PORTLAND — Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury today announced that longtime homeless services administrator and equity specialist Shannon Singleton will take over as Interim Director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services on March 28.
Singleton replaces Marc Jolin, the founding director of the Joint Office, who has resigned but will continue in the role until Singleton starts. Singleton will step in while a national search for a permanent director is under way. Jolin will continue to support the office's work during the transition as a director of special projects.
The announcement is the result of weeks of succession planning with Jolin, as Chair Kafoury and City leaders simultaneously transition the rapidly growing Joint Office from its successful initial phase as a small cross-jurisdictional endeavor toward a much expanded, sustainable department.
“Shannon’s administrative skills and tenacity will be the bridge between the extraordinary foundation Marc built and the Joint Office’s future,” said Chair Kafoury. “With Shannon’s leadership, we can urgently address the current crisis on the streets, while refining our longer-term direction and hiring a permanent director.”
‘He never asked anyone to do what he was not willing to do himself’
When the City and County agreed in 2016 to formally combine homeless services, Jolin built the new office from a mashup of employees, contracts and practices from the two jurisdictions. He emphasized both housing and shelter, seeing both strategies as urgent, as the new office went on to help thousands of people end their homelessness.
As part of that relentless focus, Jolin strongly championed supportive housing for people experiencing chronic homelessness. Supportive housing pairs intensive support services with rent assistance, and it serves people both in homes already on the market and in newly constructed affordable developments.
Portland City Council and the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners both voted in 2017 to massively expand in supportive housing, looking to create or finance 2,000 more of those specialized apartments over 10 years.
Within two years, the Joint Office and Portland Housing Bureau had identified almost half of those new homes. That work set the table for the Metro Supportive Housing Services ballot measure, approved in 2020, which will fund thousands more supportive apartments across the region.
At the same time, Jolin managed the largest expansion of publicly funded shelters in history, from 650 beds in 2015 to roughly 2,000 once COVID-19 restrictions lift, with more on the way.
Jolin’s Joint Office also transformed shelters into year-round, 24-hour low-barrier facilities welcoming pets and couples, in modern spaces. He opened the doors to motels and villages, and a new outreach supply depot downtown, and the Joint Office forged new ties with mutual aid groups, outreach teams and volunteers.
“Marc is the architect of a massive community alignment around how to approach houselessness that never existed before,” said Chair Deborah Kafoury. “Yet he never asked anyone to do what he was not willing to do himself — from personally delivering cold weather gear at 4 a.m. last Tuesday to having the long conversations it can take to build trust with our neighbors on our streets.”
Nowhere was that ethic more obvious than during severe weather, when Jolin and his team partnered with emergency managers to open a robust, no-turn away network of warming and cooling centers, complete with transportation and food.
He coordinated a similar, but much larger and longer-lasting emergency response during COVID-19 that added new shelter spaces and allowed the community to avoid significant outbreaks in days before vaccines were available. And because of smart leveraging of COVID funds, many of those new beds will serve the County for years to come.
At the same time, in the middle of the pandemic, Jolin helped lay the foundation for the the Supportive Housing Services Measure, which is the single largest ongoing infusion of new resources into this work. The measure, at its full allocation, will more than double the Joint Office’s budget.
“This measure was a game-changer for our community, and it was important for all of our neighbors without housing that we get it right,” Jolin said. “This work will define the next phase of the Joint Office, and I’m proud that the entire Multnomah County Board of Commissioners approved our community-led plan.”
“We redoubled our community’s commitment to helping people actually end their homelessness right now, offering urgent housing and support services,” he added. “But we also worked deliberately to grow every other part of our work, from behavioral health to shelter beds to street outreach to shower trailers to trash pickup. And I’m proud those new programs are already making a difference – and will make a difference for years to come.”
“I want to thank Marc Jolin for serving our most vulnerable with unparalleled dedication for over 7 years,” said Portland Commissioner Dan Ryan. “I am confident in Shannon Singleton’s ability to lead the Joint Office of Homeless Services as Interim Director during this transition. I am looking forward to engaging with our community as we conduct a national search for a permanent replacement.”
When Jolin began discussing his timeline for stepping down, Kafoury said she knew the hand-off had to take place under an experienced, committed leader.
“Shannon is the person who asks, ‘Where can I be best be of service at this time?’” Chair Kafoury said. “We agreed that steering the Joint Office through this evolution is one of the most important contributions she could make.”
A lifetime spent battling for housing stability and ending homelessness
In accepting the offer to serve as interim director, Singleton will end her campaign to be elected the next Multnomah County chair.
“There is no one-size solution to ending housing instability and homelessness,” Singleton said, “But with the foundation that Marc Jolin has laid, we’re in a position to build the additional partnerships and pathways to deliver the rent assistance, shelter and support services that we know make a difference.”
For Singleton, responding to homelessness began when she was young. Growing up in Philadelphia, Singleton said her mother would ask her to give up her bedroom for a few days — or weeks — to house someone in need. Singleton carried those family values into a career in social work, where she saw firsthand how housing instability kept people from being able to heal from trauma, substance abuse or even to fully engage in their lives.
“If they didn’t have a stable place to live,” Singleton said, “none of those other things could happen.”
In Portland, where she earned her master’s degree in social work, Singleton rose from a resident assistant to the director at the Salvation Army’s SAFES women’s shelter, the first low barrier shelter in our community. She managed a transitional housing program, day center and clinical services at Bud Clark Commons, and the first mental health street outreach team for Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare.
She joined the Portland Housing Bureau, where she led the development of the A Home for Everyone initiative’s Safety off the Streets Plan that, for the first time, added safe rest sites, transitional campgrounds, and other alternative shelters to our homelessness services system, before taking over as executive director of JOIN, a street outreach and housing services organization.
Most recently, Singleton served as the housing policy advisor and then the Director of Equity and Racial Justice for Gov. Kate Brown. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked with Public Health to develop shelter guidance statewide, legislation to support the eviction moratorium, helped develop the state’s first long-term rent assistance program and other measures. She has led the Governor's Racial Justice Council which is the first statewide effort to center the voices of people of color in the Governor's budget and policy development work.
“Shannon is a warm, engaging leader, but as passionate as she is about people, she is equally focused on data, analysis and best practices,’’ Chair Kafoury said. “She jokes about nerding out on statistics, but those skills will strengthen the Joint Office at a critical time.’’
Singleton will join a Joint Office leadership team that includes Deputy Director Joshua Bates and Peggy Brey, former interim Multnomah County Chief Operating Officer and Director of the Department of County Human Services, who recently joined the office as a quality improvement consultant.
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