-site wraparound services like case management and housing navigation.
We also partner deeply with other organizations as well as the county at those different sites.
I'll pass to Anna.
Julia Brim-Edwards
Thank you.
Anna Plum
So the county homeless services department funds 24/7 shelters.
So our shelters are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
In this fiscal year, we funded just under 2,600 units of shelter.
That is counting some of the alternative shelter for the city that we partially funded.
So there's a little bit of overlap there.
The bulk of our shelters are in the adult system, about 2,100 adult shelter units funded, and they're 24/7 funded by Multnomah County.
We also fund 185 units of shelter for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, just under 200 for the family system, 85 in the youth system, and then the rest is in that adult system.
In fiscal year 2025, the whole system served over 10,000 unduplicated people in shelter across both systems.
We also have— some of our shelter units are focused on folks who have higher behavioral health needs.
We partner with the health department.
It is funded via SHS, and those are sort of higher-intensity shelter units that are specifically for folks who have a higher behavioral health need to be successful in shelter.
Jillian Schoene
Keep going.
Housing placement.
Anna Plum
Okay.
Now I'm going to talk about housing placement.
Lots of blue boxes here.
So Multnomah County and the Homeless Services Department fund a lot of different housing placement programs, starting with transitional housing.
We do support transitional housing.
That specifically is housing that is short in nature, and typically the person might need to move.
If it's a physical location they cannot that's a difference between some of the rapid rehousing programs.
This is usually paired with a needs-specific set of supports.
So examples include our recovery-oriented transitional housing, which is a part of our continuum of care.
And we do have some behavioral health-focused transitional housing or transitional housing for folks who are exiting the justice system.
Those are some examples of some of that transitional housing that we support.
You'll see the box that says navigation support.
When we think specifically about our rapid rehousing and our PSH, a lot of the work is helping that person find that housing.
So that navigation support is some of the case management to meet folks, get to know them, find out what's going to work for them, and help them access that housing placement.
There are 2 really main ways that we help people find housing and stay in that housing.
The first is rapid rehousing.
That is also a shorter-term program.
It's usually up to 2 months.
The difference there is that typically that's someone being put into an apartment that they can stay in after that financial assistance is over, but they are then taking on that rent themselves.
So that's the difference between rapid rehousing and transitional housing at a very high level.
There are other differences that we could get into.
Permanent supportive housing is a longer-term, permanent being the key word, support with high-intensity support services that is meant for folks who would not be able to sustain that housing without that resource.
People need to— it's for folks who are chronically homeless and have a disability.
So there's specific eligibility for our permanent supportive housing program.
Thank you.
In fiscal year 2025, just over 6,000 people left homelessness for housing across all of these programs.
And right now, every month, we are placing hundreds of people into housing every month, and we're supporting thousands in our permanent supportive program of housing programs every month as well.
The end box, the other longer-term housing placement, we do have other programs that are longer-term but may not have that intensive level of support that you would see with permanent supportive housing.
One of them is reunification, is the word that you have probably heard here on the city side.
For a long time, our housing providers have been allowed to use their flexible client assistance programs to help someone move home if that home is not here and they have a stable, safe place to stay that is long-term that is not in our jurisdiction.
So a bus ticket, a plane ticket, that's something we've been able to do for a long time that I know the city is also really focusing on, which is a great efficient way to get people into housing.
We do also have some longer-term subsidies that are pretty much just a rental subsidy and are not paired with that higher case management need for folks who just need that long-term subsidy who will not be able to afford their housing on a long-term basis.
Michael Buonocore
Housing development.
So here we are at the end of the spectrum.
I'll just make a couple of points here in the interest of time.
One, in the box you see planning, permitting, middle-income housing.
This reflects that while folks thank you.
So while folks intuitively think of the Portland Housing Bureau around housing development, it really is a service area function on a number of levels, including the permitting department, Bureau of Planning Services, and Prosper Portland.
PHB funds the development and preservation of affordable housing through competitive solicitation processes.
Thank you.
I think sort of obvious nexus in this conversation is that, for example, in the administration of the Portland Housing Bond and Metro Housing Bond funds, there were requirements around the number of permanent supportive housing units that would be added into new developments.
And so we, you know, sort of supported the designation of housing resources that helped contribute to development of new permanent supportive housing units.
Jillian Schoene
Thank you.
Next slide, please.
And this will be short and sweet, so pull out those discussion prompts shared by the council president because it's going to be your turn in just a few moments.
The second slide takes it one step further and weaves in large investments and how they typically flow.
This is actually at the request of council president staff, so kudos to them.
Please note, not every dollar is represented here.
That would be impossible.
And nor should you add these numbers because, again, because we have the council president's staff here, we're going to be able to talk about flow represented here as well.
For example, you're going to see some of those state monies right in the county and city amounts.
So no addition, please.
A few highlights.
I want to note that within the amount under the federal government, you— we have very meaningful investments in permanent supportive housing.
Generally speaking, most of that does go to community-based providers with following a local rating and ranking process.
Michael Buonocore
Thank you.
Jillian Schoene
With only a small portion remaining in the county budget, primarily for data systems, planning, and administering the process by which we place people into permanent supportive housing.
The future of this funding continues to have a very big question mark over it, as has been mentioned to you before.
And all of us just got out of a meeting with HUD, who was here on the ground this morning doing some discussions with communities throughout the country in the context of the direction that they will be going.
So please stay tuned for big shifts.
Thank you.
In many millions of dollars that affect hundreds, potentially thousands of lives of people who are already housed here when fiscal '28— fiscal year '28 rolls around.
At the state, we typically track 4 buckets of investments.
You see those there: shelter, eviction prevention, short- and long-term rent assistance.
As you will recall, they made deep cuts, which resulted, just by way of example, in a $28 million cut in the middle of a fiscal year for HSD and a $5 million cut for DCHS and eviction prevention.
Jumping to Metro, they play an oversight role and they look to take on issues that really should be addressed at a regional level.
I hope to see this work intensifying under the renewed oversight body that they are literally putting in place right now as we speak.
A lot of the work that we partner with them on right now relates to the connections between health— the healthcare system and the homelessness response system, both housing and shelter.
The data work around that is phenomenal, phenomenal, y'all.
It is nationally recognized, and we are really ahead of the game there.
Those 3 entities, the feds, the state, and Metro, I label as investment inputs, which is different than the city and the county that both invest local funds and also perform the work, the outputs, in partnership with contracted providers.
Beyond that, I'm not going to go through the county and the city any further because we just did that on the previous slide.
Thank you.
But I do want to just highlight the black arrows here that represent the typical flow of funds, with most of the monies coming together and being braided and invested by the county.
I think a really good example of how you really do need one entity being on the receiving end of the investments is how we fund permanent supportive housing.
We take federal money, we take state money, we layer in some regional and local funds, including some general fund, and we make that program whole.
Like, Somebody needs to be putting the pieces of the puzzle together and making things happen.
And finally, I will just say the city and the county have a history of exchanging funds.
That's why you see the double arrow there, depending on how the partnership is defined and the priorities of any given administration and the elected bodies.
With that, I will hand it back to Council President Dunphy and Chair Vega Pedersen for discussion.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much.
Now, colleagues, first to start, if there's anything any technical or clarifying questions for our panel?
And then we—.
Otherwise we can jump into conversations.
And I'll remind you all, we've each got about 5 minutes to talk.
Um, so, uh, if folks want to raise a hand, let me know.
Candace Avalos
Point of information process.
So there's like different discussion prompts.
Are you planning on going through each and then we speak, or you want us to use our 5 minutes to answer all of them?
Jamie Dunphy
I think let's use our, our 5 minutes to answer, um, however you want to do those.
Those are just the general prompts of kinds of things I'd love to have us all discuss, um, rather than going round by round.
Thank you.
Okay, Commissioner Moyer.
Thank you.
Meghan Moyer
Okay, thank you.
Um, as this is very helpful, thank you.
Um, as is the financial breakdown of this.
Um, I think it's really telling how little help we get both from our federal government and and our state, um, being that this is repeatedly, at least regionally outside of just Multnomah County but also Washington and Clackamas County, consistently one of the most important issues to residents is our collective response to our homeless crisis.
Some of the questions that I have and comments I have, um, I already know the answer to, but I think it's important yes.
For us to think about, which is some of the changing dynamics and the opportunities that we, um, may or may not have, uh, available to us and where we're at in those processes.
One is, um, the governor talks often about homelessness and, uh, behavioral health and, um, as a reason she ran and things that she has focused on.
To what degree has the governor helped facilitate Multnomah County or the City of Portland getting Medicaid match for permanent supported housing like many other communities nationwide?
Because only the Oregon Health Association can apply for that.
Jillian Schoene
I would describe that as an active dialogue that has happened in various iterations over the years, primarily with Multnomah County knocking on the door of the state of Oregon.
We've made some progress recently.
We got some attention.
Thank you, Commissioner Moyer, for your leadership on a letter that we sent the state.
