Mental Health Association of Portland

A report released June 9 provides some insight into Oregon’s rising homeless population, and shows that mental illness and substance abuse are significant factors in a problem affecting 19,207 people statewide.

The report, based on a one-night count by Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS), also indicates 31 percent of those experiencing homelessness are children. The number of homeless families with children rose 33 percent from 2009.

OHCS deputy director Rick Crager said unemployment was a primary driver in Oregon’s “unprecedented” level of homelessness. Mental illness and addiction, however, also play a huge role.

According to a press release, the 2010 count probably understates the extent of the crisis. Even so, the report’s numbers are startling, with a total increase in homelessness of 12 percent over 2009.

The people counted had been homeless for an average of 12 months.

Among single adults in Oregon, 1,825 self-reported they were homeless due to a drug or alcohol problem, and 1,127 cited a mental or emotional disorder. Multiple responses were allowed, so some individuals may have given both reasons. These factors were cited almost as often as the most common response, unemployment.

The state also looked at how many homeless Oregonians had “secondary population characteristics.” These were not necessarily the same issues that individuals said had caused their homelessness. However, the numbers tell a similar story. Among all ages and living situations, 2,358 were listed as having mental or emotional problems, 2,829 had problems with substance abuse, and 1,015 have both a mental illness and an addiction. Individuals could be counted in more than one category.

Among Oregonians meeting the statewide definition of chronic homelessness, 1,555 had substance abuse problems, 1,326 had an emotional or mental disorder, and 618 had a dual diagnosis.

In Multnomah County, among the chronically homeless, substance abuse (462) was the most common secondary characteristic, followed by mental or emotional disorder (372) and dual diagnosis (221).

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, nationally about half of people experiencing homelessness suffer from mental health issues. At any given point in time, 45 percent of homeless people report they have had mental health problems during the past year. About 25 percent of the homeless are affected by serious mental illness. Homelessness also creates and exacerbates mental and physical health problems.

The problem will likely be worse in 2011. Lisa Joyce, of OHCS, says the 9 percent across-the-board state budget cut means Oregon will provide services to 2,000 fewer homeless people next year.

For further information: One-Night Homeless Count data by county

Opinion from Anna Griffin of the Oregonian, October 13, 2009

Here’s how things are supposed to work in the grand old U.S. of A.: You volunteer for the military. You fight for your country. You come home to a hero’s welcome, and whatever support you need to settle into civilian life.

Yet across the country, some 131,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. The majority served in the military during the Vietnam War era, which means many of them have been struggling with the root causes of homelessness – addiction and mental illness – for going on three decades.

Last year, the federal government awarded $75 million in rental assistance through something called the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program. Vets who qualify receive monthly rent checks from Uncle Sam and an array of services that includes psychological counseling, drug and alcohol rehab and help actually finding a place to stay.

Social workers consider these the golden tickets of housing support because they address both the immediate need and longer-term problems that cause homelessness.

Portland won 70 vouchers in May 2008. One year later, just 22 were in use. That’s a lot of money sitting in a government account somewhere, and a lot of veterans who spent last winter on the streets or a friend’s couch.

“It was inexplicable,” said City Commissioner Nick Fish, who runs the Portland Housing Bureau.

Administrators at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center say they were overwhelmed, like many VAs across the country.

“It’s a really time-intensive program, because there is so much emphasis on services,” said Ann Shahan, who coordinates VA anti-homelessness efforts in a region that includes Portland. “Nationally, there were issues with the voucher money being approved before local offices had caseworkers in place. That created bottlenecks.”

That makes sense, right? Bureaucracies, particularly the federal kind, are big and unwieldy. Change takes time.

Still, city housing leaders say part of their frustration – and they were frustrated enough to complain publicly even though they have to deal with the VA on a daily basis – came from spending months trying to get a straight answer from Pill Hill. They say the program just didn’t seem like a priority.

“Nobody seemed to know why it wasn’t working,” said Jill Riddle, who runs rent assistance programs for the Housing Authority of Portland, the quasi-public agency that doles out federal money.

In May, Fish, Riddle and Steven Rudman, the Housing Authority’s executive director, trekked up Marquam Hill to meet with hospital executives. It’s amazing what can happen when the people in charge actually talk: The next day, the VA replaced the bureaucrat who had been overseeing the vouchers. In the four months since, another 32 veterans have found housing.

But the delays had real consequences: This summer, the feds awarded another 10,000 vouchers. Portland received only 35, half as many as last year. Although Shahan denies it, city housing officials say they’ve heard from VA officials that we received fewer this year because we didn’t use the ones we already had.

“It’s a shame for our community,” Riddle says. “But at least we’re in a position now to show the people who make these decisions that we’ve learned from past mistakes.”

And not a moment too soon. Winter is coming. The rain is here. Of those 131,000 or so homeless vets, almost 2,000 are in the Portland region. They risked their lives – and in some cases, their mental health – keeping the rest of us free. A place to live seems like the least we can give them in return.

From OPB.org, October 12, 2009

The joint Portland-Multnomah County Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness first saw the light of day in December 2004.

City commissioner Erik Sten rolled it out.

Erik Sten: “I think most people laugh when the government comes out with a plan that says ten years from now, we hope to end homelessness – but we’re doing it anyway because we believe it could happen. It could happen if we all do the work we want to do.”

The event drew the Bush Administration’s top homelessness official, Philip Mangano.

Phillip Mangano: “We already knew that chronic homeless people – the ten to twenty percent of the homeless population, consumed more than half of all the resources we spend on homelessness. But recent studies show that this is a disproportionately expensive population in mainstream healthcare.”

In the first two years of the plan, OPB tracked a handful of chronically homeless people who received shelter and services through the Ten Year Plan.

People can be stuck on the streets for a variety of reasons, often related to mental illness or drug problems.

Steve Powell was homeless because of a physical disability. Powell’s rheumatoid arthritis means he can’t use his hands to work.

He spent 15 years living outdoors. Much of that time, he was camping on a hill in Portland’s Forest Park. On a drizzly morning four years ago, Powell had just moved into an apartment, and was settling into his new life.

Steve Powell: “It’s nice to look out there and know I don’t have to get in it. Like up there in the hills in my tent, sometimes I’d be cuddled up in some blankets, just to stay warm and now, I can sit back and look at it, instead of cuddled up under something.”

Four years later, Powell still enjoys living indoors.

Steve Powell: “Yes, I’m still here, and unless something happens, I’ll stay here, you know.”

