PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland city commissioners spent four hours on Thursday debating how they plan to spend millions of dollars meant to address the homelessness crisis.
The city has a contract with Multnomah County in which they send millions each year to help fund the Joint Office of Homeless Services, the city- and county-run group that manages money meant for the homeless crisis. However, the county holds most of the power.
The contract expires in 10 days, and some city commissioners are skeptical about re-signing.
“I am still not quite to a 'yes' yet, but I look forward to having conversations with my colleagues,” commissioner and mayoral candidate Mingus Mapps told KGW Thursday.
Thursday’s agenda item was scheduled to last 45 minutes. Instead, it took four hours before the city voted to move to a second reading next week.
The contract calls for the city to send the county about $30 million annually for the next three years. The problem is that some city commissioners aren't clear on how that money will be spent and aren't confident that will be transparent moving forward.
The director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services, Dan Field, pushed back on the accusation Thursday.
“The fact that the city is handing over dollars and not knowing where they are going couldn’t be more incorrect,” Field said.
In tents, contention
In recent weeks, Portland city commissioners have raised concerns over the county's spending on tent and tarp distribution for homeless people, while at the same time, the city spends millions removing arguably those same tents and tarps.
Records show that in the past year, the city has removed over 4,000 encampments, which equates to between 8,000 to 12,000 tents. That's more tents than the number of homeless people in Multnomah County, according to the most recent Point in Time Count.
New data from the public records request gives a potential explanation: At the same time that those encampments were being removed, the joint office was handing out another 6,554 tents and 24,172 tarps. This costly cycle was much of the focus Thursday afternoon.
PREVIOUS REPORTING: Portland leaders speak out against Multnomah County’s decision to fund more tent, tarp distribution
“We are all concerned about tents and tarps … How, when and to whom they get distributed matters, and based on that data and looking at available shelter beds is how we build that policy,” said commissioner and mayoral candidate Carmen Rubio.
Another layer to this decision sat in the fourth row of council chambers: a group of plaintiffs from a 2022 lawsuit against the city of Portland claiming tents block ADA access on public sidewalks. As part of the settlement deal reached last spring, the city agreed to keep sidewalks clear of homeless camps and limit how often they give out tents and tarps.
“Look, we worked really hard to end up with a settlement agreement on behalf of people with disabilities,” said the attorney behind the case, John DiLorenzo.
DiLorenzo argued Thursday that if the city continues to fund the Joint Office of Homeless Services, the city could be in violation of that deal and could face future legal battles, seeing as the joint office provides tents and tarps to homeless people.
“The joint office is one of the city's contractors and the settlement agreement expressly provides that neither the city nor its contractors shall be handing out tents and tarps,” DiLorenzo told KGW Thursday.
Field fought back with semantics, saying the joint office doesn't physically hand homeless people tents and tarps. Commissioner Gonzalez rebutted by pointing out that the joint office does, however, oversee a warehouse storing the supplies in question and allows dozens of groups — including nonprofits, religious organizations and neighborhood associations — to check out those tents and tarps with the intention of handing them to homeless people.
Last week, Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson told KGW that distributing tents and tarps "is all a part of having a humane response to those living on our streets while we increase our housing and shelter capacity.”
A seat at the table
About two hours into Thursday's city council meeting on this topic, things heated up when Mayor Ted Wheeler revealed his motive behind wanting to continue sending city money to the county.
“I’d like to make the case, and I’m going to be very bottom-line oriented, very pragmatic and probably completely inappropriate, but the way I view it is by making this investment, we get to shape policy and priorities at the joint office, and we get access to steering 10 times the amount of funding that we are putting in, especially under the new IGA," Wheeler began. "So, I actually view it as a good investment, provided that we hold the joint office accountable and continue to be able to shape their work in a manner that’s consistent with our goals at the city of Portland.
"From my perspective, it’s better that we work together. We have to partner, the city and county — if we go alone, that may solve some managerial issues that we’ve had to deal with or some political issues that we’ve had to deal with, but it ultimately pulls the shelter part of our system apart from the service delivery, and I think it’s critically important that they be integrated."
Mapps was unconvinced.
“When you say that, what I hear is $31 million a year is the ante that we have to pay the county to sit at this table," he replied. "I will also point out that I have IGAs with the county to manage bridges and rats and mosquitoes, and those IGAs do not include an ante where I have to hand over $10 million to sit at the table."
For the city to keep funding the Joint Office of Homeless Services, commissioners signaled that they want two main things: to be sure their money is going toward things that are working, like certain shelter models such as Safe Rest Villages and the temporary alternative shelter sites, and several commissioners signaled they'd prefer the county to limit their tent and tarp distribution to match city policies so Portland remains in compliance with the ADA lawsuit settlement.
City commissioners voted to move this to a second reading with a final vote scheduled for next week, also passing two amendments to the plan.
Under the agreement that Wheeler's office drew up in cooperation with Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, city officials will have voting seats on an oversight committee meant to guide JOHS policy. Under the original proposal, there are five voting members and no more than four non-voting members.
One of the approved amendments, brought by Commissioner Dan Ryan, expands that committee to include someone from Portland's business community, a "behavioral health expert who is not a current service provider," and a high-earning resident who pays the Metro Supportive Housing Services tax. It's unclear from Ryan's language whether these are voting or non-voting members.
The other amendment, brought by Mapps, mandates that the committee clearly define city and county roles on homelessness, and ensure housing vouchers are available for people housed in city-run shelters, such as the Safe Rest Villages.
When KGW asked Vega Pederson's office for a comment on Thursday's city council discussion, they sent the following joint statement from both the chair and Wheeler, saying:
“This new intergovernmental agreement is the roadmap that creates the Homelessness Response System we need. It establishes clear goals, strengthens coordination, identifies accountable parties and is inclusive of a broad set of community partners. Our governments have stayed engaged, at the table and are ready to complete these final steps to put in motion a new governance structure and implement the Homelessness Response Action Plan — together.”