There is going to be a workgroup set up to get more people enrolled that have severe and persistent mental illness.
We hope to get traction on that.
But, and in the governor's recent executive order, you saw that she mentioned 2 new pilots related to permanent supportive housing.
Um, to my knowledge, unless the chair or somebody else has heard, we're still waiting to hear where those pilots are.
Of course, our first question was, one will be in Multnomah County, right?
So know that we are constantly knocking on that door to figure out where the opportunities are because, um, we need to solve that problem.
Meghan Moyer
Related to, um, Who is experiencing unsheltered homelessness?
Uh, little less than a year ago, Health Share embarked on a data match with our, uh, by-names list, which showed some really important information for us in understanding who is on our streets and who is needing to access shelters on a regular basis.
Some of the information that came out of that and, um, was presented to City Council and others was that 50% of the individuals who are in our shelters each night, um, have a pre-existing diagnosis of a severe mental illness.
Um, we also know that that is a primary driver of people's need for permanent supported housing, and yet Oregon is ranked 50th out of 51 states or territories in behavioral health.
Um, what degree has the state of Oregon partnered in making sure that we have the necessary services for people who experience behavioral health issues that contribute to experiencing homelessness?
Jessica Vega Peterson
Do it again.
Olivia Clark
Yeah, go ahead.
Jillian Schoene
Um, first, uh, thank you for the question, Commissioner, and this is where I will just remind everybody in the public that homelessness housing production is at the top of the list, healthcare generally, and then behavioral health is very close behind.
So we have a shelter system, a homelessness response system more generally, acting as a— providing services in place of other broken systems, right?
So I would say on permanent supportive housing, I also want to just say it does work.
Mm-hmm.
I just don't think that we're necessarily there on scale, whether you're talking about permanent supportive housing or other types of the Medicaid piece or just services in general, like 84% of the people who we place in permanent supportive housing are still there 2 years later.
We need to keep running down that track hard and fast and to just continue figuring it out, to just do it even better.
We're on the right track, but we just need more.
Jamie Dunphy
Anna?
Anna Plum
Yeah, no, I would agree.
I think we do a lot of things to partner and try to shore up the gaps in our behavioral health system, but we simply cannot we can't do that on our own, and so it's really important that we keep partnering with our health partners, not just within the county, across the community.
That's sort of the goal and the dream of the Homelessness Response System, is to bring those partners to the table so we're working on a holistic problem as a holistic body.
Meghan Moyer
Then my last question, acknowledging that we might have service gaps which are outside of homeless response but certainly are contributing to the inflow and some of the challenges people experience in finding and keeping permanent housing.
Do you know the amount of money that our— that HealthShare cut in local behavioral health this last year?
It's $100 million.
Has that positively influenced Medicaid recipients' ability to access necessary behavioral health care, which and I would assume if 50% of our, uh, unsheltered population is experiencing, they need access to on their journey to, to permanency.
Are, are we seeing positive outcomes from cutting $100 million of behavioral health services?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
No.
Anna Plum
I would say no.
Meghan Moyer
I, I would also say no.
Rachel Pearl
I didn't—.
Jillian Schoene
I'm going I'm going to go on a limb based on the timing when those cuts came down.
I'm not sure we've seen the full picture yet.
Correct.
So more to come.
Meghan Moyer
So I bring this up not because I'm in any way trying to beat up on—.
Jamie Dunphy
Commissioner, we're at 6 minutes.
Candace Avalos
Okay.
Meghan Moyer
I just want to end.
My last comment is homeless services alone cannot resolve our homeless crisis, and we absolutely have to have better support from the state in addressing unmet behavioral health needs, or it will continue to be an upward fight that we do not have the resources to do.
They have to be a better partner.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Commissioner.
Commissioner Bram Edwards.
You all have a lot of last names.
Julia Brim-Edwards
Thank you.
I like the 3 letters.
Um, so I also had— oh, thank you for, um, I think this is a very useful chart just to, uh, for us to be— as we look at our roles and responsibilities.
Um, I just had a question.
Um, behavioral health wasn't also under the housing placement, um, it was under the shelter.
But, um, I know there's a comment that just says this does not include the regional system of behavioral health.
Um, it seems like that's a missing component, like just a call out for the, uh, for the county.
And then the other— when I look at this, it seems comprehensive, but then I look at the reasons for why, why there's inflow, and so much of them relate to money.
And I'm trying to see where on this chart we talk about like employment-related services or any sort of income generation.
I mean, if we're just dealing with the housing but not some of the underlying systems, it seems like there is a place where we would want to look at like how are we supporting individuals in terms of just self-sufficiency or, you know, their portion of what they, they need to do towards their rent or just, you know, life's basics.
Um, and, and the city and county may be like, that's not our jobs.
Um, but it's— I'm then curious who's paying attention to that because that seems pretty fundamental to the reason of why people are being yes, you're right.
Anna Plum
It's not on this slide, but we do— Multnomah County does fund employment programs that are performed by contracted providers.
This year we had somewhere between $5 and $6 million of employment programs in our budget, a variety of low-barrier, higher-barrier income acquisition programs.
I will say that it's— we— I think everyone agrees that employment is a really important path to stability for a lot of folks.
As we're focusing on what we are able to do as a region and what certain groups can do, we're going to have to be really thoughtful about, again, what is the larger community's ability to support some of these programs that are not necessarily a housing placement program, which is historically the role of the Homeless Services Department.
So completely agree, employment programs are super important to our community.
We are funding them now.
We know we're moving into future constraint, and so what that looks like will be something I think we're going to have to figure out.
Thank you.
Skylar Breading
And I'll just mention on the city side, Commissioner, that's a great question.
We see kind of a lot of those programs pop up in kind of that day center box, but also in the 24/7 shelter box as part of the wraparound services and kind of opportunities that are brought on those sites and that resource navigation that happens.
I would also just say, I think it's not often discussed, but a lot of our contractors are second chance employers.
So we're really investing pretty heavily, frankly, in I mentioned Clean Start Program, the Glitter Program.
There's a lot of really great second chance employers that we are employing through the whole system that you see in front of you.
Julia Brim-Edwards
Yeah, I'd love to have that somehow captured here because whether it's Ground Score or Cultivate Initiatives or PDX St. Love's, if you find that people who have an opportunity for that, if they've been chronically homeless, have an opportunity for some sort of employment or entry-level employment, they have much higher rates ultimately of being housed or getting housed.
So that'd just be one thing that I would love to see on this larger mix because it seems like it is a key pathway to people having more stability.
Rachel Pearl
Commissioner, can I chime in really quick?
I just want to say that in, in DCHS, we also have our Aging, Disability, and Veterans Services Division and our Intellectual and Developmental Disability Services Division, which both have long-term case management, which we both provide homeless services and prevention services with long-term case management in those programs that also have employment services connected to that.
So it's an important part, I think, of the continuum that we don't call out here, that like DCHS is the safety net services for the county, and there's a lot of specific targeted support to specific populations who are quite vulnerable to becoming homeless and are becoming homeless at faster rates than, than other folks.
Jamie Dunphy
Okay, thank you, Commissioner.
Councilor Ryan.
Dan Ryan
Thank you, President Dunphy.
Good to see you, Madam Chair.
Um, you're one of the only people that have been around, uh, as long as I have now, so it's good to, um, have that continuity.
Thank you for your service, and thank you for the panel.
I want to start by acknowledging I had the pleasure of being at Senator Avel Gordley's service this morning.
It was good to see you, Mr. Mayor, and Councilor Clark there.
Thank you.
She was a champion in many areas, but she was definitely a bold champion for mental health and behavioral health.
In fact, it got her into some cahoots with their own party, the Democratic Party.
And this is a statement.
In my 5 and a half years in this space, and I appreciate some of the questions earlier, I continue to be baffled by how we don't lift and focus more on behavioral health and mental health.
And the county is the provider.
We can blame all the sources all we want, but you are the mental health and behavioral health provider.
And I just hope that we can keep being more bold and honest about the fact that so many are suffering on our streets even before they were homeless.
I know way too many people in my life that became homeless was because of behavioral health and addictions.
They lost their families, they lost their jobs, and they ended up on the streets.
So I hope that we continue to not stuff that.
This is a couple quick questions under the what happened.
So in '21 to '23, you recall this, Chair Vega-Peterson, we really focused on having a promise of providing services for those that were showing improvements.
Yes.
Showing some agency to live independently.
They were in our 24-hour shelters with services, which was a pioneer step finally amongst our two jurisdictions.
We focused on them getting housed after they showed some agency being built and some independence.
You see some of the incremental gains, oddly enough, in the data right after that commitment.
What happened to that commitment?
The commitment to what specifically?
To prioritizing those that are in services, in 24/7 services particularly, that are showing improvements in terms of building their agency, like for working on their addictions, getting into workforce.
They were prioritized, and we're showing great— we're showing great results for that.
What happened to that commitment kind of a rewards program for those that went from chronic homelessness that were showing some hope.
