This is a follow-up to an Oct. 30 article about homelessness in Corvallis.
Corvallis officials take heat from local advocates, but city councilors promise they want to do more to address homelessness. Eventually.
First, some of them want to see what the rest of Benton County is going to do over the next couple of years.
“Discussing it in the present is not going to be relevant to how the future looks,” Councilor Carolyn Mayers said at the Nov. 3 City Council meeting. “Essentially, we’d be discussing it now, and then three or four months from now, we’d be discussing it again in an entirely different context.”
Benton County officials hope to start referring people to housing and services sometime next year through its Coordinated Homeless Response Office.
The office received $900,000 as part of Housing 360, a pilot project launched by Gov. Tina Kotek in April to provide housing and services for people facing mental health challenges.
Rebecca Taylor, the manager of the Benton County program, told city councilors at a Nov. 6 work session that Housing 360 will eventually help 15 households secure housing.
“While that might sound like a small number, when we were learning about how complex and high needs some households are, we hope to be able to serve 15 households with this funding opportunity,” Taylor told councilors. “That’s the goal, but as we learned with the flexible housing subsidy poll, it can take a very long time with such complex needs.”
‘It’s cold and wet outside’
Grace Robinson reminded councilors Nov. 3 that the needs are not all that complex. Winter is coming, and people need shelter.
“As a person who has experienced more than two decades of homelessness, I would like to say that it’s cold and wet outside,” Robinson said. “People are suffering, and when they suffer, they live in survival mode. If they have goals, it’s likely those goals center on being warm and dry.”
An alliance of local nonprofits and advocates founded the Corvallis Homeless Shelter Coalition in 2007, which has since evolved into Corvallis Housing First.
The coalition’s leaders presented city councilors with a proposed resolution Nov. 3 for the city and county to provide safety, stability and service access for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.
Councilors spent a half hour discussing whether or not they should even discuss the resolution. They eventually voted 7-2, amidst numerous expressions of reluctance, to discuss the resolution during a work session sometime in the next three months.
Work sessions are simply conversations among councilors. They don’t vote or take any specific action. A date for a work session on the proposed resolution was not set.
‘Without forcing the issue, nothing gets discussed’
The Rev. Jennifer Butler of the First Congregational United Church of Christ Corvallis often expresses frustration with city officials and councilors.
Butler serves on the board of Unity Shelter, Corvallis’ only major homeless shelter that currently offers 100 beds for both men and women. She also created 31 microshelters (roughly 18-by-15-foot dwellings) through her church.
Councilors discussing whether or not to hold discussions is not encouraging, Butler said.
“These aren’t good-faith concerns,” she said. “They’re stalling tactics, and they’ve been successful for years.”
There’s a reason advocates are pushing for a resolution rather than waiting to see what unfolds at the county level, she said.
“This conversation never happens otherwise,” Butler said. “City staff (particularly a couple of directors), led by the city manager, don’t want to have it. Councilors who oppose supporting unsheltered residents find ways to keep it off the agenda.”
Arguments against the resolution are weak, she added.
“When they say we don’t need a resolution to discuss this, they’re being disingenuous,” Butler said. “Years of evidence prove that without forcing the issue, nothing gets discussed, and nothing changes.”
‘Significant needs to address here and now’
Aleita Hass-Holcombe, the board president and volunteer coordinator of the Corvallis Daytime Drop-In Center, represented Housing First at the Nov. 3 meeting and told councilors that county efforts will be great … in the long term.
“However, we have significant needs to address here and now,” she added. “The mainstay of moving people into housing has been Section 8 vouchers and rapid rehousing dollars. Both are on hold. Section 8 vouchers have not been issued since January. It is unlikely there will be any issued for the remainder of 2025.”
She understands that helping people takes time, Hass-Holcombe said, but that only makes immediate action all the more necessary.
“Moving people along the housing spectrum from unsheltered to permanent supported housing is experiencing a bottleneck, which will not be resolved in the near future,” she said. “The flow of people out of homelessness has stopped. The number of people without adequate housing is growing and will only continue to grow.”
January’s Point-in-Time Count mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development tallied more than 600 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Corvallis.
