The Board of County Commissioners on Thursday, July 11, gave final approval to a three-year intergovernmental agreement between the City of Portland and Multnomah County that resets, outlines and strengthens both jurisdictions’ long-time shared work addressing homelessness.
The version of the agreement approved Thursday includes amendments passed by the Portland City Council on July 3; the Board approved an earlier version of the agreement last month.
The intergovernmental agreement is the result of over a year’s work between the City and County, and charts a new path forward for the two jurisdictions in their response to homelessness, including a new governance system, new goals and metrics, more transparency around data and outcomes, and clarified roles and responsibilities.
It evolves the response beyond what was just one downstream agency, the Joint Office of Homeless Services, and creates an entire Homelessness Response System that broadens and unifies the work by adding stakeholders who are all accountable for addressing homelessness and its root causes.
The Homelessness Response System will oversee and execute a newly crafted Homelessness Response Action Plan that is also part of the agreement approved Thursday.
“Supporting people to move from the street to safety is our number one priority. This roadmap creates the Homelessness Response System we need, establishing clear goals, strengthening coordination and engaging all of our community partners to produce a one-community approach,” said Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson. “Passage by both of our boards puts new governance and accountability in motion and facilitates our ability to implement this Homelessness Response Action Plan together.”
The passage of the intergovernmental agreement and the Homelessness Response Action Plan dovetails with the County and City’s accelerated work to address homelessness, including the opening of additional permanent supportive housing and expanded daytime services, and making progress toward significantly expanding shelter and opening a 24-hour drop-off sobering center.
On June 13, 2024, the Board of County Commissioners voted 4-1 to approve the previous version of the intergovernmental agreement, with Commissioner Sharon Meieran voting no. The agreement then went through an approval process by the Portland City Council, through which the City made amendments focused on the Homeless Response System’s Steering and Oversight Committee. The vote to approve the amended version Thursday was also 4-1, with Commissioner Meieran also voting no. The vote to approve the amended version Thursday was also 4-1, with Commissioner Meieran also voting no.
The City’s amendments, approved by the County with Thursday’s vote, add five non-voting member positions to the steering and oversight committee of the Homelessness Response System, including the CEO of Health Share of Oregon, the CEO of our local federal housing authority Home Forward, one business sector representative, one behavioral health expert who is not a currently a contracted provider with the City or County, and one person paying the Supportive Housing Services tax who is not a Portland resident.
Previous versions had specified that an East County leader would also serve on the committee, and the City amended the agreement to specify that the leader be a mayor of an East County city.
During Thursday’s Board session, Commissioner Meieran proposed an amendment to the contract that would incorporate additional timelines and goals for the Homelessness Response System and Joint Office of Homeless Services — goals that were added by the Portland City Council to their July 3 ordinance approving the intergovernmental agreement, but not to the agreement itself.
The Board voted 2-3 in favor of Meieran’s amendment to add the language, with Chair Vega Pederson and Commissioners Jesse Beason and Lori Stegmann voting against adding language from the City’s ordinance to the agreement. But Commissioners indicated that they would consider creating a County ordinance, like the City’s, incorporating those goals in the coming weeks.
Vote follows year of progress at the Joint Office — building block for plan
The approval of the intergovernmental agreement caps off a year of progress for the Joint Office of Homeless Services, which made significant strides in FY 2024, including:
- Meeting — and likely exceeding — its Metro-approved spending goals for the Supportive Housing Services Measure, also completing a Corrective Action Plan with Metro.
- Receiving positive audit findings from the County Auditor, including an audit showing that Joint Office housing placement data was 96% reliable, and an audit showing that the Joint Office met or exceeded all metrics for monitoring contracts and processing invoices.
- A report from the Department of County Management found the Joint Office’s year of work to formalize and strengthen its approach to contract administration could serve as a model across County departments.
- Deploying $10 million in workforce stabilization grants, helping address one of the major barriers to previous underspending: provider workforce capacity challenges.
- Exceeding the housing placement goals for two rehousing initiatives focused on people experiencing unsheltered homelessness: Housing Multnomah Now and Oregon All In.
“The Joint Office of Homeless Services has made significant progress this year. But we know that our department alone cannot address both the upstream causes and downstream impacts of homelessness,” said Dan Field, director of the Joint Office. “It will take multiple jurisdictions and our entire community to make a significant impact on this crisis. This plan and agreement create a path forward for all of us to move together and make a difference.”
Board comments on the vote
For full comments, and to watch the entire discussion, click here.
“I have described the reasons that I fundamentally disagree with the HRAP and HRS many times. I have expressed that the most telling reality here is that neither the City nor County can tell us what their basic rules or responsibilities are in regard to homelessness. I've asked the question for months, and I still don't have an answer. And that is really concerning,” said Commissioner Meieran. “I would love to be wrong about all of this, but it is a flawed plan from beginning to end, based on a flawed foundation with flawed deliverables.”
"Our constituents want to see less finger pointing, more collaboration, and better results so that homelessness is a rare and brief experience—and one that still honors people's humanity. It can be none of this without cooperation and compromise across sectors, governments, and elected leaders,” said Commissioner Beason. “I support this IGA in that spirit.”
"Approval of this agreement with the City will make a measurable impact on our homeless crisis today by increasing our shelter capacity by 1,000 units and providing people on the streets with basic services and a path to housing,” said Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards. “I also firmly believe there should be greater accountability and transparency for the work and the outcomes, and I support the County committing to the same set of reporting and accountability benchmarks that the City did.”
"Today is a historic day. It is a day of commitment, collaboration, and a promise to do as much as we can to alleviate the human suffering we see on our streets everyday," said Commissioner Stegmann. "I appreciate the intentional focus on priority populations: people leaving carceral settings, people who are discharged to the streets from medical facilities, and our youth, whether aging out of systems of care or living in neglect. If we can really solve homelessness for those populations, I think we will accomplish a great deal to decrease the increase in houseless individuals. This is an incredibly important IGA, and quite possibly one of the most important things I have the privilege to vote ‘yes’ on.”
