As Portland heads toward a pivotal election that will reshape its city government, conflicting ideologies over how to address unsheltered homelessness have opened potential legal and financial pitfalls in a key contract with Multnomah County.
Once seen as a path of cooperation to address a growing issue nearly a decade ago, the contract to run the Joint Office of Homeless Services is dividing leaders most responsible for addressing rising public distrust in government’s ability to transition people off the streets.
“I have a deep ambivalence about the future of this [contract] for our community,” said City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez, who is running for mayor.
FILE: In this video screenshot, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, left, and Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson present their proposed framework for extending the city and county partnership in the Joint Office of Homeless services, through June 2027. The press conference was held Dec. 6, 2023.
Screenshot via YouTube / OPB
The current contract between the county and city to operate the Joint Office expires on July 1.
Earlier this month, Multnomah County approved a new three-year contract with the city.
Portland City Council tentatively approved that contract Wednesday, but not before tacking on some potentially thorny amendments — a process that requires the city to hold another vote next week.
That means the current contract will expire before a new one is in place, sparking legal and financial concerns for both the governments and the dozens of contractors who run programs for the Joint Office.
“It’s going to be messy,” said City Attorney Robert Taylor. “A very messy divorce.”
The contract delay is just the latest example of how the ideological whims of elected officials have turned the department into a political football.
“Our neighbors living outside need immediate, undivided attention,” said Angela Martin, with the housing advocacy group HereTogether. “We must act quickly. That doesn’t mean public hearings where politicians debate the merits of public policy without any experts at the dais.”
Growing disagreement
The Joint Office was established in 2016, after the city and county agreed that streamlining their shared services for people experiencing homelessness could save money and time. Since then, both costs and the number of people experiencing homelessness have grown. Marisa Zapata, director of Portland State University’s Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative, recalls the decision.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is a terrible idea,’” Zapata said. “Multi-jurisdictional governing is really hard. These things only work when everyone is on the same page. You can’t have joint oversight of something when mom and dad aren’t getting along.”
The metaphor of the Joint Office as the child of divorced parents is often used to illustrate the tug-of-war over how the agency is run.
Under the current model, Multnomah County has control over the budget and administration of the Joint Office, while the city acts as an advisory board on how the program’s money is spent.
FILE: Sleeping pods at the Arbor Lodge shelter site in North Portland, operated by Do Good Multnomah, Jan. 20, 2022. The facility was purchased in 2020 using federal COVID-19 response funding and features health and housing services for unsheltered people, 12 heated sleeping pods, shower units and beds for 70 people in the main building,
Kristyna Wentz-Graff, Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
In the current year’s budget, the county contributed 67% to the Joint Office’s overall budget of $295 million, while city dollars made up 14%. The rest comes from various federal and state revenues.
The primary disagreement between the county and city is how to spend program funding. Some see behavioral health and addiction treatment as critical, others say that temporary shelter is the key, while others point to data showing that creating more housing is the most effective cure to homelessness.
Christian Gaston, a public affairs consultant who worked under former Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury when the Joint Office was created, said these discussions always seem to strike a nerve.
“Homelessness is so frustrating for people to see on our streets, so there’s always a lot of emotion involved in the debates,” Gaston said. “And then it becomes political.”
In 2020, Mayor Ted Wheeler threatened to remove the city — and its money — from the Joint Office partnership unless the county opened more shelter beds. In 2022, the county opposed city plans for a large-scale outdoor shelter if it was only made up of tents. The city didn’t receive state or county support until it included small sheds — or “sleeping pods” — with heaters instead.
These routine debates have only increased in recent years, as the Joint Office’s budget has ballooned.
The bulk of the county money funding the Joint Office comes from a tax on high income residents in the metro area, which pays for programs that help unsheltered people get into permanent housing.
Since introduced in 2021, the Supportive Housing Services tax has consistently brought in more revenue than anticipated — while the region’s homeless population has continued to grow — forcing the Joint Office to grow quickly. The office’s budget of $395 million for the coming fiscal year is nearly 10 times larger than it was at its inception.
“The Joint Office began when there were far fewer resources and a much clearer push toward political collaboration among those in charge,” Zapata said. “They had to be smart and work together to agree on spending. Now, everyone wants to be at the table just because there’s a lot of money.”
The new plan
Political arguments over how to use all of that money led to the city and county holding joint meetings over the past year to hash out their differences with a new contract and sweeping “homeless response action plan.”
The new plan pledges to halve the region’s unsheltered homeless population by 2026, end the practice of discharging hospital patients and incarcerated people to the street, and eliminate homelessness for youth aging out of foster care, among other goals. It also establishes oversight groups to ensure the Joint Office is on track to meet these expectations. The newly proposed Joint Office contract sets terms for how the two governments will work together to carry out the plan.
Mayor Wheeler said he believes this new contract and plan is the right fix to a system with a history of missteps.
