Montavilla neighborhood day center targets homeless crisis with holistic approach
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – A new day center opened in Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood on March 21 with hopes of finding solutions to the homeless crisis in the area.
The community center, a partnership with PDX Saints Love and Shelter Portland, aims to provide a path out of homelessness with resources for addiction, housing, and job training in one place.
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Founder and Executive Director Kristle Delihanty said the center located at 247 SE 82nd Avenue will serve as a path to new beginnings in an area where it is desperately needed.
“The culture and idea of this day shelter is going to be collaboration,” Delihanty said. “People know, if I go every Tuesday, if I go every Thursday, and all of these things are going to be in one place, they’re more likely to follow through with their services.”
Keith Wilson, the chair and founder of Shelter Portland, said the goal is linking people with the “future person that they are.”
But it benefits service providers as well. For instance, Delihanty said she has heard of barriers in communications from other service providers and hopes the day center can help break them down.
“If I have a client or a participant that I’m working with and I talk to Central City or I talk to MHAAO [Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon] and say, ‘This is how far we’ve got with them, what can you offer?’ I feel like we’re not spinning our wheels or our money and that we’re more effective in that way,” she said.
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Delihanty and her team are creating new programs as well, like paying people to help with outreach work. Workers will also conduct outreach in a 15 block radius of the center.
They also plan to create a homeless court where, if someone shows they are regularly checking in with services and case workers, fines and misdemeanors could be dropped by the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.
“What we’re doing here with this day shelter is really creating that linkage to support from those on the street or vulnerable to really help them come inside to reduce the barriers to their housing opportunities or essentially to help them become housing ready,” Wilson said.
Delihanty reached an agreement with neighbors that would require anyone receiving services to sign an agreement assuring they will not camp within three blocks of the day center.
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