How a new Portland-Multnomah County agreement for homeless services may impact people living on the streets

Portland and Multnomah County have been working together for decades on how to get people experiencing homelessness off the streets and ultimately into permanent housing.

Since 2016 that collaboration has taken the form of a Joint Office of Homeless Services. The five-member city commission, three of whom are running for mayor this fall, narrowly approved a new agreement governing that joint office – albeit with some changes, which county commissioners also voted to approve.

We hear more from Dan Field, the director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services, and Skyler Brocker-Knapp, the director of Portland Solutions, about what the new agreement will mean for people living outside and how it changes the way the two governments will work together.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller:  From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The city of Portland and Multnomah County have been working together for decades now to try to get people experiencing homelessness off the streets and ultimately into permanent housing. Since 2016, that collaboration has taken the form of the county-run Joint Office of Homeless Services. In recent years, city leaders have become increasingly skeptical about the partnership. But in the last few weeks, the city council and the county commission agreed to stick together, albeit with some changes, including a new off-ramp if either side wants out.

Dan Field is the director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services. Skyler Brocker-Knapp is a director of the new city department called Portland Solutions. They both join us now. It’s good to have both of you on the show.

Skyler Brocker-Knapp:  Good to be here.

Dan Field:  Thank you.

Miller:  Dan Field, I think it would be helpful to start with some real basics here. What are the county’s traditional roles when it comes to homelessness response, and what is the city traditionally responsible for?

Field:  Thank you, Dave. I’ll let Sky speak to the city, but I’m glad to start with the county. As the name implies, the Joint Office of Homeless Services is about delivering services. We’re the conduit for state and county funds. We’re also the conduit for the supportive housing services funds, that tri-county tax that runs through Metro and gets dispersed in each of the three counties. This year, that’s about $200 million – a lot of money. We combine that with, as I said, state and county funds, and we disperse that across 60 different providers of services.

Those services range from things like eviction prevention for people who are at risk of being forced out of their housing, to people who are living on the street and need a path back into sheltered housing. So our responsibility really focuses on supporting those providers, and funding the services to keep people out of homelessness and prevent them from going into it as well.

Miller:  When you said “our,” are you talking there about the Joint Office or what the county traditionally has been responsible for?

Field:  The Joint Office. The county, more broadly, is responsible for social services, human services. We have a health department which the city doesn’t have. We have a bunch of functions that really focus on service, as they relate to social services, and health and housing. And that’s really our function.

Miller:  Skyler, what is the city’s standard role here, even pre-Joint Office? But what are, primarily, the things that the city has control over?

Brocker-Knapp:  The city is in charge of public safety and public space management, broadly. So that includes the police department, the fire department, parks and recreation. We also manage streets and rights of way as well.

Miller:  I mentioned that you have a new department formally established only 16 days ago. What is Portland Solutions?

Brocker-Knapp: Portland Solutions is the umbrella program that institutionalizes some emergency declarations the mayor put in place two years ago that actually fill some of those gaps that the city doesn’t traditionally manage. So that includes our city shelter system. It includes public space activation, graffiti or trash removal. I’m really making sure that we’re meeting the needs on the ground and addressing the emergency in place.

Miller:  So let’s turn to the Joint Office’s work more specifically.

Dan, your office has gotten a lot of pushback in the last couple of years for being relatively slow to spend taxpayer money from, among other things, the supportive housing services fund that you mentioned. Multnomah County [has] been slower than the county neighbors – Clackamas and Washington County on either side – in getting money out the door, which is especially dramatic given that we are in the middle of this crisis. Where does that stand now, in terms of just spending the money that is in your coffers?

Field:  Yeah, it’s a fair question, Dave. We get asked all the time by taxpayers: “Hey, we’ve trusted you with a lot of money. What are you doing with it?” I’m really pleased that [in] the last year we’ve spent just steadily and quietly, turning that ship around. For the fiscal year that just ended two weeks ago, we’re still even finalizing the numbers, but we already know that we’re on track for dramatic improvement. We’ve spent over 85% of that supportive housing services budget – those Metro dollars I mentioned earlier. That’s well above the commitment that we made to Metro to spend at least 75%. That’s a commitment that all three counties make. We’re gonna exceed that.

Miller:  What made the difference? I mean, what did you change policy-wise that made it easier to spend the money that you had?

Field:  Yeah, it’s a couple of things. One, when I arrived in April of last year, the Joint Office had been without a steady leader and leadership team for over a year. We didn’t have a director who was permanent. We didn’t have a deputy director who was permanent. We didn’t have a financial leader who was permanent. All that’s changed. You can imagine, any organization that is without a leader for an extended period, it starts to really suffer. So we got a solid leadership team in there. On a daily, weekly and monthly basis, we’re tracking our spending. We’re making mid-course corrections when we’re falling behind. We’re accelerating and we’re making pivots throughout the year to make sure that we hit those commitments we’ve made.

