Commissioners from Multnomah County and the City of Portland voiced support Tuesday for a proposal to create a central office to oversee homeless services.
The proposed Joint Office of Homeless Services would align service delivery across jurisdictions with the goal of making things easier for people in need to access help.
“After years of talking about having a less fragmented system of human services, we are finally going to make it happen,” Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury said. “The real potential for this lies in the city and county joining forces to address homelessness. We have joined forces politically through the executive committee of A Home for Everyone and the joint office takes this collaboration to the next level.”
Chair Kafoury said the joint office also will allow the city and county to be better partners to area nonprofit organizations, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, business and faith communities, and most importantly, people living on the street and in shelters.
“Though the staffs of both governments have coordinated for many years, we still have two different contracting systems, two different offices and two different data collection systems,” City Commissioner Dan Saltzman said. “I believe this proposal will allow the new joint office to be more efficient, more nimble and easier to navigate for those who are needing our assistance.”
The systems that deliver homeless services currently are divided between the City of Portland and Multnomah County, with each providing similar homeless services to different populations.
The city has traditionally focused on single adults, while the county has traditionally focused on families, youth and survivors of domestic violence.
The Joint Office of Homeless Services will bring things under one roof, guided by the shared values and common agenda of the A Home for Everyone initiative, a community-wide effort to house Multnomah County residents.
“We have the shared vision. We have the track record that this collaboration actually works and makes a difference, most dramatically in putting 695 homeless veterans inside over the course of the last year,” Mayor Charlie Hales said. “And now we have a way to institutionalize that better way of doing the work.”
Hales, Kafoury and Saltzman all said they were committed to establishing the joint office.
The joint office has been recommended by a steering committee made up of city and county staff, which noted that most assessments of the systems identified the fragmentation in the current system of services as a shortcoming. Members of the committee presented their proposal for establishing the office by July 1 during a joint briefing to city and county commissioners. The commissioners did not vote on the proposal during the meeting.
The proposed joint office would go beyond the alignment of homeless policy to consolidate the administration of city and county homeless services, Multnomah County Chief Operating Officer Marissa Madrigal said. The office would be jointly funded and jointly governed. It would be hosted at Multnomah County, reporting directly to Chair Kafoury.
“We are not shifting responsibility for addressing homelessness from the city of Portland to Multnomah County,” Kafoury said. “We will both remain responsible. But by uniting our efforts, we will do a better job.”
The functions of the office will be regulated by an Intergovernmental Agreement, which will need to be approved by both boards before the office is formed.
As part of the transition, three county employees, currently working for the Department of County Human Services, and four city employees, currently working for the Portland Housing Bureau, will move to the joint office. The office also will include the director of the A Home for Everyone Initiative and an assistant from that office, for a total of nine full time employees.
The affected city and county staff administer contracts for services, homeless street counts and one-night shelter counts, manage systems of care, oversee system reporting and evaluation, and write proposals to and monitor funds issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program.
The Department of County Human Services will continue to be responsible for providing a variety of related services including housing stability, income and benefits acquisition and domestic violence prevention. Likewise Portland Housing Bureau will continue to oversee housing development and preservation; tenant protections policy, planning and implementation and data management.
Commissioners were supportive of the plan. Multnomah County Commissioner Jules Bailey called it a logical extension of the collaboration established through the A Home for Everyone initiative.
“This is a longtime coming...and a really important change and innovation in how we deliver a coordinated response to one of the greatest challenges we face as a community,” Bailey said.
From left: City Commissioner Steve Novick, County Commissioner Jules Bailey, Mayor Charlie Hales, Chair Deborah Kafoury, City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, County Commissioner Judy Shiprack, City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, County Commissioner Diane McKeel, City Commissioner Nick Fish