Opinion: Lasting investments, not stop-gap measures, needed on homelessness - OregonLive

Marisa Zapata

Zapata, who has a doctorate in regional planning, is associate professor of land use planning at Portland State University and director of the Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative.

Portland metro area voters passed one of the nation’s largest homelessness services measures in 2020 — the Supportive Housing Services fund. Starting in July 2021, metro counties began receiving Supportive Housing Services funds that will eventually total a combined $200 million a year to prevent and end homelessness for thousands of Portlanders, especially people of color.

In the first nine months alone, the funds helped 729 households into permanent supportive housing, which is long-term rent assistance paired with support services, with an additional 677 households in the final stages of placement, according to Metro regional data. It housed 298 people through rapid rehousing (short-term rent assistance and supports), added 577 shelter beds, and increased outreach to people living on the street — building trust after years of trauma.

The funds also helped 2,500 households with eviction prevention services including rent assistance to avoid homelessness.

But we are seeing a pivot in Portland to invest in initiatives that could criminalize homelessness instead, such as mass sweeps, camping bans and calls for forced relocation. The rallying cry behind these efforts is to address the humanitarian crisis, and yet some are advocating for increased police enforcement and redirecting these supportive services tax dollars away from the housing and services now coming online.

We cannot miss this once-in-a-generation opportunity to broadly increase the supply of housing combined with supportive services. Research shows that access to housing and outreach are the most effective solutions to homelessness.

We know what we need to do. We need investments that last and not stop-gap measures that sometimes cost more than solutions. For instance, some of the city-sanctioned camps cost more per night than rent vouchers or permanent supportive housing, according to county data. And camps could take just as long to come online as affordable housing.

Now is the time to work with elected officials to help them keep their commitment to ending and preventing homelessness. A few things Portlanders and community leaders can do:

• Advocate for more long-term rent vouchers, eviction prevention measures and greater housing development, including culturally specific housing to address the disproportionate homelessness rates for people of color. Be a YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) for policies that produce more affordable housing and support the needed revenue increases.
• If you are a landlord, welcome people with vouchers, lower credit scores or those exiting incarceration. Learn more about landlord opportunities through the Move In Multnomah program.
• City and county leaders and community organizations should create funds to purchase low-cost rental buildings when they are for sale to keep rents low and families in place. We are losing these affordable housing units faster than new ones are being built.
• Local leaders should use federal dollars to purchase hotels to provide the private space and bathrooms people living outside need and want right now. People living in this type of alternative shelter in the Seattle area were five times more likely to exit homelessness for permanent housing compared to traditional shelters, according to a study by University of Washington.
• The city and county should also invest in permanent public bathrooms like Portland Loo and urban care stations that serve everyone – not only people experiencing homelessness. Expand garbage collection to remove debris generated by sheltered and unsheltered community members.
• If you create alternative shelter, build it in a way that helps rather than harms. Research shows that villages work best when they are small and informed by the people most impacted — the ones who will live there. They work best when they’re a choice and not forced relocation under threat of punishment.

We need to respond to the humanitarian crisis of unsheltered homelessness, and we need to respond without jeopardizing the only solution to ending it — housing.

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Opinion: Lasting investments, not stop-gap measures, needed on homelessness - OregonLive
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