Miller:  Skyler, one of the sticking points in various city commissioner’s concerns about the Intergovernmental Agreement came from Commissioner Rene Gonzalez. And it was about the distribution of tents and tarps. Can you explain where things stand with that right now?

Brocker-Knapp:  Commissioner Gonzalez raised that issue and actually met with the county chair, Jessica Vega Pederson, about that specific concern. And before the final vote for the Intergovernmental Agreement, this contract between the city and the county, they actually reached an understanding where the city and the county will develop a joint policy around the distribution of tents and tarps. So that’s one of the expectations that city council laid out in its passage of this contract.

Miller:  But what does that mean in practice? My understanding is there are tents and tarps right now that are in county warehouses. Can they be given out? Let’s say there’s a severe rainstorm in a couple of months and there are people outside, and there are public workers who say, “I think that this person could benefit. They’re outside. They’re not going to get into a shelter tonight. I could provide them a tarp.” Can they do that?

Brocker-Knapp:  I’ll defer to Dan, but my understanding is there will be no more tents or tarps purchased until they determine a new policy. And I don’t believe they will be distributed until that policy is reached. But I might be wrong about that.

Field:  A quick bit of history if I can, Dave. The distribution of tents and tarps started during COVID-19 when people in shelters were at risk of dying because they couldn’t isolate. And people on the street couldn’t either. So we used tents and tarps to keep people safe, as you said, until we could get them into shelter. We opened a supply center. We don’t actually distribute directly to individuals. We share those tents and tarps, at no charge, with neighborhood associations, churches, nonprofit providers that come to the supply center and pick up tents as they need to. During COVID, we had a very low rate of death among people experiencing homelessness, in part, because we were able to get them into motels and, in some cases, use tents to help them isolate.

The pandemic’s over obviously. And the reality though is we still don’t have enough shelter for people. So we see providing tents, not as a long-term solution by any means – we agree with Commissioner Gonzales on that — [but] it’s a stop gap strategy that helps ensure people are safe from the elements even if they don’t have access. My assumption is that we will focus on severe weather and other situations where the tents can make a difference. We never have and never will distribute tents willy nilly. It’s always been a targeted strategy and we’ll continue to refine that.

Miller:  Is it fair, Skyler, to put tents and tarps in the category of harm prevention? I mean, is that a fair way to think about it? Akin to needle exchanges, this is just the basic idea of being, no one sees this as a permanent fix, but this is better than not giving people this option – if that’s a fair way to put it. I’m just wondering if the city and the county are broadly on the same page about things like harm prevention, or if there is an ongoing schism, in terms of the overall philosophy for what you’re trying to do?

Brocker-Knapp:  I think there’s an honest policy discussion taking place right now, in the public, about whether that is an effective harm prevention strategy. And so I think the city jumped in when we saw a deep need for shelter and has expanded shelter rapidly, because we think that is the need on the ground right now. We do not always agree that we should hand out tents and tarps.

I think severe weather is one of those instances where we do tend to have some agreement because there’s such a severe weather emergency. Having those emergency shelters is also really important during those severe weather events. But I think there’s an honest discussion happening right now between city council and the county board, in terms of what that means, and whether those tents and tarps should be handed out.

Miller:  OK, so tents and tarps maybe are, in terms of broad policy questions, almost too small to worry too much about. But when we set that aside, what is the heart of the policy disagreement?

I mean, Dan, one of the things that I’ve heard over the years is that people in your position have taken issue with the idea that there is an actual meaningful tension between building up shelter capacity and building up long-term affordable housing. I’ve heard people say, “No, we are doing both.” So it’s an artificial construct that they’re truly in tension. If that’s true, then what are the meaningful policy disagreements?

Field:  Everybody’s path into homelessness is unique, Dave. And every path out of homelessness is unique as well. So our goal is to create a continuum of options that allow people to exit homelessness. In some cases, that means going to an SRV [Safe Rest Villages] or a shelter of some sort. We have motel shelters. SRVs were started by Commissioner Ryan several years ago and now are fully embraced by the Joint Office, funded by the Joint Office and supported by the Joint Office …

Miller:  … and soon going to be run by the county, not by the city?

Field:  A year ahead of us. Yeah, absolutely. We have options. At the same time, we’re opening additional shelters [and] supporting SRVs – we have an RV village out by the airport. At the same time, we’re also doubling down on our efforts to take people directly into housing. So there were two initiatives over the last year. One was from the governor, Oregon All In, where Multnomah County set and exceeded its goal to move people directly from chronic homelessness to the street. The chair’s own initiative, Housing Multnomah Now, had the same approach. It was a strategy to move people directly from encampments into housing. We exceeded that target as well.

