Street roots
3
June 21, 2013
Saltzman promises a “fresh set of eyes” at housing bureau
Shelters, domestic violence, foster care among priorities commissioner emphasizes in city’s housing agenda
BY A M A N D A WALDROUPE
model is working?
S T A F F W R IT E R
ortland Mayor Charlie Hales shocked
City Hall watchers when he
announced his bureau assignments in
early June. With few exceptions, each
commissioner walked away with a new
portfolio of responsiblities. It shuffled the
balance of power in City Hall, and gives each
commissioner a lot to learn.
City Commissioner Dan Saltzman takes
over the Portland Housing Bureau, which
oversees the city’s efforts to end
homelessness and provide affordable
housing throughout the city. He assumes
the rule on the heels of Commissioner Nick
Fish, who won a Council seat in 2008 with
the explicit intention of being the city’s
housing commissioner.
Saltzman inherits Fish’s legacy, including
reorganizing the city’s housing machinery
and creating the Portland Housing Bureau;
breaking ground on the Bud Clark
Commons; expanding the city’s emergency
winter shelter program, and trying, but
failing, to negotiate flexible camping
guidelines for homeless individuals who
could not seek shelter.
Giving the Housing Bureau to Saltzman is
not a decision out of left field: the council’s
longest-serving member was a chief
architect behind the creation of the Portland
Children’s Levy, which pumps millions of
dollars each year into domestic violence,
children and education programs. He is also
one of the region’s most vocal advocates for
children’s issues and domestic violence
prevention, issues he hopes to work on as
the city’s new housing commissioner.
D.S.: If you look at the numbers between
P
A m anda W aldroupe: What was your
reaction when Mayor Hales made his bureau
assignments and nothing was as people
expected?
D an Saltzm an: I’m of the school of
thought that it’s good to shake things up. I
was surprised to the extent he mixed things
up. There’s a learning curve, but with that
comes a new zest, a fresh set of eyes looking
at issues, asking questions, hopefully asking
good questions. Everybody always thinks
they’re asking a dumb question. There are
no dumb questions.
A.W.: In terms o f you taking a position and
advocating for particular issues or policies,
what kind o f role will you take?
D.S.: There’s issues that I bring to this
the point-in-time reports in the last two
years, you could probably say it’s not
working as well. But I think a lot has been
achieved since we passed the first plan. The
whole evolution of the concept of services
connected to housing ... has come of age in
the last 10 years (and) how we marshal
resources that we already have at our
disposal.
A.W.: The 10-Year Reset Plan recognizes the
Dan Saltzman
that are priorities of mine. I’m very
interested in more emergency shelters for
women. I have a pretty long-standing
interest in family shelter space and domestic
violence. Do we need more shelter beds, or
things like hotel vouchers. With a hotel
voucher, you can bring an adult male child
with you. In a shelter, most have rules about
not having teen male children. Another one
is what are we doing with kids aging out of
foster care.
A.W.: What is it about the demographic of
foster kids aging out o f the system that
concerns you so much?
D.S.: It’s a set of individuals that demand
our attention. Many of them have suffered
horrendously in foster care, have no sense
of what’s up or down, right or wrong
because they’ve lacked positive parental role
models. I feel a special obligation to do
something about that.
A.W.: How do you think your approach will
be different from the previous housing
commissioner, Nick Fish's?
D.S.: I’m not sure I could tell you what
my legacy will be. I can tell you these are
the areas I’m always going to be passionate
about.
A.W.: A couple weeks ago, the Housing
Bureau released a point-in-time report showing
a 10 percent increase in street homelessness.
How well do you think the city's 10-Year Plan
to E n d Homelessness and its Housing First
existence o f various subpopulations in the
Portland homeless population — people with
disabilities, children, people experiencing
domestic violence. Knowing that there are these
different demographics o f people, what do you
think the Portland Housing Bureau can be
doing differently?
available. Fair housing is a very important
area - that there’s no discrimination based
on gender, race, and economic
circumstance. There’s a lot of action going
on there. I would expect the multi-family
rental industry, which to all indications they
have been, a full partner in making sure that
this is not tolerated. To the extent that
there can be fewer barriers to getting into
rental housing in terms of security deposits,
credit history and things like that — on
balance, that would be probably be a good
thing. But I’m sure there’s a whole other
side to that.
A.W.: Are you saying that you would like to
see landlords not consider credit history?
D.S.: Not being in their shoes, I can
understand how they would react to a
statement like that. But there might be
some happy median there.
D.S.: It does require, as the Reset Plan
calls for, close collaboration between the
city, the county and Home Forward. I’ll be
quite blunt that the chronically single adult
issue is an important issue, but it’s not as
huge a priority for me as some of the other
areas I just cited.
