Mental Health Association of Portland

At least 56 people experiencing homelessness died in Multnomah County in 2012, an average of at least one every week. That is the troubling finding of Multnomah County’s second annual “Domicile Unknown’’ report released Friday, May 10.

READ – Domicile Unknown, 2012 (PDF, 406KB)

The analysis by Dr. Paul Lewis, Deputy Health Officer for Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, is based on data collected by the Oregon State Medical Examiner and Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office. The report is produced by Multnomah County, the City of Portland and Street Roots.

Dr. Lewis said the ages of the people involved, and the causes of the deaths, suggest that virtually all the deaths were avoidable. More than half the deaths were accidental and included death from overdose, drowning, burns and hypothermia. The average age of death was about 46.

“Forty-six is too young to die,’’ Lewis said. “Especially since most of these deaths are preventable.’’

Israel Bayer, executive director of Street Roots, said that, “as a community we should pause and understand that each one of these people was a human being who passed away far too early in life.

“Housing is not only the safest way to provide people adequate health care, it’s also the most cost effective,’’ Bayer said. “We know that by providing people a safe and stable home that we can give people the opportunity to live long and successful lives.’’

Multnomah County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury said the report is key to understanding the impact of homelessness.

“This report makes it clear why we need to end homelessness in Multnomah County,’’ Kafoury said.  ”Each of the people in this report was someone’s brother, sister, mother, father or neighbor.  Their lives matter and so do the lives of every person in our community.”

By David Stabler, The Oregonian, Friday, February 24, 2012

Benjamin Brink / The Oregonian
Because it was full, the Right 2 Dream Too tent area in Old Town turned away the two men who were later shot under the Morrison Bridge. The organization turns away an average of 20 people a night.

Hours before they bedded down Tuesday night under the Morrison Bridge, Carter “Joe” Hickman and Albert “Allen” Dean, sought shelter at an Old Town homeless tent area, said Ibrahim Mubarak, who runs the shelter. They were turned away for lack of room — an increasingly common event for Portland-area shelters.

At 5:12 a.m. Wednesday, Portland police officers responded to reports of a shooting under the bridge’s east side. Hickman, 57, and Dean, 43, were shot while they slept. Both are expected to survive. The assailant remains unknown, but police have a description of the vehicle.

The two men had shown up Tuesday night with a third friend, Mubarak said. “All three were turned away because we were full,” he said. Each night, the shelter, Right 2 Dream Too, turns away an average of 20 people, he said.

Mubarak knows Hickman, who remains in fair condition at OHSU Hospital. Hickman frequently slept at the shelter, which occupies a vacant lot by Old Town’s Chinese Gates. Dean was treated for a grazing wound and released.

The circumstances of Wednesday’s shooting underscore the area’s severe shortage of homeless shelters. Demand has never been higher, advocates say.

Hickman and Dean are two of the roughly 2,700 homeless people who sleep outside, in vehicles, abandoned buildings or in Multnomah County’s emergency shelters. In Washington County, 1,356 people were homeless or in transitional housing on a one-night count in 2011. Clackamas County homeless numbered 2,747 last year, with only 48 beds in emergency shelters.

Homelessness increased 8 percent in Multnomah County in 2011, according to a survey by Portland Housing Bureau and Multnomah County. In January, 361 men and 173 women were waiting for a room at Transition Projects Inc., Portland’s largest homeless agency for single adults.

Portland Homeless Family Solutions, which shelters families, used to overfill three or four times a year. Today, the agency fills 75 percent of the time, said Brandi Tuck, Executive Director. “For years, we have not had less than capacity,” she said. Twenty families are waiting for shelter. The average wait is one month.

Portland isn’t alone. A woman waited six months to get into My Sister’s House, a woman’s shelter in Gresham, said director Becky Coleman. Another shelter, My Father’s House, is also full.

“A lot of homeless just camp out on the Springwater Corridor or downtown in alleyways, underneath awnings,” Coleman said.