The 58 year-old Powell has two homeless friends, he refers to just as Mike and Mark, who come by occasionally. Powell says Mike wants to move inside.

Steve Powell: “As far as Mark, uh, I have no idea what he has in his head. I mean if I was him, I’d be getting off that hill because he’s getting visited by the rangers and the police, and he’s going to wind up in jail.”

Powell says he might’ve wound up dead, if he’d stayed outside. He’s heard that falling trees struck his favorite camping spot in a recent storm.

The Ten Year Plan has housed more than 2000 chronically homeless people like Steve Powell in the last four and a half years.

Powell might still be homeless if not for one of the priorities of the Ten Year Plan: permanent, subsidized shelter.

But building those places is expensive and complicated. To understand just how hard it is, let’s go back to where the Ten Year Plan was announced: the musty lobby of an old Ramada Inn in Portland’s Rose Quarter.

Again, former federal housing czar, Phil Mangano.

Phil Mangano: “And here – right here, in the building, the promise of the future isn’t it? Permanent housing for the homeless at Rose Quarter Housing.”

Ed Blackburn with the housing and treatment non-profit, Central City Concern, was optimistic in 2004, that the Ramada would soon become Rose Quarter Housing.

Ed Blackburn: “So we hope to start that renovation and have it ready, I think some time in late summer for occupancy. It may be a little sooner than that, or a little later than that.”

Fast-forward almost five years, and Rose Quarter Housing is still a construction zone, with hard hats required. Ed Blackburn says there are two big reasons the project has taken so much longer than expected.

One is best demonstrated on the top floor. It’s been completely gutted.

Ed Blackburn: “The leaks were coming through the roof, down into the walls, and because they had so many layers of vinyl wall paper on it, it wasn’t leaking out, you didn’t see it, until you started tearing the walls apart. And once you found that, we had to replace the walls, because they’d had too much water in them for too long.”

Those construction problems became even costlier, when problem number two surfaced last year. The financial meltdown that forced hundreds of Oregonians into homelessness, also tightened up the credit needed to finish housing projects.

Now, some of the rooms on a lower floor are finished. Ed Blackburn can stand on the new tile floor and admire a river view and the fall colors of Portland’s west hills. Blackburn says Central City’s five-year slog to turn this hotel into housing mirrors the struggles of the Ten Year Plan.

Ed Blackburn: “It’s not easy ending homelessness and this building wasn’t easy to keep financed. We found all things we weren’t expecting when we started tearing things apart. We worked real hard to keep things together, but it’s moving. And there are going to be setbacks but you keep moving. It’s kind of like a metaphor for the whole Ten Year Plan, this building.”

Ultimately, Blackburn agrees with city officials who don’t see much need to change the Ten Year Plan, halfway through. Portland’s new housing bureau director, Margaret Van Vliet, says the Ten Year Plan might need tweaking, but not a fundamental change.

Margaret Van Vliet: “Are we exclusively looking at the chronically homeless, or primarily looking at chronically homeless versus the newly homeless, because of the explosion in the number of newly homeless, to some extent, we’re still reacting.”

Blackburn says even though the economy has made matters worse, the Portland area is better off, thanks to a countywide focus that started when the Plan to End Homelessness was still just an idea.

Ed Blackburn: “You know that metaphor of water coming into the bathtub, and you’ve got a spoon, but it’s coming in faster than you can get it out, so the tub keeps filling up. Well, we got a big bucket about six years ago, and we started getting out the water faster than the homeless population was increasing. But now that spigot’s been turned on higher. So we’re going to have to work harder.”

Meantime, folks like Steve Powell, are grateful to have a bath tub to come home to – even as he thinks about his friends, who don’t.

READ – Don Clark / Roger Shiels Agreement, 1989
READ – Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness, – Portland, Oregon
READ – City of Portland – Sit / Lie Ordinance
READ – City of Portland – Sidewalk Management Resolution final draft, October 12, 2009

OUR COMMENT: Chronic homelessness is not a result of misfortune. The chronically homeless are substantially made up of persons with an untreated – or mistreated – mental illness or addiction.

The city has made some minor improvements for finding and funding housing for persons who are chronically homeless, but the Federal “Housing First” model has proven to be a substantial failure. Without additional treatment slots funded by the state, without supportive services, without opportunity for employment, most persons who are chronically homeless will often return to homeless, burning yet another set of bridges as they fail to meet bureaucratic expectations.

By Mike Reese, Guest opinion posted in the Oregonian, August 9 2009. Mike Reese is Central Precinct Commander with the Portland Police Bureau.

Enforcement tool addresses behavior of ‘road warriors’

As the Central Precinct commander for the Portland Police Bureau, I oversee the enforcement of the sidewalk obstruction ordinance and interact regularly with the homeless and their social service providers.

As a founding member of the Street Access for Everyone committee (SAFE), I have looked carefully at the issues of sidewalk obstruction and homelessness for the past three years. The SAFE committee was instrumental in securing enhanced services for the homeless and developing a sidewalk obstruction ordinance that balanced the needs of the homeless and the downtown community.

In June, a Multnomah County judge said the ordinance is pre-empted by the state’s disorderly conduct statute. In a previous ruling, however, a different Multnomah County judge upheld the ordinance and said the SAFE process was a hallmark of good public policy. The city attorney and Portland City Council are seeking clarification on these competing rulings before deciding what adjustments to the current ordinance are needed.

With the ruling in June, the only tool police now have to address sidewalk obstruction is the state disorderly conduct statute, a criminal offense, which raises the question: Should the police arrest someone engaged in sidewalk obstruction using a criminal statute? It seems a little like driving a thumbtack with a sledgehammer.

The ordinance, on the other hand, strikes a balance that allows police to keep the sidewalks free for pedestrian travel while recognizing the many exceptions that may legitimately apply (people waiting for goods or services such as TriMet riders, medical issues and protests). The police can only issue citations after warning a person that their behavior is a problem, and the charge is a violation that can result in community service or a fine.

Most important to note is that the majority of citations have been issued to “road warriors,” young adults between 18 and 30 years of age. They’re the ones engaged in aggressive panhandling and intimidating behavior in downtown. I’ve talked to nearly a hundred of these young adults over the past three years. Most are addicted to heroin or alcohol. They travel across the country and don’t have ties to our community.

They have made a lifestyle choice to live on the streets, and they consistently refuse housing, treatment or other services. Social service providers have told me that this group is very difficult to connect with and often preys on the traditional homeless population.