A.W.: Why?
A.W.: In the backdrop o f what we’ve been
talking about are the budgets for these various
programs. The Housing Bureau is very reliant
upon one-time funding and it's struggled to
fin d a stable revenue stream, one that can be
more or less reliable in years going forward.
Are you interested in seeking a stable funding
source, and where do you think it can be
found?
D.S.: It’s important to provide people
with opportunities to get off the street —
like rent assistance and services connected
to housing, but there’s a core population
that none of that is ever going to touch.
A.W.:, Do you think homelessness can be
ended in Multnomah County?
D.S.: No. I don’t. I think there’s a lot we
can accomplish. Services connected to
housing, rent assistance, the Bud Clark
Commons and services like that all have
roles. Do I see that ultimately ending
homelessness? No. I’d loved to be proven
wrong.
D.S.: I think we made a big step in the
budget we’re about to adopt. We took a lot
of one-time funded housing services and
converted them to ongoing. That was a huge
chunk, almost $9 million worth of one-time
programs in our ongoing programs. But
many of our one-time fu n d e d p r o g r a m s g e t
fu n d e d w ith s e r ia l, o n e -tim e a p p ro p ria tio n s.
T h e safety net and the issues around
homelessness have always enjoyed that
status.
A.W.: Mayor Hales has made a point o f
saying he wants to address panhandling in
some way. Do you share his concerns about the
issue?
A.W.: There's a bill in the Legislature that
would curb discrimination against people with
Section 8 vouchers. What else do you think
landlords and people in the real estate and the
rental community can do to alleviate poverty
and provide assistance to low income and
potentially formerly homeless renters?
D.S.: First of all, I hope that bill passes. It
will really open up a lot of opportunities for
Section 8 renters that are currently just not
D.S.: I don’t want to wade into the
sidewalk management issues because I find
it to be quite confusing, frankly. We get a lot
of complaints from people about the
environment downtown. We’ve always gotten
those complaints, though. I’m not sure
there are any answers out there.
A.W.: You seem to be saying that this issue
See SALTZMAN, page 9
Homeless onenight count brings numbers up 10 percent
STAFF REPORTS
he number of homeless counted
on the streets of Portland and
Multnomah County is up 10
percent over 2011 figures, according to
the figures released earlier this month.
The latest 2013 Point-in-time count
conducted by the city and county reported
2,869 people who were homeless -
meaning sleeping in emergency shelter,
vouchered into motels or sleeping
outdoors. Of those, 1895 people were
found literally sleeping outdoors on the
night of the count
An additional 1,572 people were
■
4,000 people.
“The numbers are
we’ve been seeing on the streets,’ says
Executive Director Marc Jolin with JOIN.
“We know as a system we’ve helped
thousands of people avoid eviction and
homelessness, while housing thousands
more.”
Jolin went on to praise local government
for prioritizing the safety n e t but says
since the beginning of the recession it’s
been an uphill battle. “There’s a lot more
we need to do as a community and society
if we’re going to end the tragedy of
thousands of vulnerable people who have
no place to call home.”
■ Half of those sleeping outdoors have
been homeless for less than a year.
■ Chronic homelessness (a focus of the
10-year plan to end homelessness),
increased by 27 percent since 2011 among
individuals sleeping outdoors.
■ The number of literally homeless
persons in families with children increased
by 72, or 18 percent, since 2011. There
are 749 homeless children in Multnomah
County, 264 of them under the age of five.
■ The number of literally homeless
women increased by 171, or 22 percent,
since 2011.
■ More than half of the homeless
population has a disabling condition.
■ Nineteen percent of the overall
homeless population and 41 percent of
homeless females were affected by
domestic violence
■ The number of people of color who
are unsheltered was 38 percent higher in
2013 than in 2011; the number of people
of color in emergency shelter was 16
percent higher; people of color
experiencing homelessness are more
likely to be families with children than the
overall homeless population.
The report notes the reason for the
continued increase in homelessness is due
to unemployment and extremely low
vacancy rates, which the U.S. Census
Bureau places at 3.4percent in the
Portland metro area.
The low vacancy rates have contributed
to higher housing costs and limited rental
availability. This has been especially
challenging for low- income households,
who must compete for a limited number of
affordable units. The current fair market
rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the
Portland metro area is $912, which is 64
percent of the monthly income for a full
time minimum wage worker.
The report also notes that the death of
56 people on the streets in 2012 could
have
Nationally, it’s unclear if homelessness
has increased or decreased overall.
According to the National Alliance to End
Homelessness, overall homelessness has
decreased since 2005 in Oregon. This
conflicts with local and state data that
show an overall increase in homelessness.
overwhelmingly increased nationally due
to the recession and the lack of state and
federal funding for housing and homeless
services.