Portland, Multnomah County leaders seek $9M to boost shelter beds, support services
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — New details have emerged about how Portland and Multnomah County leaders plan to reach their ambitious goals to address the homeless crisis. It includes more money and trying to keep people on the right path once they find a home.
When it comes to how leaders plan to hit the targets they set, it will take adding a lot more shelter beds and a lot of supportive services for people.
Currently, there are 2692 shelter beds with a goal to increase to more than 3247 by the end of the year. Right now, the proposed 2025 budget would keep that number the same. However, the draft plan from the two governments and service providers calls for 505 more, a total of 3752 — at the cost of $9 million.
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A working group of service providers and leaders in Portland, Gresham and Multnomah County made recommendations for how this should happen.
In year one, the focus is on building out the infrastructure which includes staffing service providers to be able to help the 2,700 people elected leaders want to get off the street. In order to support the continuum to housing, the group calls for funding an additional 401 permanent supportive housing beds. In total, this would give the county 3054 units of permanent supportive housing.
In year two, leaders are also calling for further investment into rapid rehousing, which would get people into housing and provide behavioral health, substance use disorder, job training and other services they need to stay housed.
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“Providing long term relationship based case management to help people keep their housing — this is surprisingly an uncommon approach,” said Path Home Executive Director Brandi Tuck.
“Sheltering is never been the only way we will meet this goal,” said Deputy Director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services Ana Plumb. “The community sheltering strategy is one really crucial pillar to a larger plan and it will be a partner with all those other systems and all those other systems to serve that goal.”
“While housing is generally the key component, having affordable housing available, having services attached to housing, attached to shelter, attached to outreach, it’s really needed throughout the whole spectrum of people experiencing homelessness,” said NARA Northwest Supportive Housing Services Manager Amy Thompson.
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The plan will require properly staffing for the shelters and the services needed to ensure people can stay out of homelessness.
The City of Portland Senior Policy Advisor Skyler Brocker-Knapp said that the city is looking at the outcome of its efforts so far and seeing that its future goals are reachable.
“I think we need to act quickly and if we fail, we need to pivot and learn from that action and we need to be transparent about exactly what happened and why and analyze that going forward,” Brocker-Knapp said.
Part of the shelter site expansion are expansion of the large sanctioned campsites, also called temporary alternative shelter sites. A second temporary alternative shelter site is expected to open in Multnomah County as soon as the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality gives the green light. It will house 70 RVs and 90 sleeping pods.
The Safe Rest Village program will also expand two locations, adding 130 units between the two.
This plan is a draft and is open for people to comment on until March 29. After that, the city and county will adopt to solidify this plan in April.
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