Washington County’s three homeless shelters are full, too. In January, 64 families were waiting for emergency shelter, said Annette M. Evans, Homeless Program Coordinator for Washington County’s Department of Housing Services.

Demand no longer spikes only in winter, advocates said.

“When I first came here 17 years ago, we would see a substantial difference between summer and winter,” said Doreen Binder, Transition Projects’ Executive Director. “We don’t see that anymore.”

When winter warming shelters close in spring, demand at other emergency shelters rises, said CityTeam’s Roger Burke.

With shelters chronically full, it’s hard to track changes in demand. But another yardstick, meals served to the homeless, shows increased demand. Zarephath Kitchen in Gresham served a record 142,000 meals last year. Portland Rescue Mission on West Burnside normally serves 250 to 350 meals a day. Last Tuesday, it dished up 420.

Age is another change in homelessness. Today’s homeless men and women are younger than in previous years. More mothers and children are homeless, as well, advocates said.

“We used to see a lot of two-parent families with kids who had been around for a while,” Tuck said. “Now, we’re seeing younger parents with toddlers.”

At 5 p.m. Thursday, a line of men stretched down a Portland block, each hoping to secure a mat to sleep on the floor at CityTeam International, a homeless shelter on Grand Avenue.

When the doors opened at 6 p.m., the line surged forward. Within 10 minutes, all but six of the 51 spots were taken.

“We can’t keep up,” said Rev. Chuck Currie, who has worked with homeless issues for 25 years. “Portland is the national model for how to address homelessness, but that only shows you how bad off the rest of the country is.”

Deborah Kafoury, a Multnomah County commissioner who works on housing issues, points to programs such as Rapid Rehousing for Homeless Families as one solution. The program seeks to get families into permanent housing quickly, often by working with landlords.

“When families lose their housing, we’ve found jumping through a bunch of hoops is not helpful to anyone and costs more money,” she said.

Also see:

Portland Mercury: Drive-By Shooting Injures Two Homeless Men Sleeping Under Morrison Bridge
Portland Mercury: Homeless Men Shot Under Morrison Bridge Had Been Turned Away from Packed Old Town Tent Refuge
KATU TV: Two homeless men shot in ‘drive-by’ under Morrison Bridge
KPTV TV: Homeless men shot while sleeping under Morrison Bridge
Rev. Chuck Currie: Statement On Ash Wednesday Shootings Of Homeless Portlanders
The Oregonian: Two Homeless Men Shot While Sleeping Under Morrison Bridge
The Oregonian: Police Release Suspect Information, Victim Names in Homeless Shooting
Right 2 Survive Pdx: Right 2 Dream Too Response to Shootings of Two Unhoused Men

‘Like’ this Posting on Facebook

From the Lund Report, September 15, 2011 – by Amanda Waldroupe

The state’s new funding formula for allocating money to counties for mental health services takes funding away from some counties, gives money to others

Multnomah County’s board of commissioners voted this morning to use $8 million dollars of its one-time only and general fund reserves to make up a total of $12.4 million in state cuts affecting the county’s safety net services.

The county is using a mix of one-time only funding, remaining general funds, and the county’s Verity funds to pay for the programs, which include everything from domestic violence services, anti-poverty services, and behavioral health care.

Obviously, not all programs and services are being saved from the chopping block: the county is choosing to accept state cuts effecting mental health services for adults and children; gang intervention; juvenile detention services, and community prevention services relating to the county’s sexual transmitted disease (STD), HIV, and Hepatitis C program.

Much furor came from $5.56 million in cuts to the county’s mental health crisis services, which serve uninsured and low-income people with severe mental illnesses. Those cuts would have eviscerated the county’s safety net services, said County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury.

Approximately $4.7 million of the cuts were added back by the state, and preserve funding for adult residential services, addiction services, and commitment services for adults sent to the Oregon State Hospital when they have a severe mental breakdown.

It is not clear why the money was added back, but could be the result of a September 13 meeting between Joanne Fuller, the county’s chief financial officer, and Richard Harris, administrator for the state’s Addictions and Mental Health office. Neither returned a call for comment.

