Street roots
3
March 16, 2012
Safety net swings in balance of city budget talks
City’s housing and
homeless services play
the competitive waiting
game for coveted one-time
appropriations
The Safety Net
Of its total budget request of $91,471,065,
the Portland Housing Bureau is asking for
$4.8 million in one-time funding, which is at
the discretion of the mayor’s office.
Here’s what the net is trying to hold on to:
Homelessness Prevention
and Rapid-Rehousing
$1.9 million
This is for short-term rent assistance to
prevent eviction and keep epople housed
during a difficult transition. Usually a few
months of assistance, it money that is flexible
and rapidly disbursed to keep people from
losing their housing and becoming homeless.
BY JOANNE ZUHL
STAFF WRITER
ooking at the housing and homeless
landscape these days, Portland City
Commissioner Nick Fish paints a
pretty grim picture.
"It’s a rising tide of need with declining
resources. That’s it in a nutshell,” says Fish,
who oversees the Portland Housing Bureau.
“We’ve got more adults and families facing
homelessness, more families being priced
out of the housing market. We’ve got
historic vacancy rates. Unemployment is
still very high. We’re now catching the
foreclosure fever. We’re still in a deep
recession, and we have fewer resources to
meet the need. It’s a perfect storm.”
This from a self-proclaimed glass-half-full
kind of guy.
That internal optimism will be needed as
the city slogs forward in its 2012-13 budget
“cutting” process, with all bureaus asked by
Mayor Sam Adams to submit reduction
proposals of 4, 6 and 8 percent. In addition
to the bureau packages, the mayor has to
decide how the shrunken pool of one-time
money - funding allocated in each cycle by
the mayor - is divvied up. Last year, that
was a pool of about $23 million. This year
it’s projected at about $11 million.
Of that, Fish’s Portland Housing Bureau
is asking for nearly $4.8 million to pay for
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services
$1.734 million
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r-round, winter and severe
ler. I his money is paired with funding
and resources from Multnomah County,
to
the streets. It also pairs with programs to
services and help people connect with
housing opportunities,.
P H O T O B Y K E N H A W K IN S
Commissioner Nick Fish (with Mayor Sam Adam s in the background) at the groundbreaking
fo r the B u d Clark Commons. The mayor is expected to come out with his proposed budget,
with one-time fu n d in g allocations, in early May. Under consideration is nearly $4.8 million
fo r the city’s safety net o f services that include the B u d Clark Commons shelter and housing
programs.
falling from about $40 million in 2010 to
around $17 million starting next year. An 8
. percent reduction would cost another
$500,000.
One of the few constants in the budget
has been local funding. The city, under
Mayor Adams, has consistently backed the
safety net for people engaged in getting off
the streets, staying in housing, and securing
long-term stable housing.
he Portland Housing Bureau’s $91
Adams was unavailable to comment in
million total budget request is a
combination of seven sources, including the time for publication, but spokesperson Amy
city’s General Fund. All of those sources are Ruiz said the mayor has long backed these
funding streams. “In this especially difficult
under pressure. The city is losing $3 million
budget year, he pledges to do his best to
from federal fund sources because of cuts in
continue protecting housing and social
Washington, D.C. It’s revenue from tax
services,” Ruiz said.
increment financing has hit the cliff —
T
1 H
Housing Access Services
$456,300
This includes programs that provide
information and referral, adovocacy and case
management for low-income renters faced
with homelessness, eviction, housing
discrminiation and unhealthy housing
conditions. This often assists hard-to-house
individuals, including people with rental
screening barriers such as poor credit,
evictions and criminal history.
th e c ity ’s social safety n e t: sh o rt-te rm r e n t
a ssista n c e , s h e lte r an d e m e rg e n c y se rv ic e s,
housing access and homeownership
programs, and the Bud Clark Commons. It’s
not new money, but it is subject to the
mayor and council’s approval, each with
their own bureau budgets in play. The police
bureau alone is asking for $5.4 million in
one-time funding. The mayor is expected to
come out with his budget in early May.
“It’s going to be much more competitive,”
Fish says, “The safety net is competing
against fire stations, against the mayor’s
education agenda, against the Portland Plan.
We’re going to have to make some tough
choices.”
W v? HitsV' I 1 - US s x ®
One of the main lines in the safety net is
short-term rent assistance, a consolidation
of funds leveraged by local money. It is used
to pay for a couple of months of rent for
qualified families working to stay in housing.
JOIN, a nonprofit housing assistance
organization, receives about $100,000 in
short-term rent assistance from city coffers.
It one of the most significant sources of rent
assistance JOIN receives from the General
Fund. Unlike other funding sources, this
money is flexibile enough to fill critical
gaps.
“We’re very reliant on those funds,
especially for some of our highest barrier s
folks who have the biggest struggles to
See S A F E T Y NET, page 4
Bud Clark Commons
This is a reduction from last year’s bi
(down from $390,000). The building,
houses Transition Projects day and sto
services and Home Forward’s housing
program, opened this past June as the city’s
flagship shelter and service facility. In its first
six months, the facility reported serving 4,300
people — an average of 600 daily visitors
seeking basic needs and services. The city
reports that nearly 300 people have found
permanent homes through the Day Center
.
..
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Homeowne
programs. The
for
minority communities <
of the bureaus
iphasis on minority homeownership. The
provide down payment assistance to
households.
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