PORTLAND, Ore. — With the homelessness crisis pushing beyond the city proper, Portland's suburbs are struggling to deal with the challenge. Beaverton's Mayor and Washington County commissioners came together Friday in Southeast Portland in an effort to find their own solutions.
"We have a safe park program in our community — the average person in that is a 77-year-old woman," said Beaverton Mayor Lacey Beaty. "Beaverton also has a very sad statistic of the highest rate of teens experiencing homelessness in the state. So we know our issues around our elderly and our young people, so we're coming together to look at how to bridge those two models and open a shelter."
The mayor reached out to Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson for a tour of the Laurelwood Center. It's funded by Multnomah County and run by the nonprofit Transition Projects. The shelter has 120 beds and prioritizes people older than 55, those with disabilities and veterans.
Since opening in 2019, it's served more than 1,000 people helping more than 300 people transition into housing. But there were challenges. Before Laurelwood could be built, there was an intensive community engagement process and dealing with neighborhood opposition.
"I started a 10-month-long process with business people, with schools in the area, neighborhood associations to talk about what this place could be here,' said Vega Pederson.
Beaverton has not revealed any locations for the shelter but plans to have community engagement on the process.
"One thing we can all agree on is no one wants to see people homeless on the street and whether it's in my backyard or somebody else's backyard we have to come together with creative solutions to fix this problem," said Beaty.
The city has so far partnered with the legislature to help fund the shelter and Washington County to operate it.
"I hope this isn't a problem in 10 or 15 years from now, but right now we desperately need these services in Washington County," said Beaty. "We cannot pretend like this is just a problem that exists only in Portland."
Beaverton along with other cities in Oregon received $1 million from the legislature to address homelessness and a lack of affordable housing.