The sidewalk obstruction ordinance is one of the few tools the police have that allows us to engage the road warriors and local street youth in a fairly low-level enforcement manner. In fact, I’ve had several “sidewalk” conversations with the young woman whose case resulted in the recent court ruling. My hope is that this dialogue will help support and encourage her to become clean, sober and permanently housed.

The notion that being homeless means that you can engage in anti-social behavior is not reasonable. So is the idea that the city cannot reasonably regulate the sidewalks in downtown for the common good. Somehow all of us have to find a way to get along. We as a community have to decide what behavior is acceptable and what is not.

As part of the SAFE process, homeless providers and advocates, business leaders, downtown residents and police officers came to the same conclusion: Blocking sidewalks and intimidating other people is not acceptable. Through this ordinance, we had an effective way to address this behavior. The sidewalk obstruction ordinance made downtown a more welcoming and safe place for everyone.

OUR COMMENT – Mike Reese misunderstands his role as a police officer, and some basic issues around homelessness, and, perhaps in the case of these “road warriors,” addiction and mental illness. This misunderstanding, that police officers are responsible somehow for providing leverage to cause persons with addiction or mental illness to seek treatment, has two basic problems. One, his basic assumption is wrong – police officers are neither the leverage or the fulcrum toward addiction treatment. Two, Reese clearly hasn’t the education or orientation to what addiction or mental illness is; Reese writes, “They have made a lifestyle choice to live on the streets, and they consistently refuse housing, treatment or other services;” this is amazingly false, akin to writing that prostitutes like to have sex with twenty men a night.

This misunderstanding is perpetuated by bad management in our police department, management which allows individual officers to become entrepreneurs and social reformers.

EXTRA – Sit /Lie Dies – Portland Mercury, July 2 2009

From the Corvallis Gazette-Times, August 1 2009

Ricky Frew isn’t blaming anybody for his situation. He’s perfectly content to hang out on the streets of downtown Corvallis, drinking with his friends and sleeping wherever the night finds him.

But it’s no way to recover from surgery.

Frew, 58, was admitted to the emergency room at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center July 7 with an old leg fracture that hadn’t healed properly. A doctor inserted a metal plate and six screws to knit the bones back together, bandaged and splinted the leg and told Frew to stay off it for six to eight weeks.

The same day, the hospital discharged Frew with vouchers for cab fare and one night in a downtown motel. A local nonprofit got him a wheelchair and a few more motel vouchers.

On the night of July 9, Frew was back at the Corvallis hospital. His incision had bled all over the motel’s carpet and sheets. The manager told him not to come back.

“My stitches come loose,” Frew said. “(Blood) was coming out the back of my cast. It was all red down in there. I knew something was wrong.”

This time he got some fresh stitches, some medicine to help his blood coagulate and a cab ride to the Signs of Victory shelter in Albany. He spent a few nights there before migrating back to Corvallis and the streets he calls home.

Julie Manning, a vice president with the hospital’s parent company, Samaritan Health Services, believes Good Sam and its discharge planners handled the situation responsibly.

“One of our social workers got involved and made a number of calls on his behalf to try to find a safe place for him to be,” Manning told the Gazette-Times.

“Based on the resources available for this person in that circumstance, that seemed to be the best option.”

The discharge dilemma

For people like Frew, the options in Corvallis are limited.

Community Outreach Inc. operates a 70-bed shelter and frequently accepts homeless patients being discharged from Good Samaritan, both from the general population and the psychiatric ward. It also has a clinic staffed with volunteer doctors and stocked with donated medications (Samaritan supplies a large share of both).

“I can’t think of a time when someone who’s been medically fragile has been turned away from here,” said Rich Donovan, the nonprofit’s executive director.

But Community Outreach also operates rehabilitation programs for drug and alcohol addiction, and it has one ironclad rule: The shelter won’t accept anyone who hasn’t been sober for at least five days.

That rules Frew out.

“We don’t do detox. It’s dangerous,” Donovan said, because people fighting a long-term alcohol addiction can go into violent seizures.

“The bugaboo is if you have somebody who’s just hell-bent on drinking after they’ve had surgery, nobody knows what to do with that population.”

For a few months each winter, local volunteers operate an “all-comers” shelter for homeless men, sober or otherwise. But it closes during the day and has no medical facilities.

The First Christian Church downtown serves free meals to those in need and hosts a daytime drop-in center for the homeless, but it’s not set up to be a shelter.

Nevertheless, the church’s pastor says, there have been at least three cases where homeless patients left Good Samaritan in taxicabs and were delivered to First Christian.

“They were discharged from the hospital and brought here and left on our doorstep,” the Rev. John Evans said. “There probably have been others who were left in other places downtown.”

Manning said she couldn’t comment on those claims without knowing the details. But she did say that Good Sam can’t keep patients indefinitely and that “the larger community” has a role to play in providing for the needs of homeless patients.

“We’re a hospital. We care for people in an inpatient setting, and we provide outpatient services,” she said. “When it is no longer medically necessary for a patient to be in the hospital, that’s when we begin to move into transitioning them to (someplace else).”

Evans acknowledged that Samaritan faces a difficult dilemma, caught between the need to free up beds for paying patients and accepting after-care responsibility for charity cases no one else wants to take.

“It is clearly wrong that people who are unable to care for themselves are discharged without anyplace for them to go,” Evans said. “That’s not entirely the hospital’s fault. It has to do with our health care system and the way we view people at the lower end of the social scale.”

Who’s responsible?

The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires all hospitals that accept Medicare dollars to treat anyone with an emergency medical condition, whether that individual can pay or not.

“Anyone who comes through the emergency room, we have a responsibility to stabilize them,” said Andy Van Pelt, communications director for the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems.

Last year, Van Pelt said, Oregon hospitals provided more than half a billion dollars’ worth of charity care for indigent patients.

Samaritan Health Services gave away $8.3 million in charity care throughout its five-hospital network in 2008, including $3.9 million at Good Sam.

But just where does the hospital’s responsibility to care for those patients end? At discharge? Or does it continue throughout their recovery? And who should pay for that continuing care?

Those questions came into sharp focus in 2006, when the city of Los Angeles took legal action against a number of area hospitals for dumping homeless patients in the city’s Skid Row district. In response, the state passed a law requiring hospitals to improve their discharge procedures, but that didn’t completely resolve the situation.

“One of the problems was that there aren’t enough beds to discharge these patients to,” said Linda Rodriguez of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, noting that Los Angeles has roughly 81,000 homeless people but only about 5,000 shelter beds.

