How can that be? What does it say about Pittsburgh's recruiting and vetting process? Does it resemble the iffy due diligence that likely plays a role in the ongoing departure of high level appointees from Portland city government?
I asked Anthropics' Claude AI to assess the problems at the city's housing agency. I supplied it with this piece and The Oregonian's coverage of Home Forward going back to April of this year. This is the result:
The reforms that follow from this record are not complicated:
Stop new development starts until portfolio occupancy reaches the promised 6% vacancy.
Tie any future development funding to measured operating performance.
Lower rents on units priced above market immediately.
Use the expedited eviction statute as written.
Stop placing high-acuity tenants in buildings designed for seniors and disabled residents unless on-site services are funded first.
Build dedicated supportive housing, with clinical staff, for people who need it, and stop treating ordinary affordable housing as a substitute.
Publish the outside assessment and the dashboard, or explain why they don't exist.
Replace the board members who oversaw the travel spending and the Hollywood East record.
None of these requires solving the national housing shortage. All of them are within reach of Home Forward, its board, and the City of Portland. The Examiner headline says managers admit the system is broken. The more useful point is that they run a large part of it.
This is what the Pittsburgh Housing Authority announced:
“After an extensive national search, the Board is thrilled to welcome Ivory Mathews as the next Executive Director of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh,” said Wasi Mohamed, Chair of the HACP Board of Commissioners. “Ivory is a nationally recognized affordable housing executive who brings nearly three decades of transformational leadership, a proven track record of success, and a deep commitment to expanding access to affordable housing. Following a thorough review and extended conversations, we are confident in her ability to lead HACP into an exciting new chapter. We look forward to working together to strengthen our agency, deliver for our residents, and create more opportunities for Pittsburgh families.”
Did anyone there even read the scandal she created in Portland?
Could the homeless problem be solved if so much money didn't have to be made in the process of solving it? And how dare these rich white guys call places where poor people live "shit shows"!
I’ve volunteered with SRO residents in Old Town, many of whom are recovering from addiction. Even they complain about a system that mixes people who are stable and simply trying to get by with people who are actively using, highly disruptive, or not ready for independent housing.
So I wouldn’t dismiss the description as just “rich white guys” insulting poor people. Some of the residents living in these buildings would probably use equally strong language themselves.
Reducing this to “people making money” and “rich white guys” doesn’t really help solve the problem. The harder question is how to provide safe housing for low-income tenants while also dealing honestly with addiction, disruptive behavior, and residents who need more support than ordinary independent housing provides.
One thing I’ve heard repeatedly from residents is that conditions can depend heavily on the quality of the on-site manager. Once a building loses control, it can be very difficult to restore order. That may also be an argument for smaller buildings, where managers can know residents better, problems are easier to identify early, and a relatively small number of difficult tenants are less likely to destabilize an entire property.
The real issue is whether the housing system is serving very different populations as though they all have the same needs.
This is not about affordable housing capacity, it’s about site mismanagement, excessive construction costs for the new site which has no parking, and not taking responsibility for the residents legal right of quiet enjoyment. Home Forward and its property manager Pinehurst management in the Pearl properties have failed the residents, good people that deserve better. You can’t attract new tenants when you don’t manage properties adequately, and allow some individuals to live in them that have serious behavioral health and substance abuse issues, resulting in security and other site problems. Thank goodness residents have created their own governance systems to help hold Home Forward and Pinehurst Management accountable. No more excuses, just action and accountability are needed.
“Why are we spending $700 million on a new building when we’ve got 900 units that are open?” Because Portland has a huge drug problem that a is not being addressed. Because there is easy money for housing and not for drug treatment. There are over 2000 vacant, low-cost housing units in Portland that have remained unfilled for quite some time.
I'm of the belief that if we have matching grant money for something, then it should be spent especially if it's on housing. The homelessness, drug, and mental health crisis in ALL of America's cities needs a federal solution that is unlikely to come from the current administration. Building urban infill affordable housing now improves our supply, increases population density, and puts on a better footing for when we inevitably solve the other issues. Saying "no but" to construction projects is how we got to where we are with almost every problem in the first place. If we had funneled another 100k people into the central city over the last 20 years, do you think we'd be talking about downtown revitalization? Absolutely not. We wouldn't need downtown office workers or tech startups to fill the Pearl mixed use office space. You wouldn't even notice they were gone.
The proposed building is being constructed at $700,000 per unit, that they admit is double market value, over 160 million total. This does not sound like “affordable” to me. It doesnt feel like the solution to low cost housing. One of the reasons we have so many “low cost” housing vacancies in Portland, is that people cant afford to live in them
Howard Husock makes a useful distinction in America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake between people who are economically poor and people whose behavior makes them difficult tenants or neighbors. The two are not the same. Many low-income and working-poor households are responsible tenants who simply cannot afford market rents.
That distinction seems directly relevant here. Some tenants—particularly people dealing with active addiction, severe instability, or the early stages of recovery—may need more structured housing, closer supervision, treatment, or supportive services before they are ready for fully independent tenancy. Placing everyone into the same housing model does a disservice both to those who need more support and to responsible low-income tenants who deserve safe, stable homes.
