PORTLAND, Ore. — Since the city of Portland and Multnomah County partnered on a county-helmed agency aimed at addressing homelessness in 2016, the amount and quality of shelter in the area has risen dramatically. But according to a newly released city audit, the scale of that work remains unequal to the task of sheltering people in Multnomah County, let alone placing them in permanent housing.
Back in 2015, just before the creation of the Joint Office of Homeless Services (JOHS), the county could boast just 521 year-round shelter beds. By 2022, that number had nearly quadrupled to 2,053 shelter beds, the Portland City Auditor's Office found. This year, JOHS has budgeted for 3,220 beds.
The audit found that JOHS has gradually lowered barriers to entry, spread the placement of shelters throughout the city and expanded the variety of shelter models offered.
But the estimated number of homeless people in Multnomah County rose over those years as well. During the last Point in Time count conducted in the county, done back in January 2023, volunteers found 6,200 homeless people — a number the county attributed to better data collection than in prior years. Neighboring counties reported a drop.
The result, the audit found, is that shelters in Multnomah County "were generally full and had long waitlists," could be difficult for homeless people to access, and were only sporadically equipped with the means to help people move into more permanent housing.
Supply unequal to demand
As of spring 2023, the auditor's report noted, the joint office funded four family shelters with private rooms for about 100 families. But 211info, which is supposed to be a resource for people trying to connect with a shelter, reported that between 300 and 350 families were on a waitlist, with wait times ranging from a month to 6 months.
Shelters for single adults reported waitlists as well, with wait times ranging from days to months, depending on a person's demographics or particular needs. JOHS staff, homeless people and service providers alike all pointed to common problems — not enough shelter space resulting in lengthy waitlists, making it difficult to maintain connections with people on the streets.
The city auditor's office advised that JOHS should be using data to build up shelter where it's needed most. While they said the joint office has taken into account what data it has, it "did not have a systematic process for evaluating this information to identify the unmet need for shelter, and was not able to right-size shelter supply to meet the demand."
JOHS-funded shelters cannot be accessed on a walk-in basis, the report adds; they can only be accessed through a reservation or referral. For family shelters, those are exclusively done through 211info. For adult shelters, there's no central clearinghouse for shelter referrals — it's a patchwork largely handled by the different shelters or the organizations that operate them.
"211 oversees the waitlist for one adult shelter and can offer contact information for other options, but does not track their availability," the report states. "Many adult shelters must be contacted individually for a reservation or to join a waitlist, though Transition Projects has a centralized intake process for their congregate shelters."
In order to free up beds for referrals from outreach workers, Portland police, park rangers and Portland Street Response, some congregate shelters now "set aside" beds for people encountered on the streets. However, the audit notes that these beds often went unused at best, resulting in people actively on a waitlist missing out on an otherwise unoccupied bed.
"Offering several different ways to access shelters is a positive if there is 'no wrong door' to entry," auditors said. "But the lack of shelter availability means there is often no right door either. For adults, having to contact multiple providers to try to find an open bed could be time-consuming and frustrating — and even more so if shelters don’t answer the phone, have limited intake hours, or can only offer a spot on a long waitlist."
Interestingly, the report suggests that streamlining access to shelter hasn't been a big priority for the joint office. Since there isn't enough shelter to go around, making shelter more accessible would only "move more people onto waitlists." JOHS has, however, commissioned a study to look into the benefits of a central, standardized entry process.
From shelter to housing
Auditors found that JOHS-funded shelters often lacked any goals for helping people transition into housing, and the office had no overall target for placements. Across the shelter system, JOHS data showed that 1,136 people in shelters, or 25%, exited into permanent housing. By comparison, 1,287 exited back into homelessness and 2,369 people were unaccounted for after leaving.
"Without a target, we could not determine whether 25% of shelter exits to permanent housing meant that shelters were an effective gateway to housing, or whether the exit rate met Joint Office or elected leaders’ expectations," auditors said. "In addition, no system-wide targets had been set for length of shelter stays or returns to homelessness."
Contracts with individual shelter providers were inconsistent, with more than a quarter of adult shelters lacking targets for permanent housing and more than half missing targets for length of stay. Housing benchmarks that were included sometimes differed in how they were measured, making it hard for auditors to compare outcomes.
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But comments from service providers included in the report often seemed against more rigid system-wide metrics that don't take into account the different challenges they face.
"There are a significant number of families requiring permanent supportive housing for individuals in recovery," one provider said. "The housing options that would meet their needs have waitlists that are too long for them to find housing within the 4- to 6-month shelter stay target."
"Providers focus on outcomes as required by the county, which becomes a priority instead of, what are we doing, what are we putting time and effort into," another said. "The way data is captured could be changed to reflect these efforts and add value."
The auditors noted that they "recognize the challenge" of setting both consistent and realistic metrics across a range of different shelter types, serving different populations.
"The Joint Office said they work with providers to establish performance measures that are customized to the provider; in other words, what success looks like for them," the report says. "But the Joint Office also attributed some of the variability in performance measures to having different contract managers working on different providers’ contracts. The Joint Office acknowledged the need for more consistency and said that reviewing and setting goals was part of the shelter strategy work it began in October 2023."
At the same time, the audit found that few shelters met their targets for housing placement or length of stay, although they did meet retention goals. In 2022, JOHS data showed that just over 30% of people who exited shelter for permanent housing returned to homeless services within 15 months. This met the 70% retention goal that JOHS set for many of its shelters.
Moving ahead
As the audit process went on, the report notes, there was increasing momentum at JOHS to tighten up procedures and expand shelter capacity — spurred in part by new leadership, as well as past audits and consulting that were critical of the office's decision-making structure. Staffing and data infrastructure had also started to improve.
The shelter strategy announced by Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler late last year does lay out goals for housing placements from shelter, and lays out ideas for how to meet those goals.
Ultimately, the Portland City Auditor's Office recommended that JOHS use data to inform shelter expansion in order to meet the need, take a closer look at its referral process for shelter and break down barriers to access, and establish more consistent goals across the shelter system. It also recommended that JOHS continue working to reduce racial disparities in homelessness, which it has thus far made strides in addressing.
Vega Pederson, the county's Chief Operating Officer Serena Cruz and the Joint Office of Homeless Services agreed with the audit's recommendations, saying that they were "pleased to share" that much of the work on expanding and improving shelter access was already underway.
"We acknowledge that much has changed within JOHS over the duration of this audit and appreciate the audit team's responsiveness to changing circumstances as they developed their findings and recommendations, including acknowledging initiatives such as our multi-jurisdictional Community Sheltering Strategy that are already in progress," they said.
JOHS also responded to the audit, saying in part:
"The Joint Office is in agreement with, and will continue to prioritize, the recommendations in this audit. We are proud that the City Auditor has confirmed that our programs are designed to reduce racial disparities. We acknowledge that these disparities still exist, often due to forces beyond the control of the Joint Office, and we continue to center racial equity and the reduction of disparities in our programs. The report also includes recommendations related to shelter planning and coordination, and we are pleased to share that work to expand and improve our shelter system — building on previous work since 2016 to add not only shelter beds but also different shelter types — is already under way in many of the recommended areas, including through the recently released two-year Community Sheltering Strategy."