Most homeless shelters, she adds, are not equipped to take care of people with medical needs, especially if those needs are complicated by drug or alcohol dependency.

“In a lot of ways, hospitals are put in a bind in being able to find an adequate place to place people — which doesn’t absolve them from responsibility,” Rodriguez said.

In the wake of the Los Angeles scandal, some California hospitals have opted to keep homeless patients until their recovery is complete rather than risk charges of dumping.

That can be expensive. But Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, argues it can be far less spendy than the cost of repeat emergency room visits by people who get sick again after returning to the streets too soon.

“If people don’t recover, they just keep coming back,” Roman said. “That’s a cost we all bear.”

A novel approach

It’s a nationwide issue, one that hospitals and homeless advocates have been grappling with for years.

“It’s actually a very big problem,” said Laurel Weir, policy director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

“Hospitals are not sure what to do, and they’re not getting support from the local government or the state government,” she added. “The most effective solutions we’ve seen so far are broader partnerships between hospitals, local governments and social service organizations.”

One promising development to emerge in recent years is an approach known as medical respite care. The idea is to provide temporary housing and low-cost medical care to homeless people who aren’t sick enough to be in the hospital but are too fragile to return to the street.

“People are discharged pretty quickly these days from the hospital to the home, where they can recuperate,” said John Lozier of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, a Nashville, Tenn., nonprofit that promotes the idea of respite care. “But without a home, you don’t have the things one comes to expect that one needs to recuperate.”

There are about 40 such programs around the country, Lozier said, including one run by Central City Concern in Portland.

“They have sprouted up independently with encouragement from each other and from our organization,” he said. “It’s a widely perceived need.”

A handful are freestanding programs, but the majority are collaborative efforts that take a variety of forms. Some are housed in homeless shelters or combine motel vouchers with visiting clinicians, while others involve arrangements with nursing homes, assisted-living facilities or treatment centers.

A 2006 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that respite care programs resulted in a significant dropoff in expensive emergency room treatment. Compared to patients who did not receive respite care, those who did averaged five fewer inpatient days and more than a third fewer emergency room visits over the next year.

“The trick is, like everything else, getting it funded,” Lozier said. “But in a lot of places, hospitals are beginning to understand it’s in their self-interest to provide the resources for these kinds of places.”

‘There’s always more’

Like other communities around the country, Corvallis is involved in developing a 10-year plan to end homelessness, an effort led by Benton County. The draft version of the county’s plan covers a lot of ground, including the availability of health care for the homeless.

Manning, who serves on the committee developing the plan, is hopeful it will help mend some of the holes in the social safety net.

“Would it be nice if there were additional options? Absolutely,” she said.

“And as part of this community’s work around the 10-year plan to end homelessness, these are some of the very questions being addressed: What can we as a community do to address this?

“And there’s always more we can do.”

OUR COMMENT – Excellent story by Bennett Hall.

Editorial from Anna Griffin of the Oregonian, July 31 2009

Clayton Lance isn’t some pinko, Communist, civil libertarian do-gooder.

The St. Helens lawyer earns a good living, usually representing paying clients accused of serious crimes like murder, assault or driving the getaway car for skater Nancy Kerrigan’s attackers.

But when another lawyer asked for research help about Portland’s “sit-lie law,” he got curious. Wasn’t that thing ruled unconstitutional? he wondered. Why am I still hearing about it?

Lance went to a coffee shop to read up on the law, which bans sitting or resting on certain Portland sidewalks. Then he called soup kitchens, looking for someone cited under the law who needed a lawyer.

“It was just so obvious that they couldn’t legally do what they were trying,” Lance said. “I didn’t even have time to finish my coffee before I figured that out.”

And yet, here’s a prediction: Sometime soon, the Portland City Council will again try to prevent sitting on the sidewalk as a way to address police and shopkeeper complaints about panhandlers and vagrants. Soon after that, a judge will throw the law out.

It has happened twice in five years. Each time, courts declared the law unconstitutional. Last month, a judge tossed the civil complaint against Lance’s eventual client, 31-year-old panhandler Katherine Perkins.

Judges, it turns out, don’t appreciate laws limiting the right to peaceful assembly. They tend to frown on attempts to punish everyday behavior that no reasonable person would consider a crime.

To be clear, our sidewalks require work. Particularly in nice weather, central Portland resembles a combination living room/Motel 6 for street kids and panhandlers. Downtown businesses need help competing against suburban shops, where customers can usually reach their destination without being bugged by requests for spare change, the stench of urine and sweat or other reminders that poverty and mental illness really do exist.

City leaders, however, haven’t figured out how to do that without singling out the homeless. Plenty of restaurants offer sidewalk seating without proper permits. TriMet riders violate the ordinance all the time by slouching to the pavement while awaiting buses or trains. Yet in its first 13 months, almost 75 percent of those receiving sit-lie warnings or citations were homeless.

Courts have rejected similar bans across the country. Judges seem inclined to allow them only when cities take extraordinary steps to shelter everyone who wants it, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.

As a city, we haven’t done that. Yes, taxpayers have spent millions to fight homelessness, but the focus is on permanent housing. A court fight over urban renewal spending has delayed a planned $45 million day center for homeless men and women. The City Council has added benches, showers and public toilets, but not as fast as advocates hoped.

There will always be people who opt for the streets. The challenge is to shrink the population as much as possible with shelters and services before giving police legal tools to move those who remain.

That’s going to take something like Miami’s meal tax, which generates about $9 million annually to fight homelessness, or Seattle’s affordable housing levy, which voters will consider extending this fall to raise $145 million over seven years.

Special taxes to help the poor: Can you imagine that happening here?

More likely, city leaders will do more well-intentioned talking, then take another stab at a sidewalk law.

And more lawyers will be like Lance, who says his firm will defend for free anyone cited under sit lie:

Eager to do some pinko, Communist, civil libertarian good.

From KGW.com, July 16 2009

FOR REFERENCE – Oregon is ranked #1 in homelessness in the Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Resource Exchange’s Fourth Annual Homelessness Assessment. Over 20,000 Oregonians were homeless on a one-night count in January 2008, 0.54 of our population – one out of 200 people. Over the past 18 months social services have been eliminated and Oregon’s economy has turned downward – so there’s reason to suspect the number of homeless persons has increased.

Oregon ranks third in year-round beds provided per capita – 14,215.

If you’ve noticed more homeless on Portland’s sidewalks you’re not alone.