Treating every low-income tenant as though they have the same needs and can function successfully in the same setting is not compassionate policy. It is poor housing management.
It is my understanding that some policymakers at the city and county consider it a violation of at-risk tenants' autonomy to require them to use supportive services and enter treatment. Hence the services are available, but using them is not mandatory in order to obtain and remain in subsidized housing. If that is indeed the case, it's just plain bonkers.
I’m exhausted watching these slow-motion, completely preventable disasters unfold while the city keeps moving forward as if there’s no reason to stop and reassess. At some point, accountability and basic competence have to matter.
It is reprehensible that the residents of the Pearl district have to put up with this. I applaud the people want their quality of life back. The political class from the city to the state level has failed them and Portland in general. I want Portland to be highly successful and a place where young people want to move to build a life. The evidence I see, and demographic changes seem to support it, are that Portland peaked prior to 2010.
A few questions arise. Why the high cost? In many of the articles in multiple publications, Home Forward says they have high ongoing cost due to mortgages. This despite that they don't pay property taxes since they are a NFP and, I believe, they get subsidies to build. The 'affordable housing' industry has put themselves financially into the spot where they have to charge rent that is comparable to market rate housing where owners are paying taxes and have to generate a profit. Homeforward, and other NFP housing organizations, must lower their capital and operating costs.
Why the Pearl district, the Lloyd district, downtown, etc? I believe that this is part of a master plan to increase Portland density toward the Metro Transportation Plan of smaller housing footprints so everyone rides bikes and walks with the goal of eliminating private automobile transportation in the name of climate change and maintaining Oregons onerous zoning rules that limit urban growth. The politicians don't have a problem with the high housing and social costs so long as it fits the ultimate goal to remake Portland into Amsterdam or some other equally dense city in Europe. It sounds conspiratorial until you start to read the transportation planning documents.
Finally, based on the evidence of the last 15 years, they don't have a problem with the externalities that degrade Portland quality of life. Portland, has built a homeless industrial complex that seems designed to do just enough to say they are doing something, spends hundreds of millions of dollars through a Not-for-profit network yet produces few tangible results towards making Portland more livable. The money and politics of the NFP housing and social assistance programs have become so alluring that the desires of the people in Portland to live in a beautiful city where they can be assured of safety for their families have become second priority.
There is nothing conspiratorial or surprising about the idea that Portland wants to continue designing a European style, new urbanist city. If you're reading that and thinking "wow, there's no way they would do that because cars are so great and how is the city going to work without designing itself at the behest of them," then you're oblivious and should probably go read A LOT more before going anywhere with a confident opinion.
In fact, I would "boldly" say that most transplants who come here do it because of how that plan has been implemented so far and the Utopian ideal of it in the future. So if you're not on board with it, then Portland probably isn't the place for you.
“Portland” actually doesn’t want this. There’s a relatively small minority of people for whom biking or our inadequate public transit happens to meet their transportation needs, but they seem to have convinced themselves that they speak for the entire city. Maybe instead of reading, as you say, you should get out and talk to other people sometimes.
The bigger problem is small, extremely vocal groups trying to make major decisions for everyone else while dismissing anyone who disagrees as somehow backwards or unwelcome. Your comment is a pretty good example of that attitude. We can all see how well that approach is working out for Portland.
As someone who is actually from Portland, I’d be perfectly happy with fewer transplants coming here expecting to reinvent the city into some sort of ideological experiment detached from the realities of how most people actually live and get around. If that’s what you’re looking for, perhaps Portland simply isn’t the place for you.
I am convinced that novel vacations to Europe by well healed people has deluded them. Amsterdam is no paradise. There is also a sort of heavy government regulation in most European cities. And the addiction movements toward legalization of narcotics in The Netherlands, has grown the largest criminal drug networks, which doesn't please some of its neighbors like French, who think quite differently.
I am so impressed with the quality of the responses to this article. No rash, off-the-hip quotes. Plenty of analysis based on real-world experience. Public agencies tend hire expensive consultants to tell them what they want to hear instead of listening to people who know the community and something about how society works.
The notion that the proposed Home Forward structure would be one of the first, if not the first, new building constructed on the former USPS site is a pretty radical departure from the build-out concepts floated in the multiple architectural design meetings held in the Pearl before COVID. The City has already spent well north of $130M to acquire the USPS property (including building a new USPS facility for USPS near PDX) and then demolish the former USPS buildings. That dollar amount pales compared with the billions the City, County, and private developers have spent installing the infrastructure and high-rises to develop the Pearl District as a national leader in urban redevelopment. It is truly puzzling how the City continues to make decisions that severely undermine the gigantic investments it has made in the Pearl. Is it a failure to understand basic Economics 101 in terms of supply and demand when it comes to real estate decisions? Is it the City’s failure to accept the fact that people value safety and security over most everything else, preferring instead some sort of leftist view that a desire for safety and security is elitist and not sufficiently empathetic toward those who make terrible decisions over lifestyle practices? I read this article today and feel like this is yet another Groundhog Day episode in the life of the Pearl.
