JOHS reduced supply distribution to a single pickup per month, advocates say this decision has dire consequences
As another cold winter approaches, homeless Portlanders will soon face bitter conditions many are ill-equipped to confront, and outreach workers say the Joint Office of Homeless Services is failing to make adequate resources available during this critical time.
From tents to sleeping bags to clothes to toiletries, mutual aid and nonprofit workers deliver necessities to their homeless neighbors. However, the Joint Office, which provides a critical avenue for supplies and resources, is narrowing an essential lifeline.
The Joint Office’s provisions, distributed from a Northeast Portland warehouse, were already insufficient to meet the soaring demand, and authorities have steadily constrained supply releases and pickup appointments over the past two years. The Joint Office recently chose to decrease access to those supplies further, leaving service providers in the lurch.
Joint Office interim director Shannon Singleton announced in an Aug. 8 email the office would again curtail supplies and appointments from biweekly to a single pickup per month while imposing new limits on item totals. Nonprofits, homeless advocates and mutual aid organizers say the decision has immediate consequences — including life-threatening ones during extreme weather — for the community members who will soon face another winter on Portland’s streets.
Dwindling resources
The Joint Office of Homeless Services, a partnership between Multnomah County and the City of Portland, is intended, as the Joint Office website puts it, “to house, shelter, and provide health care, employment assistance and case management to people experiencing homelessness.” As part of those services, the Joint Office operates a hub for dispensing supplies and necessities to nonprofits and aid groups, who then distribute them to those living on the street.
These supply releases, distributed out of a Joint Office warehouse in Northeast Portland, are an indispensable lifeline for Portland’s homeless, particularly in times of extreme weather — one made all the more critical by the city’s own confiscation of such supplies during sweep operations.
Federal COVID relief funding initially allowed the Joint Office of Homeless Services to expand its supply availability beyond the amounts previously allotted for extreme weather events and to make resources available to a wider array of outreach providers. Its warehouse served as a hub to distribute essentials of all kinds for those living on the street: from outdoor equipment like tarps and tents to water, socks, blankets, hygiene supplies, and all manner of personal items, as well as pandemic supplies like gloves and hand sanitizer.
In the early days of the COVID crisis, these supplies came as a welcome augmentation to the tireless work numerous nonprofits and aid groups undertake to preserve homeless people’s health and well-being. That sort of assistance is particularly critical during times of severe weather: from lifesaving water given out during heat waves to the cold-weather gear and clothing that, on winter streets, can easily make the difference between life and death.
But as the pandemic dragged on, the Joint Office began to modify appointment procedures. The first new restriction imposed was that only representatives of registered nonprofits would be allowed to receive items. No longer could informal groups or individuals (whether involved in mutual aid or not) show up to accept supplies. Further, the once-weekly supply releases were halved to a bi-weekly schedule. Because of per-visit maximums, this meant that the total amount of items available to any nonprofit was also cut in half.
One resource of particular importance was also subject to new limits: water. The Joint Office initially told outreach groups that water would be unlimited. For obvious reasons, during times of extreme heat, water is perhaps the most essential item to stock. But perhaps less well-known is that water is equally important during extreme cold, as proper hydration helps prevent hypothermia. In any case, the initial promise of “unlimited” water was abandoned, and pickups were limited to 60 cases — a paltry amount relative to demand.
Multnomah County deputy communications director Denis Theriault said federal COVID funding allowed the Joint Office to distribute supplies regularly and to many different groups. Initially, supply disbursal was limited to contracted organizations and during extreme weather, Theriault said.
“But COVID funds were temporary, and they are winding down,” Theriault said. “That means the Joint Office has had to make changes in access to and pickups from the supply center. But even as federal COVID funds are winding down, the Joint Office isn’t reverting to its pre-pandemic role. It’s not returning to a time and place where the supply center isn’t available at all outside severe weather.
“Instead, Joint Office remains committed to preserving a baseline level of work to provide supplies all year and to work with groups who had not previously accessed supplies from the Joint Office before COVID.”