The federal government has just counted more homeless per capita in Oregon than anywhere in the nation.

Why are Portland city leaders frustrated? Portland is four years into it’s ten-year plan to end homelessness.

Despite finding housing for hundreds of chronically homeless, and despite reaching 60 percent of the plans goals, the demand for service is increasing because of the economy.

Also, in 2007, the Portland City Council gave police the authority to write non-criminal citations to anyone responsible for blocking city sidewalks.

A judge last month ruled the city ordinance unconstitutional because it’s pre-empted by state law so, effective immediately, Portland Police are no longer enforcing the sidewalk ordinance

This, at a time when homelessness is peaking in Portland and sleeping on sidewalks is becoming a more and more common sight.

“The whole principle was we want everyone to be able to use sidewalks,” said the city’s Housing Commissioner, Nick Fish. “The law was never intended to target any one particular group but with this ruling it means we have one fewer tool to use to keep the sidewalks unobstructed.”

Compounding the legal challenges, Oregon is now ranked first in homelessness, second in joblessness, and third in hunger nationally.

Social service providers like Transition Projects, Inc. are stretched thin.

“We’ve got about 400 people on the waiting list now,” said TCI’s Community Service Director, Fern Elledge.

Commissioner Fish is seeking solutions and looking for help from the public.

He and Commissioner Amanda Fritz will co-host town hall meetings this weekend and next Tuesday.

“Rather than engage in a divisive debate about our sidewalks let’s engage the whole community in a debate about how we solve the problem,” said Fish. “This cornerstone of solving the problem is this resource access center.”

The $47 million resource access center will break ground in October, offering shelter, counseling, showers and job resources to help stabilize the lives of those in need. The city is paying $27 million of the total cost.

“Throwing money at the problem really encourages more of that problem,” said John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute.

Charles says Portland is “rolling out the welcome mat” to the homeless by increasing funding services.

He also criticizes city policies that encourage urban density because those policies make housing less affordable.

Charles says Dignity Village, a self-governed homeless village sanctioned by the city on land near PDX Airport, is the perfect model of self-help among the homeless.

Homeless villager Gaye Reyes agrees.

“The government doesn’t help us here. We’re self-supporting, self-sustaining. We built these (temporary houses) ourselves. Nobody came in and did it for us, Reyes said.

Fish says Dignity Village is a successful experiment on a small scale, but it cannot serve the 1600 people sleeping on the streets of Portland.

Fish says the city should stick to its ten-year plan to end homelessness even in tough times.

EXTRA – The Housing and Urban Development’s Homeless Resource Exchange
READ – The HUD HRE Fourth Annual National Homelessness Assessment (PDF 5.6 MB)
EXTRA – the Housing Authority of Portland’s Resource Access Center planning page
READ / LISTEN – Report Says Oregon Leads Nation In New Homeless People, OPB.org
READ – Oregon leads nation in homeless count, Portland Tribune
READ – Portland grapples with homeless issue after ruling on sidewalk ordinance, Oregonian
READ / WATCH – Report: Ore. has highest per-capita homelessness in the nation, KDRV.com Medford
READ – Oregon homeless to get help from federal agency, Oregonian
READ – Home Again, A 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness – brochure (PDF .5 MB)
EXTRA – Portland Housing Bureau, Portland agency responsible for coordinating services for homeless persons

From the Portland Mercury, July 2 2009

City Stops Enforcement after Constitutional Ruling

One of the most glaring black spots on Portland’s pristine liberal consciousness was excised late last week when Police Chief Rosie Sizer ordered her officers to stop enforcing the controversial sit-lie law.

Sizer’s decision followed a sweeping constitutional ruling by Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Stephen Bushong on June 19. “I ruled that [the sit-lie law] is preempted by state law,” says Bushong. “It prohibits conduct permitted by state law, and that’s not permitted under article 11, section two of our Oregon Constitution.”

The Portland Business Alliance (PBA) has been the driving force behind the law, even though PBA Vice President of Downtown Services Mike Kuykendall continues to insist that the law was not created to target homeless people. However, 133 of the 170 individuals who received warnings and citations under the law in its first 13 months reported being homeless. The city also failed to cite a single business owner under the ordinance, even though unlicensed sidewalk signs technically qualify for citation, according to city attorneys.

The PBA did not respond to inquiries seeking comment by press time.

“It’s great to see the end of this, because it was something that really looked unfair,” says Patrick Nolen, an activist with Soapbox Under the Bridge who has fought the law since its inception.

“I’ve been working for a couple of years on this and I’m happy to see it go away,” he continues. “Although I don’t think that just ‘not enforcing it’ is the way to go. I think we need to get it off the books because it’s still an unfair law.”

City Commissioner Amanda Fritz extended the ordinance for six more months in early May so that she and City Commissioner Nick Fish could conduct “outreach” around it. Fish was unavailable for comment by press time, while a Fritz staffer told the Mercury, “The commissioner is not ready to give interviews yet.”

The status of the planned outreach process remains unclear.

Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman says the city has not yet decided if it will appeal Bushong’s ruling. Meanwhile City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who has continued to oppose the ordinance on civil rights grounds, was busy climbing Mount Hood on press day and could not be reached for a victory comment. His chief of staff refused to supply one, either.

From the Portland Tribune, May 29 2009

One-night count could be skewed by weather and agency improvements

Oregon’s sagging economy could be behind a large increase in the number of homeless people across the state.

Information released Friday by the Oregon Housing and Community Services found a 37 percent jump from a year ago in the number of homeless people counted during a January one-night statewide census.

The count found 17,122 people who were homeless, up from 12,529 people in January 2008.

Skyrocketing unemployment numbers and some wage reductions during the recession could have contributed to the number of people who live on the streets.

“The numbers confirm what we already knew, families and individuals can’t afford to pay for one of their most basic needs – a place to live,” said Rick Crager, Oregon Housing and Community Services deputy director.

“It’s a new face of homelessness that we’ve not seen before,” said Corky Senecal, director of Housing and Emergency Services at Neighbor Impact in Central Oregon, an area hard hit by unemployment and resulting homelessness. “Last year these people would have read the stories in the paper, watched them on the evening news – and very possibly would have written a check to an organization that helps the homeless. Today, they are homeless.”

Among the state’s most dramatic differences discovered from last year:

• A doubling in the number of homeless veterans.
• A 100 percent increase in the number of childless couples who are homeless.
• A 150 percent increase in the number of people tallied in the street count.
• More than four times the number of households living in doubled-up situations with friends or family.
• An additional 1,150 people who said they were camping.
• A 32 percent increase in the number of unaccompanied youth who were living on the streets.