In Seattle the affordable-homes developers themselves have recently put a pause on further building when they THEMSELVES realized that they couldn't successfully operate such projects for very vulnerable people WITHOUT providing supportive on-site services. Wouldn't it be great if Home Forward did the same?
Summary: Seattle’s new Social Housing Developer paused processing applications for very low‑income tenants (<30% AMI) at its first building (the Elara apartments in Belltown) because it realized more on‑site supportive services were needed before those residents could move in.
Key details: The developer began moving in tenants but stopped processing the lowest‑income applicants to build out additional support. They said they needed time to arrange contracts for: Job‑program referrals, Behavioral‑health support, Community‑reconnection services. They emphasized that although not legally required, they wanted stronger referrals in place for their most vulnerable residents. Applicants earning 30–50% AMI are still being processed; lowest‑income processing is expected to resume by November.
Permit me to introduce something some would consider peripheral to this discussion. Housing those with severe mental illness have to be accompanied by treatment. Many will not comply consistently with treatment and they will decompensate. Really strong case management, initial requirements for mental stabilization and connection to treatment as judged by consistency over time, can make it workable. There has to be early backup with transport to hospitals and civil commitment when they decompensate. The cities idea of housing these individuals without any mandated and demonstrated treatment, and their advocacy for such impractical policies might be countered by the case of Damon Johnson in June 2025.
The police arrived at his apartment after it was reported that knives were seen hanging outside his windows. He was psychotic and needed to be restrained by police. He died of asphyxiation. These cases tell us something about the lack of police personnel adequate to the demands in Portland. In short, we need many more officers. And we need rapid transport and coordination by EMS in such cases. These types of cases should be treated as we would if someone was having a heart attack. Rapid restraint and transport to the ER are of utmost important. That requires often like six police officers, not three who were present for Johnson, and two EMS workers to handle and even then, people might be injured or worse. They are very dangerous situations because they don't know if the person is armed. Take it also, that some individuals, might also have contaminated needles that can be weapons as well.
Housing First was a policy failure and the homeless to housing continuum, advocated by some, is just the same thing with a different name. Just like this article, where demonstrated competence in the housing industry should come first, treatment and demonstration of such should come first when it comes the severely mentally ill. Housing is only appropriate for those who obviously need it and are fully compliant with mental health treatment requirements built into their housing agreement, and a system that is proactive in removing tenants who fail to comply. If they fail to comply their residency should be terminated and they should be transported to the ER for evaluation of possible civil commitment.
Historic results from Home Forward are not only disappointing but also no remedial action seems to be at work demonstrating any results for a turnaround.
Risking the loss of housing credits...hmmm. follow the money.
Inevitable is the word that truly scares me. The Pearl is already suffering and they are being told they must swallow this pill.
Einstein said it best, expecting different results by doing the same thing is INSANITY.
If these Home Forward developers are in fact able to build, they should be required to more their families in.
We have made matters worse, not better at every step of the way. It is hard to build truly affordable housing for many of those we see unhoused in Portland. It is more expensive, all in, to build small highly durable units, especially close in where land values are higher. It is more costly per square foot to build high rise post tension concrete buildings than wood-frame low rise. It is more expensive to use union labor than non-union and minority owned contactors. We are building units for people who have little current resources to pay rent and agency to reside in a residential community and those with special needs requiring specialized resources. It is harder to source capital and community support, and the units are more costly and challenging to maintain because of the tenant mix they are provided for.
It is most logical to try and minimize these obstacles by doing what we can to ensure that those being place there are prepared and will have the best benefit from the expenditure, for tenant and the government agencies funding the effort. Does that not make good common sense?
We have way too many homeless people who are very hard to house, mostly due to drug addiction, psychosis or both. We have no room at the state hospital. It is full of people who committed crimes and are awaiting a diagnosis that they are suitable to stand trial. If they don't get to that threshold, back to the streets. We don't have enough treatment beds (both initial detox and residential treatment) for those addicted, and we are waiting for them to pick treatment on their own, which is almost never immediately available. We are assuming that those addicted to meth, Fentanyl and the new variations. have the free will to opt for detox. And when they do, the detox we provide for opiate addicts is itself addictive. If we had enough residential detox beds to get those addicted temporarily off the street for 7-14 days, we still don't have sober housing with support services to help them navigate all the things they will need to do to successfully recover-find purpose to replace the need for the drug that they turned to in the first place, to find employment, to reunite with friends and family outside the world they have been inhabiting, to deal with warrants, health issues, education deficiencies, expunge criminal records, deal with unwanted tattoos, recover job skills. In short, to find agency in the larger society they abandoned and that has abandoned them. It sounds daunting. It is, but not as hard as we make it out to be. In the short term, it is a logistical problem and a matter of political will, more than it is a lack of funding. We could make a huge immediate dent in the homelessness and affordable housing need and the lack of sober housing with a few short-term changes and a commitment to drug addiction recovery. Here's how.