What happened to that commitment?
I don't see it in the data.
It looks like it leveled off.
Anna Plum
I don't think any change was made to that commitment.
And I would also say committing to— the county transitioned to 24/7 shelter with services model prior to 2021.
And so that commitment to having people in shelter that lasts 24/7 and that has housing services related to it actually predates that.
And I don't think that commitment has changed.
I think what you— how I might respond to that is we have different models of shelter across the community, and we need to make sure we have the right balance because there are certain models that are easier to have people access services in them.
And I think what I hear you saying is we do have models.
I'll call out a shelter in our community, a program that has a congregate shelter and a motel shelter, and they do move folks from that congregate shelter to the motel shelter when they feel like they might be more ready to go on that housing journey.
And that's not a problem.
It's easier to do that in a motel shelter than in a congregate shelter.
That motel shelter has great outcomes because of that trajectory from folks who are feeling more ready.
So that model exists.
I think that's a model we can zoom in on and recreate across the continuum.
And our ability to do that equitably really depends on having a common agreement about what that looks like, what the best pathways are, and funding that equitably across all of the shelters and not just in little pockets here and there.
Dan Ryan
Okay.
The data doesn't indicate that.
I want to get I'm going to get to my other questions because I'm going to get the hook soon.
In '23-'24, I sat on a subcommittee focused on the city and the county goal of building more of those shelters.
And that was a big goal.
And we locked arms.
I was on that subcommittee with you, Commissioner Brim Edwards, among a couple others.
That was just 2 years ago.
And now I read through media sources that the county— through this, that the county's abandoning this goal.
Yes.
Looking to close over 1,000 shelter beds.
How is it that we can go from having a goal just 2 years ago to then abandoning that goal?
It's these fits and starts that makes it so challenging to build the system.
Why is the county choosing to cut so many shelter beds in this upcoming budget?
Anna Plum
So as the person who led that subcommittee, I will happily respond to that question.
So you're referring to the community sheltering strategy, which was a 2-year goal to add shelter to the community, but that was not the only goal of the community sheltering strategy.
It was also to have more people exit that shelter to housing and to provide more supportive services in those shelters.
To be quite frank, that goal was set when we were in a very, very different funding scenario in the community.
And as we've communicated a few times, the decision to recommend to close some shelters— we do have some closing this year, the rest is all part of our requested budget— really is about making sure we have the right balance across our community between shelter and housing placement.
Thank you.
Succeed in increasing the number of people who are exiting shelter to housing, partially because as the number of beds rise, it gets— that percentage, the denominator gets bigger, the percentage will go down even as we're housing more people.
But partially because we are spending money on shelter that is then therefore not going into housing placement.
In a situation where we had less of a resource constraint, we were able to envision let's add shelter and add housing placement.
Now we're having to make really tough choices between the two.
Dan Ryan
Yeah, and I'll just end with one last question.
And I also think we stopped prioritizing those people for housing.
In outreach, I continue to be confused.
I'm glad that conversation came up.
And this is with you, Mr. Mayor and the chair.
Like when we built yours, the— not yours, the city, the county's shelter systems, they close at 5:30 AM.
Yeah.
Where's the outreach workers to help them get from there to, say, the Blanchet House?
Where's the outreach workers that we finally got TriMet to take on, which really is doing wonderful work?
I've been on that for a few years.
And then I hear they have threats for their outreach money.
And that's our largest shelter that we have is MAX on the east side.
I get to this because SHS money could be used for shelters.
Yes.
It can be used for outreach.
It can be used for behavioral health and mental health services.
And I think a lot of Portlanders keep scratching their head on why we don't prioritize such things from the Metro SHS funds that taxpayers are funding.
Thank you.
Jillian Schoene
And Commissioner, I just want to clarify, you know, Multnomah County does not run the entire regional behavioral system of behavioral health.
Multnomah County is just a safety net, largely the uninsured.
So we are part of a region that expands out of just the tri-county area.
I believe Columbia, and I could be corrected, out to Clatsop counties.
That is sort of one of the regions where the state funds the regional system of behavioral health.
There have been 533 beds that the state has funded in this, in Multnomah County specifically since 2021.
Investments became— started sort of being invested in our community, and it's still not enough.
But zero of those beds were inpatient psych.
So that is where the need remains right now and where you will see advocacy from our team and Health Share and others coming together around getting more inpatient psych beds, like what you see at Inpatient Prov, those psych beds in Unity.
We need more of that here.
But Multnomah County does not control that, just to fact-check that for a second.
Dan Ryan
Thank you to all the outreach workers that are meeting people where they are, and I really keep absolutely, we agree.
Jessica Vega Peterson
Thank you, Jillian.
I appreciate that.
I mean, I will— Multnomah County is the local mental health authority, and we are legally responsible for people who are uninsured and underinsured.
But we have an entire Medicaid system, our CCO system, the healthcare system that is also incredibly responsible for people who are on Medicaid or other insurance.
And so that's why I think looking at the systems and those including what the state is responsible for, which Commissioner Moyer has been such an advocate of, is a really important fact check to this.
I think the other thing that I wanted to say is, you know, one of the reasons we wanted to have this discussion about roles and responsibilities right now is that we are about to go into our budget cycle.
So there are decisions that are going to be made about dollars.
You know, one of the things that is on here is about that, like the 2 arrows pointing to each other about the exchange of money that thank you.
Right now, the, the $31.5 million that the— that is in the IGA for the city to give to the county provides funding for 756 shelter units and 218 transitional housing units.
So when we think about the dollars that are going into the system and the impact that they have, I think it's important for all of us to understand how those dollars are being used to support it, whether it's city dollars thank you, Chair Vanga Peterson.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Ryan.
Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you for being here, everyone, for the presentation.
I have the different areas we're supposed to speak within.
So the first one for me is around system, the unified balance system.
The more that I've learned, the more spaces I've toured, shelters I've visited, I do believe more and more there's no one-size-fits-all solution to homelessness.
There's no one exact way to solve it.
You know, shelter, or like, we need a wide range of approaches to meet people where they're at, when they're ready.
I also think, you know, that includes preserving programs that we know are demonstrably working, that have good outcomes, the ones that are successfully transitioning folks into housing.
I heard that mentioned.
To zoom in, I, I want to zoom in on an example that I know pretty well in Montavilla, where we have shared constituents.
Thank you.
Beacon Village.
I remember when it was first created, how intentional that model was, how impressed council was on their focus on dignity, stability, connection, and they've seen real outcomes.
Their numbers are really good.
What what you don't see by the numbers too is I've talked to a lot of the people in the neighborhood who were worried about the shelter at first, and now it is a really important part of their neighborhood.
They say.
They say that they feel safer because of it.
They feel like the folks that are there are their neighbors.
They come back and visit.
People that are on the storefronts nearby too say something similar.
I was just talking with Mayor Wilson yesterday about how it is one of the places that has— it's on the chopping block that we, when we're talking about over 1,000 beds being slated to be cut, I'm really concerned about places like this being closed.
Can we—.
Are you able to share what the projected cost savings from closing these beds is?
Is there a number?
Anna Plum
Yes, I will look it up and give it to you in just a moment.
I don't have it right off the top of my head, but it's from across the whole spectrum.
It's tens of millions of dollars that we are saving by closing those shelter units.
And I do want to speak to the number because that is an additive number over a period of time.
So in this fiscal year that we are in, Our budget that we adopted this fiscal year included closing 230 units of shelters in 2 programs, one where the lease was ending and one where the building needs to be used for other purposes.
The current— our requested budget for this fiscal year includes closing about 775 units as sort of close to the end of this fiscal year.
Those are primarily in the adult system and some scattered site vouchers.
Not all of those are occupied.
It does envision another program going halfway through next fiscal year.
Thank you.
So the 1,000 that's being quoted is actually including some things that we are already planning to close this fiscal year and some things moving into the next.
So I just wanted to be really clear on what that number actually is because we're using a smaller number when we talk about the impact of this fiscal year.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Okay.
And it's no secret that the county and the city, we have a lot of fiscal constraints that we're looking at as we're doing our next budget.
And I also need to be clear that I am getting so many emails and I'm getting hearing from many of our constituents that are really concerned about cuts like this when hundreds of millions of dollars are going to the Moda Center.
It's really difficult for people to reconcile that level of spending with cuts to, like, small, effective homelessness programs.
So I think a question we need to talk about is how are we prioritizing investments when there are proven community-supported models like Beacon Village— it's a small one— on the chopping block, while much larger expenditures are moving forward.
Um, I don't know like which pocket, which plate is it general fund money that we're giving, but I— this conversation needs— the public needs to be able to hear.
Anna Plum
And to the question on the shelter units, it's around $30 million of reduction.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
$30 Million.
And are— is it public yet what the county is, um, giving the Blazers?
Because I think it's more than that.
Anna Plum
I don't know the answer.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Anybody else want to get in queue?
This is the quietest this body has ever been.