In the most recent count, 9,890 individuals – nearly 60 percent of the people identified as homeless – did not receive services or shelter, according to the state information. People in more than 2,000 households are on the streets or living with friends or family. And close to half of households counted had a member with an emotional, mental or substance abuse issue.

Crager said the one-night census numbers, while dramatic, could have seen big increases because local agencies have improved the way they find and track homeless folks. “There are more homeless on the streets, and we’re better at finding them,” he said, citing homeless numbers rising from 3,294 on the street in 2008 to 8,561 in 2009.

Weather can be another factor, Crager said. In snow in 2008 hindered efforts in some rural Oregon towns to count homeless people. “In urban areas, cold weather can attract people to warming centers and other services, making them easier to find,” he said.

From the Oregonian, April 15 2009

Jeremy Karvonen’s slide into homelessness started two years ago when he lost his job as a welder. He used up his savings, then his girlfriend’s student loans. They lost their storage unit, then their apartment. For months, they slept on sidewalks, under bridges and beneath overpasses.

In February, Karvonen found a bed at Transition Projects, which runs several homeless shelters. He spends his days applying for jobs as a welder, a fast-food worker, a stock boy and a day laborer. Nothing’s worked.

“I don’t want to live like this, but there’s no one out there willing to help us,” he said. “I’ve got a nice resume and letter of recommendation. Most jobs don’t want to look at you if you’re homeless.”

Karvonen’s story echoes that of hundreds of homeless people counted in a January survey that found their overall numbers have jumped 13 percent since 2007 in Multnomah County.

According to the Jan. 28 street count, 2,438 people were homeless that night, including 1,591 who were sleeping outside — on the street, in an abandoned building or in a car.

The overall number is equivalent to the entire population of Estacada, or all of the students at Grant and Franklin high schools.

“That sort of increase is just terribly alarming to us,” said Tony Bernal, director of development for Transition Projects. “We’ve seen recessions come and go, but we haven’t seen anything along these lines before.”

The count is a snapshot that tallies people sleeping outside, in shelters or in hotels using federal Section 8 housing vouchers. Officials believe the actual number is much higher because it’s likely that not everyone sleeping outside was counted.

Portland Commissioner Nick Fish, who heads the city’s housing efforts, said much of the increase is due to the deepening recession that has boosted unemployment and bankruptcies. Twenty-one percent of the people contacted reported that they had been homeless less than six months. And the number of people who identified themselves as military veterans is up 75 percent.

“We think this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Fish said. “In our analysis, this is the result of the one-strike-and-you’re-out economy, and it’s going to get worse.”

Other cities, Fish said, have reported as much as a 30 percent jump. He credited the city’s aggressive 10-year plan to end homelessness with lessening the problem here. Portland and Multnomah County have found homes for about 6,000 people in the past four years under the initiative.

The city’s $33.75 million housing budget faces a $6.7 million hole — just under 20 percent — with the new fiscal year that begins July 1. Much of that is what’s called “one-time money,” paid from a current year general fund surplus that’s expected to disappear with lower tax revenues in the coming year.

During recent budget hearings, Fish asked the City Council to find the money for housing programs, and there is some support on the council for closing the gap. Without the money, Fish predicts the numbers of homeless people will increase.

Fish also is seeking about $28 million to build the Resource Access Center, a $50 million homeless shelter and service center planned for Old Town / Chinatown. The money was supposed to come from the River District Urban Renewal Area, but the city’s redrawing of the boundaries of that area is tied up in a lawsuit. City finance managers are looking for another source of money.

Meanwhile, the number of people on the waiting list for a bed at Transitions shelters has almost doubled in the past year, from 286 in October 2007 to 434 in October 2008.

Those numbers are likely to soar if the city can’t find money for programs such as rental assistance, Bernal said. And the recession also has affected shelter donations, which were down 30 percent from 2007 to 2008.

“What makes it worse is most of us doing this work are nonprofits,” he said. “And I don’t know anyone who didn’t take a hit.”

READ – Report: More homeless people on Portland’s streets, Portland Tribune, April 14 2009
READ – Portland’s 2009 One Night Homeless Street Count, Bureau of Housing and Community Development
READ – Shelters: who stays, who goes, Portland Tribune

From the Catholic Sentinel, March 19 2009

This parishioner would wash her doughnuts in the baptismal font.

She camped overnight outside the church doors and added words to the liturgical responses in a loud voice. She stole things.

One Christmas, just when other members of the Downtown Chapel in Portland were getting fed up, the woman, who has schizophrenia, went up to the crib scene. Would she take something? Would she knock figures over?

Instead, she pulled out a fine, folded purple blanket and put it in the manger, her gift to God.

Though few parishes face a situation this dramatic, every faith community has mentally ill members. From bi-polar choir singers to depressed catechists, parish life includes the same puzzling conditions as the rest of society.

Some simple steps can be be helpful, say two Portland Catholic mental health experts who have written a pamphlet for national distribution.

“The starting point is the issue of awareness,” says Dr. Tom Welch, a psychiatrist and member of St. Philip Neri Parish in Portland. “Mental illness is so common. Every family either has a member with a mental illness or knows somebody with mental illness. It is so prevelant but so often invisible.”

Welch is writing the pamphlet, based on an article for Church magazine, with Dorothy Coughlin, director of the Archdiocese of Portland’s Office for People with Disabilities.

Parishes may want to be supportive of mentally ill parishioners, but don’t know how.

The Coughlin-Welch pamphlet will give simple suggestions, insisting that no one needs to be a mental health expert to do what should be done.

Praying for those with mental illness during the petitions is a good start. That offers not only spiritual aid but also public recognition. Coughlin says the main idea is to extend genuine welcome.

“What is it that gives any of us hope when we are ill?” she says. “What we need is friendship, support — someone who understands me for who I am.”

Parish education programs on the topic and facts in the church bulletin would help, say the two writers. A 12-week seminar called Family to Family has proven effective at many churches.

Dr. Welch says the parish can offer what mentally ill people need the most — relationships.

The National Catholic Partnership on Disability has given a grant to the Archdiocese of Portland to raise awareness about mental illness at parishes. That is paying for the production of a DVD for Catholics. Oregon parishes also can look to the Downtown Chapel for experience.

Holy Cross Father Ron Raab is in his eighth year at the chapel, a church with many homeless and mentally ill worshipers.