We are using a scare resource, affordable housing managed by Home Forward to house addicts in the early stages of recovery (or not even trying at all). Especially the studio and SRO units like found at the Fairfield, Joyce and Fountain Place near me, should only be used for sober housing. No exceptions. Evidence of addiction should be result in an immediate eviction. Unit damage should require immediate eviction. That should be a clearly understood condition of occupancy going in. My suggestions:
A 14-30 day Detox and Recovery Period should be a minimum requirement to be accepted for housing at Home Forward facilities. The Peer Support agency should use this period to ensure that a checklist of items are in place and basics have been covered with the addict;
-Personal contact information
-Health and mental health assessment
-Contact information for friends and family.
-ID and sources of funds determined
-Medical insurance in place of applied for.
-Assignment of a peer support councilor/agency for support a support plan
-Outline of a Personal Recovery Plan.
-Rules and protocol for living in affordable housing
-Clean drug test
Provisions need to be made for a non-criminal mandatory treatment process for those addicted to drugs but without crimes of violence. The governor should sponsor and the legislature should pass a provision for a short term (30 maximum) mandatory drug detox program via a non-criminal civil commitment along with an expedited due diligence process. There will be no threat of criminal prosecution for failure and there will be no post-detox supervision, but those completing detox will be offered placement in short term (60-90 days) sober housing with support services. Their first detox commitment will be medically assisted with Suboxone or Methadone or the latest alternative to moderate withdrawal symptoms. During the detox period they will receive those things outlined above and receive a referral to sober housing at Home Forward or a longer-term residential care facility.
The mandatory detox can use the unfunded 250 dorm beds in the Inverness Jail.
Richard, you have provided substantial information to help me understand the issues.
I have questions:
1) Why do we have so many homeless people in Portland?
2) Why do we think the most humane way to address these unfortunates is to offer them housing when they have not demonstrated that they have ever contributed to our city?
3) How was Housing Forward selected? Do they have any "skin" in the process?
4) Lastly, because I do not want to exhaust your generosity, why was the Pearl chosen?
Efforts in this area require substantial changes in culture here in Portland along with mental health law and policy. We need to beef up police staffing and acute psychiatric care. Legislature could pass a bill providing for civil commitment for severe mental illness which encompasses severe drug or alcohol addiction that provides for judicial hearings in hospital courtrooms within 12 hours of ER admission, a substituted consent by judges for treatment, and a max commitment of six weeks in local community hospital psychatric units. This would allow full assessment of peoples problems along with a measure of their motivation to change course. If they can demonstate cooperation and adherence to treatments recommended and their need for housing afterwards, then housing plus strict case management to document continued compliance are warranted. Such a law would serve communities which are degraded by the severely mentally ill on the street. It should be the norm that police would transport people screaming at voices in their head in the middle of busy streets and take them to the ER either voluntarily or forcibly and that they would then be committed after the judge balances their liberty interests with public needs for safety and civility and beauty in the public square.
I think your comment said as much, but to make it perfectly clear, the state of Oregon, including Portland and Multnomah County, will never get ahead of the addiction crisis as long as harm reduction is the mandatory and exclusive response to substance abuse disorders by agents of state, regional and local governments.
Harm reduction is not just about preventing blood-borne infections with clean needles, testing drugs for deadly adulterants or resurrecting the overdosed with Narcan. Far too many people believe that is all there it to it and say: "Sure, why not?"
Harm reduction is a comprehensive philosophy based on the untenable premise that society's policy toward drug addiction should not be shaped by common notions of right and wrong, commonly known as morality. Instead, we are to acknowledge that addicts possess autonomy and respect their choices. In that paradigm, addiction is simply another way of being and a choice that is not to be judged.
The fact is that harm reduction rests on twin falsehoods: the one already mentioned, that a person who is a slave to their drug of choice is fully capable of exercising sound judgment in the management of their life. The other lie is that it is improper to suggest or require that an addict enter treatment until and unless they're good and ready to so. That isn't harm reduction; that's a death sentence.
Excellent reporting, Allan. Still at the top of your game. Your article exposed the folly of the "housing first" solution. Putting a roof over a drug addict or mental patient doesn't address their needs. It only leads to damaged units and outraged neighbors, as your article documents. I wonder why the city didn't condemn Lloyd Center and turn it into a multi-function homeless shelter: housing, feeding, medical care, therapy, and police security, all in one location. (They could even provide a shelter for their dogs.). Anyway, nice to see you are still on the beat. My best to Jolene.
I left Portland years ago for sunnier days but still have children and grandchildren there, hence my continuing interest. I am saddened at what Portland has become, and don't see any hope of improvement.
Nooo! I live in the shadow of Lloyd Center, as do thousands of Portlanders. Turning Lloyd Center into a multi-function homeless center would crater property values and the quality of life in a neighborhood that never fully recovered from the damage caused when Lloyd Center destroyed blocks and blocks of housing. Besides, the land is already controlled by private interests with other and better plans for the area, so government would have to use the power of eminent domain to acquire the dirt and pay fair market value for it.
In other news, the former director of Home Forward, Ivory Matthews, is the newly appointed Executive Director of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh (HACP), effective October 1, 2026. https://hacp.org/hacp-board-selects-ivory-mathews-as-next-executive-director/
How can that be? What does it say about Pittsburgh's recruiting and vetting process? Does it resemble the iffy due diligence that likely plays a role in the ongoing departure of high level appointees from Portland city government?