Jillian Schoene
Council President, and I'll just layer in there some additional context because like this is what I'm about to name is like part of the shared challenge that we all are in.
You had the county homeless services department announce that it needed to take $68 million in cuts.
About half of that amount is based on the city's city's current intention of keeping what it normally would send across the river.
However, if the city doesn't keep its money, to be fair, you're going to probably be closing shelter.
The city shelter system was largely funded by one-time-only monies.
Prior Administrator Mike Jordan has been warning about this fiscal cliff for years when the city started down that journey.
Here we are.
The fiscal cliff is happening on the city side of the equation.
ARPA is all gone.
SHS, one-time-only monies that the county was legally forced to get out the door on a time— within a year by Metro.
Those are all gone.
Here we are, a collective fiscal cliff.
So let's design the new normal, a unified, balanced system that moves more people into housing.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Mr. President.
I'm pulling up my stopwatch because I'm a good boy.
Um, okay, thank you, colleagues, uh, county colleagues.
Um, I just have a couple questions here.
So the color scheme on the continuum orange is the City of Portland, blue is the county.
Is that to indicate just funding source, or is it to indicate who performs a function, or is it some combination of the two?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Both.
Jillian Schoene
Yeah, it's both roles and investments.
Mitch Green
Okay, that is helpful.
I think just in the spirit of like trying to get to a sense of, I mean, think there's some problems I think it makes sense for me to have a function area be consolidated under one roof.
And then if we have to blend monies together, we blend monies together.
But having 2 different eviction defense offices is confusing.
There might be a good legacy reason for it, but I think I strongly support eviction defense.
Councilor Dan Ryan.
I think that we need to pair that with actual financial resources to make those tenants whole, get them out of arrears, and then perhaps subsidize them for a time and then connect them with employment services.
But 2 different offices, I'm not sure meets the mark.
I want to talk a little bit about budget.
Jillian, you just reminded us I think it's important to note that we've known about this fiscal cliff for a long time and we are confronting it now.
We're very fortunate to be on the body now that has to deal with that.
The way that I'm thinking about it is I think the City of Portland— I'm not going to speak for the county, but I think if our designation is sticks and bricks, as Councilor Avalos has kind of sort of helped us frame, then my first principle would be the city needs to step in and play the role as the price maker not the price taker in the rental market.
What that means for me is we need to be acquiring properties as part of a social housing portfolio.
If you're not ready to call it that, call it whatever.
But we have properties that are on sale relative to the new construction price of a building.
And if we can go out and acquire those into some level of permanence, Then we have locked in a cost to the City of Portland, which is then a cost to the county.
'Cause so if the county's gonna sort of subsidize rent, provide rent assistance for a long period of time, we do not wanna be downstream.
We do not wanna be at the very bottom of a downstream kind of market-driven process where we have to kind of make up an ever-growing share of subsidy because there's no cost control in our jurisdiction.
And so it's really about setting— being in the driver's seat on cost.
And I know that there's only so much of this you can do and you have to phase it out, but I urge us to think in that direction.
I think some of us are across this dais.
And I would say that I think when folks think about social housing as part of this continuum, the immediate response is, well, you can't put someone who's experiencing a severe behavioral health crisis in kind of just any old building 'cause they're not ready for it or they'll do some damage.
And we can have a debate around that, but not everyone who's experiencing houselessness or is destined for houselessness has an acute condition.
And so we can imagine parsing, finding more places for people to be at a lower cost so that way we can get a handle around this and then pairing them with the appropriate wraparound services that they need.
I think if we look at the— I'm at 3 minutes and 50 seconds.
If we look at the key KPIs, there's that model of, you know, how much do we need to scale in financial resources to reduce, you know, homelessness by some percentage?
And it's— there is no scale efficiency built into that model.
There's no way to realize some sort of efficiency at a system level.
And this, I think, is the way to think about that.
Thank you.
I've already talked about consolidated eviction defense.
I think that that's critical.
And finally, we should be having a conversation about capitalizing a larger risk mitigation common pool resource.
There is one, I think the city contributes some money to it, that is really meant to support the kind of insurance risk profile, the actuarial risk profile of PSH providers.
But again, we've got— a lot of our affordable housing stock is filling that space as well.
And so the damage to those units, I think, would be benefited, those providers would be benefited by having access to a risk mitigation common pool.
And so that's one of the things that I think can stretch our resources in this community and we can have a multi-jurisdictional approach to that.
So I'm 5 minutes and 5 seconds.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you.
Jessica Vega Peterson
Councilor Green, just to clarify, we don't have an eviction defense office at the— we provide dollars for eviction defense, but we don't have an office for that.
Mitch Green
Okay, that's helpful.
That's— I just see it in the chart there as blue, so I wanted to make sure.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you very much, Councilor Green.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Rachel Pearl
Unless you want me to say something.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Council President and commissioners.
It's so good to see you today.
You know, Jillian, I want to pick up on what you were saying just a minute ago.
We saw these fiscal cliffs coming.
We knew this was going to happen.
And I'm sitting here knowing that the council is going to be debating soon using one-time dollars toward potentially rent assistance, creating another fiscal cliff, by the way, on a service that is another Mm-hmm.
So I feel like we've now spent a year talking about the fact that we have these 2 systems that sit side by side, um, that are not well coordinated.
We've spent a year doing that since we started the joint meetings.
A whole lot of people talked about this not together, not in joint meetings, 4 years before that, but we've had a year of joint meetings now.
Thank you.
We have systems that duplicate services.
I still don't know how much those services are being provided in coordination with each other versus we're doing our thing and you're doing your thing.
We have fiscal cliffs we knew were coming and didn't plan for.
We have not enough resources to support people in our community who desperately need support, and the impacts of that roll into other community members who didn't previously need support and are now needing help with the impacts of that.
So we have a foreseeable mess that may not have been preventable, but at least could have been dealt with more effectively.
And I think the question keeps being asked, what do we all as electeds want to do about that?
But I still have a long list of questions about where services are coordinated, who can perform them most efficiently, who can perform them for the least dollar amount, where we get the most effective impact.
And we look at slides that collect data but don't actually take it apart to tell me where, as a policymaker, I should be investing at the city and where I should be so I guess I'm looking for a staff recommendation, truly.
Yep.
Where the city and the county staff come together.
Yep.
And say, if we want to operate the most efficient, most effective system that takes our very limited resources, and in the long run, not just today, but 5 years from now, I'll call that the medium run, Has moved the most people into housing, prevented the most possible people from moving into homelessness, and helped us move toward the system that my colleague was talking about just a moment ago, where we actually are better able to control rent prices.
So this is less of a problem into the future.
So there's a lot I could say about what I think the system should look like, and a lot of questions I could ask about where the duplication is the biggest problem and how we can undo that in this budget when we do not.
Not have enough resources to provide the services that frankly people should be demanding from us.
Um, but with only 5 minutes, instead I'm going to ask for that staff recommendation because we can't keep spinning our wheels and we are at the crisis point.
We are past the crisis point in fact because we are now cutting the funds without having created the long-term system that we should have with those one-time dollars that prevented us from getting to this point.
So I would love it— I don't set these agendas anymore, Council President Chair, you do— but I would love it if at some point we are actually looking at a proposed solution and not just outcomes that aren't meeting the mark and a system that contains an immense amount of duplication.
Thank you.
Jillian Schoene
Thank you.
I just need a directive on both sides of the river.
Thank you.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Council President and Chair, I would love it if we could give that directive.
Steve Novick
Heard.
Jamie Dunphy
More to come.
Councilor Murillo.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you guys so much for your presentation.
Jillian, I really appreciate everything that you shared, and I think that I appreciate you reasserting that this was an issue that people before us Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Mayor.
This is a crisis that none of us who are sitting here saw coming and did not account for it, and we have inherited those woes, and it's up to us to deal with it now.
But I just want to say, you know, we are all facing a very difficult budget crisis.
The federal government not bringing those dollars down to every local jurisdiction is very difficult.
And so I just appreciate the work that we're all trying to do here today, and I'm glad to see my colleagues from the county here as well.
As far as what I've seen, before COVID the city spent a lot of money, about $20 million, on programs like rapid rehousing, supportive housing, and permanent supportive housing.
Currently, that is significantly lower.
I think it's around $5 million.
We've seen, I think, on the city side, a huge increase in sweeps, putting people into temporary shelters, And a lot less on getting people into long-term housing.
And I'm curious, maybe Jillian, this is for you directly, how that has impacted your guys' work.
And if you could ask the city to focus on something, what would you have us focus on?
If this is the right move or the wrong move, no judgments, not trying to throw anyone under the bus, but just genuinely asking what would be the most helpful.
Jillian Schoene
I'm not here to throw anybody under the bus either, because I think, you know, prior to COVID, things looked differently and we had that joint partnership.
It wasn't perfect yet either.
I mean, homelessness is hard, right?
And then COVID hit.
Things got blurry during COVID new programs came in online because of what was happening out on our streets.
I have zero blame around that.