“However, a group of Corvallis service providers working on a mapping project suggests there are more like 1,000,” Hass-Holcombe told councilors. “To be concise, it is inevitable that Corvallis will see a rise in homelessness. There is a lack of shelter bed availability. Even at max capacity, we will have far too few shelter spaces for the number of unsheltered people in our region.”
‘Corvallis is not a social service agency’
City Councilor Alison Bowden supports the proposed resolution.
“It is imperative that this be discussed sooner rather than later — ideally before the new year,” Bowden told their fellow councilors Nov. 3.
The resolution isn’t perfect and is not the final answer, Bowden added.
“That’s one of the things that’s been missing from past conversations with council — having a plan in front of us and being able to look at it more closely and being able to actually discuss the specific merits,” Bowden said. “When things are discussed in a bubble, it’s not as effective.”
Councilor Jim Moorefield said the burden of addressing homelessness rests primarily on the county.
“The city of Corvallis is not a social service agency,” Moorefield said. “The county is. The county has community health programs. The county has identified housing and homelessness as essential for the county and its public health program.”
City officials clearly have a role to play, he added.
“We have public plans,” he said. “We have social service dollars. We have money sometimes for capital projects. And we have a leadership responsibility, so we are partners in the effort.”
Just a lesser partner, Moorefield said.
“It’s important that as we discuss these things that we acknowledge who has a lead role here,” he said.
After saying city hall has social service dollars, he stressed that those dollars are limited.
“This is not money that the city has in its back pocket,” Moorefield said.
Now may not be the right time to spend money, he said, but he’ll be ready when the time is ripe.
In the meantime, he added, the resolution is unnecessary.
“I think that situation needs to be addressed,” he said. “I don’t think it needs the resolution to do it.”
Moorefield retired in 2018 after 20 years as the executive director of Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit organization that developed affordable housing
“Councilor Moorefield’s background is in housing development, not in working with people living unsheltered,” Butler said. “That matters. Those of us who work at the extreme edge see what doesn’t show up in staff reports. We know what’s needed on the ground right now.”
‘Where can you just be?’
Council President Paul Shaffer pointed out that regional offices to address homelessness in Oregon will not be fully established for months. Just the deadline for selecting regional coordinators isn’t until May 1 next year.
“It’s a conversation we need to have sooner rather than later,” Shaffer said. “If we wait until the regional offices are in place, the winter will have passed. People will have lived in the mud for better or worse for another winter.”
Councilor Charlyn Ellis said all involved are doing their jobs, but people are still suffering.
“Once you’ve been trespassed from the parks, where can you go?” Ellis said. “You can go to the library when it’s open. You can sleep in front of city hall from 10 to 7, but there’s a huge part of time in the day when … Where can you go? Where can you rest? Where can you just be? It’s really important when we’re having these conversations to hear the voices of the people who are experiencing this.”
Ellis said she understands why more people experiencing homelessness don’t testify before the county.
“We’re totally intimidating,” she said. “When your life is in chaos, it’s pretty impossible for you to show up and speak to us.”
She suggested councilors leave time in a work session for three or four people experiencing unsheltered homelessness to come and share those perspectives.
“When you can see the person and hear their story, you have a different perspective on things,” Ellis said.
‘Look at me. I look like a bum.’
It’s not just the City Council that intimidates people living without shelter, Donna Niemczak, who sleeps in a city park, told Street Roots. She’s heard from other people living in the park that police will be sweeping homeless camps every other week starting Thursday, Nov. 27.
Although upset, Niemczak is also defiant.
“I’m not moving this time,” she said. “I’m done. I don’t care about going to jail because I’m trying to survive out here. I’m staying where I have been for three years.”
Lt. Benjamin Harvey, the Corvallis Police Department’s public information officer, said he doesn’t know what Niemczak is talking about. First of all, he said, he doesn’t like the word “sweeping.”
“We don’t refer to anything as sweeping because we’re not cleaning anything,” Harvey said.
Whatever such actions are called, he added, the police aren’t doing them.
“That’s news to me,” he said. “We do work based on community requests to designate camping sites and deal with them. We don’t proactively go out and look for things to engage with. There’s not a set schedule of every two weeks that we take action.”
