A temporary homeless shelter established by the mayor’s
Street Access for Everyone (SAFE) committee is on track to go $25,200
over budget by next June—thanks to higher than expected demand
for its services.
Cops and private security officers have been directing homeless
people who are sitting and lying on downtown’s sidewalks to the Julia
West House (JWH) on SW 13th and Alder, ever since doing so became
illegal in Portland on August 15. The shelter provides hot showers,
coffee, and someplace warm to sit.
By October 1, the center was already proving more popular than
expected [“No Room at the Inn,” News, Oct 4] and matters have since
gotten worse. The center’s ideal stated capacity is between 40 and 60
people at a time, but it’s consistently holding 80 people during peak
hours.
“Because there is no other day center, JWH is experiencing much
heavier usage than expected,” wrote the center’s director, Marvin
Mitchell, in a memo to the SAFE committee on October 31. “We have
consistently had counts of 80 and more between 8 am and 11 am.”
To operate the overcrowded center, Mitchell now wants to pay another
part-time staffer to cover the center’s peak hours at a cost of
$16,000. Also, he needs another staffer on the second floor five hours
a week to oversee the showers, which costs $7,200, and $2,000 extra for
more towels—a total of $25,200.
That money is likely to come from the Portland Business Alliance
(PBA), according to the SAFE committee’s co-chair, PBA Vice President
of Downtown Services Mike Kuykendall, who offered to look into paying
for the shortfall at the November 1 SAFE committee meeting.
But throwing money at the problem may not be enough.
“It kind of worries me if we just add staff. Does that really
control the central issue, which is over-utilization?” asked Liora
Berry, program coordinator for ending homelessness at the city’s Bureau
of Housing and Community Development (BHCD). “If we put more staff in,
does that really resolve the issue?”
Homeless advocates don’t think so. At the committee meeting, Patrick
Nolen of Sisters of the Road said the city should fund another
temporary day-access center as soon as possible. Kuykendall agreed to
chair a subcommittee to try to locate another site.
Meanwhile, the SAFE group has started flexing its political muscles
on the issue of what the city’s permanent center for the homeless
should look like when it eventually gets built—straying into
political territory usually reserved for council’s homeless
commissioner, Erik Sten [“Somewhere to Go, Something to Believe In,”
Feature, Nov 1].
Sten’s plans for the center are based on research done by BHCD that
shows money is best spent on ending homelessness when it’s put directly
into getting people stabilized in housing. Temporary centers like the
Julia West House, which effectively warehouse homeless people to get
them out of the cold, are not covered in Sten’s 10-year plan to end
homelessness because over the long term, they don’t offer the best bang
for a city’s buck.
Nevertheless, most on the SAFE committee were shocked to hear from
Berry at BHCD that Transition Projects, Inc. (TPI)—the social
service agency Sten’s office contracted to run the new resource
center—does not plan to place emphasis on temporary day-access
space to get people out of the cold when it eventually opens in
2009.
“It’s a service access center,” said Berry. “What [TPI] doesn’t want
is a place where people are free to just go and watch TV.”
Berry’s remarks drew surprise from most around the table, signaling
what could be the beginning of an intense debate about the center’s
role. Sten may have written the center into the 2004 plan to end
homelessness, but it has been the momentum generated by the SAFE group
that has brought it closer to reality.
“I’d resist the assumption that if someone is just homeless with
nowhere else to go, then they’re going to be ready to engage with the
services right away,” said Monica Goracke of the Oregon Law Center, who
co-chairs the SAFE committee.
Marc Jolin of homeless nonprofit JOIN suggested pulling together
another subcommittee of the SAFE group to talk about how it can
influence plans for the resource center.
“Different people have different perspectives about how the place
will be, and that’s important,” responded Berry.
“I’d welcome the SAFE committee getting involved in the 10-year
plan,” Sten told the Mercury on Tuesday, November 6. “My whole
concern has always been whether SAFE gets past symptoms and into
causes. But the 10-year plan can only really succeed if we have a whole
bunch of different actors doing their part.”