Today is the National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day, a day when communities across the country gather to remember and honor the thousands of homeless people who die in the United States each year. Tonight, a coalition of local advocacy groups—including Right 2 Survive, JOIN, Sisters of the Road, and Operation Nightwatch—will host a Vigil of Remembrance and Solidarity at the site of a Southeast Portland homeless shelter slated to open in the new year.
Vigil attendees will meet at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church on SE Powell and then walk in silence to the unopened Foster Street Shelter, less than a mile away.
“We’re talking about people tonight who have died while living on the street, and we’re remembering them,” says Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson, who will attend the vigil.
At least 79 people who identified as homeless—that’s nearly two people each week—died in Portland last year. The leading cause of death was drug or alcohol consumption, and the number was nearly identical in 2016. National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day is annually held on the day with the longest night of the year, to draw attention to the challenge many homeless people face just trying to make it through a night.
Pederson says that Multnomah County, and its partners at the city and state level, took measurable steps to improve homeless services this year. The Joint Office of Homeless Services, a partnership between the county and the city of Portland, saw a 21 percent increase in people it interacted with, and helped 6,000 new people keep their homes through a rent assistance program.
At the ballot box, Portland area voters approved a $652.8 million Metro housing bond, and Oregonians approved Measure 102, which should make the city of Portland’s 2016 housing bond more effective.
But while money is coming in for affordable housing construction, Pederson says the county could use more funding for services that help vulnerable people stay housed—things like mental health treatment, addiction services, and help finding employment. Working together, the city and county have added some units of permanent supportive housing that fit those needs in the last year, but Pederson says there’s a lot more that could be done.
“The issue that we really have to tackle in 2019,” she says, “is how are we going to get the resources to do that?”
One potential source of funding for permanent supportive housing: a new plan in the works to use a portion of the Portland tourism tax for homeless services. That money would likely be more flexible than bond dollars, and the Metro Council, the city of Portland, and the county are working together to iron out an agreement—though votes at the county and city level were recently pushed back to early next year.
“That would be a great use of this money to address an issue that everybody’s concerned about, and do it in a way to provide the dollars for those services that are harder to come by than the bond money,” Pederson said. “My hope is that early next year means very early next year.”
Pederson has worked closely on the long push to open the new Foster Shelter, which will be run by Transition Projects. That plan received opposition from some homeowners in the area earlier this year. Neighborhood groups have since reached a “good neighbor agreement” with Transition Projects to settle some of their woes. The groups hosting tonight’s vigil invited Pederson with the intention of celebrating the shelter, which will open next year.
“I was really touched by that, with all the work that my office and my team has done with that in the community, to try to get the community ready for that opening,” Pederson says. “We’re talking about the Foster Shelter as a way to help folks living on the street.”
“At least 79 people who identified as homeless—that’s nearly two people each week—died/committed suicide in Portland last year. The leading cause of death was drug or alcohol consumption, and the number was nearly identical in 2016.”