Given the Joint Office’s $255.5 million fiscal year 2022-2023 budget, many have wondered why more resources cannot be dedicated to securing crucial resources. The directors of homeless services organizations Blanchet House, Rose Haven and William Temple House published a Sept. 4 opinion article in The Oregonian in which they underscored the dire state of the crisis. Responding to intensifying suffering on the streets and woefully strained resources, they called for increased government support. Portland’s aid organizations, from formal institutions to less formal mutual aid groups, have all felt these pressures bearing down on multiple fronts.
Sandra Comstock is the executive director of Hygiene4All, a nonprofit “run by and for our houseless neighbors” that furnishes showers and bathrooms, toiletries, first aid and numerous other necessities to those in need.
As Comstock described, the new restrictions have had an immediate detrimental impact to this work.
“Having five tents a month is not enough — especially when sweeps are happening, and the weather’s getting cold and rainy,” Comstock said. “We’ve had some success in getting sleeping bags donated and things like that, but these are items that we can’t afford to purchase in bulk ourselves.”
Comstock’s organization has been deeply reliant on Joint Office supply drops; now that that source is starting to dry up, she cited grim possibilities heading into winter.
“We’re a tiny organization,” she said. “Those extra supplies are really important for being well-stocked and are essential for making sure people have the basic things they need in order to not end up in the emergency room, particularly as the winter comes on. Being able to stay dry and have dry things to sleep in is essential so that people are not ending up with hypothermia. We had someone near our spot die last year from hypothermia, from lack of a sleeping bag and a tent.”
The shortages can also catalyze public health issues: A lack of sheltering tents can hinder clean needle provision, compounding risks for addicts. Items like pull-ups are crucial for the many elderly people who sleep on the streets each night. And, Comstock noted, last month, the Joint Office provided no condoms at all, potentially allowing sexually transmitted diseases to spread.
Concerns surround other aspects of the changes to supply policies as well. During the recent inundation of the city with wildfire smoke, some criticized the Joint Office for waiting to distribute N95 masks until the day when the air quality was at its worst rather than offering them in advance.
Another change is a new restriction only allowing two cars to pull up to the warehouse per pickup, further constraining the amount of supplies that a group can carry away at any given appointment.
These small barriers matter because the Joint Office warehouse is such an essential hub. Nonprofits and aid groups do accept donations and acquire products themselves.
“For the small organizations that do a really good job of distributing things across the city, having a centralized place that’s buying stuff in bulk and can get (bulk discounts) has been really helpful,” Comstock said. “We can’t even begin to replace (the Joint Office depot supplies). It’s not just the number of things. It’s the cost to get those things.”
As one arm of the government sweeps encampments and confiscates possessions and survival gear, its other arm is now declining to release as many supplies in the first place. There is a frustrating circularity in play — the Joint Office supplies provide for a need, only for the sweeps to confiscate them, furthering the need.
“At the same time that the city is increasing the number of times they’re (conducting sweeps and) removing peoples’ possessions, and a time when we’re about to go into the rainy season, to have this happen, and to just be told by email …,” Comstock said. “It just didn’t give us any time to prepare.”
She added Hygiene4All, though it runs a regular winter fundraiser, will be forced to rely on it even more heavily this year as a result of the dwindling of Joint Office aid. So far, returns have been low.
“We’re not going to be able to help people out as much,” Comstock said. “Frankly, the fundraiser’s been quite tiny.”
At the time Comstock spoke with Street Roots, the Hygiene4All winter fundraiser had only accumulated around $500.
“It’s heartbreaking to have people come in and have to say, ‘We don’t have enough of that,’ or, ‘We’re all out,”’ Comstock said. “It’s really hard on our staff and volunteers. It’s something we talk about all the time: how bearing witness to trauma is also very disturbing and upsetting for our people. It’s taken a real emotional toll on all of us, I’d say.”