I asked Anthropics' Claude AI to assess the problems at the city's housing agency. I supplied it with this piece and The Oregonian's coverage of Home Forward going back to April of this year. This is the result:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What accountability would actually require
The reforms that follow from this record are not complicated:
Stop new development starts until portfolio occupancy reaches the promised 6% vacancy.
Tie any future development funding to measured operating performance.
Lower rents on units priced above market immediately.
Use the expedited eviction statute as written.
Stop placing high-acuity tenants in buildings designed for seniors and disabled residents unless on-site services are funded first.
Build dedicated supportive housing, with clinical staff, for people who need it, and stop treating ordinary affordable housing as a substitute.
Publish the outside assessment and the dashboard, or explain why they don't exist.
Replace the board members who oversaw the travel spending and the Hollywood East record.
None of these requires solving the national housing shortage. All of them are within reach of Home Forward, its board, and the City of Portland. The Examiner headline says managers admit the system is broken. The more useful point is that they run a large part of it.
This is what the Pittsburgh Housing Authority announced:
“After an extensive national search, the Board is thrilled to welcome Ivory Mathews as the next Executive Director of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh,” said Wasi Mohamed, Chair of the HACP Board of Commissioners. “Ivory is a nationally recognized affordable housing executive who brings nearly three decades of transformational leadership, a proven track record of success, and a deep commitment to expanding access to affordable housing. Following a thorough review and extended conversations, we are confident in her ability to lead HACP into an exciting new chapter. We look forward to working together to strengthen our agency, deliver for our residents, and create more opportunities for Pittsburgh families.”
Did anyone there even read the scandal she created in Portland?
I do believe the part about "extended conversations."
So agreed!
failing up !
Could the homeless problem be solved if so much money didn't have to be made in the process of solving it? And how dare these rich white guys call places where poor people live "shit shows"!
I’ve volunteered with SRO residents in Old Town, many of whom are recovering from addiction. Even they complain about a system that mixes people who are stable and simply trying to get by with people who are actively using, highly disruptive, or not ready for independent housing.
So I wouldn’t dismiss the description as just “rich white guys” insulting poor people. Some of the residents living in these buildings would probably use equally strong language themselves.
Reducing this to “people making money” and “rich white guys” doesn’t really help solve the problem. The harder question is how to provide safe housing for low-income tenants while also dealing honestly with addiction, disruptive behavior, and residents who need more support than ordinary independent housing provides.
One thing I’ve heard repeatedly from residents is that conditions can depend heavily on the quality of the on-site manager. Once a building loses control, it can be very difficult to restore order. That may also be an argument for smaller buildings, where managers can know residents better, problems are easier to identify early, and a relatively small number of difficult tenants are less likely to destabilize an entire property.
The real issue is whether the housing system is serving very different populations as though they all have the same needs.
This is not about affordable housing capacity, it’s about site mismanagement, excessive construction costs for the new site which has no parking, and not taking responsibility for the residents legal right of quiet enjoyment. Home Forward and its property manager Pinehurst management in the Pearl properties have failed the residents, good people that deserve better. You can’t attract new tenants when you don’t manage properties adequately, and allow some individuals to live in them that have serious behavioral health and substance abuse issues, resulting in security and other site problems. Thank goodness residents have created their own governance systems to help hold Home Forward and Pinehurst Management accountable. No more excuses, just action and accountability are needed.
“Why are we spending $700 million on a new building when we’ve got 900 units that are open?” Because Portland has a huge drug problem that a is not being addressed. Because there is easy money for housing and not for drug treatment. There are over 2000 vacant, low-cost housing units in Portland that have remained unfilled for quite some time.
I'm of the belief that if we have matching grant money for something, then it should be spent especially if it's on housing. The homelessness, drug, and mental health crisis in ALL of America's cities needs a federal solution that is unlikely to come from the current administration. Building urban infill affordable housing now improves our supply, increases population density, and puts on a better footing for when we inevitably solve the other issues. Saying "no but" to construction projects is how we got to where we are with almost every problem in the first place. If we had funneled another 100k people into the central city over the last 20 years, do you think we'd be talking about downtown revitalization? Absolutely not. We wouldn't need downtown office workers or tech startups to fill the Pearl mixed use office space. You wouldn't even notice they were gone.
The proposed building is being constructed at $700,000 per unit, that they admit is double market value, over 160 million total. This does not sound like “affordable” to me. It doesnt feel like the solution to low cost housing. One of the reasons we have so many “low cost” housing vacancies in Portland, is that people cant afford to live in them
Howard Husock makes a useful distinction in America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake between people who are economically poor and people whose behavior makes them difficult tenants or neighbors. The two are not the same. Many low-income and working-poor households are responsible tenants who simply cannot afford market rents.
That distinction seems directly relevant here. Some tenants—particularly people dealing with active addiction, severe instability, or the early stages of recovery—may need more structured housing, closer supervision, treatment, or supportive services before they are ready for fully independent tenancy. Placing everyone into the same housing model does a disservice both to those who need more support and to responsible low-income tenants who deserve safe, stable homes.
