Multnomah County's last chance

Election of chair can make all the difference

By Ken Thrasher

I have watched Multnomah County’s many failed attempts to reduce unsheltered homelessness, while spending over $2 billion over the past five years. What do we have to show for it?

* A deflection system that has spent over $15 million with little or no outcomes.

* A planned sobering center first proposed two years ago and still is 1-2 years away from completion.

* A tripling of unsheltered homeless to nearly 9,000 in the county, which may be a low estimate.

* 600 empty county jail beds while many individuals being arrested are released back onto the streets.

Two years ago, the county prioritized increasing shelter beds in its Homelessness Response Action Plan, promising to deliver 1,000 new beds by the end of 2025. Now it’s looking to close 600-plus beds for “budget reasons,” leaving hundreds of people without treatment, without housing and with no where to go.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Portland promised and delivered 1,500 overnight shelter beds during his first year in office. However, this strategy ended up leaving many individuals transient on our streets during the day, many the beds were not occupied, there were no wraparound services or housing transitions, and there were few effective connections to day centers. Now, with the city’s budget shortfall, the mayor has announced a planned closure of the Northrup Shelter in Northwest Portland, and the City Council may well defund the 1,500 beds.

So we could end up losing 2,100 shelter beds overall in the new budget cycle. This would raise unsheltered homeless numbers to 11,100, significantly straining other county and city resources, and surely result in more unsafe streets and street deaths. Based on the University of Chicago’s conservative estimate, it costs $36,000 to keep a person unsheltered. That would pencil out at $400 million annually in Multnomah County, just to maintain its then current unsheltered population.

And this doesn’t account for the potential collapse of the Portland Housing Authority’s (aka Home Forward) affordable housing system, with 7,000 rooms and a 11-14% vacancy rate. Far from being an effective resource in a functioning homelessness-to-housing continuum, Home Forward shows signs of gross financial and operational mismanagement, including inexplicably high vacancy rates during a housing crisis, egregious violations of health and safety codes, and cash flow that puts its debt near default status. With the CEO leaving, it’s time for a true performance review and plan, including putting an accountable board in place.

Multnomah County is on the edge of the cliff, with impending significant funding shortfalls, in addition to state and city budget shortfalls. Is this the moment at which Multnomah County falls off the cliff, or does it meet the moment and embrace systemic change?

Let’s hope the county does not hurtle over the edge. Many individuals and groups have advocated for a strategy and implementation plan to fix this mess, such as having a central intake plan as part of systemic change. With the election of a new county chair in November, we have an opportunity to change course. We need candidates who will stop being non-committal and lay their cards on the table.

No help from Gov. Tina Kotek.

We need a results-driven plan with accountability, measurable outcomes, and public reporting. The University of Chicago says implementing such a plan could save one-half of the cost of keeping people unsheltered, or in our case, $200 million per year.

Here is a proposed approach:

1. Start by understanding both the county’s sources and uses of funds related to homeless and housing services. This will require a third-party performance review and forensic evaluation, which can and should be demanded by the Governor.

2. Replace the Homelessness Response Action Plan with a real plan created by an independent board of experts. The plan must include:

i) Centralized intake with a true by-name list that accounts for all individuals living unsheltered.

ii) Individual recovery plans that track success.

iii) Services that meet people’s needs—including addiction and mental health treatment—so people are able to move from homelessness to stability.

iv) Enforcement of no-camping bans and drug-use laws.

v) A process to get out-of-county people back to their homes and support systems, building on the mayor’s successful program and outreach similar to San Francisco’s

An affordable housing plan must:

i) Ensure that people with substance abuse issues, behavioral health or physical health needs are provided appropriate wraparound services to meet their needs, including in particular optimizing new HUD requirements and funding streams.

ii) Establish an independent governance and accountability board to oversee operations, finances, collections, security, maintenance and property management services, including setting standards of performance and accountability through regular reporting.

3. Ensure independent oversight and accountability of the system.

i) Reduce the number of providers to create scalability based on capabilities and outcomes delivered.

ii) Use a third-party accountability expert to publish performance data, along with standardized costs of daily services, outcomes achieved versus planned, transitions to stable housing versus recidivism to the streets and other factors to determine which providers are retained or replaced.

We don’t have time to waste. Spending money like we have been doing on the same things again is a recipe for disaster. The federal government also just announced a new fraud czar. After what we recently saw in Minnesota, they are coming after blue states to find alleged fraud, and then will cut off all social benefits to the state, which would be a disaster for our most needy children and families. And Multnomah County just hired a person to head its homeless services who spent the last 10 years in leadership of the Homeless Services Authority in Los Angeles, a city under a court-ordered performance review that showed profound operational mismanagement, with the inability to track billions of dollars.

I spoke to the governor on April 24—and despite eight months of our trying to get her office to show leadership on having a performance review done on Multnomah County—she didn’t feel it could be done at this time and merely discussed contractor reform. Not the leadership I was hoping for.

At the combined city/county budget discussions on April 28, the focus was on how to reduce homelessness to 21,000 by June 30, 2027, versus the projected 22,500. The current level of 19,000 is growing by 360 per month. There was no discussion on how to stop homelessness with a new plan or enforcing no-camping and drug laws. The lack of leadership was stunning.

The election for Multnomah County chair may be our last chance to stop the insanity.