Recent investments in congregate shelters raise questions about priorities, efficacy
According to a recently announced spending plan to address homelessness jointly funded by the city of Portland and Multnomah County, local sheltering options will substantially increase.
The plan, which will cost $38 million in total, allocates $18 million to add 400 new beds to the city and county’s available roster of shelter space and “bring people out of the elements and offer connections to health and housing services.” The city and county will divide the rest of the funds between efforts like expanding mental and behavioral health services and improving hygiene services at unsanctioned encampments, among other areas of need.
Shelter space can take on a lot of different forms. Recent Street Roots coverage explored shelters like the proposed Safe Rest Village sites that allow people to temporarily reside in private tiny homes, which offer a sense of privacy that many people who have experienced homelessness say can be invaluable. And when travel took a nosedive during the pandemic, converting vacant hotels into quarantine-friendly shelters became an often-discussed model that offers similar privacy benefits.
These alternative shelters are popularized and held up as beacons of progress. However, they have not replaced the congregate shelter model. In order to move people off the streets as quickly as possible, which policymakers say is their top priority, congregate shelters will have to be utilized as well.
Homeless people and advocates say all of these short-term options can be beneficial, but only if politicians develop the shelters in tandem with policies that make lasting change. The main goal must be to support homeless people living in them, not to appease housed people and business owners with hastily formed shelter options.
Who are short-term shelters meant for?
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler addressed the danger that many of Portland’s unsheltered residents face daily while living in outdoor encampments during a Nov. 1 press conference announcing the new spending package — but followed up to say those affected most by these sites are people who don’t live in them.
“Too many of Portland’s houseless (people) live in squalid, filthy, dangerous locations outdoors. And all too often, they’re victims of crime themselves,” Wheeler said. “The impact of these unsanctioned encampments is felt most by housed Portlanders and business owners who are closest to these campsites.”
The conspicuous nature of unsheltered homelessness in Portland — made more visible by the fact many people living in unsanctioned encampments can’t easily access restrooms or trash services — has particularly appeared to attract the ire of local business owners.
Organizations representing business owners in Portland, like the Portland Business Alliance and dark money advocacy group People for Portland, issue some of the most prominent demands for improved short-term shelter across the city. However, advocates fear this is done more with the hope of moving homeless people out of sight than actually helping them.
In a video testimonial created by People for Portland, an organization that has made “end unsheltered homelessness,” one of its primary goals, Portland Clinic CEO Dick Clark explained why he wants urgent action from local policymakers to address homelessness.
“We are experiencing daily issues, ranging from needles being found at our doorstep to tents being found on our property, to people suffering healthcare issues, to endless garbage,” Clark said. “It takes us away from serving our patients and starts to jeopardize our business.”
Bobby Todd Mitchell has been homeless in Portland since he moved here in 2018 and is involved in homeless advocacy work. He has lived in encampments on the streets and in congregate shelters, and he’s now living in one of Do Good Multnomah’s converted hotel shelters. Mitchell said he understands business owners may be uncomfortable with encampments near their workplaces, but the needs of the people living on the streets should be prioritized.
“Shelter isn’t going to fix homelessness on its own. It’s going to require addressing the reasons people become homeless.”
“Businesses can come and go. They can lose money; they can make money,” Mitchell said. “I’m worried about the people (living in the encampments), though. I want them to be able to be inside and have a safe place to sleep.”
But if more shelter capacity is created simply to eradicate visible homelessness from the streets, advocates say homeless people may suffer even more. The 2018 Martin v. Boise ruling made it so that cities in the Western United States cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances without first offering people a place to stay. But “mandatory shelter for all” approaches have been criticized as a way for local governments and business owners to have an excuse to criminalize homeless people.
“By making offers of shelter a precondition to the enforcement of anti-homeless laws, they fuel the narrative that homelessness is choiceful, and thereby that criminalization is deserved,” members of homeless advocacy group Western Regional Advocacy Project wrote in a blog post on the subject. “This tactic becomes even more insidious in light of the fact that an ‘offer’ of shelter can mean practically anything, and that even the mere pretense of an offer seems enough to circumvent the requirements set forth (in the Martin v. Boise case).”
This debate is playing out right now in Sacramento, California, where officials are currently weighing a right to housing ordinance that would require homeless people to accept shelter if it is available. This would be the first policy of its kind nationally, and some Sacramento homeless advocates, like members of the local branch of the Poor People’s Campaign, are concerned about the real-world ramifications this would have for local homeless people.
At this time, however, there does not appear to be a similar policy in development in Portland.
Have congregate shelters in Portland improved?
As winter approaches and temperatures plummet, sleeping outside becomes particularly uncomfortable — and potentially dangerous. Despite concerns additional shelter beds may lead to harmful mandatory shelter requirements, there is a demand for indoor shelter. If they’re developed with the needs of homeless people in mind, all types of shelters can offer important benefits, advocates say.
According to Denis Theriault, communications coordinator for the Joint Office of Homeless Services, congregate shelters in the Portland area aren’t what they used to be. While there is still a lingering negative connotation about indoor congregate homeless shelters compared to other models, many of these spaces offer more privacy and freedom than in the past.
“People have a sense of how shelter used to be five or six years ago, where you had to line up to get a bed,” Theriault said.
Many congregate shelters allow people to reserve beds for an extended period of time instead of making people line up every day, not knowing if they’ll have a place to sleep that night or not. Theriault said many shelters now allow guests to bring pets, and people can often stay with their partners.
However, advocates say if a plan to combat homelessness focuses too heavily on short-term options, it will fail to address the larger problems at hand, which will ultimately leave everybody disappointed.
Within the new funding plan — which Theriault said is only one pot of money that the city and county are drawing from to pay for other short-term shelter and affordable housing plans — there is also money for improving programs that officials say will help with long-term goals, like supportive programs for people with mental and behavioral health issues.
Theriault said looking at solutions from a broad perspective is necessary for creating impactful change.
“There has been a huge expansion in shelter (in Portland), but it hasn’t translated to what people see outside,” Theriault said. “Shelter isn’t going to fix homelessness on its own. It’s going to require addressing the reasons people become homeless.”
Mitchell thinks he will get a place of his own when he has to leave the converted hotel shelter. He said it is possible because he was able to save money while staying in short-term housing.
Before he moved into the hotel, Mitchell stayed at Do Good Multnomah’s Wy’east congregate shelter. He said that he’s grateful to now have his own space where he doesn’t have to share a bathroom with dozens of other people, but to him, living in a congregate shelter was better than living on the streets.
“There’s no better feeling than knowing you had that warm, safe place to go back to when you were done at the end of the day,” Mitchell said.
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