But here we are now today, and things need to shift to a new normal.
And we now have shared key performance indicators that both elected bodies have used.
That is the investment strategy.
Those indicators should inform everyone's votes.
HSD did use those KPIs to inform their budget.
What you see in their requested budget is the more balanced system that we need.
Right now, we spend about $150 million on shelter between both of us, and that is equal to the ongoing SHS amount coming to Multnomah County and back out the door.
Like, we're spending a lot on shelter.
We have to shift our funds to more moving more people out of homelessness.
So that's the HSD budget is a requested budget is a great start.
I think with a directive, I would bring together the wonderful team at Portland Solutions and HSD, particularly around what does a UNO what is the right mix of shelter?
Right, because we brought on a new type of shelter during COVID which was the right thing to do.
But what is the right mix of shelter, and what is that level of investment that allows us, in the context of the key performance indicators, to actually start curving down, if you will, the number of homeless people in our community?
Like, we have the data and we have the key performance indicators that we share to inform those investment decisions and come back with that recommendation to you.
Angelita Morillo
So simplify that for folks in the audience who don't know all the key performance indicators.
Just plainly say, what would you want the city to be focused on?
Jillian Schoene
Being in partnership with Multnomah County to end the homelessness of more individuals.
Angelita Morillo
Right, but as far as actual things, like, do you want us to focus on long-term housing, moving people into permanent housing?
Dan Ryan
Councilor Loretta Smith.
Jillian Schoene
I think the city has a couple of roles that the county just does not play.
Housing development, high five, y'all, and start sprinting right down that.
A lot of great work has happened.
Economic development paired with that, right?
Y'all, I mean, the county has a tiny bit of funds, but housing development, economic development, like, go for it.
I do think all 24/7 shelter should go back to the county.
And we have one system with referral, looking at the referral pathways, redoing the referral pathways, and that, that live at the county.
Do we keep— I'll say what is not being said yet.
Do we keep some overnight-only beds online for public space management?
Yes.
I think so.
For those getting a human to a bed who maybe is resisting 24/7 shelter, maybe keeping, I'm gonna say, 200 to 300 online for that purpose.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
I appreciate you being—.
Jillian Schoene
During this transition time period.
Jessica Vega Peterson
Gotcha.
Angelita Morillo
Okay.
See, I love Jillian.
She'll answer you honestly and directly.
I appreciate that.
And I agree with you.
I think, you know, when we look at this chart, the part of housing Councilor Smith.
I think that housing development falls squarely under the city, and I think that's where we haven't really seen a vision from the city.
I think now we have a council that's very committed to doing things like social housing, land banking, revolving loan funds, debt buydowns so that we can create more sustainable rent pricing.
And so I'm very committed especially to that part.
I think that's where my colleagues— I hope that we will focus on, and I'm really excited about the possibility of us really looking into those long-term solutions so that the county can— I feel like you do so much of that emergency management, really, of the crisis that has been handed to us, also partially by the federal government right now.
So thank you, I really appreciate that.
And I would just urge my colleagues that when we have opportunities to invest these dollars in long-term solutions like social housing, that we need to be taking those and we need to be decidedly committing to it every single step of the way, because if we don't, then we will just fall back on the status quo.
So thanks for your time.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Murillo.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. President.
First of all, Mr. President, Chair Vega Pedersen, I suggest the next meeting like this just be billed as Jillian Unplugged, and we should just let Jillian hold forth.
Jamie Dunphy
So I've got a few quick specific questions.
Steve Novick
One is, And I doubt we know this.
Do we happen to know what percentage of people who are served eviction notices subsequently become homeless?
Rachel Pearl
You want to know the percentage that actually become homeless after being served an eviction notice?
Steve Novick
Yeah.
Rachel Pearl
We don't have the entire— I don't have that data available specifically to you right now.
We know there's a lot of layers.
So we know that for every eviction that ends up in eviction court, people self-evict, right?
So for every one person that ends Mm-hmm.
Up in eviction court, 5 self-evict.
So that means the number that we see that actually make it to eviction court, which really our resources that we have for eviction prevention at the county would only prevent evictions for 1 month, um, for the entire year, right?
If that— if all of those moved forward.
The challenge with eviction once it gets to eviction court is there is arrears payments that are due in order to actually prevent that eviction and prevent the eviction from being on their record and the eviction from happening.
So we can see what actual data is available to you in terms of the numbers that actually become homeless, but it is a challenging data point to collect accurately.
Steve Novick
Okay.
I mean, what I'm getting at obviously is I'd be curious to know, I mean, if we could show that here's the percentage of overall people served eviction notices become homeless, and here's the percentage if they get some sort of assistance, how big the difference is.
Another random question I have is, what is the annual cost per unit of permanent supportive housing?
Anna Plum
Are you asking for the rent assistance or just all services?
Steve Novick
Like the total public money.
If you have one permanent supportive housing unit, what does that cost in public money per year?
Anna Plum
Hold on, I'm Googling it for you right now.
So it depends on the household.
So there's adult, family, So the costs do change depending on that, and we do have an average cost I'm going to pull up for you.
Just one second.
So for an adult doing PSH, the average cost is around $36,000 to $38,000.
Mitch Green
A year?
Julia Brim-Edwards
A year?
Candace Avalos
Yes.
Steve Novick
And do we have a wild guess as to how many people we think should be in permanent supportive housing right now but aren't?
Anna Plum
So Metro did just publish, uh, some— or they're about to publish some numbers on that that I can send to you around the estimates by county, how many folks are in PSH and how many they estimate would need it.
I don't have those memorized, but they do exist.
We can follow up.
Jessica Vega Peterson
Yeah.
Steve Novick
And finally, Mr. Bhattacharjee, I think you touched on this, but in terms of rent assistance, can we say that the city has only provided X kinds of rent assistance, they're different from the Y kinds of rent assistance that the county has provided?
Michael Buonocore
Has there been either officially or unofficially I think in terms of the eviction legal defense interventions, I think there's a question of whether we're in parallel with each other.
But again, in terms of anything that you— that one might categorize as rent assistance, the only thing the city does is around eviction legal defense.
Steve Novick
And is it true that the county does some of that too, but the county also does a lot of other rent assistance stuff?
Michael Buonocore
I believe that's true.
Rachel Pearl
Yeah, so, and, and DCHS is, because we are the designated community action agency, which is the designated, like, safety net provider for the county, we have eviction prevention.
We have also, we are a provider for the Medicaid 1115 waiver.
Angelita Morillo
We have a lot of different programs.
Rachel Pearl
We do contract out for legal defense and legal support related to evictions as well.
So those are— yes, we do.
We cover everything related to eviction prevention in DCHS.
Steve Novick
And in the past, you've provided some rent assistance that goes beyond eviction prevention, no?
Julia Brim-Edwards
Yes.
Rachel Pearl
So in terms of economic stability programs, we also have a program called Multnomah Stability Initiative.
Or MSI that's connected to the Sun Service System, which is largely a— it's a prevention program for households who have a child who's under 18 who are considered potentially at risk for becoming unstable in their housing.
And that's long-term case management and support.
But then we have eviction prevention, which is for folks who have an eviction notification or are already actively involved in an eviction court process.
Steve Novick
And that's where and is that pretty similar— do you run that pretty similar to how the city does eviction prevention paired with some financial assistance?
Rachel Pearl
I can't speak to how the city runs their legal support.
I don't know what your— the pairing with rent assistance is.
But I think we know that one of the things that we can continue to talk about, and I do think it's an area of exploration of like who should do what and is there opportunity for us to streamline if we are having duplication of services, is how do we make sure that we're providing the best I think the constant question around legal support as paired with the amount of dollars we actually have for eviction prevention, we really do need to make sure those are comparable amounts, that we aren't overly investing in legal support because we know that we can't prevent evictions if we don't actually have rental assistance to pair with the legal support.
So that is an important conversation that we need to continue to have.
And I think there's opportunities for us to partner with the city to streamline that.
Steve Novick
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Commissioner Brem Edwards.
Julia Brim-Edwards
Thank you.
Um, so I just want to state one thing for the record, um, that when I joined the County Commission, um, Metro and the broader community was kicking the county because of the $100 million in unanticipated and underspent dollars, and the corrective action plan had us spending it.
So just Thank you.
Just for the record, it wasn't— there was a lot of pressure on the county because of the humanitarian crisis on the street to make those investments.
So it wasn't like people just ignored the fiscal cliff.
There was a corrective action plan, and we had a crisis on their streets.
And I think the county made both some long-term investments and also some ones that were needed right then.
Since I have limited time, I want to focus on the KPIs.
Number 1, which is reducing homelessness over 2 years, and 8, which is within 2 years reduce the share of people who are known to be unsheltered.
I support a unified city and county strategy on shelter and housing, respecting our roles.
I'm concerned that we're heading into both of our budgets yes.
Not with a discussion about the right mix, but about both entities looking at cutting some significant shelter capacity without taking into consideration what the overall impact will be of those cuts.
