A year ago, two Master of Social Work students at Portland State University set out to answer a question: How much does the city of Portland actually spend on homelessness?
The answer was – and remains – elusive. While there are budgeted figures for agencies specifically charged to provide homeless-related services – shelter, housing and counseling programs, for example – there were no hard numbers to aggregate from non-homeless-focused programs, despite knowing anecdotally that there were costs.
The survey and resulting report by Katherine Lindsay and Kathleen Evans sheds at least some light on the ripple effect the homeless crisis has through Portland’s myriad bureaus – financially and psychologically.
Their academic report, titled “Economic Impacts of Unsheltered Homelessness: A city of Portland Budget Analysis,” sampled only 3 percent of city workers but tallied nearly $3.6 million in expenses on personnel costs reallocated on issues arising from unsheltered homeless.
“It is important in recognizing the full picture of spending so that you can make better spending choices, or different spending choices,” said Lindsay, who along with Evans has since completed her master’s degree. Lindsay is also a qualified mental health professional and a certified drug and alcohol counselor working with the city’s Office of Management and Finance Homelessness/Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program. Evans works with the Joint Office of Homeless Services. This report was done independently of their roles with the city.
“Another important question is, how do we equip people with the skills to be interacting with people?” Evans said. “People do feel overwhelmed, and they don’t know what to do, and they don’t want to cause people more harm.”
Evans and Lindsay both agreed that there was a sense of release from employees who were glad to share their experiences, not out in frustration, but out of concern for those in need.
The process
The students separated visible and invisible costs, with the invisible costs being those not specifically budgeted and spent for the mitigation of issues arising from street homelessness. They gave the primary contact in each bureau a short survey for distribution to staff that they identified as dedicating regular work hours to unsheltered homelessness.
Over the course of 51 days between April and May 2018, the researchers collected 129 responses from 16 city bureaus, the office of mayor and city commissioners.
They found $1.2 million in visible costs among those surveyed, primarily spent on cleaning up camps.
But the invisible costs are far more compelling, with bureaus racking up nearly $15,000 a day on absorbed personnel costs for hours worked responding to issues related to homelessness.
The majority of this time is spent on enforcement issues, such as campers sleeping in vehicles. Respondents also reported time spent addressing legislative inquiries and attending policy meetings, coordinating response efforts, responding to “livability” issues and public space management. Examples included a parking enforcement worker encountering RV-related concerns, a housing inspector confronting illegal occupancies and campers in the field.
“A worker in an aquatics center talked about how much time she spent responding to issues with the showers, and trying to navigate how to be compassionate and responsive to those folks, but also it is a challenge for families coming in using that space where there are people utilizing that for hygiene services,” Lindsay said.
Caveats and creative thinking
Lindsay and Evans are quick to note the report’s caveats: It focuses on a very small sample of city employees, and the figures are extrapolated from median annual salaries of respondents.
“We know that’s not the totality of spending,” Evans said. “From our methodology, we can’t get that.”
But the information gathered in the survey does have implications for how the city budgets and forms policy moving forward.
First and foremost, Lindsay and Evans say more research is needed, and the city should conduct a full city audit to account for both visible and invisible spending.
Another implication from this report is how bureaus staff their programs. Current practices of hiring in response to workload increases has led to a compliance-based response to homelessness, the authors wrote.
“While some of these positions are likely necessary, it is argued that many could be more effective if reallocated to intervention-based programming focused on harm-reduction strategies for those experiencing street homelessness,” the report states.
The situation also affects employee morale, Lindsay and Evans say, as workers are tasked with duties outside their skill set and expected job duties.
“The folks who are responding, they’re doing what they should be doing,” Lindsay said. “Frankly, because we don’t have anything else in place, they have to respond, for the folks out there’s safety. Until that change happens, those folks are doing a hard job often with a lot of integrity. And that’s where I get really nervous. People were transparent, willing, helpful. The responses we had were kind. The focus was not punitive or condemning. It was concern. Which was really surprising.”
Ultimately, they state in their report that they want to see the city shift its budgetary policy from being “reactionary, compliance-focused” to “intervention-based, harm-reduction strategies.”
Those strategies would include an intergovernmental partnership that provided waste pickup, along with creating two mobile restroom trailers (six restroom units total) and mobile laundry services. The authors also reference work done in Seattle to support three sanctioned camps with case management and safe parking programs that have helped transition folks into housing, according to the report.
By their analysis, these harm-reduction programs would cost less than half of the current reallocated spending now being siphoned out of bureaus.
Lindsay and Evans stressed that the results of this project should not be used to vilify either people experiencing homelessness or the front-line city workers, but rather used to create better policy around budget and staffing needs.
“There’s this whole breadth of perspective that we’re not tapping into and that can be utilized to create change,” Lindsay said. “A lot of people care a lot.”
Email Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at joanne@streetroots.org.
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