Portland’s regional homeless response agency prides itself on making the path out of homelessness easy to navigate. But the city’s first audit of the eight-year-old Joint Office of Homeless Services tells a different story.
Auditors found that the shelters overseen by the Joint Office have waitlists that can stretch up to a year, are regularly at capacity and ineffective at moving people in shelters into permanent housing.
A notice of an illegal campsite, posted along the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade in Portland, March 26, 2024.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
The audit is the latest analysis of Portland’s homelessness crisis, an issue that has only grown since the Joint Office was established in 2016, despite the passage of new voter-approved tax dollars meant to curtail the problem.
Auditors note that the waitlists and struggle to find housing for the lucky few who are able to get into shelter is discouraging.
“There is a risk of trauma if people are unable to access shelter when they need it, and a risk that they will give up on trying to access the homeless response system altogether,” the audit reads.
The Joint Office is run by Multnomah County, but is co-funded by the city of Portland. It operates dozens of shelters across the region, as well as programs that help move people into permanent housing. It’s currently in flux as the city and county renegotiate their joint oversight of the agency to ensure the programs are meeting expectations. The city and county aim to finalize a new two-year plan that would more swiftly address the region’s homeless crisis.
The investigation underscores concerns elected officials have raised in recent years.
Auditors note that all Joint Office shelters require people to secure a reservation before being allowed in, yet there is no consistent process for getting a reservation. The report described a variety of ways people can obtain a shelter spot, ranging from calling 211 to getting a referral from a police officer. That’s not necessarily a bad standard, the audit explains.
“Offering several different ways to access shelters is a positive if there is ‘no wrong door’ to entry,” it reads. “But, the lack of shelter availability means there is often no right door either.”
The audit found that waitlists for family shelters contained more than 300 families in early 2023, and an expected wait of up to six months. At shelters for individual adults, some waited up to a year to move off a waitlist and into a bed.
The county has an estimated 2,000 shelter beds – with the majority of them occupied. The county estimates that more than 5,000 people are living unsheltered in Multnomah County on a given night. At the same time, the city and county have faltered in securing long-term funding to move people out of shelter and into affordable housing.
That’s partly linked to challenges with Metro’s supportive housing services tax, a voter-approved fund that goes toward programs that help people experiencing homelessness get housed. That tax has outperformed expectations, bringing in more than $100,000 above anticipated revenue each year. Yet, the county has struggled to get those dollars to service providers, due to problems with contracts and staffing. Earlier this week, the Joint Office announced it was on track to meet its spending goals for the current fiscal year, which ends in June.
“If shelters are not able to help participants successfully transition into housing, there is a risk that they will exit to homelessness instead of a home,” the audit finds.
The consequences are measurable. According to the investigation, more people left shelter to return to homelessness than those who moved from shelter into permanent housing between July 2022 and July 2023.
Auditors conclude that the Joint Office has failed to set up an agency that meets the current needs of Portland’s growing homeless population. It recommends the Joint Office develop a plan to expand its shelter system, set realistic expectations to measure success, and work to remove confusion for people seeking shelter.
Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said in her response to the audit that the Joint Office is already changing course to meet demands. She pointed to a new “homeless response action plan,” crafted by Vega Pederson and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, to halve the county’s unsheltered homeless population by 2026. That plan, introduced last month, says it will reach that goal by investing in more shelter beds and housing — similar to what the audit suggests. The plan hit a snag earlier this week, when Vega Pederson asked the man tasked to lead this plan to resign amid allegations, first reported by Willamette Week, that he bullied women at the county.
The homeless response plan has yet to be approved by the city and county commissions. But Vega Pederson assured auditors that the agency was on the right path.
“We are pleased to share that work to expand and improve our shelter system... is already underway in many of the recommended areas,” Vega Pederson writes.
This isn’t the first analysis of the young agency. Multnomah County released its own audit of the Joint Office last August. That investigation found issues with how the office managed contracts and collected data, among other things. The county is expected to release a second installment of that audit later this week.