The 675 that's proposed reduced by the county, added on top of the 230 that are coming offline already at the end of this fiscal year, year.
Just this last week, Sunstone, that is both a city and a county shelter provider, announced shutting its doors on June 30th.
Are all those individuals exiting to the street?
That's, you know, my question.
I don't think that's a good thing for our community, and I think it certainly doesn't support KPI number 8 with it, you know, of reducing the share of people who are known to be unsheltered.
Councilor Loretta Smith, So I really hope that we have— we don't just have this quarterly meeting and then go our separate ways in the budget process, but really that we have— we act in a coordinated way.
I hope we act in a coordinated way to continue to provide adequate shelter capacity.
I mean, we do need to make investments in other places.
I will say though, giving someone a safe thank you.
So providing a safe place to sleep with basic services, access to other services, safety, the ability to get stabilized, to me, that's— has— is a valuable investment of our resources.
So we need to do that.
To me, it's really an and conversation, not an or or instead of.
So I'm hopeful that we can the city and the county don't just be like, hey, we're not gonna invest that anymore, the other side will do that.
We really need to be coordinated.
We have to have a, for those, if there are shelter beds that are reduced, that we need to have a person-level transition plan.
So every person from a shelter is not exiting to the street.
That's the wrong thing to do.
So we should be acting in coordination and—.
Councilor Smith.
I think while we're doing that, the other piece is really like leaning into the conversation.
This is one that the city will lead on housing production, but like, what is the housing— what's the city's housing production goal?
How do we fill those vacant units?
How does the county support the city in that work?
Because I think that's what our overall community expects us to do, not to be like, hey, we're keeping our money, Councilor Smith.
Candace Avalos
I think it's important that we have a coordinated strategy.
Julia Brim-Edwards
We're going to keep our money, they're keeping their money, and we're going to both do the things that we want to do, we want to invest in, but really having a coordinated strategy.
Because I think that's the only way we're going to actually make progress on these 2 key performance indicators, which I think are both important.
And I think how this is phrased here, this says the goal is based on— but the goal is based on budget yes.
I think the community is going to look at that and say, what does that mean?
We expect outcomes and reductions in both homelessness and unsheltered homelessness.
And so what are the budget votes that need to happen?
What's the coordination and the planning that needs to happen in order to actually see improvements?
Not in 2 years, but in this upcoming budget year.
So I hope this is maybe a message to leadership that we continue these conversations.
These discussions and the coordination, um, because we can't be blaming, um, the other party, um, at the other end of our budget process.
I think our community expects more.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Commissioner.
Skylar Breading
Council President, if I may just— I know it wasn't a question, but I just, I want to offer maybe a ray of hope for folks, because I think, um, Commissioner, thank you for those, um, for that statement.
I think we are more coordinated than I think we've ever been, um, so I will I will just offer that.
I think there is room for improvement and we will keep working on it and we can always coordinate better and more.
But I just want to state that that's been my reality for the last 4 years and I think I really appreciate the partnership.
Julie and I talk on the phone literally every single day.
So I think just want to name that.
I do think there is room for improvement and we need to keep working better.
And I think the elected bodies also need to be talking and coordinating in that way, not just the administrative bodies.
I would also just mention, I think we've definitely been talking about fiscal cliffs for a long time, and I will just offer, I think it's been a conversation between the former city administrator Mike Jordan, the COO at the county Chris Neal, and now the new city administrator Raymond Lee about not swapping money back and forth and coordinating our services.
So I think both of those things have been really underlined by those conversations that have happened behind closed doors often.
But I just wanted to name that because I think maybe you all don't ever see that every day.
And I think those conversations have happened and are happening and that coordination is taking place.
Again, we have plenty of room to improve, but I think it's gotten a lot better and we're trying really hard.
And I think to your point, Commissioner, When we hear there's a constrained budget and we're going to have to close shelter at the county, our first call is to our county partners to say, how do we help with the humans who are going to leave those shelter beds?
How are we going to help?
Because we have overnight shelter, we are working on housing placement.
How do we help you?
What do you need?
And I think those are the conversations that really hearten me of this is a system, this is a city, this is a county, and we're working on this together.
So sorry for editorializing.
I just wanted to say yeah, I was—.
Anna Plum
I would just add on that, and I was going to jump in and say I think one of the places where we coordinate the best is in the event of a program closure or move.
We work together really, really, really intensively to find places for folks who work with our providers, who work with each other.
Like, that is a place where I think we do a really good job of coordinating to focus on the humans who are, who are in those spaces who need a safe place to be.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Councilor Dan Ryan.
Julia Brim-Edwards
I really appreciate that, and I have heard that informally, but I think it's really important to make it more public in ways that people can see it, because all we see is, hey, there's 675 shelter beds that are coming offline, and what does that mean to the community, and which ones are being closed?
And it's not being explained in a way, or the path ahead being laid out in a way that people can see.
Councilor Smith.
Described in a way that the city and county are working together.
So I love that that's happening, but it's not visible.
And so making it visible so that people can see that coordination, because you have a lot of people really panicked in the community right now.
I mean, there's lots of shelter providers, staff who feel like they're going to lose their jobs shortly.
You have community members who feel like they're absolutely.
Skylar Breading
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Commissioner.
Vice President Clark.
Olivia Clark
Thank you, Council President.
Just a couple of quick things.
I want to reinforce some of the things that have already been said.
It's been a good dialogue, but I think it's time we move from coordination to consolidation.
Thank you.
And that's something that we're looking at in the change of government here in the city.
We're moving in that direction in our bureaus as well.
So I really think we need to continue to discuss consolidation.
I think if the public, you know, sees this, this complex web of fragmented programs, they're going to scratch their head and wonder about the cost of administration.
How much money are we spending both To some degree, I think we also need to discuss consolidating of the providers, consolidating.
And I know I heard you say, Councilor Koyama Lane, that it's not a one-size-fits-all, but I do think that we need to look at some way of saving administrative costs through consolidation.
And you asked the question about what would be my ideal.
Yeah.
I think that we need to look at simplify this entire system so that there's one place to call, there's one place to get help, there's one way to enter the system, just to make it as easy as possible.
And I want to also reinforce the idea of the additional psych beds.
I think you're absolutely right, Jillian, that— and I think that Commissioner Megan Moyer started out with that, that I think we have to have a shared legislative agenda around that.
The city and the county need to link arms and go to the legislature and ask for those things together.
You know, I've talked about having an annex of the state hospital up here, but maybe that's not the approach.
Maybe it's just psych beds somewhere.
But I'd like to see us more closely coordinate our legislative strategy around that.
But I would just emphasize, I think we really need to move from coordination to consolidation.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Vice President Clark.
Sorry, morning, Tim.
I think Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos
Okay, thank you.
So, um, I want to start by talking about how I'm thinking of this conversation overall.
It is important that our understanding of homelessness reflects current conditions.
While individual factors can lead to— play a big role, whether that's mental illness, substance abuse, there's also domestic violence is a big factor to homelessness.
Let's not forget there there's actually a long list of them.
The strongest driver of homelessness today is structural: the cost of rent and the lack of available housing.
We see this consistently in the data.
Places with higher housing costs and lower vacancy rates have higher rates of homelessness, regardless of any of those other factors.
So in other words, the strongest predictor is whether people can afford housing, rent burden relative to income, not whether they have a behavioral health condition.
Thank you.
I think what differs is, you know, mental illness exists in every community, but homelessness does not, right?
And what differs is whether people have access to housing they can afford.
Homelessness happens when vulnerable people are in a system where housing is too scarce and too expensive.
So that framing matters to me because I think it informs what our role should be as the city.
Now, when I look at the Homeless to Housing Continuum, I see that the city's strongest role on the front Councilmember Smith.
Thank you, Mayor.
I think that we need to focus on both the front and the back ends.
So that to me looks like preventing people from entering homelessness in the first place and ensuring that there is enough housing for people to exit into.
That means eviction prevention, rent assistance, housing stabilization on the front end, and housing production, especially permanently affordable social municipal supportive housing on the back end.
I don't think that the city should be in the shelter business long term.
I think that the county is better positioned to lead on services, outreach, behavioral health, shelter operations, case management, And our job is to make sure fewer people ever need those services in the first place, and that when we do, when the when they do, there's somewhere for them to go.
And so that is where I see rental assistance becoming critical.
I know this is a growing discussion that I just want to name and put my stake in the ground.
If the primary driver of homelessness is the inability to pay rent, then preventing that loss of housing is one of the most effective tools that we have, in my opinion.
And so when someone falls behind by a month or two, that's often the tipping point for them.
And a relatively small amount of rental assistance can keep a household stable and prevent a much more expensive and traumatic experience that is homelessness.
So if we're serious about slowing the inflow, I, I think that we need to invest in the tools that actually do that, and rental assistance is one of the most direct proven ways.
In a post-COVID environment, you know, we've been talking about ARPA funds winding down.