Homeless people — and even those suspected of being homeless — are still treated roughly in Corvallis, said Dancin’ Mike (who prefers not to give his last name). He’s a regular fixture in Corvallis and is often seen dancing on the sidewalks. Although not homeless himself, he’s often mistaken for being homeless.
“Look at me,” he said. “I look like a bum. If you look a certain way, they’re going to treat you like trash, especially if you’re poor or homeless. Nobody likes you.”
Corvallis is a city of 61,000 people 80 miles south of Portland and is the home of Oregon State University. It likes to think of itself as an affluent community, Dancin’ Mike said, but it’s not.
“Most of the people who are living here are low-income,” he said. “Most people are working at 7-Eleven or Fred Meyer. We’re not doctors and lawyers, and the cost of living isn’t minimum wage. It’s expensive. Know what I mean?”
Chelsea Corrigan, a peer counselor at the Corvallis Drop-In Center, knows exactly what Dancin’ Mike means.
“Now that I’m no longer homeless, I’ve graduated to the working poor,” Corrigan said. “Capitalism and all that stuff is still in play, but I have more abundance than I did, and I’m able to share it.”
‘More people will die living outside’
City Manager Paul Shepard told councilors nothing they do immediately will have an immediate effect.
“I want to temper expectations just a little bit about what might happen within the next couple of months,” he said.
So, Shephard wants to temper expectations for action this winter?
“Let me translate (Shephard’s statement),” Butler said. “More people will die living outside for another year. While I appreciate that Councilor Moorefield supports permanent housing, waiting for that timeline means people freeze to death in the meantime.”
With federal housing funding disappearing under this administration, conditions will deteriorate rapidly, she added.
“The policy development timeline doesn’t align with the human survival timeline,” she said.
‘358 units of affordable housing have been completed’
Brigetta Olson, Corvallis’ housing and neighborhood services manager, told Street Roots it’s true that the Trump administration is denying money to communities that don’t enforce camping bans. Federal officials are also taking money away from permanent supportive housing in favor of transitional shelter, she said.
However, she denied that city officials have done little in the face of growing homelessness.
“In the past couple of years, 358 units of affordable housing have been completed in Corvallis and are now occupied,” Olson said. “An additional 425 affordable housing units are currently under construction or will begin construction soon.”
She added city officials have contributed more than $2 million toward Third Street Commons with 47 units of permanent housing. Construction is scheduled to begin early next year.
The city has also purchased an apartment building and a single-family house, and is in the renovation process. Councilors dedicated 50% of a social service levy in February for two years of efforts to expand shelter programs.
Olson also pointed to the city’s collaboration with Benton County and its Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool to secure housing and support services for people experiencing homelessness. In partnership with nine service providers, she said the funds have rehoused more than 54 households — including 69 adults and 53 children.
‘A very necessary part of getting to that point’
Shawn Strobl, who serves on the board of the Corvallis Daytime Drop-In Center, lived without shelter for more than a decade after he fractured his neck while working in North Dakota in 2011.
He eventually found housing through local service organizations and now advocates for other people to have the same opportunity.
“Our proposal is a very necessary part of getting to that point,” Strobl told councilors Nov. 3. “Built into the resolution is a time cap of two years for this program because we believe this needs to be a temporary program and should be paired with a targeted approach to establishing trust and transitioning people into temporary and ultimately permanent housing.”
Grace Robinson, now in her second year as a student at Linn-Benton Community College, said she also wants people to have the chance she had to find stable housing or at least come in from the cold.
“I’m hoping resources will be made available to help people stay warm and dry,” Robinson said. “Only then will they have the available energy to have dreams and set goals for their own futures.”
‘Obstruction dressed up as prudence’
Butler said councilors need to stop deferring to staff who have consistently blocked progress and start listening to providers actually doing this work.
“The bottom line: Corvallis has the capacity to act,” she said. “We have providers ready to do the work. What’s missing is political will from a city manager and certain councilors who would rather this problem disappear than address it honestly.
“The Nov. 3 meeting was just another chapter in a long story of obstruction dressed up as prudence.”
In contrast, Strobl told Street Roots he was encouraged by the progress made by the council agreeing to discuss the resolution. He just hopes that it won’t suffer death by discussion.
“My concern is that it will wind up in endless work sessions,” he said.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2025 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 40.
This article appears in November 26, 2025.