Multnomah County will close the 90-bed shelter in the former downtown Greyhound station March 30, eliminating a low-barrier shelter option for homeless Portlanders and risking union jobs.
Do Good Multnomah, a unionized shelter organization in the Portland metro, managed the Greyhound site. Non-unionized nonprofit Helping Hands operates the Bybee Lakes Hope Center, the county’s planned alternative.
The Hope Center is located 10 miles from the former Greyhound bus station. The alternative shelter mandates its participants maintain sobriety (something the Greyhound shelter does not require). The Multnomah County Homeless Services Department said the Hope Center has immediate availability for 100 additional beds.
The department gave Do Good a contract in December 2020 to open the Greyhound site as a temporary shelter to meet an urgent need at the time, according to Julia Comnes, Multnomah County communications coordinator.
Do Good Workers United — Do Good’s union — is affiliated with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, Local 1790. Porter Clements, AFSCME Local 1790 president, said staff likes the downtown site for its size and convenience but not so much for the facility’s poor working and living conditions.
The Homeless Services Department was also concerned about conditions, and that concern ultimately necessitated the move, Comnes said. However, the union wanted the county to fix the centrally located site, rather than abandon it, according to Clements. The union also raised concerns about the new site not being managed by a union workforce.
Controversy
Clements said unlike Do Good’s downtown shelter, Bybee is not low-barrier, meaning its participants must be sober (and must also not be registered sex offenders of any class), according to its website. Clements said removing low-barrier shelters would go against Mayor Keith Wilson’s goal to eradicate unsheltered homelessness.
The Bybee location is a not union operated, which runs counter to a labor harmony agreement the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners signed October 2021, according to the union. A labor harmony agreement is a contract between an employer and its employees “designed to minimize the risk of labor disputes,” as defined on Oregon AFSCME’s website.
Moving the shelter from downtown to a non-union-operated site means many shelter workers will lose their jobs, which the agreement was designed to protect against, according to Clements.
The county says the current site is unusable because the building’s physical infrastructure is not conducive to long-term living and working. However, there’s more to the story, according to union representatives.
“The building that they were operating within lacked heating, air conditioning,” Clements said. “It basically wasn’t equipped to be delivering the kinds of services it was intended to on a long-term basis.”
The county repeatedly denied Do Good’s requests to address the issues, according to Clements.
Unlike Do Good’s downtown site, the Hope Center is out of the way. It is located in the never-used Wapato Correctional Facility, and only one bus line travels there.
Clements was disappointed that the local government didn’t address the issues at the current site so it could continue operating long-term, he said.
The county side
The downtown shelter was always intended as a temporary solution, according to Comnes.
“Outside a pressing emergency like the pandemic, the design was not well suited for human habitation,” Comnes said.
Choosing a new site came down to cost-effectiveness and urgency.
“The County believes adding beds at Bybee Lakes Hope Center would be a more cost-effective option than identifying another, new location for the units that will be closing at the former Greyhound location,” Comnes wrote in an email.
The county is not concerned that the new space is not low-barrier, according to Comnes.
“The vast majority of shelter beds funded by the Homeless Services Department are low-barrier beds, like the ones at the Downtown Shelter,” she wrote. “In fact, Bybee Lakes is one of only a handful of shelters requiring sobriety that are funded by the Homeless Services Department.”
Labor harmony
Whether a provider is unionized is not a factor in deciding which sites to use for services, according to Comnes.
“Several providers receiving significant funding from the Homeless Services Department have unionized workforces, including New Avenues for Youth, Sunstone Way, Cascadia Health, Central City Concern and Transition Projects,” Comnes said.
The county has taken steps to address the underpayment of homeless service workers, like investing $20 million in organizational health and professional development grants and funding cost-of-living raises for provider employees, she added.
Still, closing the shelter may cost people their jobs.
The union has an agreement with Do Good spelling out procedures in the case of a shelter closure. If the county closes the downtown shelter, current staff will undergo a process “that includes internal transfers and interviewing for new opportunities within the organization,” Chris Gardner, Do Good director of communications and marketing, said.
While a complaint about the working conditions at the site last year was not a factor in relocating the shelter, it simply re-emphasizes a truth about the site: it is not habitable for long-term use, Gardner said.
Both sides agree that, in its current state, it is not habitable. While the union would have preferred a larger, closer, more inclusive shelter that also retained employment for shelter workers, those who used to rely on the downtown site will now be left to find adequate shelter elsewhere.
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This article appears in March 19, 2025.