But at a September 13 Oregon Health Policy Board meeting, Harris told the board that the state’s mental health services serve less than forty percent of the demonstrated need. “As the population has grown, we have not kept up with services,” Harris said.

The cuts are the result of a new state funding formula that calculates how many state dollars each county gets for crisis mental health services. Karynn Fish, spokeswoman with the Oregon Health Authority, says the funding formula is based on a county’s population, as well as the prevalence of individuals with severe mental illness living in each county.

The funding formula applies to all counties with populations over 50,000 people, and the formula’s purpose is to equitably distribute state dollars.

Fish said the state cuts will not be finalized for another six weeks. But projections, which were shared with legislators in January, show that not all counties lost state funding. Some are actually getting additional funding, such as Deschutes, Lane, and Washington counties.

The Authority, Fish said, was “working with counties to make them aware of the fact” that the funding formula would change.

“There’s winners and losers,” said Rep. Tina Kotek (D-Portland), who has followed the state cuts. “The funding formula has helped faster growing communities.”

Cindy Becker, the administrator of Clackamas county’s human services department, said the county is losing approximately $285,000 from the state, but she is not alarmed by it. “It’s always a big issue for us,” she said. “You cut the funding, but the services don’t go away.”

Jessica van Diepen, the interim executive director of the Association of Oregon Community Mental Health Programs, said the recently announced cuts did not put the association in a “panic.”

“We were part of that conversation, originally” to change the funding formula, she said. And she points out that “we live in a world, in the last 10 or 15 years, where we see cuts on a regular basis…it’s a no win situation when money is short.”

During a county budget work session last week, Fuller said that the state cuts may become the “new normal” for funding mental health services.

Kotek hesitated to agree, but did say that Multnomah County needs to work with surrounding metro counties to find an appropriate balance of services.

“The funding formula is here to stay based on population,” she said. “[Multnomah County] argues that they serve more people. If they are serving people from other counties, they need to show that. It’s not okay for the counties to have their own silos.”

The Lund Report requested that Multnomah County provide data showing the prevalence of mental illness in Multnomah County. Dave Austin, the county’s spokesperson, did not provide that data.

Becker points out that some counties do not have enough people needing particular services, such as acute care or detox services for people with alcohol and substance abuse addictions, to warrant operating particular services in the county.

“We don’t have the critical mass to be able to sustain them on a county by county basis,” she said, making it necessary for some counties to contract with others that do have those services, such as Multnomah County. “We can’t afford to have those services.”

Kotek said she has requested that an informational hearing be held during the Legislature’s interim meeting in November to learn more about the funding formula’s effect on counties. Van Diepen did not say that the funding formula necessarily needs to change.

She said, “it’s a healthy tension we need to continue to have conversations with each other about.”

From the Lund Report, September 8, 2011

Services are proposed to continue for one year using one-time only money and reserves in light of $11 million in state budget cuts

September 8, 2011—Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen is proposing to use one-time only money and reserves from the county’s Verity funds to sustain funding for mental health crisis services and other social services effected by state cuts totaling $11 million, which were announced late last week.

Joanne Fuller, Multnomah County Chief Operating Officer

The county is using a total of $7.8 million from a mix of general fund money, one-time only money, and the county’s Verity account to mitigate the state cuts.

“The mitigation proposal is designed to address the state cuts…in a very conservative way,” Joanne Fuller, the county’s chief financial officer, told the board during a Tuesday work session.

The proposal does not restore funding to all programs. The juvenile justice system is proposed to be partially cut, including alcohol and drug treatment and a gang outreach team, and services for mentally ill people committed to the Oregon State Hospital when that person experiences a sudden mental health crisis.

“We looked to fund those critical services that we felt the community couldn’t live without,” Fuller said.

Layoffs are also expected; however, it’s unclear how many positions will be cut.

Fuller said the proposal gives the board and the county’s human services department time to consider how to deliver services more efficiently and effectively. The worse case scenario, she said, is that services will be funded for one year, then eliminated.