Mike Forney, who has lived on the streets for 10 years, found employment with Hygiene4All as a hygiene technician; he also works with Ground Score. The availability of tents, sleeping bags and other necessities, he says, has made all the difference in recent times.
“My fear is that it could go back to the way it was before people were getting those resources,” Forney said. “People were stealing from other people just so they would have the bare necessity of some sort of shelter to sleep under.”
It is difficult, Forney says, to see so many on the streets struggling to subsist with close to nothing in a city with such plenty as Portland.
“Having a (place) where people can come to a hub and get the basic needs for healthy living is really, in my opinion, mandatory, and it’s really not excusable to not have something like this in an area that has such an overabundance of material,” Forney said.
Jenna Goldin is a Portland accountant and activist who has been involved in aid volunteering in North Portland for the last two years. Her nonprofit helps up to a hundred people living on the streets each week, distributing cooked meals, gear and other necessities. Goldin’s financial experience has proven invaluable for tasks like money management and grant applications.
“That’s been really helpful for raising for when we have extreme weather,” Goldin said. “Different mutual aid groups are always trying to get money and resources because we are so undersupplied by the city.”
Goldin echoed Comstock in describing the pressures of ever-shrinking resources.
“This goes back to Joint Office: what they supply has never been enough, and then it has only gotten less,” Goldin said. “And the need has just become greater. So it’s about how we as individuals and community members can supplement.”
An ever-present need
Those individuals and community members have been eager to help and have provided an incomparably valuable system of aid for the many thousands of homeless Portlanders. From ad hoc groups to institutional organizations, committed volunteers and activists all cited frustration at the limitations that Joint Office has put in place — especially as such enormous resources have been committed to traumatic and counterproductive encampment sweeps.
During the unprecedented hardships of the pandemic, Portlanders stepped up for their unhoused neighbors in droves. With every Joint Office announcement that supplies would be further limited came a bitter sense of abandonment.
“It feels like a bit of a slap in the face, considering how much we did during the pandemic to keep people alive and relatively healthy,” Comstock said. “The city couldn’t have done what they did without us. But now there’s just no conversation or discussion, no discussion about priorities. It was a unilateral decision, and that doesn’t feel good when we’ve been such loyal and stalwart partners during what has been an incredibly difficult time.
“A lot of us put our lives on the line to be out there continuing to give people stuff when other places closed down. I sacrificed four months without seeing my kids in order to be on the streets doing that. A lot of us did similar things. It would be nice if we were at least consulted.”
The break in that relationship is not only one of material loss. It is also a loss of expertise and lived experience. Nonprofits, aid groups and volunteers have a deep knowledge of the needs of people on the streets and a keen sense of the most effective interventions, which the city’s efforts to address homelessness could benefit from. Hygiene4All, for example, has been surveying unsheltered staff and clients on their most pressing needs.
“It’d be nice if the city did the same for the people supplying this stuff, because we know what’s needed,” Comstock said. “We’re the ones that are seeing what’s being asked for on a daily basis.”
As winter approaches, the strains on homeless Portlanders and those who have committed so much to aiding them will only grow more pronounced. Mike Forney has seen that type of destitution and suffering firsthand and experienced much of it himself during his time living unhoused.
“Not having that support can lead to peoples’ lives being shortened,” he said — as his own nearly was during a health scare on the streets.
“I think it’s important that (the public) be reminded how important it is to come out and offer people (food), so that they not only can help the broken but learn how, from their stories, that they didn’t plan on ending up like that,” Forney said. “It’s not because someone just decided to go and live under a bridge somewhere. It was a series of events that sometimes takes professional and long-term care to help someone out of.”
For him, working at Hygiene4All and providing supplies for those on the streets is “such a way of giving back to a community that helped me and fed me and comforted me through my travels when I was feeling really withdrawn.”
Those in the Portland nonprofit and aid communities are hoping that they will be able to count on more reliable support from their city and county governments in order to offer that same compassion to the thousands who go unsheltered in the city each night, both to relieve suffering and to save lives.
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