Portland Tribune, Aug. 20, 2015
City, county and social service leaders announced new initiatives to better help those most in need in Portland on Thursday.
The initiatives include a High-Intensity Street Engagement effort between the city of Portland and Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare to focus housing placement and retention efforts, including culturally specific wraparound services, for people who need the greatest amount of support. It will start in September.
READ – Fact Sheet: Mayor Charlie Hales’ Homelessness Initiative (PDF, 249KB)
The program will include other service providers, such as the Urban League of Portland and the Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest. The Neighborhood Response Team of the Portland Police Bureau will work with the service providers as well.
The initiatives were announced at a City Hall press conference attended by Mayor Charlie Hales, Housing Commissioner Dan Saltzman, Multnomah County Commissioner Jules Bailey, and Dr. Derald Walker, chief executive officer, Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare.
“This is about focusing our services to those residents most at-risk, those most in need of housing and services,” said Hales. “Thanks to our partners, the service providers, we will look to find services for those homeless Portlanders who require more intensive assistance.
“First, we’ll find services for people. Then we’ll address illegal camp sites,” Hales continued. “’Services first,’ though, is the key.”
“By coordinating services, this model uniquely tailors engagement, interventions and ongoing critical resources that are specifically designed for the individual,” said Walker. ”It wraps around healthcare and housing benefits to provide the essentials in life to some of the most vulnerable folks within our community that the rest of us often take for granted. Cascadia is honored to partner with the City of Portland and so many high quality service organization towards this aim.”
The initiative will cost $924,000. One-time general fund dollars for it were included in the city budget that took effect July 1. The goal is for Cascade Behavioral Health to serve 50 families this first year. If successful, Hale will propose making it an ongoing item in future budget.
The press conference was held a few weeks after a petition drive supported by the Portland Business Alliance that urged city leaders to do something about the increasing number of homeless people and camps in Portland.
Two other programs by the city also were announced Thursday:
- The city will introduce a one-point contact system for residents who want to report behavior-based issues such as illegal activity or people blocking public space. The city will provide a phone number, email address and texting address that residents can use to report problems for all sites within the city, regardless of which agency owns them. That program will debut in October.
- Day Storage Pilot Program: Portland is about to unveil two storage sites, on the east and west side, which houseless people may use to leave their belongings for the day. The facilities will be staffed by outreach workers and will include storage space, toilets, sharps containers, and a kiosk of information from service providers. That program also will debut in October.
The city and county are currently working together to provide housing for hundreds of homeless vets in 2015.
To the writer of the piece titled “Mayor’s $924,000 homelessness plan will provide housing and services rolled into one” or “Jenny”, dated August 21, 2015.
As a disability, mental illness, and homeless advocate, as I write pieces for my Huffington Post Disability “What’s Working” blog, I always endeavor to provide the facts with my personal insight and experience regarding the subject at hand. In other words, what’s working & what’s not working.
After reading your piece on Portland’s allocation of $924,000, my takeaway was disbelief. I imagined that a Mental Illness Advocacy group such as Oregon Mental Health Consumers, that there would be some level of constructive criticism regarding the City of Portland spending $924,000 to get 50 homeless off the streets. Yes, that’s right, 50 individuals – not 50 families as stated in your piece.
The Request for Proposal details the “homeforward” plan to eliminate homelessness in Multnomah County, “A Home for Everyone: A United Community Plan to End Homelessness in Multnomah County” which clearly states fifty homeless individual’s, and more specifically, African-American homeless individuals to clearly be the primary focus. Neither of these PDF’s are referenced in your piece.
I was also a little surprised that there was no mention that, if a year from now, this plan works and accomplishes its goal of housing 50 homeless individuals, Portland is going to have a wake-up call. It will finally hit home that the price tag of finishing the job, to treat and house the remaining 4,950 homeless in Portland, may come at a price tag of
$831,600, 000.
If you do the math, that’s $924,000 per 50 homeless, and we have 5,000 homeless in the city of Portland.
I think that rather than rewriting press releases from the establishment print media, and clearly slanted Mayoral press release, this advocacy association would be better served to know all of the facts, and then give truthful and constructive insight.
Rather than be strictly critical and not offer a solution, I welcome feedback/criticism on an opinion piece on this “plan” draft I’m finishing to follow-up on a recent Op-Ed published in July of 2015. See;
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/07/portland_homeless_crisis_easie.html
I appreciate the opportunity to comment – thank you. Also, I sincerely appreciate your association’s service, and only hope to only further the efforts of all advocacy efforts.