“I really believe that the last frontier of our culture and the last frontier of the church is dealing with mental illness,” Father Raab says. “It is something we fear. We can talk about helping ‘those poor people,’ but when it comes to being in relationship, which is what the Gospel is all about, we have not learned that when it comes to mental illness.”

From the Vancouver Columbian, January 30 2009

Hundreds accept a chance at improving their lives

Toni doesn’t know why she’s alive today.

She figures she shouldn’t be. She tried to inject bleach into a vein and doesn’t know what went wrong.

What went right, she said with tears in her eyes, is that her mother found her where she was staying at a local motel and got her to the hospital. She was diagnosed with severe depression and began the rounds of addiction treatment programs until she found one that worked.

Now she’s living with her mother and spending her days at the Val Ogden Center, a vocational rehabilitation “clubhouse” for people with mental illness.

She’s been clean and sober for 90 days, she said. She’s 22 years old, eight months pregnant, single and a veteran of the streets.

“I had nowhere to go, nothing to do,” Toni said. The Val Ogden Center “has been a family for me.”

Free services and that sense of family drew 340 needy people Friday to Project Homeless Connect, a single-day clearinghouse of services and resources for the homeless held at the Red Lion Hotel at the Quay. That’s a big jump from last year’s first local Homeless Connect event, which drew 200 to Hudson’s Bay High School, according to Kelly Adams, spokeswoman for the organizing Council for the Homeless.

Dozens of service providers and hundreds of volunteers were on hand, from mental health clinics to the state veterans department, and from barber shops offering free cuts on site to laundromats passing out coupons for free washes. They said they were gratified that the event was so successful — with a line snaking out the door and a scarcity of elbow room inside at times.

They were also alarmed.

“It’s frightening that it looks like this,” said Janet Bentley-Jones, recovery programs director at New Life Church, which runs counseling programs, support groups and a gym for people fighting drug and alcohol addiction — nearly all of whom are homeless, she said.

Given the sour economy, Bentley-Jones said, she’s bracing herself for funding cuts for social services, and a resulting rise in misery.

“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” she said.

“The need is great, and there are not enough resources,” said optometrist Suzanne Zamberlan of Evergreen Eye Care, who was doing eye exams for those who signed up on what turned into a long waiting list. Zamberlan said homelessness brings a greater risk of long-term eye infections and greater risk of glasses’ getting broken, stolen or lost.

“Most folks I’ve talked to haven’t had an eye exam in 10, 15, 20 years,” she said. “Some have prescriptions but don’t have glasses.”

In the end, 30 eye exams were conducted and 12 vouchers for free glasses distributed. Eighty people got haircuts.

Something special

Council for the Homeless executive director Craig Lyons said Clark County has in place a great system for tracking and aiding the homeless, and a unique sense of volunteerism to boot.

“We recorded something like 14,000 hours of volunteer time last year,” he said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s something special about this town.”

This second annual Homeless Connect event came the day after Lyons and many other outreach workers and volunteers scoured the county to conduct a rough single-day homeless census. Results won’t be available until late February, but last year the final number was 1,062 people counted as living locally with no fixed address.

This year, Lyons is hoping the excellent local system and its volunteers will balance out an economy in freefall.

Second chances

Folks in weather-beaten jeans lugging backpacks or shopping bags enjoyed a free lunch of turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls and cake served on white tablecloth.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” said Al Shamshak, 52, who’s been in the Vancouver area for a couple of months. “I’m very grateful for everything these people are doing today. They treat you like a real human being, and that means everything.”

Shamshak, a New England native — he introduced himself as “The Shak from Boston” — said he’s been on his own since he was 16, and spent 17 years in prison for attempted murder. He’s looking for a job as a cook, he said, and he sent out 47 résumés last month without a response.

“It’s disheartening. I worked all my life,” he said. “Sometimes you get overwhelmed. I think about doing the wrong thing sometimes, but I know I won’t benefit.”

Across the room, James Ingram was digging through used books for his daughters, who live with their mother in Portland. He came up with a couple of American Girl paperbacks and a Nancy Drew mystery, and proudly discussed his girls’ growing reading skills.

His first daughter was murdered at age 17, he said, and his whole world “turned upside down.” He wound up living on the streets, living on alcohol, he said. Eventually he suffered a series of small strokes, he said. By then he’d already pulled himself together, checked his pride and asked for help.

“It came down to, am I going stay on the streets and die, or see my girls graduate?” said Ingram, 57. “I’m getting a second chance to be a dad.”

Always hope

Adams of the Council for the Homeless said she spent the day listening to hard-luck stories in amazement.

“Some of these things you hear — it’s like, if they haven’t killed you, nothing will,” she said. “It just shows, no matter how far you fall, there’s always hope.”

Folks who came to get help were glad to talk about their hopes.

Ingram, who’s got a small temporary apartment — what’s called “transitional” housing — hopes to go back to school, maybe brush up on his Spanish and become a translator. The Shak from Boston, who sleeps in the emergency shelter of a local church, said he’ll keep looking for work. And 22-year-old Toni, sleeping on her mom’s couch and battling depression, wants to open her own cafe one day.

“I’ll be your first customer,” said her friend, Janice Hafer, another Val Ogden club member. “You can put my dollar on your wall.”

From the Portland Tribune, December 18 2008

Report shows rise in homelessness – Successes shown by city’s ten-year plan appear to lose ground

For the past two years, city officials have announced with pride that their 10-year plan to end homelessness was working. An annual one-night count of the homeless showed there were fewer people sleeping on the streets in the downtown area, as well as throughout the city, each year.

Not anymore.

Local authorities think it’s probably due to the economic downturn, but whatever the reason, there are more homeless people in Portland, with the majority concentrated in the downtown area, than there have been in years.

According to the city auditor’s annual government performance report, released last week, homelessness in Portland is up 33 percent over four years ago, when the plan to end homelessness was initiated.

READ – City of Portland Service Efforts and Accomplishments: 2007-08 (PDF 1.1 MB)

Some officials and advocates for the homeless question the auditor’s numbers, which are based on one-night counts of people in Multnomah County shelters, rather than people actually sleeping on the street, but none deny that homelessness is on the rise.

It was just short of two years ago that then-city Commissioner Erik Sten announced after an annual one-night survey that homelessness had appeared to decline 39 percent.

Not everybody is sure it did.

“We’ve been saying for a few years that homelessness has been rising,” says Patrick Nolen, community organizer for Sisters of the Road Cafe, an Old Town nonprofit that serves meals to a predominantly homeless population.