“A lot of these cuts may be the new normal from the state,” Fuller worries. “The chances of getting money back in many of these areas may be very slim.”

The state cuts, Fuller said, are the result of a new funding formula that determines how much funding the counties receive for social service programs. Previously, such formulas were based on a variety of factors, including demand for services. Now, the formula is based solely on a county’s total population.

“We knew Multnomah County was going to get less money,” but it ended up being “a lot less money,” Fuller said.

County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury said state legislators have reacted with surprise to the reductions caused by the new formula, not “realizing the cuts were basically eviscerating the entire mental health system.”

“I’m still trying to figure out why nobody seemed to know this was coming,” she said.

If the commissioners approve Cogen’s proposal, the county will have approximately $2.2 million left in unspent one-time only money, and $100,000 in unspent general funds.

Fuller said it makes sense to use one-time only money from a service delivery perspective, but that it puts the county in a less sound financial position moving into the next budget year. “Verity is not an ongoing resource,” she said.

Cogen expects more funding cuts as the federal government attempts to trim the national deficit. And he expects the Legislature to make more cuts during its February session. “This is not the only bad news we’re going to have this budget year,” he said.

“The cuts that are coming will probably be even worse than these,” Kafoury said.

In a moment of grim irony on Tuesday, Cogen summed up what local governments may expect if the economy doesn’t improve and cuts to human service programs continue: “The good news is that they’ll have to stop cutting eventually, because they will have nothing to cut.”

From the Oregonian, June 21, 2011

Homelessness in Multnomah County jumped about 8 percent between 2009 and 2011, according to a new report that looked at how many people were living on the streets, at emergency shelters or in motels with vouchers earlier this year.

READ – ‘The Portland Housing Bureau, Multnomah County and their partners worked together to produce the “2011 Point-in-Time Count of Homelessness,” a comprehensive report examining a point-in-time snapshot of homelessness in our community.’

Precisely how much worse the picture has gotten amid the recession depends on how one defines homeless.

The report, compiled by the city of Portland and Multnomah County, studied four types of homelessness: people who sleep outside, in short-term shelters, transitional apartments or on the couches of friends and relatives. In those categories, homelessness increased between 7 and 9 percent between 2009 and 2011.

Generally speaking, the number of homeless Multnomah County residents grew from 2,542 to 2,727 in the two-year period. Using the broadest definition of the term, which includes all four categories, the increase went from an estimated 14,451 to 15,563.

“Even one person on the street is too many,” said Portland Commissioner Nick Fish, who oversees the Portland Housing Bureau.

Other statistics from the survey, released Tuesday but conducted in January, reveal additional trends. For example, 12 percent of the homeless population identified themselves as military veterans this year, although only 9 percent of Multnomah County’s overall population falls into that category. In 2011, 35 percent of homeless women said they had experienced domestic violence.

African-Americans comprised 18 percent of the county’s homeless population, but only 7 percent of the general population. Native Americans saw a similar over-representation. They accounted for 9 percent of the homeless population compared with 2 percent of the overall population.

The down economy explains most of the uptick, city and county officials said. But better, more exhaustive methods for counting the homeless also contributed to the increase, which they characterized as relatively slight given the historic proportions of the recession.

“The fact that there is anybody who is homeless in our community is something to be concerned about,” said Multnomah County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury.

The count took place on Jan. 26, because federal rules say the survey must occur when the number of people in emergency shelters is typically highest. If local governments want federal grants to address homelessness, they must provide updated figures for homelessness every two years. The state of Oregon also requires an annual tally of shelter occupants for budgetary reasons.

Doreen Binder, executive director of the Portland nonprofit Transition Projects, said Tuesday the latest snapshot of the county’s homeless population doesn’t account fully for the impact of the recession on low-income residents.

Her agency gives people free laundry detergent, toiletries and food so they can save their money for rent. “Just because they’re not living on the street, doesn’t mean their needs haven’t increased,” Binder said.