“It’s clear and we all agree that the Joint Office has not been wholly successful up to this point,” Wheeler said Wednesday. “The Joint Office has lacked coherent goals, accountability or a data driven approach. This new contract addresses these issues.”
But, for some elected officials, it’s not enough.
FILE: Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, pictured in 2022.
Courtesy of Sharon Meieran
County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, the sole county commissioner to vote against the contract, said the agreement “misidentifies the problem it’s trying to solve,” by not focusing enough on funding behavioral health care. City Commissioner Mingus Mapps, who is running for mayor, has pledged to vote against the entire contract when it returns to council next week. He’s argued that the city hasn’t seen any clear benefits from its investment in the Joint Office, while homelessness continues to grow on Portland’s streets.
“Why are we putting dollars into this system, which we all agree is broken?” asked Mapps at a recent council meeting. “The answer seems to be, well, because that’s what we’ve always done.”
Others at the city have only signaled their support of the contract after pushing for ideological changes.
The Joint Office contract introduces a new oversight group, chaired by elected officials, responsible for shaping policy and budget decisions. City Commissioner Dan Ryan, who is running for reelection, introduced a tweak that would add four non-elected people to that group: a member of the business sector, a behavioral health expert who doesn’t receive funding from the Joint Office, the CEO of the state’s Medicaid provider Health Share of Oregon, and someone who pays the supportive housing services tax. Under this proposal, non-elected members would not be allowed to vote on decisions, while elected members would be.
Commissioner Carmen Rubio, another mayoral hopeful, tacked on another amendment Wednesday. It requires the the director of the county’s public housing authority Home Forward also sit on this new oversight board. City Council approved both Ryan and Rubio’s amendments Wednesday.
FILE: (Left to right) Portland City Commissioners Mingus Mapps, Carmen Rubio, Rene Gonzalez and Dan Ryan at a public work session on July 18, 2023.
Caden Perry / OPB
Commissioner Gonzalez spent the past week negotiating over contract language that would limit the county’s ability to hand out tents or needles to people living outside. He withdrew his proposal the night before the city’s vote, after getting word from Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson that the county would halt purchasing tents for the time being.
Mayor Wheeler, who is not running for reelection, also added a rule to the contract that urges the county to show progress on several agreed-upon goals by Oct. 15. If the City Council believes those goals haven’t been met, it will decide whether the city will officially exit the contract.
The timing, weeks before election day, is hard to ignore.
“People are counting on us to make a policy that truly gets people off the street and into a shelter, an apartment, or the path to recovery without stripping them of their humanity,” said Multnomah County Commissioner Jesse Beason, in an interview with OPB. “When we wait until the 11th hour to drop potshot amendments with a deadline conveniently right before the election, I am not sure that’s the vote of confidence they are looking for.”
Beason is not running for office in November. (Disclosure: Beason is a member of the OPB Board of Directors.)
Martin, the housing advocate with HereTogether, agrees that a vote on the Joint Office contract isn’t the place for politically-driven adjustments to a homelessness plan. But that doesn’t mean those conversations shouldn’t exist elsewhere, like within the new homeless response plan framework enshrined in the contract. ”The plan provides for ongoing collaboration and course correction, over the course of the contract,” Martin said. “It’s designed to facilitate the kind of debate Commissioners Gonzalez and Ryan think needs to happen right now.”
A “messy divorce”
City rules require any amendments to a council item be heard a second time before advancing, meaning the contract won’t get a final vote from Portland leaders until the next council meeting July 3.
It’s uncertain if enough county commissioners support the city’s updated contract, or if they will move to dissolve a future contract entirely. But it is clear that this timeframe will force the current Joint Office contract, which terminates July 1, to expire.
Portland City Attorney Robert Taylor said this won’t immediately halt the Joint Office’s work, but it will create financial challenges for organizations that count on the Joint Office’s support.
”Because the service providers [funded by the Joint Office] are anticipating that this agreement is going to continue,” Taylor told city commissioners last week. “Budgets have been passed in anticipation of it continuing.”
Its expiration will likely send the city and county into complicated legal negotiations to split the Joint Office across the two governments. Several city commissioners have expressed interest in retracting the $25 million the city promised to hand over to the county to run the Joint Office in July.
Shannon Singleton is the former interim director of the Joint Office, with a background working in housing nonprofits and government agencies. She’s now running for a seat on the county commission in November. Singleton said that terminating the contract will be “completely disruptive” to the Joint Office’s work, especially if the city retracts funding.
“Because the budget was just passed, every dollar is accounted for,” she said. “That means staff will have to change course and pull money out of somewhere else — or shelters and programs will close. We will see worse outcomes. These are human lives that could be impacted by what feels like a political decision.”
Singleton said she’s disappointed to see the Joint Office remain a department vulnerable to reactionary political tweaks from elected officials. “I’m not clear if there are aligned values between city and county now,” she said, noting that was more present in 2016. “I hope that’s a conversation they’re having, even behind closed doors. I think that’s where we’re really stuck.”