Last week, a young, frightened woman phoned my Multnomah
County office looking for help. She was a mother, with three children, who
needed housing. The family had been doubling up with a relative, but now that
relative was moving out of town. She needed help immediately. She’d called the
shelters in Portland, but they were full and most had a six-week waiting list.
She was growing desperate.
Her call hit particularly close to home. I’m a mother and I
have three children. I know too well how hard it is to get three kids fed,
clothed and ready for school, to arrange childcare, pay bills, keep up with
vaccinations, struggle to help them with math homework, meet with their
teachers, counsel them about bullies, to care for them physically, emotionally
and mentally in today’s increasingly
complicated world.
But, I cannot imagine what it’s like to do all that while
homeless.
Too many of our mothers and fathers do know, though. Between
low vacancy rates, rising rents and the lingering effects of the
recession, on any given night in Multnomah County, more than 2,869 people are
homeless, according to the 2013 point-in-time Count.
Reading the painful headlines this summer, it’s tempting to
want to throw up our hands.
“Violent Attacks amid seasonal rise in homeless population
raise tension in city,’’ The Oregonian, July 22, 2013
“Homeless Camp in SE Portland Frustrates Neighbors,
Homeless” The Oregonian, July 26, 2013
“Three Blocks of SW Fourth Are A Homeless Camp” Portland
Mercury, June 7, 2013
While it’s reasonable for the press to inform the community
about these incidents, the articles only tackle a fraction of the story. A more
complete picture would show that the homeless population in Multnomah County
include:
- Parents who
are raising children. The number of families who are homeless increased 18
percent since the last point-in-time Count. - Newly
homeless. More than half the people sleeping on our streets have been homeless
for less than a year. In other words, just a year ago, they had homes and many
of them had jobs. In fact, many of them still do have jobs. - Military
veterans. More than one in 10 of our homeless adults served this country. - Young
people. On any given night, there are at
least 100 homeless youths on waiting lists for a shelter bed.
What the headlines do capture is that our system is at
capacity. Multnomah County, the City of Portland, Home Forward and community
partners have helped thousands into homes in the last decade with smart
strategic spending on programs like rapid re-housing, flexible rent assistance,
and permanent supportive housing for those with addictions and disabilities.
Yet the federal government, paralyzed by sequestration, is
actually serving fewer households and with lower benefits. The result is that
despite our best efforts so far, too many people in our community cannot afford
a place to live. Last November, for
instance, when Home Forward opened up the Section 8 voucher waiting list for
the first time in years, they received 21,000 applications in one week. Yet,
under the most optimistic scenarios, only 3,000 of those households will be helped in the next five
years.
We have reached a critical crossroads: we can either stay
the course and hope that forces outside Oregon’s borders like Congress and the
national economy will somehow resolve this issue. Or, we can boldly step
together in a new direction.
We can start by knocking down the artificial boundaries of a
30-year-old agreement that made the city of Portland responsible for
chronically homeless individuals and Multnomah County responsible for homeless
families. Instead of this archaic system with gaps and unintentional overlaps,
we can create a new unified hub that will pool our scarce resources, encircle
our community partners and inspire our partners in business and philanthropy.
Toward that end, I stand with City Commissioner Dan Saltzman
for his recent pledge of additional funds for housing. I commit to working with
my colleagues at Multnomah County to respond in kind. And I call for a new
unified effort that more closely aligns our entire efforts, streamlines our
administration and re-focuses on attention toward building on what we know
works. We are one community and we must
work as one.
This week, we know that there are far too many children who
dressed for their first day of school at a homeless shelter. Let’s help their
mothers and fathers bring them soon to a safe and secure home.
This article appears in 2013-09-13.