Treating every low-income tenant as though they have the same needs and can function successfully in the same setting is not compassionate policy. It is poor housing management.
Amen!
It is my understanding that some policymakers at the city and county consider it a violation of at-risk tenants' autonomy to require them to use supportive services and enter treatment. Hence the services are available, but using them is not mandatory in order to obtain and remain in subsidized housing. If that is indeed the case, it's just plain bonkers.
I’m exhausted watching these slow-motion, completely preventable disasters unfold while the city keeps moving forward as if there’s no reason to stop and reassess. At some point, accountability and basic competence have to matter.
Seriously. Enough.
It is reprehensible that the residents of the Pearl district have to put up with this. I applaud the people want their quality of life back. The political class from the city to the state level has failed them and Portland in general. I want Portland to be highly successful and a place where young people want to move to build a life. The evidence I see, and demographic changes seem to support it, are that Portland peaked prior to 2010.
A few questions arise. Why the high cost? In many of the articles in multiple publications, Home Forward says they have high ongoing cost due to mortgages. This despite that they don't pay property taxes since they are a NFP and, I believe, they get subsidies to build. The 'affordable housing' industry has put themselves financially into the spot where they have to charge rent that is comparable to market rate housing where owners are paying taxes and have to generate a profit. Homeforward, and other NFP housing organizations, must lower their capital and operating costs.
Why the Pearl district, the Lloyd district, downtown, etc? I believe that this is part of a master plan to increase Portland density toward the Metro Transportation Plan of smaller housing footprints so everyone rides bikes and walks with the goal of eliminating private automobile transportation in the name of climate change and maintaining Oregons onerous zoning rules that limit urban growth. The politicians don't have a problem with the high housing and social costs so long as it fits the ultimate goal to remake Portland into Amsterdam or some other equally dense city in Europe. It sounds conspiratorial until you start to read the transportation planning documents.
Finally, based on the evidence of the last 15 years, they don't have a problem with the externalities that degrade Portland quality of life. Portland, has built a homeless industrial complex that seems designed to do just enough to say they are doing something, spends hundreds of millions of dollars through a Not-for-profit network yet produces few tangible results towards making Portland more livable. The money and politics of the NFP housing and social assistance programs have become so alluring that the desires of the people in Portland to live in a beautiful city where they can be assured of safety for their families have become second priority.
There is nothing conspiratorial or surprising about the idea that Portland wants to continue designing a European style, new urbanist city. If you're reading that and thinking "wow, there's no way they would do that because cars are so great and how is the city going to work without designing itself at the behest of them," then you're oblivious and should probably go read A LOT more before going anywhere with a confident opinion.
In fact, I would "boldly" say that most transplants who come here do it because of how that plan has been implemented so far and the Utopian ideal of it in the future. So if you're not on board with it, then Portland probably isn't the place for you.
“Portland” actually doesn’t want this. There’s a relatively small minority of people for whom biking or our inadequate public transit happens to meet their transportation needs, but they seem to have convinced themselves that they speak for the entire city. Maybe instead of reading, as you say, you should get out and talk to other people sometimes.
The bigger problem is small, extremely vocal groups trying to make major decisions for everyone else while dismissing anyone who disagrees as somehow backwards or unwelcome. Your comment is a pretty good example of that attitude. We can all see how well that approach is working out for Portland.
As someone who is actually from Portland, I’d be perfectly happy with fewer transplants coming here expecting to reinvent the city into some sort of ideological experiment detached from the realities of how most people actually live and get around. If that’s what you’re looking for, perhaps Portland simply isn’t the place for you.
I am convinced that novel vacations to Europe by well healed people has deluded them. Amsterdam is no paradise. There is also a sort of heavy government regulation in most European cities. And the addiction movements toward legalization of narcotics in The Netherlands, has grown the largest criminal drug networks, which doesn't please some of its neighbors like French, who think quite differently.
I am so impressed with the quality of the responses to this article. No rash, off-the-hip quotes. Plenty of analysis based on real-world experience. Public agencies tend hire expensive consultants to tell them what they want to hear instead of listening to people who know the community and something about how society works.
Agree.
The notion that the proposed Home Forward structure would be one of the first, if not the first, new building constructed on the former USPS site is a pretty radical departure from the build-out concepts floated in the multiple architectural design meetings held in the Pearl before COVID. The City has already spent well north of $130M to acquire the USPS property (including building a new USPS facility for USPS near PDX) and then demolish the former USPS buildings. That dollar amount pales compared with the billions the City, County, and private developers have spent installing the infrastructure and high-rises to develop the Pearl District as a national leader in urban redevelopment. It is truly puzzling how the City continues to make decisions that severely undermine the gigantic investments it has made in the Pearl. Is it a failure to understand basic Economics 101 in terms of supply and demand when it comes to real estate decisions? Is it the City’s failure to accept the fact that people value safety and security over most everything else, preferring instead some sort of leftist view that a desire for safety and security is elitist and not sufficiently empathetic toward those who make terrible decisions over lifestyle practices? I read this article today and feel like this is yet another Groundhog Day episode in the life of the Pearl.
