The Oregon Legislature wrapped up its even-year short session after approving millions of dollars to build new housing and provide more shelter beds and other services for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness
Robert Day has given up on ever living with a roof over his head.
It doesn't matter how many housing units are built, how much rental assistance is offered, how many shelter beds are provided or how many programs are funded.
Day, 30, told Street Roots he expects to spend whatever remains of his life wandering the streets of Corvallis looking for someplace, any place, he can stay for a few hours without being hassled.
No one forces him to live this way, Day said. He chooses to live without shelter — if only for lack of options. He has too many "issues," he added, to stay housed very long.
"There's nothing good about being homeless," he said. "It sucks. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has any way of avoiding it. The hardest part is finding a place to sleep and just dealing with people."
Even if help is on the way, it could take a long time.
Jimmy Jones, the executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency in Salem, told Street Roots recent action by the Oregon Legislature will likely do little to change life for people on street level.
The Oregon Legislature wrapped up its even-year short session March 7 after approving millions of dollars to build new housing and provide more shelter beds and other services for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.
Lawmakers' efforts are helpful and welcome, Jones told Street Roots — but only to a point. Most people living on the streets of Oregon's cities will see little change as a result of the legislative session, he said.
“It’s going to take a generation”
At the end of the 31-day session, legislators approved $376 million to increase housing construction and expand emergency shelters while easing restrictions on local urban growth boundaries.
"Most of the things in the Legislature were more of a long-term approach — especially on the production side," Jones said. "You're looking at years for that to make any sort of significant difference."
Included in the funding package was $65 million for providing shelter beds over the next 15 months. "That's going to be a great blessing, but at the same time Oregon Housing & Community Services is really going to have to figure out the best way to run that most effectively and most efficiently," Jones said.
People hoping Oregon can build its way out of its housing crisis are in for a long wait, he added. "It's going to take a generation to build our way into adequate stock," he said.
“It’s not going to be enough”
Overall, however, Jones said he was pleasantly surprised by the session. "This was one of the most shockingly bipartisan sessions that I've experienced here in Oregon," he said. "After the last five years, it was a little bit refreshing compared with what it was before."
State Sen. Kayse Jama, D-Portland, told Street Roots he was also pleased with the session. "I am very proud of the steps the Legislature took this session to address housing insecurity and homelessness in Oregon," said Jama, who chairs the Senate Interim Committee on Housing and Development.
"The Emergency Housing Stability and Production Package passed by lawmakers will help to stabilize and house Oregonians facing housing insecurity and vastly increase access to affordable housing," he said.
True, said Jones, but he and other front-line advocates told lawmakers at least $65 million in rental assistance was needed to get people through the summer of 2025. "We ended up with $41 million," he said. "That's about two-thirds of the need. It's just not going to be enough, even though the state's trying to stretch that as far as they can."
Jones' agency had a couple dozen people on their waiting list for rental assistance in Marion and Polk counties in December. "Today, we have more than 300," he said. "It's going to take a long time to get those folks served. Some folks are going to lose their homes just waiting on the assistance."
“One group of advocates against another”
One of the more controversial bills during the session was Senate Bill 1537, which amended Oregon's 51-year-old urban growth boundary regulations.
Urban growth boundaries were created in 1973 by Senate Bill 100, a legendary piece of legislation championed by equally legendary Gov. Tom McCall.
Every Oregon city has an urban growth boundary — a line that limits where a city can expand over the next 20 years. The 1973 bill was designed to limit urban sprawl.
The bill approved by legislators this year allows the Portland metro area to expand beyond those boundaries by 300 acres to provide land for affordable housing. Smaller cities will be able to expand by 50 to 100 acres.
"Senate Bill 1537 pitted one group of advocates against another," Jones said, adding that he respects people's desire to preserve Oregon's environment.
"People matter too," he said. "The fact of the matter is that our rental costs have continued to escalate at a phenomenal rate."
Within the expanded areas, 30% of all housing units are reserved for affordable housing.
"It is not housing that is just orphaned out on the margins," Cameron Herrington, the director of policy and advocacy at the Oregon Housing Alliance in Portland, said. "There are accompanying investments in infrastructure and amenities. We feel confident that the overall balance that was struck in that legislation was the right one."
“Affordable housing is at risk”
Herrington said he remains concerned that lawmakers are looking toward building new affordable housing while neglecting the housing that already exists.
"This is really a looming crisis all across the state," Herrington said. "There are affordable homes that we have invested in as part of our public infrastructure that are in danger of being lost, either because the buildings are old and deteriorating or because the subsidies that initially funded the buildings are expiring."
Those homes are going to revert to market rate, and the low-income tenants who live there will be priced out, he said.
"That is a major threat of another wave of homelessness as our additional affordable housing is at risk, and the Legislature did not invest in addressing that crisis this year," he added. "That is a major area that needs attention, and the entire state needs to respond to it in the next biennium."
Oregon Housing and Community Services published a report last fall that concludes $200 million is needed every biennium to maintain Oregon's existing affordable housing.
"Every biennium that goes by that we're not investing that $200 million, we're digging a hole," Herrington said. "We're going to be losing housing. Even as we're investing hundreds of millions to build new affordable housing, we're letting additional affordable housing disappear if we do not address that need for $200 million in each budget cycle."
Oregon is $150 million short this fiscal year, he added.
