Dan Saltzman got the message loud and clear yesterday after his colleagues on the Portland City Council unanimously approved a $300,000 step toward what he hopes will be a $2 million burst of one-time spending on targeted homelessness programs.
“Reading between the lines,” he says, he’s confident all those votes will still be there when he formally introduces the rest of the package this fall, during the next of the council’s regularly scheduled budget updates.
“I think so,” he told me.
And that’s why, as he mentioned yesterday during the vote, he’s convening a small advisory group to help him figure out the best way to divvy up and dispense that largesse. As we’ve reported, spending that cash won’t be any problem now that the city is grinning its way through news of a surplus that could top $11 million.
He sent over the list of people he’s invited to join up—with the caveat that not everyone’s RSVP’d back yet. Of note, County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury will be on the panel with Saltzman—important because she’s officially promised, at the urging of groups like Street Roots, to scare up county money for the same thing. He’s also invited Nick Christensen, a Metro reporter and member of the Lents Neighborhood Association—showing some interest in addressing the longstanding camps that have sprouted up in East Portland.
Saltzman expects the group to meet twice in the next few weeks to help him refine a rough plan for the spending that the Mercury first reported on last month.
So far, he’s targeted rent assistance and clearing shelter space, especially for women on the streets, and counseling and outreach to groups like street kids. He doesn’t have dates yet—no surprise given that he doesn’t know all the calendars his office will need to coordinate. But the mandate will be clear.
“This will help flesh it out,” he said of his “broad strokes” plan from last month. “Or maybe they’ll say these broad strokes aren’t the right strokes. What can we do that’s most effective.”
Saltzman did acknowledge one omission on his list of invitees: None of the people he’s chosen are currently on the streets or fresh from living there. But that’s because, he says, he and Mayor Charlie Hales will be having a separate meeting with currently homeless advocates on October 4. The meeting is part of Hales’ ongoing informational sessions on homelessness.
Josh Alpert, one of Hales’ senior aides, has confirmed the meeting and said it’s related to discussions on how to spend money. Advocates had long pushed for that kind of session.
“As we continue to figure out solutions, and as more money becomes available,” says Alpert, “we want to know where best to put this money. We have our assumptions but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily right.”
It is coming apparent to most Portlanders that no matter how much we spend on this, no matter how many meetings they hold, no matter how much time we spend on the issue that homelessness in town will only get worse if we stop enforcing the rules and laws that we already have on the books. It is especially getting worse in regards to drug use and sales in our parks and on our streets, with almost zero enforcement.
One of the problems the city has is the way homelessness interfaces with the city. Residents and business owners have zero assurance their doorway won’t turn into a shooting gallery or someone won’t camp outside their door. Even if these things happen, they’re stonewalled by an apathetic city government.
Go ahead, spend away, but until we enforce laws that bring civility to the streets—the problem will continue to get worse. We are seeing the evidence of that on our streets.
But the self-congratulatory agencies and advocates will pat themselves on the back everytime they think they’ve scored more money or opened more shelter spaces—but there’s 10 new people lined up behind them looking for services and many people are running empty with regard to their compassion levels.
Many people support spending on the homeless, but it’s a give and take that street level conditions improve and they can open a business or walk down the street without seeing blatant drug use or sit in the park and not experience misery around every nook.
We’ve been spending millions on this problem with worsening street conditions.
What gives? The advocates say more money will make the conditions better. Either they’re lying or we’re stupid to believe them. I am confused.
Agreed, ws. I’d also like to point out that this is all the exact same discussion that led to the Bud Clark commons:
“We need shelter beds. We need a drop-in center for services. We’ll add hundreds of permanent units for the hardest to serve.”
So we do all that, at great expense to us all, and just a couple of years later we’re hearing about how heartless the city is and we don’t take care of anybody and we don’t have any shelter beds. We just built 100 of them for something like $45 million. Are we expected to do another one of those each year? How about a little appreciation for what the City and taxpayers HAVE done and do every day for this population?
I know it didn’t house everyone, because that is impossible. But it is a blatant lie that the taxpayers of Portland haven’t done a lot to try to help this problem. Through that lens, all of these people just look entitled and unappreciative to me. Street Roots and Denis included.