So those are initiatives to move people directly into housing. We also have a whole set of initiatives to expand shelter space, motel space, congregate shelter, safe rest villages, pod villages. We wanna have options for everybody so that nobody is on the street at the end of the day.

Miller:  Skyler, let me put it to you this way. Do you think the disagreement – to the extent that there still is one – is more that this county-run partnership is doing the wrong things, focusing on the wrong things? So, say, folks who are also – it’s worth pointing out – running for office. Or is it that they’re doing the right things, but just there’s not enough urgency and things aren’t going fast enough?

Those are very different versions or critiques. And it’s not yet clear to me which one is at the forefront.

Brocker-Knapp:  Yeah, I think it’s a great question. So I would say, I think to Dan’s point, we’ve come a really long way in the partnership, in the last year especially. For example, this new contract between the city and the county creates a homelessness response system, and that has a ton of different action items that are part of a plan. And the implementation of that plan, I think, will garner a lot of the results that people are looking for, that both city council members, people running for office, and the county board are looking for, as well as the broader community. And that includes a lot of policies that, two years ago, probably would not have been able to be reached by both the city and the county.

Miller:  What’s an example?

Brocker-Knapp:  So shelter is the biggest example. I think when I started, about two-and-a-half years ago, it was a big fight to increase our shelter beds. The city jumped in to increase shelter capacity because we felt like that was the need that we were seeing on the ground. We traditionally have never run shelters before. So now we’re partnering on those. As Dan mentioned, the county is funding some of those shelters. They’re operating some of those shelters through nonprofit contractors and providers, and we work together every single day to operate a ton of shelter spaces. And so we’re increasing those numbers dramatically over the course of this year as well.

Miller:  So Dan, has the county, on some level, changed its philosophy about the relative importance that temporary shelter should play in this conversation? Do you now think that more emphasis should go towards shelter and a little bit less towards permanent housing?

Field:  We’re absolutely still committed to permanent housing as a solution to homelessness.

Miller:  As the eventual solution, but I guess we’re always talking about the margins here and the ratios. If you have, even if it’s hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, on some level, it’s limited. And you have to decide what percentage of that money should go towards what. And I’m wondering if you’d acknowledge that the county has changed that ratio a little bit?

Field:  I think what we’ve tried to do over the past year that is different, Dave, is to achieve a balance. We are an under-sheltered community. So even as we’re racing in partnership with the city and the state to build housing, affordable housing and permanent support of housing, we absolutely needed more shelter. And I think we’re bringing that system into balance. But that doesn’t change our underlying commitment to get people permanently housed.

Miller:  Skyler, the city passed a separate resolution that has 12 metrics that have to be met by October 15. The city and the county are gonna check that out. I understand that a number of those were already in the agreement. So it’s not like city commissioners said, “do these 12 new things.” But what is new about what you all have three months to do?

Brocker-Knapp:  So that Homelessness Response Action Plan that I alluded to has almost 100 action items, some of which are part of those 12 metrics that city council laid out. They have explicit expectations and wanted to emphasize, I think, those specific 12 goals. So Dan and I are working hand-in-hand and our teams are working hand-in-hand to implement all of those goals, and at least meet those metrics by October 15. So when council looks back and says, “have you hit all these 12 metrics,” we can say, “yes, the Joint Office and the county, as a whole, has hit these metrics.”

Miller:  Is it just by chance that that’s before the upcoming election?

Brocker-Knapp:  (chuckling) I don’t think that was a mistake. Very politically charged.

Miller:  But what do you see, Dan, as the most important pieces of that three month check-in?

Field:  I think over everything else, Dave, we have to demonstrate continued alignment and ability to work together to start to check some of these items off the list. All of them are important. All of them will touch lives. All of them will advance our effort to eliminate homelessness. But most importantly, at this juncture, we have to demonstrate that we can work collaboratively. We have the funding. We have the resources. I think what we have demonstrated over the last year-and-a-half, and will continue to demonstrate, is simply the ability to stay aligned around specific metrics that we share.

Miller:  What’s an example where it has been challenging to work together and where it’s necessary to work together? I mean this, in a sense, gets to the whole purpose of this Joint Office. Because theoretically, the city could work on place-based services or public safety, and the county could focus on other kinds of public health or other services like that, and you could just call it a day.

So Dan, first – If coordinating work is going to be one of the big challenges in the next three months, what’s one tangible example where that’s necessary?