I think that, you know, as everyone has said, we just have to be real clear about our goals, and the city should be leading where the market will never meet the need— below-market housing, supportive housing, long-term affordability— while also maintaining strong prevention strategies like the rental assistance and eviction defense.
And I think the county should continue leading on the service side of the system.
Now, given the fiscal constraints that we're heading into, we have to be more intentional, and I think our limited dollars should be concentrated, um, in the prevention of homelessness, building the housing solutions that don't Councilor Smith.
Thank you, Mayor.
I think that we need to be very intentional about the services that exist today at a scale that we need.
And I think that, you know, as everyone is saying, maybe taking a step back from areas that are better led by other governments, including the county.
Now, ultimately what success looks like to me is, you know, what you said, Jillian, right?
Fewer people entering homelessness in the first place.
I think that has to be the number one success metric for us.
And that success will come because we've stabilized them upstream and there's a clear functioning pathway into permanent housing for those who do end up experiencing homelessness.
Thank you.
And so that requires that both sides of the system are working together, that strong prevention and the supportive housing.
I also want to name something that I've been hearing consistently, which is that staff are asking for clearer direction, and at the same time, we as policymakers are often turning back to the staff for that direction.
So I'm just like, oh no, we're in this cycle.
So let's just call that out real quick.
And I think that what that signals is that we just need to be clearer about our roles.
And so for the council, you know, I, and I The council and the commission, but for the sake of who I am, council needs to set the vision and the policy direction, and your job, right, is to operationalize that.
And so if we're asking the staff to define the vision, then we're going to continue to see, you know, some of the incremental approaches instead of the structural alignment that we need.
Because understandably, I think staff get worried about getting ahead of the electeds, but then electeds, you know, we don't always have all of the right information.
So I'm just calling that out as a problem that we need to continue to work on solving.
And I think that can be solved in lots of ways that I'm happy to lead on in the future.
And then I think ultimately, you know, that is a big part of why we've been working on the unified housing strategy.
And we're making really good progress on that.
All of these folks are in those meetings and helping us to define what our role is on the continuum.
Because without that shared framework, we're just going to continue to have these same conversations.
So I hope that as we enter in these next couple of months, you know, the new housing committee will get up and going, and the plan is to bring those discussions to the committee, bring those to the whole council, uh, so that hopefully— it sounds like you guys need the vision, and that's what we need to do.
So we need to be charged.
And I agree that we're kind of in this conundrum, but, um, I would ask that, um, we start figuring out how to give that clear direction to staff, because, um, sometimes we keep expecting it back and forth, and that's clearly not working.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, President.
Alisha Jones-Dixon
Thank you, Chair.
Uh, just a couple things.
One, I'm one of the only commissioners that— or the only commissioner that has 4 other cities outside of Portland.
Um, so just, uh, yes, coordination, but please, please, please, please invite the folks out in East Multnomah County as far as like the homeless services division.
I think you guys already do that with Jessica.
Um, one of the big— biggest things that one thing that we continue to lean into is just coordination.
Like even for the nighttime shelters specifically, it sounds like we started that process as far as DHS figuring out how can we potentially coordinate services for folks that are in our care, even if it's for 12 hours at night.
And then also I just would like to take it a step further to think through if we collectively can think through how are we using technology.
I know we have Housing Connector and OneApp and other, you know, of businesses here.
How can we fulfill the vacancies and ensure that folks that need wraparound services have those wraparound services here in Multnomah County?
And then we need to do a better job as far as— and I'm repeating some of the things that has been said already— as far as working with our partners at the state level, DHS, and then also OHA, and really build out a system of care that works for our most vulnerable.
Lastly, I appreciate your leadership and then the push and we can figure this out together, and that's what we're doing.
So thank you, and unfortunately I have to leave.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Commissioner Jones-Dixon.
Uh, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Thank you, Council President.
Um, I want to uplift something I've heard from providers who are possibly going to have to shut down their programming, their shelters.
Anna Plum
Um, has there been conversation about there being an extended ramp-down period from We're in active conversation with our providers around various options for what closures could look like across the community.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that any extension would cost money.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
And then the other question is around— I started talking to the mayor about this yesterday, but is there a way to think about some of our current vacant affordable housing units and potentially and seeing if we can— if first access, first dibs can be given to those who are losing shelter or those who are coming out of shelter.
Is that something we can do?
Michael Buonocore
I think we can physically do it.
I think there's a, you know, there are, as we said before, many compounding issues that affordable housing providers are facing and the most the most visible one is literal vacancies, you know, empty apartments that we want to see there be a connection between.
There's a space for someone to have a home and a person who needs it.
What's less visible is referred to as economic vacancy, which is folks who are in apartments and are struggling to pay their rent.
And so— I think that's a good point.
Apartments that look occupied by rent-paying folks, that's not necessarily the case.
So if we are making that connection of someone who is homeless to an empty apartment and they don't have income, we don't really have a solution, right?
We have a physical environment, but no— housing providers simply cannot operate with no revenue coming in.
So there has to be a— Yeah.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Which maybe could be continued conversation as we talk about these housing dollars.
Jillian Schoene
Yes.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Koyama Lane.
Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Mr. President.
I just wanted to note to the public that's listening that nobody likes any of the kind of cuts that any of us are talking about.
But I wanted to say that from the city perspective, we are committed to making sure that we are able to when one-time money for housing, homelessness-related stuff expires, the only pot of money we could theoretically use to make that up is the general fund.
And in the city, the general fund mostly goes to police, fire, and parks.
So we'll be— what we'll be talking about is cutting police, fire, and parks in order to continue funding shelters or what have you.
And I'm sure the county has similar constraints.
I actually just wanted to see if any of the commissioners wanted to weigh in on to that.
Mitch Green
Councilor Dan Ryan.
Steve Novick
Step up and say what general fund programs they have that they'd have to cut further if they were trying to avoid cutting these homeless dollars.
Jessica Vega Peterson
Yeah, I mean, I, I think we're in a similar position in that when you look at what general fund dollars fund at the county, as well as similarly at the city, we're talking about public safety investments.
You know, our Multnomah County Sheriff's Office is almost entirely funded by general fund dollars.
We have similar with our District Attorney's Office, but we also have like really incredible programs in DCHS.
A lot of our youth and family services system programs are all funded by general fund dollars, and some of those are the most important upstream investments that we are making, including some that are helping with things like eviction prevention or employment opportunities to help stabilize folks.
Anna Plum
So, I mean, I think we can all say this, that there are no good cuts.
Mitch Green
Right.
Michael Buonocore
Yes.
Jessica Vega Peterson
—That any of us are having to face in these more difficult economic times and looking at the new normal that we're getting to in terms of sources of funding like SHS dollars, as well as the really unstable environment, federal environment that we have dealing with.
So as we're making these decisions, as we're thinking about, well, do you have to— do you want to continue this one-time-only investment?
It's all about the trade-offs, and they're not easy.
And I think that's why this conversation that we're having today and the work that we've been doing about how do we more— how do we best work together in order to fund a system that is effective and efficient and gets us to the goal of connecting people to safer, stable, and permanent places to live is incredibly important.
So thank you for bringing that up and for helping to raise up, like, these are not easy decisions.
Skylar Breading
Thank you.
Jessica Vega Peterson
But they're critical ones that we're all gonna be making in the next several months.
Steve Novick
Finally, just, I'm sorry that Commissioner Jones-Dixon left.
He mentioned the fact that he represents other cities, and I just wanna state the obvious, which is that it would solve all our problems if Wood Village just stepped up and did their fair share.
Jamie Dunphy
Hear, hear.
Thank you, Councilor Novick.
Councilor Green.
Mitch Green
Thank you.
Just briefly, you know, This is an important conversation 'cause we don't have a lot of money.
We, in fact, we're at a deficit across our jurisdiction, so we need to figure out how to close.
So in that kind of a space, I wanna make sure we're not doing things that are pennywise and pound foolish.
Like for example, the impact reduction program hauls away a lot of personal belongings, trash, what have you.
And that's what that program does.
But if we make sure that we adequately fund programs like the glitter program in particular, then I believe that they've got like a sort of a laundry reuse type of like, they sort of divert some of that away from the waste stream to be reused.
That can cut our costs to the impact reduction program because I think we get the swelling of the volume in the winter months when it's wet.
Right?
That's how we measure this stuff.
So, you know, I think about making sure that we're seeing opportunities to preserve the buckets of money that we have and just make more efficient choices in that while also providing these ancillary benefits for sort of, you know, jobs for those that traditional labor markets cannot provide.
And so it looks like you want to say something.
Skylar Breading
Yeah, well, Councilor, I just appreciate that.
I would just say I think that's exactly why the Impact Reduction Program chose to invest in the wash house to get it up and running and in the glitter program for exactly that reason.
Because we see it's frustrating, I think, to us to like keep having to do the same thing when we could actually do something else and fund a program that would divert and reuse kind of those textiles that we're finding on the street.
So I just wanted to share that.
Mitch Green
Thanks for acknowledging that.
