It is too easy to live in Portland and view homelessness as Portland’s problem. But here’s a startling perspective. Despite the fact that the Point in Time Count measured a slight decrease in homelessness in Portland between 2017 and 2019, homelessness actually rose 13.8% in the entire state during that same time period.
That’s how bad things are in the rest of the state. And while the Portland metro area has the largest concentration of people who are homeless, it is important to remember that 75% of unhoused Oregonians live elsewhere in the state.
The Point in Time Count has plenty of shortcomings; it’s a snapshot of homelessness on the streets, in shelters and in transitional housing on one night in January. It reaches only those who are willing to be surveyed, and it likely discounts plenty of people, including those without documents. It is widely acknowledged as an undercount.
PSU REPORT: 38,000 homeless in Portland area, more than five times Point in Time estimates
And if we focus on unsheltered homelessness in Oregon — the people sleeping on the streets — Oregon is a national outlier: according to HUD data, we have the second-highest unsheltered population of people at 64%, just behind California at 72%. (Hawaii is next at 57%). All of these states have high housing costs.
This concern about unsheltered Oregonians prompted House Speaker Tina Kotek to float the idea that the Oregon Legislature declare a “state of housing” emergency to more quickly get money to communities across the state, as well as lift permitting and zoning hurdles that make siting shelters difficult.
“Until we have solved the overall housing supply problem, people need to be able to get into shelter,” Kotek told me this week.
“No one is blaming local governments,” she said. “We as a state want to be partners. We want to free up dollars and technical expertise so we have more shelter beds.” In other words, communities should not have to go it alone.
Kotek was drawing motivation from a report that the Oregon Housing and Community Services published last August, the Oregon Statewide Shelter Study, which estimated nearly 6,000 shelter beds are needed statewide, particularly for “people of color, persons who do not have documentation of citizenship, youth, families where one parent is male, and people who are LGBTQ.” The report also emphasized that in order to be part of a larger effort to support people with housing, these shelters need to be low-barrier. This includes removing qualifications like sobriety, focusing instead on getting people into safe conditions as the first-order public health concern. It also means allowing people to keep their pets.
That matters for people like Sara Moore, who Street Roots interviewed in Coos Bay for our Housing Rural Oregon series. She explained she couldn’t get into the area shelter because she had pets. She did, however, have a van, so she was able to park in the Walmart parking lot.
A State of Housing Emergency should also support people like Sara — who have access to a vehicle — find legal options to park, and also, legal places to camp. The technical assistance that the state offers in terms of shelter siting and permitting could be offered in these areas, too. Shelters don’t work for everyone, and when they do, it is important that they are set up to support people to get housing and services, something the Oregon Statewide Shelter Study emphasizes.
“If this were an earthquake, we wouldn’t be sitting around,” Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek told me. “We have to push ourselves to address this with an emergency state of mind.”
I mentioned to Kotek that the dangerous outcome of an emergency state of mind can lead to draconian measures — sweeps, rounding people up, warehousing them.
“This is not about criminalizing the activity of being unhoused,” she emphasized. “People are not at fault. The system is at fault.”
But it is important that we all are watchful to ensure that this state of emergency is used for pushing resources from the state to local communities — which is very important — and isn’t co-opted for punitive measures.
Portland enacted a state of emergency in 2015, extending it three times into next year, and the city has used it to speed up the permitting processes for shelters and day storage units, as well as design review processes for affordable housing. These are all constructive steps, with still more potential. City officials emphasize the difficulty of siting new self-governed camps on public land. Surely this is a technical fix that could be addressed in a revised state of emergency.
It should be noted that Hawaii, who comes in third behind Oregon for the number of unsheltered people, has had a state of emergency over the homelessness crisis since 2015.
This is a statewide crisis. Too many are teetering on the brink of homelessness. Yes to declaring a statewide housing emergency if it means life can be a bit less arduous for people on the streets now, while we also fight for the housing they have a right to.
Director's Desk is written by Kaia Sand, the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand.