Last week, reporting from the Portland Mercury revealed some of the living conditions at Argyle Gardens, a transitional housing apartment complex operated by Transition Projects Inc. Tenants reported issues with poor management, cleanliness in communal spaces and bed bugs. Tony Bernal is the interim executive director of TPI. He joins us to share the organization’s response to the reporting and what TPI is doing now to address some of these issues.
The following transcription was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with another perspective on a conversation we had last week. You might have heard our segment about living conditions at Argyle Gardens. That’s a transitional housing apartment complex in North Portland. It opened in the summer of 2020 and it was hailed as a cost effective way to help some people out of homelessness. But just three years later, as reported by the Portland Mercury, tenants have been complaining about a variety of problems including filthy conditions, assault and theft. We talked about this with Courtney Vaughn, the news editor for the Mercury. Today, I’m joined by Tony Bernal. He is the interim executive director of Transition Projects which developed and is responsible for this apartment building. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Tony Bernal: Thank you so much, Dave.
Miller: Can you remind us what the idea was and is for Argyle Gardens?
Bernal: You bet. So Argyle Gardens is a 72-unit affordable housing complex that was developed in the Kenton neighborhood. The goal of that project is to make some of the most affordable housing in our community so that we can house people who would otherwise not be housed. A small portion of the residents there struggle with living in community and meeting some of their basic needs, such as properly caring for their own hygiene and the spaces that they live in. We have been working to address these needs by bringing in some more services, more rental supports, and meeting the unique needs of the people living there. As an agency, we are wholly committed to ensuring that everyone has safe and affordable housing, and the services that meet their own unique needs.
Miller: Why did you pursue the single room occupancy, the SRO model, for a big chunk of this building? And just for folks who aren’t familiar with that or didn’t hear the conversation last week, that means that it’s basically a bedroom, for these particular units, that a resident would have. And then they’d have access to a shared bathroom and a shared kitchen area. Why this model?
Bernal: Yeah. Thank you so much for that question. You know, if you’ve lived in a dorm room with a shared kitchen and bathroom, you understand what a single room occupancy unit is. Single room occupancy units are a model that have been used in Portland, and throughout the country, for more than 100 years. Transition Projects has decades of experience successfully operating them. One of the benefits to the single room occupancy units are that they are more affordable to operate. And because that is true, we’re able to house people who would not otherwise be able to be housed because their incomes wouldn’t allow them to pay a rent high enough.
Miller: Why did this model fall out of fashion? They used to be much more common in Portland and all around the country. They, at a certain point, became known as flop houses. But why did they fall out of fashion?
Bernal: You know, there are still plenty of the single room occupancy units in the country. I think we have pursued a variety of options and we think, very much so, that there need to be a variety of options for people experiencing homelessness and for everyone. And I think we have seen, recently, a bit of a resurgence in single room occupancy units. I know the state of Oregon has begun to fund them again. The Portland Housing Bureau put out a solicitation that specifically solicited single room occupancy units. I think sometimes housing styles fall out of fashion and then they come back. And I think we have seen that with the single occupancy units.
Miller: The picture that emerged from the Portland Mercury’s reporting, and that we heard on this show last week, was of an apartment complex in a lot of disarray. Dirty kitchens, cabinets full of bicycle parts as opposed to food, conflicts between tenants, and gaps in the kinds of social services that seem necessary to promote a healthy, safe environment. Just simply, do you dispute that basic categorization?
Bernal: No, I think there’s clearly some work that we are doing and continue to need to do. I will say that, ultimately, this isn’t about a cleaning contract. It is about connecting people to the services that they need to thrive in their housing. I’ve been doing this work for almost 25 years. And what we have seen is a growing need for deeper supportive services. We have seen more acuity, we have seen a mental health crisis worsening. People who, often, have been out of housing for decades who are once again brought into housing, lack some of the resources that they need to survive and take care of their own needs and exist in community.
It is hard work. It’s some of the hardest work that we’re doing in our community and yet we can’t give up. And we have to continue to pursue every available resource to provide the services that people need so that they can thrive and live together in community. And we know that it works. We have plenty of experience with this model with the population that we’re serving. Sometimes there are stumbles, but we have to remain committed to doing this work.
Miller: Apropos to everything you’ve just said, I’m wondering about the acuity level of the residents in these spaces and the requirements or expectations of living in this kind of communal space. How would you assess the match between those two?
Bernal: Yeah, so I think that is ongoing work to ensure that we have the best fit for everyone in the housing that we have for them. That said, housing resources are very scarce right now. And often we don’t have the choice of many housing options for someone. So we have to find the first available housing option that we have for them. I think we have learned that there are some folks who are less of a good fit for a single room occupancy unit and living in that, sort of, close community than others. I think we will continue to do that work. And we need to continue to bring in the services that people need in [physical] health, mental health, because that is [usually] a piece of it.
Miller: We’re talking about the challenges in operating a supportive housing complex in Portland. The reason is one particular relatively new apartment complex, a deeply affordable complex in North Portland, but the lessons here I think are broadly applicable, not just in Portland but all across Oregon, especially since supportive housing seems to be one of the most widely acknowledged solutions for homelessness. Is it fair to say that on some level the needs of these populations were, for the last couple of years, have been underestimated in terms of the level of services provided?
Bernal: I think in many ways, yes. I think we are constantly trying to adjust our services to the resources that are available. I think frequently what housing providers with social service providers are left to do is to try to make up the gaps of all of our other systems.
So if we don’t have a functioning mental health system, if we don’t have a way to get people incomes and the resources that they need, we are often left to do that work of trying to fill in those gaps and make every necessary bridge that we can. And we do the best that we can. And we need to do more collectively in order to really serve people.
Miller: Do you have the resource? I mean, the way you’re describing is that in a world where we don’t really have a safety net, we’ve got tatters of it. When it comes to housing, that’s where you have no choice but to figure out ways to make it work. But do you have enough resources to do that?
Bernal: There are not enough resources in terms of certainly mental health, addictions treatment. I think we need to continue to push to get those resources out, not just the people experiencing homelessness, not just people formerly experiencing homelessness, but really to a much larger segment than that. And yet we cannot wait until those services come before we house people, right? Things only get worse if people are not housed.
Miller: You gave us a glimpse of this, but I guess I want to dig deeper in this because you’ve been working in this field, at Transition Projects specifically, for almost 25 years. It’ll be 25 years in just a month or so. In the big picture, what has changed in that time?
Bernal: Yeah, so many things. I think overall mental health acuity has gotten worse. I think in general people have gotten sicker. People have gotten older. The average age of someone experiencing homelessness has gone up significantly. Transition Projects operates most of the shelter beds in the state of Oregon. Twenty years ago, 25 years ago, you would not see somebody in the shelter who was 70 years old, 75 years old. That is commonplace now. You can imagine the health issues that go along with that and just people’s abilities to basically function.
People have been outside of housing for longer. There was a time when we were moving people back into housing quicker. We have people who’ve been outside of housing for decades. Their health issues get worse. Their mental health issues get worse. If they didn’t have an addiction before they became homeless, they have an addiction now. So there are a variety of issues that really have gotten magnified in this work and that we continue to grapple with every day.
Miller: What specifically is going to change in terms of policies or staffing or resources or even your choice of the property management company? What is going to change at Argyle Gardens going forward?
Bernal: We have a number of items that have been in action already. We initially intended the property not to be permanent supportive housing. Permanent supportive housing is, and I think most of your listeners know, permanent supportive housing is housing that is connected typically to on site supportive services that are resourced appropriately. So that was not the original vision for Argyle Gardens. We now know that we must convert more units to permanent supportive housing. We are actively in the process of doing that. We initially started with one services staff which is traditional for a property that size. We have increased that to three services staff. And we are bringing in additional resources, everything from nursing students to a variety of other health and loan supports so that we can work with people to meet their individual needs and help them to thrive in their housing.
Miller: Tony Bernal, thanks very much for your time today. I appreciate it.
Bernal: Thank you so much.
Miller: Tony Bernal is the interim executive director of Transition Projects.
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