That's going to be really important to me to make sure that we see an ongoing commitment there.
But also, I know that there are more people lined up per day looking for work with that program than they have available.
And that's and that's a huge opportunity for us.
We want to provide a job for anyone who wants to work and who has the capacity to do something and give back.
So thank you.
Skylar Breading
Yeah, we're looking to expand that.
Yep.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Green.
I'm going to put myself in the queue.
You know, I heard a lot of agreement across this board and a lot of, not, I mean, a lot of agreement across I personally don't quite understand why we have a system where we have 24/7 beds and how those are dramatically more expensive than overnight-only beds plus day centers.
Feels like it's going to be a wash ultimately.
There's nothing on this chart that I would like to cut.
I would like to expand all of these things until we solve the problem.
That's obviously not where we're at.
And so from my perspective, anywhere that the color is over overlap needs to be the priority of us getting into our own lanes and doubling down on what works and what doesn't.
There's a lot of good work happening here across this thing.
And I also want to totally acknowledge what, Sky, what you were saying, that the systems are working better together than they ever have.
And is there room for improvement?
Sure.
Should we probably think about, as Councilor Clark was, or Vice President Clark was saying, yes.
Some consolidation?
Absolutely.
Should we— is there work to be done on our contract languages across our 2 bodies?
Yes, absolutely.
Let's prioritize some of that.
But also, we need to double down on what is working.
And I am also hearing the call from staff for more input from us and more direction to say this is what comes next.
So I look forward to working with all of you towards what that next vision may be.
With— we have 9 minutes left.
I'm going to turn it to Commissioner Moyer for our last word, and then I'm going to turn it to the mayor for— oh, and Councilor Avalos, and then the mayor.
Okay, Commissioner Moyer first.
Meghan Moyer
Yeah, I do think one of the things that we have not talked about, but it is really important because it was very much central in the passing of SHS, is that there was, and when passed, and continues and should continue to be A focus on reducing people who experience chronic homelessness.
And that is an important distinction because people who experience chronic homelessness, it is a more challenging community to successfully permanently house.
We— if we want to house the most number of people for the least amount of money, we would entirely focus not on chronic homelessness.
We would focus on eviction prevention, People who don't have disability, who don't experience significant barriers to being rehoused, would go in, swoop in.
I'm for all of those things, but I am very nervous in some of this conversation that we're not remembering that the intention of that money had a focus on people who experience chronic homelessness, which means they're likely to be experiencing co-occurring challenges.
Councilor Smith, But in my district, and I'm sure other people see this in areas of their district, there is a high concentration of people who experience chronic homelessness who are also experiencing a variety of other issues such as behavioral health or disability on our street.
And I, you know, from my perspective, it's just my perspective, there is also a moral imperative to serve those people even if they cost more.
Yes.
Because our safety net system has crumbled.
And I— that is so beyond this room of individuals.
We didn't create that.
But I don't want us to lose how important it is to struggle with building the right system, even for the people who have the most barriers, and even if they are never fully independent, um, because it is incredibly important to who we are as a community.
Thank you.
That we not leave those people behind.
Not that I think anybody implied that here, but, um, I just wanted to say that because they, they cost more.
They do.
Jamie Dunphy
Councilor Avalos.
Thank you, Commissioner Moyer.
Candace Avalos
Okay, what's going on?
Okay, yeah, wait for the weird sound to go away.
Okay, okay.
Jamie Dunphy
Commissioner Avalos or Councilor Avalos.
Candace Avalos
I know it's confusing.
I just wanted to first react to what you're saying because I completely agree, Commissioner.
And I think my— where my brain is at is I'm concerned about us creating more chronically homeless people by not fixing the problem of not letting people become homeless because too many more people are becoming homeless due to all the factors we talked about.
So that's my concern.
So I agree with you.
There are going to be a group of people that are just always going to be difficult to care for and are going to have unique needs.
And we need to create systems that adapt to that because that is ultimately government's job is to address those things, right?
We have disability programs.
We have all these programs for that reason.
And, you know, if we don't stop the amount of people going in, we're just going to create more long-term chronic homeless people that are going to be even more of a strain on the system.
So just want to affirm what you're saying.
And lift that up.
I actually just had a quick question because I was reflecting on what you framed, Council President, and you were like, let's look at the places where there's overlap and pick a lane.
And that when I looked back at the diagram, I realized that under housing placement, it's all blue.
But I seem to understand that the city is doing housing placement type things.
You've got the strike team about like housing placement.
So can you explain where— why do we have no orange in this section?
Because I feel like I've heard us describe that.
Jillian Schoene
So the housing placement is a yeah, I could have on the final blue box where we reference reunification, which is one example of other long-term housing placements, we, we could have colored that orange.
I'll take responsibility for that.
Yeah.
Candace Avalos
Okay, so then in other words, you're saying out of all of the things under this category, the thing that the city does right now is just that reunification part, but everything else is county?
Skylar Breading
Yes.
I think there's a lot of caveats.
I would just say in terms of what Councilor Koyama Lane mentioned with kind of some potential housing dollars.
We have coordinated with the county in the past almost every year basically on placing folks into housing, but that doesn't mean we own that program, if that makes sense.
So I think what Jillian is trying to show with the chart is like who's overseeing that program.
That doesn't mean that we don't place folks into housing in coordination, often like directing to the contractors and helping them.
Councilor them to place folks in housing.
But we don't like own that program, if that makes sense.
Candace Avalos
That's very helpful to know.
And then I think is also part of the problem, right?
Because it's like those little nuanced details are where we get tripped up, because then it's like, wait, who's on first?
Who's doing that?
So I, I guess some feedback that I, I love how this is structured, and then maybe let's add a couple more layers of nuance to that.
Maybe it's more colors, more charts, I don't know.
But I think that would help us because those are the little things that add up and make the councilors and the commissioners feel like they don't know who is on what.
Does that make sense?
Um, that's all.
Thanks.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Councilor Avalos.
Mayor.
Keith Wilson
Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Chair, councilors, commissioners.
Thank you for this opportunity.
Panel, thank you for all the work.
You know, we've got a lot of hard work to look at.
How are we going to balance the continuum?
What are we going to do with the processes we have.
There are so many variables that we get to work with, and working together is really going to allow us to really meet the moment.
Commissioner Moyer had noted that there's a moral obligation, and I always go back to outcomes, and I also go back to what are we really trying to measure and what are the measurement that is really most important, and I look at lost lives.
And in '23 and '24, we lost 800 Portlanders to suffer and die homelessness in Portland, and we had to act.
We simply could not continue on, and we all were elected to act.
I'm proud to say that my new emergency overnight shelter system has provided over 100,000 nights of safe sleep to vulnerable people who would otherwise be on the streets.
2,100 unique individuals operated— pardon me, stayed in those shelters last month.
We've helped people out of derelict RVs so they no longer pose a hazard to our roads, our watershed, and our neighborhoods.
And encampment counts have dropped across the city, and they've decreased by 70%, 75% in the downtown core.
Most importantly, we've accomplished this by offering a helping hand, life-saving resources, and a path off the streets.
We've seen the success of our efforts reflected across the city.
More businesses are choosing to stay and grow in Portland.
We've seen one of the steepest declines in homicides in the nation.
And Councilor Koyama Lane, something that would be really dear to your heart, even pedestrian deaths are way down now that we quickly clear high-crash corridors and tents and other as we discuss our performance and priorities, I will ask that we continue to fund a balance of life-saving shelter and shelter to housing options for all Portlanders to succeed in Portland.
Thank you.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Chair Vega-Petersen.
Jessica Vega Peterson
Thank you so much.
I just want to thank everyone here, um, at the dais for the clarity that you've provided on what you'd like to see, the providing— the, um, priorities you have, and thank you.
And the perspective on our roles and responsibilities.
I also wanted to say a huge thank you to this like all-star staff that we have sitting here for providing information, answering questions.
But I think most importantly for the work that you guys do every single day to make sure that the policies and decisions that we make up here get implemented.
That work has the biggest impact on the people that we are serving here in these elected roles.
I also want to just say I think it's so important for us as partnering jurisdictions to provide the best support that we can to those who are experiencing homelessness, at risk of experiencing homelessness.
And I just appreciate the opportunities that we have to come together to have these conversations as we're looking at the, the limited budgets that we have to work with and all of the different priorities we have even outside of the homelessness.
I know that this is something we all care deeply about, passionately about, and the constituents that we serve do as well.
Our next session is going to be a little more than a month away on Tuesday, April 28th.
So I look forward to continuing our conversation, to convening again and keeping this work going.
So thank you.
Thank you, Council President.
Jamie Dunphy
Thank you.
Thank you to our county colleagues for coming over.
Thank you to everybody for the presentation today and all the amazing hard work that is happening.
Colleagues, thank you all for your time today.
And with that, we are adjourned.
Jessica Vega Peterson
1 Minute.
Good job.
Keith Wilson
To the races.
Meetings galore.