News
Page 4
Street Roots • Dec 8-14, 2017
P H O T O B Y JO E G L O D E
BY A M A N D A WALDROUPE
S T A F F W R IT E R
decision by the Joint Office of
Homeless Services to start wait-listing
homeless families who seek shelter
beds - a first for Portland and Multnomah
County - has rattled service providers at all
levels of the social services spectrum.
“The decision to close intake was very
painful,” said Andy Miller, the executive
director of Human Solutions, the east
Multnomah County social services agency
that operates the county’s homeless family
shelter. “What looked like an infinite
escalation of our nightly census was also
painful and traumatic and stressful for
everyone involved.”
The family homeless system in Multnomah
County is one that is not used to saying no.
For as long as Human Solutions has operated
a family homeless shelter, it has turned away
no one, either letting them stay in the
shelter or housing families in motel rooms.
Now, homeless families seeking shelter
must call 211info, and once the family shelter
is identified as the best service available to
them, they’re put on a waitlist.
There are already 100 families on the list,
which is one month old.
There are only two homeless family
shelters in Multnomah County, and services
mainly comprise rental and eviction
assistance dollars, which cannot help every
family. With the region experiencing a severe
lack of affordable housing, some fear that
dire consequences loom if the family
A
homeless system does not change
dramatically.
“(Our) community does need to prepare
for what it hasn’t had to witness, and that’s
children sleeping outside on a nightly basis
because they have no other place to go,”
Miller said.
The waitlist might not last long - if recent
initiatives to house homeless families are
successful.
The “Home for the Holidays” initiative, a
call to landlords and property owners to
make units available to homeless families,
launched three weeks ago and has already
housed 16 families. The goal is to house 40
families by mid-January.
Human Solutions is in the process of
screening 40 more units and pairing those
units with families. One property owner has
even offered to rent a handful of units to
homeless families and charge no rent for a
few months.
Miller thinks it’s likely that the initiative
will quickly exceed its goal. As a result, he
hopes Human Solutions will be able to take
families off the waitlist for shelter.
The Joint Office is also working with
providers, including Portland Homeless
Family Solutions, to open emergency
wintertime shelter for families, as many as
75 beds, this month.
Miller said Human Solutions is exploring
master-leasing an entire apartment building.
Miller said the agency wants to lease a “well-
run, attractive building in a good location” for
up to five years. Human Solutions would, in
turn, sublease the units to families, setting
monthly rent at amounts the families could
afford and not allowing no-cause evictions.
“It buys us some time and gives us built
housing now,” Miller said. “There’s a lot of
housing being built in Portland. It’s just not
affordable and not accessible to the folks who
need it the most.”
He said Human Solutions is talking with
property owners, and he hopes to identify a
property as quickly as possible.
The initiatives come after a six-month
period that has seen a 300 percent increase
in homeless families seeking shelter.
Families with children made up 654 of the
more than 4,100 people experiencing
homelessness in Multnomah County this
year, according to the 2017 point-in-time
count. About 12 percent of them were
unsheltered.
Human Solutions’ shelter has a capacity
for 130 people. Since opening at a new space
in outer southeast Portland in February
2016, the shelter has always exceeded that
capacity. Through late 2016 and early 2017,
an average of 220 adults and children sought
shelter. Once the shelter reached capacity,
Human Solutions sent families to motel
rooms.
Those numbers were the basis for the
shelter’s budget - $1.6 million from the Joint
Office of Homeless Services for the 2017-18
fiscal year to operate a 205-bed shelter,
which includes 130 shelter beds and overflow
hotel rooms.
“We thought we were at a right-sized
See WAIT-LISTED, page 5