PORTLAND, Ore. — For the Portland metro area, Multnomah County and its board chair have an outsized influence. The county's population of 803,000 and its economic centrality make it a regional powerhouse — and the county chair is a powerful position for influencing policy, setting agendas and deciding budgets.
Last week, Multnomah County passed its first budget under the new county chair, Jessica Vega Pederson. It sounds huge: $3.5 billion. Regardless, it came with some disappointing outcomes for various stakeholders as local governments attempt to tighten their belts over the next year.
The Story's Pat Dooris had a chance to sit down and talk with Chair Vega Pederson on Tuesday to discuss the new budget and how she's attempting to address the county's homelessness problem.
In talking with Vega Pederson, Dooris learned something new almost immediately about how Multnomah County and the city of Portland interact. She explained that, for a long time, the county has been the de facto provider of the local community's social safety net. Meanwhile, Portland handles things like economic development, water, sewer and other utility services.
That's a big part of why the county is immersed, more so than the city, in social services — everything from the health department to the Joint Office of Homeless Services and more. And though Portland elected leaders have complained about the county's outsized influence on the local response to homelessness of late, that control also stems from this longstanding division of labor.
Over the coming year, JOHS will have a budget of $280 million. Within the last seven years, taxpayers will have spent more than $1 billion toward the joint office and the services it facilitates. But homelessness is as big an issue in Multnomah County as ever before.
The first part of Dooris' interview with Vega Pederson airs Monday on The Story. A transcript is available below, lightly edited for clarity.
Funding homeless services
Pat Dooris: What are you gonna do to solve our homeless issue?
Jessica Vega Pederson: I think the most important thing with the homeless crisis that we have right now is to make sure that we are all working together and we are working with all cylinders firing in order to address this issue ... and I will say that I don't believe that is something that's been happening before. And so when I came in here as the new chair, it was important to me that we do have that partnership, we do have the collaboration, you know, within the county — as we're functioning as one county — as we're talking to the city and really engaging with them in terms of how we need to be working together to solve this problem. And that goes similarly with our other Multnomah County cities, with Metro and with the state as well. So I think that is the priority that I had coming in. And that's what you see reflected in the budget and the decisions that we made there.
PD: And $265 million, I think, going to the (Joint Office of Homeless Services) ...
JVP: Yeah, there's about $280 million that goes to the homeless, to the Joint Office of Homeless Services. And that is made up of dollars from county general funds, city general funds, the Supportive Housing Services measure ... we have some state funds that are in there. So it's a real combination of all of those things. So I think our task in front of us this year is to make sure that we are investing in the right programs, the right infrastructure, the right investments in our providers to get those dollars out into the community, helping the people who need it the most.
PD: And is there anything that will be different this year that will be more effective? Because we're spending all this money and we still see the problem grow.
JVP: We have all this money, I think we need to do a better job of actually spending it. And I think we need to be investing it wisely in the places where we know it can make the biggest difference. So I think, in talking with providers, they've really highlighted strongly that we need to have more investment in wages for the people who are doing this frontline work. And that's absolutely true. And so we've made that commitment in my budget. We're also looking at some of the underspent supportive housing service measure dollars and how we can adjust that and work with some of our philanthropic partners to get that, you know, set of money out the door to help providers. And they could use it for wages, they could use it for technical assistance, they could use it for benefits, but really to make sure that we are, we are looking at that obstacle.
PD: Okay. But I can just hear some viewers screaming at their TV right now, saying the money is for the people who are on the streets to get them off the streets, that it's not for the homeless industrial complex.
JVP: Oh, well, you know, people who are living unsheltered outside, who are experiencing incredibly tough conditions ... oftentimes have substance use disorder or mental health issues, right? They need that help getting connected to services, they need that help getting connected to housing, and that's exactly what our providers are out there doing. But it's hard, it's been really hard to staff up — just like we talked about, you know, challenges in our health field. It's the same thing when somebody can get a warehouse job at Amazon and make more money than they can doing outreach to people who are living outside. That's a problem. So we wanna make sure that we're valuing the work that's happening.
