Portland’s homeless crisis continues to challenge the City Council, with recent revelations raising questions about the effectiveness of its current efforts.
Mayor Keith Wilson’s decision to resume clearing homeless camps survived a recent council challenge to cut $4.3 million from the clean up program. District 3 Councilor Angelita Morillo proposed the amendment that acknowledged she wanted to stop the “sweeps” and instead transfer the money into rent subsidies and similar programs to prevent homelessness.
Photo from Shelter Portland.
The proposed amendment failed after receiving only five of the 12-member council votes, allowing the cleanups to continue.
But less than two weeks later, The Oregonian reported that the Portland Housing Bureau was sitting on $21 million in unspent funds that could potentially be spent on preventing homelessness. The Nov. 21 story revealed that PHB employees had apparently lost track of the money generated by a fee on rental landlords because of the influx in federal Covid-19 assistance funds during the pandemic.
That is a little less than five times the amount of money Morillo intended to redirect.
Then on Dec. 2, the Oregonian reported that nearly 1,900 units of publicly subsidized affordable housing units in Portland are currently sitting vacant. That is 7.4% of the income-limited units available in the city, and more than what is considered normal where supply and demand are in balance and units are being efficiently utilized.
The next day, Willamette Week reported that Home Forward, the city’s housing authority, has 955 empty units – a 14% vacancy rate of its 6,847 units. In some cases, the newspaper said, nearly half the units in organization apartment buildings are empty.
The revelations are happening while more than 16,000 people are homeless in Multnomah County, with close to 7,500 people living outside or in their vehicles, according to the most recent data. Most are in Portland, the county’s largest city.
After the $21 million in unspent PHB funding was revealed, several City Council members, including Morillo, introduced a resolution on Dec. 3 to spend the money on rental assistance and other programs to prevent homelessness. Among other things, the proposal would put $9 million toward rental assistance and $9 million toward emergency vouchers.
The resolution is scheduled to be considered by the council’s Homelessness and Housing Committee on Tuesday, Dec. 9. It could be presented to the full council in January.
A previous North Peninsula Review story on the City Council’s response to the homeless crisis can be found at northpeninsulareview.com/split-city-council-keeps-homeless-camp-sweeps-going.