Nolen says that five years ago, Sisters was serving about 250 meals a day, and now they are serving about 425 a day, almost all to homeless people.

Nolen says he has talked to a number of homeless people who told him they have never been counted in the city’s annual one-night survey.

Sally Erickson, homeless program coordinator for Portland’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development, agrees that homelessness is on the rise this year, but maintains the one-night counts are an accurate reflection of homelessness in Portland.

Erickson says that the one-night count showed that in 2005, 1,020 people were turned away from shelters – most in the downtown area. In 2006, 664 people were turned away from shelters in one January night. In 2007, 575 were turned away, indicating more progress. But in January 2008, 709 were turned away, showing the start of an increase.

Erickson says city and county efforts to put more homeless people into subsidized apartments and to build new shelters made a major dent in the homeless population. She places blame for the increase on the recession.

“If not for the ten-year plan, we would be in much worse trouble,” she says.

But the increase in numbers is not the only trend among homelessness in Portland, according to Erickson and others.

Israel Bayer, director of Street Roots, a nonprofit newspaper produced and sold by homeless people, says the paper, long based in Old Town at 211 N.W. Davis St., is planning to open a second office this summer. But it won’t be in the downtown area. Instead, Street Roots will open where more of the homeless appear to be moving, to outer Southeast and Northeast Portland.

The new Street Roots office will be at Northeast 81st Avenue and Northeast Halsey Street.

“We see poverty trends moving east,” Bayer says. “As more of Portland becomes gentrified, we’re seeing poverty at all levels moving out of the city.”

Bayer and others say many homeless who once slept on streets in the downtown area now camp in areas around I-205 and in the Gateway area of Northeast Portland.

Nolen, of Sisters of the Road, says that some of the movement of the homeless to Southeast and Northeast Portland is due to police enforcing the city’s controversial anti-camping ordinance in the downtown area. Portland police this spring conducted a sweep of a number of homeless camps beneath the city’s bridges, in some cases taking away possessions and handing out citations.

“The anti-camping law is enforced less the farther out you go,” Nolen says. “And the sit/lie ordinance (which prohibits daytime sidewalk obstruction) is only in the downtown core. The one effect it truly has had is, the more you push people along with it, eventually people move.”

But many advocates say social service providers, still predominantly downtown and in Old Town, have not yet caught up with the trend to the east, leaving many homeless there without services such as health care, food and shelter.

Last week the nonprofit Oregon Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of four homeless people, seeking to invalidate the city’s anti-camping ordinance.

The city’s annual one-night count of homeless people will take place January 28, and organizer Erickson says she could use help. Volunteers willing to spend a couple evening hours interviewing the homeless at either social service agencies or on the street are needed. To volunteer, go to www.handsonportland.org .

EXTRA – Home Again, A 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness PDF. A significantly flawed plan which fails to acknowledge the impact of untreated addiction and mental illness on homelessness.
EXTRA – BHCD’s web site for homeless services

From the Portland Mercury, October 30 2008

Death’s Door Key – City Surveys the Health of the Homeless

“I’ve had two heart attacks this year. I’m in alcoholic withdrawal. I have seizures, I have hypertension, I’m on about 12 different medications. I shouldn’t even be smoking right now, to tell you the truth,” said Lewis Goescht, smoking a cigarette outside the Portland Rescue Mission on W Burnside. It’s just before dawn on Wednesday, October 22.

Goescht was one of 646 homeless people surveyed about their health over three days last week, by a team of nearly 70 volunteers working in collaboration with the city’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development (BHCD) and the New York-based nonprofit Common Ground. Common Ground has a new “Vulnerability Index” survey, which is being conducted in six cities across the country, including Portland.

The Vulnerability Index relies on research by a Boston organization identifying seven medical indicators like HIV, cirrhosis, and kidney disease that cause afflicted homeless people to have a 40 percent chance of dying over the next seven years.

Later last Wednesday, Common Ground’s Director of Innovation Becky Kanis showed the Mercury a photograph of 11 homeless people taken in New York in 2000. Each of them has one of the seven medical indicators. “Only three are still alive,” she said.

The city’s new housing commissioner, Nick Fish, told an audience at the Portland Building last Friday, October 24, that he was proud of the survey, “even as I am troubled by what we have learned. Frankly the results shock me.”

Portland’s homeless population is markedly sicker than the others surveyed so far by Common Ground. Of the 646 homeless people surveyed in 13 sectors close to the city’s downtown core, 47 percent had one of the seven dangerous conditions, compared to an average of 42 percent among the other cities surveyed. Most significantly, Portland’s rate of tri-morbidity—where a person has co-occurring psychiatric, substance abuse, and chronic medical conditions—is 36 percent, compared to an average of 22 percent in the other cities surveyed.

Liora Berry of BHCD suggested the federal slashing of the Oregon Health Plan—132,000 poor Oregonians were insured on the plan in 1995, and just 19,000 are now—could be partly to blame. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed were uninsured. The survey also uncovered 45 medically vulnerable veterans, and 23 people under 25 with injection drug habits, daily alcohol use, or HIV infection—significant risk factors for morbidity among homeless youth.

The worst case surveyed was a 63-year-old Hispanic woman who has been on the streets 10 years, with liver disease, kidney disease, heart problems, a history of frostbite, who had been the victim of violent attacks since becoming homeless, and who has no income or health insurance.

Commissioner Fish responded to the data by asking BHCD Homeless Program Manager Sally Erickson to come up with “a plan” by next Monday, November 3. Fish says he’ll also work with the county to consider opening two new warming centers in the winter months, for $200,000 each. Erickson has already set aside 50 winter shelter beds for people with the most pressing health problems, and plans to use 70 veterans’ vouchers from the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to target the vulnerable veterans.

But with no extra federal funding on the immediate horizon, the impact of the survey on the city’s housing policy is potentially much further reaching, controversially changing the way people get to the top of housing waiting lists, for example.

Goescht, who is on the city’s list for housing at a nearby shelter, was at first reluctant to fill out a survey. But volunteers explained that his answers could help his chances of getting into housing sooner, so he changed his mind. When he was done, the volunteers took his picture, and handed over a $5 Safeway card for his time.

Nevertheless, Erickson is resolute about the imperative implicit in the data.

“At the moment, people are getting housed because they are able to elbow themselves to the front of the line,” Erickson told the Mercury. “We’re going to ask the question borne out of the Vulnerability Index, which is how we become smarter with our resources so we can save some lives.”