In Seattle the affordable-homes developers themselves have recently put a pause on further building when they THEMSELVES realized that they couldn't successfully operate such projects for very vulnerable people WITHOUT providing supportive on-site services. Wouldn't it be great if Home Forward did the same?
Summary: Seattle’s new Social Housing Developer paused processing applications for very low‑income tenants (<30% AMI) at its first building (the Elara apartments in Belltown) because it realized more on‑site supportive services were needed before those residents could move in.
Key details: The developer began moving in tenants but stopped processing the lowest‑income applicants to build out additional support. They said they needed time to arrange contracts for: Job‑program referrals, Behavioral‑health support, Community‑reconnection services. They emphasized that although not legally required, they wanted stronger referrals in place for their most vulnerable residents. Applicants earning 30–50% AMI are still being processed; lowest‑income processing is expected to resume by November.
Permit me to introduce something some would consider peripheral to this discussion. Housing those with severe mental illness have to be accompanied by treatment. Many will not comply consistently with treatment and they will decompensate. Really strong case management, initial requirements for mental stabilization and connection to treatment as judged by consistency over time, can make it workable. There has to be early backup with transport to hospitals and civil commitment when they decompensate. The cities idea of housing these individuals without any mandated and demonstrated treatment, and their advocacy for such impractical policies might be countered by the case of Damon Johnson in June 2025.
The police arrived at his apartment after it was reported that knives were seen hanging outside his windows. He was psychotic and needed to be restrained by police. He died of asphyxiation. These cases tell us something about the lack of police personnel adequate to the demands in Portland. In short, we need many more officers. And we need rapid transport and coordination by EMS in such cases. These types of cases should be treated as we would if someone was having a heart attack. Rapid restraint and transport to the ER are of utmost important. That requires often like six police officers, not three who were present for Johnson, and two EMS workers to handle and even then, people might be injured or worse. They are very dangerous situations because they don't know if the person is armed. Take it also, that some individuals, might also have contaminated needles that can be weapons as well.
Housing First was a policy failure and the homeless to housing continuum, advocated by some, is just the same thing with a different name. Just like this article, where demonstrated competence in the housing industry should come first, treatment and demonstration of such should come first when it comes the severely mentally ill. Housing is only appropriate for those who obviously need it and are fully compliant with mental health treatment requirements built into their housing agreement, and a system that is proactive in removing tenants who fail to comply. If they fail to comply their residency should be terminated and they should be transported to the ER for evaluation of possible civil commitment.
The economics are upside down.
Historic results from Home Forward are not only disappointing but also no remedial action seems to be at work demonstrating any results for a turnaround.
Risking the loss of housing credits...hmmm. follow the money.
Inevitable is the word that truly scares me. The Pearl is already suffering and they are being told they must swallow this pill.
Einstein said it best, expecting different results by doing the same thing is INSANITY.
If these Home Forward developers are in fact able to build, they should be required to more their families in.
We have made matters worse, not better at every step of the way. It is hard to build truly affordable housing for many of those we see unhoused in Portland. It is more expensive, all in, to build small highly durable units, especially close in where land values are higher. It is more costly per square foot to build high rise post tension concrete buildings than wood-frame low rise. It is more expensive to use union labor than non-union and minority owned contactors. We are building units for people who have little current resources to pay rent and agency to reside in a residential community and those with special needs requiring specialized resources. It is harder to source capital and community support, and the units are more costly and challenging to maintain because of the tenant mix they are provided for.
It is most logical to try and minimize these obstacles by doing what we can to ensure that those being place there are prepared and will have the best benefit from the expenditure, for tenant and the government agencies funding the effort. Does that not make good common sense?
We have way too many homeless people who are very hard to house, mostly due to drug addiction, psychosis or both. We have no room at the state hospital. It is full of people who committed crimes and are awaiting a diagnosis that they are suitable to stand trial. If they don't get to that threshold, back to the streets. We don't have enough treatment beds (both initial detox and residential treatment) for those addicted, and we are waiting for them to pick treatment on their own, which is almost never immediately available. We are assuming that those addicted to meth, Fentanyl and the new variations. have the free will to opt for detox. And when they do, the detox we provide for opiate addicts is itself addictive. If we had enough residential detox beds to get those addicted temporarily off the street for 7-14 days, we still don't have sober housing with support services to help them navigate all the things they will need to do to successfully recover-find purpose to replace the need for the drug that they turned to in the first place, to find employment, to reunite with friends and family outside the world they have been inhabiting, to deal with warrants, health issues, education deficiencies, expunge criminal records, deal with unwanted tattoos, recover job skills. In short, to find agency in the larger society they abandoned and that has abandoned them. It sounds daunting. It is, but not as hard as we make it out to be. In the short term, it is a logistical problem and a matter of political will, more than it is a lack of funding. We could make a huge immediate dent in the homelessness and affordable housing need and the lack of sober housing with a few short-term changes and a commitment to drug addiction recovery. Here's how.
