The city and federal government should recognize the role they play in creating homelessness when addressing what actions they are willing to take to ensure the safety of those forced out onto the streets.

Money changes everything, and often if you do or don’t have it effects your perception of whether those changes are positive or negative. Let’s look at the shift of HUD funding from affordable housing to Urban Renewal. In 1978 HUD funding for affordable housing was over 80 billion dollars. Congress drastically cut funding for affordable housing in the 1980’s and the numbers of homeless surged.

During the same time the outsourcing of our manufacturing industries coincided with increased investing in urban renewal zones. These are programs intended to reinvigorate downtrodden neighborhoods. The fun part of this is when the community stakeholders would get together and brainstorm ideas for improvements. But the cold hard reality of implementing the ideas from brainstorming was tedious. The planning process was often co-opted by corporate interest that turned Urban Renewal into a boondoggle for a few wealthy investors.

Residents saw expensive residential and new commercial buildings being built. This pleased property owners and caused rents to rise displacing more people into homelessness.

In reaction Congress enacted the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. They built shelters to maintain the homeless in homelessness. The wealthy generally saw this as an act of compassion. People who had formerly been housed but now had to live in shelters saw this as wealthy people benefiting from their suffering.

The shelter system is imperfect to say the least. Any time you pack a hundred or more people into a place the size of a school gym the snoring, sneezing, coughing, and farting are going to spread disease and the tension is going to breed violence. Add in all the rules and restrictions meant to limit said disease and violence and you get an atmosphere heavy with tension. Shelters are places of high stress.

A study called the New York New York Cost Avoidance Study reported that it’s cheaper to just pay somebody’s rent than shelter them and pay all the addition costs society incurs (ie… stress induced problems: emergency room visits, jail, mental health issues and so on). Big surprise! It would have been cheaper to have kept the affordable housing. Now Congress starts this Housing First program, kind of like JOIN has been doing.

Problem is Federal funding policy through HUD has torn down a lot of the formerly affordable housing and Urban Renewal has increased the rents of other housing so that the pool of affordable housing has shrunk dramatically while the need for affordable housing has grown just as fast.

So to correct the problem HUD is spending a fraction of what they used to on affordable housing while cutting funding for shelters. The wealthy might see this as a step in the right direction. The homeless see themselves stuck out on the streets. This is especially dangerous for women.

This year Salvation Army’s Harbor Light women’s shelter was closed. The numbers of women forced to sleep on the streets of Portland has grown dramatically. The City of Portland has allowed 30 hotel vouchers to be handed out to women in need. For the few women who were fast enough to get the vouchers this is a temporary solution. For the majority of woman still stuck outside it just wasn’t enough.

Friends of mine asked me to find out if the city could do anything more. I talked with Sally Erickson who referred me to Liora Berry, both from the Bureau of Housing and Community Development (BHCD). Ms. Berry referred me to Kamron Graham who works for Transition Projects Incorporated (TPI). Ms. Graham told me the 30 vouchers were all handed out the first day they had them available and were currently providing emergency shelter in motels for 34 women. I decided to go to City Hall and talk with Jamaal Folsom who works for City Commissioner Eric Sten he said the City has no new funding, but Liora Berry at BHCD is working on the shelter problem. Then I went to Mayor Potter’s office and left a message for Sara Culp. She referred me back to Kamron Graham. The vouchers are still used up.

Channel 12 news reported new emergency beds for women at Harbor Lights as the low temperature dropped into the 20’s. According to Beverly Gant with West Women’s Shelter there are 32 beds available for women and children plus two on a emergency police referral bases. Only five of the estimated 749 homeless women in Portland (JOIN 2005 street count) showed up at the shelter the night it opened Monday November 27th. Those numbers will rise once the homeless are notified the shelter is open. Funny them notifying the T.V. news but not getting the word out to the homeless, do they think we have TV’s plugged into the sidewalk?

I tried to get a handle on exactly how many women shelter beds there are in Portland. It is a little tricky figuring that out. Many of the Family shelters, which are all full, accept single women also. I called Bradley-Angle House, Raphael House, Jean’s Place and Yolanda house. Those that got back to me reported being full. Jean’s Place has 55 beds, 22 of which are reserved for emergency shelter, separated into three phases and stays often last up to a year. The wait list is about 10 to 16 weeks according to Janice who was kind enough to answer my questions.

Portland Rescue Mission also extended the number emergency men’s spaces to 70 mats in the chapel and 50 beds downstairs. They were unaware of any other new emergency shelter and were forced to turn an unknown number of homeless back onto the street. TPI has 185 men’s shelter beds and Salvation Army has about 100 emergency mats and additional beds if you can pay the $10 a night. Surprisingly while Portland Rescue Mission was turning men back out to the street Salvation Army had 45 mats left on the floor unused. Last year Portland Rescue Mission didn't open until Salvation Army was full. The homeless men didn't expect Salvation Army to have space and Portland Rescue Mission didn't know beds where available there. Mike at City Team Ministries said their shelter has 50 beds for men and has been filling up every night. In January 2005 JOIN counted 1606 homeless men.

In addition couples are extremely hard to find shelter for, as are people with pets or people caring for aging parents on the streets. Liora Berry Homeless Program Coordinator with BHCD states, “The city is looking to bring in more money. We need organizations to come forward and say we can provide shelter space.” Ms. Berry talked about the difficulty with zoning issues in locating shelters. The BHCD is also looking at alternative ways to provide emergency shelter. Possibly renting an entire motel if offered.

I sat in Public Safety Action Committee meetings in City Hall and Portland Police Officer Jeff Myers justified sweeping people off the streets by saying there is plenty of shelter space so people must be choosing to be homeless. I kind of have to respect that kind of bald face lying right in the face of someone who knows better. Officer Myers has a lot of self-confidence and no law says Police officers can’t lie.

The Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness (TYPEH) focuses on the homeless person as the source of homelessness. In reality personal responsibility is but one side of a coin when it comes to root causes of homelessness. If we continue to ignore the societal causes we have no chance of ending homelessness. The TYPEH should be called the Plan to Mitigate Homelessness. Federal Policy administrated through HUD creates major forces driving the increase in homelessness. Can you smell the hypocrisy?

Locally, Portland Development Commission Governed by the City of Portland has planned and implemented the gentrification leaving people out on the streets. Many of the people housed in the expensive new condos are from out of town and want to push this homeless problem out of sight. Mayor Tom Potter convened a “Street Access For Everyone” (S.A.F.E) committee to replace the old Title 14 sit lie law. It’s basically meant to push homeless people out of sight so we don’t offend the tourist or business people. Genny Nelson, Monica Goracke, and Andrea Myer worked on the committee and managed to get some good suggestions included in the plan. When I look at the current results of the cities efforts it leaves me wondering.