"That is already a hole," he said. "If we can't respond to the scale of the need again in the next biennium, we're just getting further behind in terms of maintaining what we've already invested in."
“The band-aids that are absolutely necessary”
Herrington nonetheless applauded lawmakers for investing money in shelters and rental assistance. "Those two big investments that were made respond to the immediate crisis," he said. "Those are the Band-Aids that are absolutely necessary right now to stop the bleeding."
Money for shelters will be particularly important in the fall, he added. "That investment will make a huge difference in keeping people alive and healthy by keeping those shelters open," he said.
"Then the housing production investments are really looking at the root causes, hopefully moving us to a point where we don't need as many emergency shelters, where we don't have as many tenants facing eviction because they can't afford skyrocketing rent," Herrington said.
He agreed with Jones that building enough housing supply to meet demands is a time-consuming and frustrating process in a state with the third-highest homelessness rate in the country (behind New York and Vermont, according to a 2023 headcount by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development).
"That's just how the housing market works," he said. "You can't just turn up the speed on the conveyor belt in the factory."
“We saw a lot of policy bills”
State Rep. Farrah Chaichi, D-Beaverton, told Street Roots the session was amazingly productive, given that even-year short sessions are usually reserved for budget fixes and small technical changes.
"Our state has had a lot of building needs over the past several years," Chaichi said. "We need the short session to do more. We saw a lot of big policy bills come out this session, and 31 days is hardly anything. We did some good stuff in a short amount of time."
Chaichi's House District 35 will get a portion of $85.4 million approved for new behavioral health treatment centers, specifically the upcoming Center for Addictions Triage and Treatment. The center will provide comprehensive drug treatment with additional supportive services for adults beginning next year.
Beaverton received $7.9 million for a new pump station. "It sounds boring, but because of the funding of that, we can have 2,000-plus units in five different neighborhoods because we're building the water infrastructure," Chaichi said.
Chaichi also pointed to workplace protections for warehouse workers and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits for hot food as accomplishments coming out of the session. She similarly expressed pride in the Family Financial Protection Act (Senate Bill 1595), which limits debt collection.
"It cut down the amount of people (who) can collect on your debt so you can still afford to live your life," Chaichi said. "If people get into trouble and they get into debt, and creditors take so much money that they can't afford their housing, there's going to be even bigger problems down the road. It's just going to snowball."
Going into the regular session next year, Chaichi said she would like to see more restrictions on rent increases. Legislators passed Senate Bill 611 last year to limit rent increases to 10% annually, but the cap only applies to buildings that are at least 15 years old and doesn’t apply to subsidized housing. Landlords for newer buildings can increase rent as much as they want.
"For all the work we're doing to get more housing units available, if they're rentals they're going to be less than 15 years old," she said.
"I really want to see something that is going to help people stay housed in those newer units and generally make living affordable — whether that's wages or alleviating the pressure of inflation on basic necessities," she added.
“They’re essential workers”
Reyna Lopez, the executive director of the Woodburn-based farmworkers union Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste or Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United (PCUN) told Street Roots the short sprint of a session still felt like a marathon.
"This was an exhausting session for a lot of folks, but in particular a lot of our friends who were advocating for our communities really came out of it pretty disappointed," said Lopez.
"The Oregon Worker Relief Fund was one big missed opportunity," she said. "There definitely could have been some investments in that."
The fund was created during the pandemic to make sure that farmworkers and other essential workers (documented or not) could access emergency relief.
"The Worker Relief Fund has been continuing because there have been all kinds of needs throughout the state to get emergency funds into people's hands quickly, especially people who have been excluded from resources," Lopez said.
"Our message has been that immigrants are part of the backbone of Oregon," she said. "They're essential workers. We were told that during the pandemic, but unfortunately, we didn't see those investments in the Legislature."
Union leaders specifically sought $9 million for the Climate Change Fund for farmworkers. Lawmakers allocated nothing.
"We know there are going to be more extreme climate conditions, more extreme weather conditions," Lopez said. "We saw heat that killed workers. We have seen wildfire smoke at toxic levels, especially in southern Oregon. We wanted to make sure there was a fund available for workers who had to miss work due to extreme weather and toxic conditions."
Lawmakers also failed to move forward on universal representation to ensure that nobody at risk of deportation or civic exclusion in communities is without legal representation.
Another disappointment, Lopez said, was that so many lawmakers (except for Chaichi and a few others) voted for House Bill 4002 to recriminalize drug possession just three years after voters approved Ballot Measure 110 — the most progressive drug law in the country.
"PCUN supported Measure 110," said Lopez. "Throughout the session, we said we stand with our endorsement of the measure, but we didn't see the engagement we wanted to see with BIPOC communities. Criminalization doesn't make Oregon safer. Investing in our communities and investing in programs that support our communities, that's what makes our communities better and safer."
Still, Lopez said, there will be other legislative sessions.
"Any time we bring up an issue in the Legislature, it's always building up to making our case stronger next year," she said. "For us, it always depends on what kind of organizing we're doing in the community. We're now in election mode. We're now in community-building mode."
Robert Day doesn't expect much from the next legislative session, or any legislative session. His long-term agenda is to find a reasonably dry, hassle-free place to sleep within the next 12 hours.
"It wasn't that bad out here, but the number of people has doubled or quadrupled," he said. "It keeps getting worse. It doesn't help that everyone treats us all the same. Like we're nothing."
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. 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.
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