OPINION | Pay attention to local government responses, homelessness in 2022
I hear a sense of despair from so many of you over the humanitarian crisis of homelessness. While many community members volunteer with community organizations and through mutual aid efforts, I also hear confusion about local governmental efforts and impatience that the problem is intractable.
So, I begin 2022 with three modest suggestions for where you can give attention to local government responses and homelessness. These are three footholds.
1. The Point-in-Time Count is back. After a one-year postponement in 2021, Multnomah County will gather data for a street count from Jan. 26 through Feb. 1, along with local governments across the country.
You can volunteer to help with this street count.
While this is consistently an undercount, it illuminates trends over time and comparisons to other regions. In particular, this will be the first street count since the pandemic, and hopefully give more understanding about increases in homelessness. While street homelessness is more visible since the pandemic, it’s difficult to ascertain what is an actual increase and what is increased visibility because people have been forced to move and hide less frequently. This data is compiled into a report that’s released in the spring.
2. The Multnomah County Chair race is key. There are a number of important elections in the May primaries and November general election, including the gubernatorial election.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Multnomah County chair in terms of their impact on homelessness, and perhaps too easy to take for granted that we have, in fact, had a county chair who made homelessness her central issue.
Deborah Kafoury, who has been chair since 2015 (and on the commission since 2009) can no longer run because of term limits. She helped create A Home for Everyone, a local plan to address homelessness that involves a number of workgroups open to the public. In 2017, she helped form the Joint Office of Homeless Services to combine city of Portland and Multnomah County work addressing homelessness. To give a sense of how fragmented this once was, the city used to provide services to single adults, but if those adults were part of a family that needed services or a domestic violence survivor, they had to go through the county (which also governed services for kids). The Joint Office brings all of this into one body.
The next county chair will be in a key leadership with the Joint Office of Homeless Services, including driving the budget that will commit homeless services tax measure funds. We’ll dig more into this race in coming months, but as you follow it, it’s important to understand the importance of a chair committed to these services. The Washington County chair will also be up for re-election.
3. Track the implementation of housing bond and homeless services money. It is easy to want to blow up old solutions because the pain is so widespread. I encourage concerned readers to learn more about these public commitments that our region began supporting in 2016 (and I’ll write an update on all the housing projects in the coming months). Both the Portland Housing Bond and Metro Bond have public oversight meetings. While those bonds were both big victories, they are finite – once the building is done, it’s done. But the homeless services measure supports those projects and others in an going way for ten years, and all three counties manage implementation.
Right now, Metro Government is accepting applications to join the Tri-County Planning Body to plan and oversee the implementation of these services.
Another way to get involved is through the HereTogether coalition, which individuals can join to advocate for implementation and oversight of the metro tax dollars in all three counties (Street Roots advocacy is a member of this coalition).
This is a modest list, but a foothold. We have much to learn, track and advocate. Onward we go into 2022!
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