We are using a scare resource, affordable housing managed by Home Forward to house addicts in the early stages of recovery (or not even trying at all). Especially the studio and SRO units like found at the Fairfield, Joyce and Fountain Place near me, should only be used for sober housing. No exceptions. Evidence of addiction should be result in an immediate eviction. Unit damage should require immediate eviction. That should be a clearly understood condition of occupancy going in. My suggestions:
A 14-30 day Detox and Recovery Period should be a minimum requirement to be accepted for housing at Home Forward facilities. The Peer Support agency should use this period to ensure that a checklist of items are in place and basics have been covered with the addict;
-Personal contact information
-Health and mental health assessment
-Contact information for friends and family.
-ID and sources of funds determined
-Medical insurance in place of applied for.
-Assignment of a peer support councilor/agency for support a support plan
-Outline of a Personal Recovery Plan.
-Rules and protocol for living in affordable housing
-Clean drug test
Provisions need to be made for a non-criminal mandatory treatment process for those addicted to drugs but without crimes of violence. The governor should sponsor and the legislature should pass a provision for a short term (30 maximum) mandatory drug detox program via a non-criminal civil commitment along with an expedited due diligence process. There will be no threat of criminal prosecution for failure and there will be no post-detox supervision, but those completing detox will be offered placement in short term (60-90 days) sober housing with support services. Their first detox commitment will be medically assisted with Suboxone or Methadone or the latest alternative to moderate withdrawal symptoms. During the detox period they will receive those things outlined above and receive a referral to sober housing at Home Forward or a longer-term residential care facility.
The mandatory detox can use the unfunded 250 dorm beds in the Inverness Jail.
Richard, you have provided substantial information to help me understand the issues.
I have questions:
1) Why do we have so many homeless people in Portland?
2) Why do we think the most humane way to address these unfortunates is to offer them housing when they have not demonstrated that they have ever contributed to our city?
3) How was Housing Forward selected? Do they have any "skin" in the process?
4) Lastly, because I do not want to exhaust your generosity, why was the Pearl chosen?
Many tnanks. I would like to meet you some time. (mgreen747@gmail.com)
Efforts in this area require substantial changes in culture here in Portland along with mental health law and policy. We need to beef up police staffing and acute psychiatric care. Legislature could pass a bill providing for civil commitment for severe mental illness which encompasses severe drug or alcohol addiction that provides for judicial hearings in hospital courtrooms within 12 hours of ER admission, a substituted consent by judges for treatment, and a max commitment of six weeks in local community hospital psychatric units. This would allow full assessment of peoples problems along with a measure of their motivation to change course. If they can demonstate cooperation and adherence to treatments recommended and their need for housing afterwards, then housing plus strict case management to document continued compliance are warranted. Such a law would serve communities which are degraded by the severely mentally ill on the street. It should be the norm that police would transport people screaming at voices in their head in the middle of busy streets and take them to the ER either voluntarily or forcibly and that they would then be committed after the judge balances their liberty interests with public needs for safety and civility and beauty in the public square.
I think your comment said as much, but to make it perfectly clear, the state of Oregon, including Portland and Multnomah County, will never get ahead of the addiction crisis as long as harm reduction is the mandatory and exclusive response to substance abuse disorders by agents of state, regional and local governments.
Harm reduction is not just about preventing blood-borne infections with clean needles, testing drugs for deadly adulterants or resurrecting the overdosed with Narcan. Far too many people believe that is all there it to it and say: "Sure, why not?"
Harm reduction is a comprehensive philosophy based on the untenable premise that society's policy toward drug addiction should not be shaped by common notions of right and wrong, commonly known as morality. Instead, we are to acknowledge that addicts possess autonomy and respect their choices. In that paradigm, addiction is simply another way of being and a choice that is not to be judged.
The fact is that harm reduction rests on twin falsehoods: the one already mentioned, that a person who is a slave to their drug of choice is fully capable of exercising sound judgment in the management of their life. The other lie is that it is improper to suggest or require that an addict enter treatment until and unless they're good and ready to so. That isn't harm reduction; that's a death sentence.
Excellent reporting, Allan. Still at the top of your game. Your article exposed the folly of the "housing first" solution. Putting a roof over a drug addict or mental patient doesn't address their needs. It only leads to damaged units and outraged neighbors, as your article documents. I wonder why the city didn't condemn Lloyd Center and turn it into a multi-function homeless shelter: housing, feeding, medical care, therapy, and police security, all in one location. (They could even provide a shelter for their dogs.). Anyway, nice to see you are still on the beat. My best to Jolene.
Good to hear from you, Greg. Things just keep getting more and more interesting, which may be a Chinese curse.
Take care
I left Portland years ago for sunnier days but still have children and grandchildren there, hence my continuing interest. I am saddened at what Portland has become, and don't see any hope of improvement.
Nooo! I live in the shadow of Lloyd Center, as do thousands of Portlanders. Turning Lloyd Center into a multi-function homeless center would crater property values and the quality of life in a neighborhood that never fully recovered from the damage caused when Lloyd Center destroyed blocks and blocks of housing. Besides, the land is already controlled by private interests with other and better plans for the area, so government would have to use the power of eminent domain to acquire the dirt and pay fair market value for it.
The original post had the incorrectly identified comments by T.J. Norton to another HomeForward employee, Michael Fu. The story has been updated.