Worker wages
About $1.5 million in the new budget is earmarked for nonprofits so that they can pay their outreach workers better wages. Dooris asked what the average pay is now for those workers, but was told that the county does not have that information handy.
So how does the county know that outreach workers need to be paid more if they don't know about their current wages?
A county spokesperson did say that a 3% cost of living increase was applied to each contract in order to cover better wages and the increased cost of doing business under relatively high levels of inflation.
In taking a closer look at Vega Pederson's claim regarding Amazon workers versus homeless outreach, the job site ZipRecruiter provided some data. As of June 12, the average pay in Portland for an Amazon warehouse job was listed at $18.21 an hour.
A posting on ZipRecruiter from the Salvation Army showed them offering a job in homeless outreach for $25 an hour. Catholic Charities offered $19 an hour. The Portland Rescue Mission advertised a starting pay of $20.50.
The Portland Business Alliance — which recently announced a rebrand to the "Portland Metro Chamber," albeit still under the PBA umbrella — sent a letter signed by 64 organizations at the end of May to the chairs of Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, declaring that low wages for nonprofit workers in the homeless services were a problem to be "urgently diagnosed and addressed," saying that it was slowing the work of addressing homelessness.
"If we do not ensure that they are able to pay living wages, and the employers do not receive prompt reimbursement to cover their costs, we will never offer the breadth and quality of services we must have to truly reduce homelessness in our community," the PBA said.
Where the buck stops
Dooris also asked about recent criticism from Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who ran against Vega Pederson for board chair and lost. Meieran told The Story that there is no overall plan for addressing homelessness in Multnomah County, little accountability and little coordination.
But Vega Pederson said that there is indeed a plan, and she's working to make it better.
Jessica Vega Pederson: This was a huge priority for me. So one of the things that I did in coming in, and this was also in response to just recognizing that there was serious underspending that was happening in terms of getting these dollars out the door (of the joint office) was to engage with some national leaders ... to come in and look at how are things set up internally at the joint office, how are things set up with our relationship with the partners and the work that's happening outside, and come up within 90 days with a plan of action that really provides all those details. So we have engaged with James Schroeder and Healthcare Management Associates to do this work. They've already started on the first phase where they're talking to folks in the joint office and in our provider community to really get that feedback. And then, like I said, in 90 days they're gonna come up with that plan of action to really (see) what we need to be doing to reduce these obstacles to set up the system that we need, so that we can go forward and meet those goals that everybody wants us to and get the impacts that everybody wants to see.
Pat Dooris: Yeah. Do you think there needs to be like a homeless czar, some person in charge of everything that can hold people accountable?
JVP: Well, that's Dan Field, right? Dan Field is now the new director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services. And really the joint office ... was set up to be that place, so that it wasn't just things that are happening in a silo, but that it could be done in cooperation and coordination with the city, the city of Portland, and their needs as well as Multnomah County. And because now we have the dollars from the SHS measure, it's also gonna be done in conjunction with Metro, right? So this is really the nexus, and his position is really the nexus, of making sure that all of these investments that are taking place are being done smartly, that are being done efficiently and that they're being done with accountability and transparency.
PD: Okay. And I just have a simple mind, so maybe this won't even be possible, but I'm thinking — and I've heard wonderful things about him, but it's not like he can go fire somebody in the city who's not carrying out their duties, right? Or even somebody in the county or somebody in the nonprofit world. And if there was a homeless czar, as I'm imagining it in my brain, that would be somebody who could be accountable and, you know, really enforce the accountability.
JVP: I don't know if people would say, "No person over here has the right to come into my organization and fire somebody." ... But that's why it's important to have that collaboration with our partners, right? So, and I will say that that Dan Field reports to me, but his hiring was done in partnership with Mayor Wheeler. We just had a meeting this Monday with me and the mayor, you know, and talking to Dan. So we're doing a lot of things in partnership around that because we know people need to be accountable. We know we need to have the city performing in, you know, developing the housing that we need and building the housing so that we can use the long-term rental assistance to get people stabilized into housing. We need to be working together on all of these things. So that partnership and that kind of work is happening.