City, Multnomah County get realistic about Portland’s homelessness crisis

PORTLAND, Ore. ( KOIN ) — The Multnomah Board of Commissioners and the Portland City Council gathered for a joint meeting on Tuesday to discuss whether or not the resolutions and ordinances laid out by the agencies’ collective Homelessness Response Action Plan are having real-life impacts on the state of Portland’s homelessness crisis.

The Oct. 8 meeting began with summaries by City and County staffers showing progress made toward specific milestones and deadlines established in the action plan in June . The rate at which former homeless people are retaining supportive housing in Multnomah County, for example, is currently exceeding expectations, officials said.

But following the presentation, City and County representatives proceeded to have a realistic discussion about what those milestones mean and what progress toward solving homelessness actually looks like.

The structure established for carrying out the Homelessness Response Action Plan was among the first topics to spark tense debate between city and county commissioners. Under the current plan, a Steering and Oversight Committee, governed by Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, County Commissioner Lori Stegmann, City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez and Gresham Mayor Travis Stovall, was put in place to direct City and County commissioners on how to address the homelessness crisis. However, it remains unclear what authority the committee actually has in influencing policy.

“After several months of conversation, I’m still not sure of the purpose of the steering and oversight committee,” Mapps said. “Is that committee fundamentally an advisory committee or is it a policy committee?”

Wheeler said he views the committee as a roundtable where the City and County can openly have difficult discussions on how to solve Portland’s homelessness crisis.

“Nobody has a monopoly on the truth when it comes to homelessness,” Wheeler said. “Homelessness is a term that represents everything from substance abuse, behavioral health, domestic violence survivorship, housing affordability, people coming out of the juvenile justice system, people coming out of corrections, people who are struggling with their transition from the foster care system. We did ourselves a huge disservice when we put one label on it and called it homelessness. It’s much broader than that.”

If the City and County are going to solve the problem, he said, they need to air out their disagreements and combine their resources to work toward a single goal.

“The Steering Oversight Committee where that is going to happen,” he said.

County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards and City Commissioner Dan Ryan, meanwhile, expressed that the City and County haven’t made it clear what that goal is. The Homelessness Response Action Plan, for example, doesn’t call for data showing a net reduction in homelessness, she said.

“Without that data on the inflows and the outflows of who is homeless, this body doesn’t really know whether we’re treading water, making progress or backsliding,” Brim-Edwards said. “We absolutely have to set a goal, because right now, you’ve got a whole bunch of action items, and percentages of increases, but we don’t actually have a goal that will show that we’re reducing [homelessness], and I think without that, people aren’t going to believe us.”

Ryan added that the government bodies need to establish what they’re actually trying to achieve by setting goals. One of the end goals, he said, should be something along the lines of helping able-bodied Portlanders escape homelessness and drug addiction, find and maintain careers, and lead meaningful lives. But achieving those goals will take cooperation between City and County representatives.

“As long as we’re clear about what the roles and responsibilities are of the City and the County, we can work together,” Ryan said. “… We can continue to work together just like this, having tough conversations.”

Although most of the current Portland City Council is moving on following the upcoming November election, Wheeler said that he is hopeful that the City and the County can work together to fix Portland’s homelessness crisis.

“I think there’s more agreement and consensus here than not,” he said. “The question is really in the details. How do we move forward, what data do we collect, how do we ensure the geographic equity in the solutions and whatnot. … We do need to work together, we do need to collaborate, and frankly, we need to be a little more aggressive in pushing upstream to actually solve the problem.”

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