Field:  It is challenging, and it requires daily effort on behalf of Sky and me and our teams as well. And I’ll give you a specific example. Every Friday we have, first thing in the morning, a huddle. A lot of people on that include public safety, transportation, Joint Office, nonprofits. And they focus on what’s happening in our community. Where there’s some problematic encampments that perhaps the city is gonna move in and address, we need to make sure that the services that the county can bring to bear are there in alignment with the city efforts.

That doesn’t mean that the county is going to be doing the public space management or the law enforcement there. But it means that we need to be in alignment with the resources that we bring to that effort. That takes constant conversation and communication. Tensions arise. People have different priorities. People have a different way of thinking that things should be addressed. But that continued communication and collaboration is not gonna result in perfection, but it’ll move us forward.

Miller:  Skyler, what do you see as the places where the partnership is most difficult and most necessary?

Brocker-Knapp:  I think one piece that is just top of mind right now is community engagement. And I think we’ve started really collaborating around what that looks like, from the city and the county perspective. So at the city, we get a lot of really frustrated individuals every day who want an encampment removed or resolved, [like] an RV that’s in their neighborhood taken care of, and folks to get services. So we need to work with our county partners to make sure those services are delivered. As Dan said, we’re also providing some of those services ourselves. And we want to make sure that this partnership works going forward. We also want to communicate to the larger community, in terms of good neighbor agreements around different shelter sites or just community engagement around specific policy areas as well.

Miller:  Dan, we talked about the deadline coming up in just under three months. But a new provision of the agreement means that, if I understand this correctly, either party can back out basically at any time for any reason, like a no-fault divorce. Does that mean that there’s a sword hanging over this partnership?

Field:  No, I’m not looking at it that way, Dave. You know, any relationship, romantic, professional, business relationship needs to have an exit strategy. But that doesn’t mean you focus on it. It’s there. I think it’s clean. I think it’s great to have it there. So people know that’s a backstop. But the reality is we’re focused on working together. We know we don’t have a choice. We know that our community is only strong if the city and county are working together.

And by the way, we have a strong relationship with the city of Gresham that we’re not talking about today. But that’s another example of where we have to work together even across political differences that our elected officials may have. I think 99% of my attention is focused on that commitment and maybe 1% is focused on the exit clause.

Miller:  Skyler, what will it mean that there are now going to be five new non- voting members of an oversight committee, including one person who is just a rich person, a high earning individual. I don’t remember ever seeing someone who was put on to a committee, an oversight committee, simply by virtue of how much they make. You’re not the one who put that in. I just point out I’ve never seen that before. But what’s it going to mean that all these folks are going to be contributing to oversight?

Brocker-Knapp:  I think those five members were intended to provide some insight into the different parts of the system that might not normally be at that oversight table, at that steering committee table. So, for example, the healthcare representative – somebody who works for the coordinated care organization – will provide some of that insight for folks who are on Medicaid or OHP, the Oregon Health Plan, and who receive those services. So something that city commissioners and county commissioners might not understand is how deeply those services are integrated into the homeless community and to all the processes that we’re talking about. So I think it’ll provide some background for them.

Miller:  I think that most people listening now don’t care about an Intergovernmental Agreement per se. They just want their government, their elected leaders, to efficiently and effectively solve big problems. What’s going to change on the ground as a result of everything we’re talking about? Skyler, you can go first.

Brocker-Knapp:  What we’re envisioning is an integrated system. So what folks see on the ground, practically, is someone receiving outreach who’s living unsheltered. And that outreach worker is already connected to different services, maybe a shelter bed, or maybe it’s behavioral health treatment or detox services. And they’re able to get that person to that shelter space. And then from that space, that person is navigated to housing, to any kind of workforce development issues, or maybe they need an ID – that’s all realized in that space. I think those systems have not been previously connected. And one thing we’re working very hard to do is integrate those systems. So folks will actually see people being successfully moved into housing in a different way that’s a little more holistic.

Miller:  Dan?

Field:  I’ll give you another example, and thank you for that Sky. The city, as has been reported, is working on a camping ban of sorts. They’re sort of navigating their public space management strategy, if you will. And we’re gonna be in a place to provide services to people who are impacted by that.

So this past year, just a few months ago for the first time ever, the Joint Office has created contracts and is now funding what we call day services providers. These are organizations like Blanchet House, Rose Haven, Marie Equi Institute, providing meals and hygiene services to people during the day. The idea is that as those city ordinances take effect and people are impacted during the day, we wanna have the services there to help support them. And that’s the kind of integration and coordination between the city and the county that, even a year ago, you would not have seen.

Miller:  Dan Field and Skyler Brocker-Knapp, thanks very much.

Brocker-Knapp:  Thank you.

Miller:  Dan Field is a director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services. Skyler Brocker-Knapp is the director of the very new Portland department, Portland Solutions.

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