Think Out Loud

Multnomah County Commissioner District 2 debate: Sam Adams & Shannon Singleton

By Sage Van Wing (OPB)
Oct. 29, 2024 1 p.m.

Broadcast: Tuesday, October 29

00:00
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Sam Adams and Shannon Singleton are in a runoff to represent North and Northeast Portland, District 2, on the Multnomah County Commission. Neither candidate got over 50% in the May primary. The seat opened up when Susheela Jayapal stepped down last fall to run for Congress. Sam Adams is a former mayor of the city of Portland and previously held a position within Mayor Wheeler’s office. Shannon Singleton, a trained social worker, is the former interim director of the Joint Office of Homeless. They join us to share why they’re running and what they want to accomplish if elected.

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Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with our last debate of this election season. It’s for the race to fill the District 2 seat on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners – that encompasses most of North and Northeast Portland. I’m joined now by the top two candidates who moved on from the primary. Shannon Singleton served as the executive director of the homeless services nonprofit JOIN. She was also the interim director of the county- and city-run Joint Office of Homeless Services. Sam Adams is a former Portland mayor and a former advisor to the current Mayor Ted Wheeler. Welcome back to Think Out Loud to both of you.

Sam Adams: Thank you.

Shannon Singleton: Thank you.

Miller: You both know the drill. I don’t have a timer here, but I’m going to do my best to give equal time to both of you as you go, and we’ll do our best to get to as many issues as we can.

Shannon, I want to start with you and the response to homelessness. You’ve said repeatedly that you want to do more of what works. So what works when it comes to homelessness?

Singleton: It’s a great question. What works, we know, is we’re seeing alternative shelters – like hotels, motels, tiny houses, those tiny transitional campgrounds, Safe Rest Villages – those styles of shelters, having higher rates of housing placement ...

Miller: than congregate shelters?

Singleton: Yes, than our congregate shelters. And so if our goal is housing placement, we need to rethink what our shelter system looks like and do more of what works.

Miller: Are they also more expensive?

Singleton: They are more expensive, and I have questions about what types of services are being offered. Is it equitable in congregate shelters and what are we offering in these other sites? Because we have to unpack a little bit more than just the outcome numbers. So I think if we’re seeing higher service levels – meaning, there’s behavioral health treatment, housing placement, case managers, folks who can really provide that support and housing placement work at alternative shelters, and not at congregate shelters – then we need to re-evaluate how we’re funding both models.

Miller: But just briefly, what is your pitch to voters in terms of … if you’re saying you are wanting to do more of what works, and those kinds of alternative shelters and the variety of versions of them, that’s what works, how many more of those are you saying you would push for as a member of the commission?

Singleton: You know, it’s a good question, Dave. I haven’t actually come up with a specific number that I’m pushing for. I think, really, to me it’s about keeping that outflow of folks moving out and into housing. And where I think our system lacks is in that retention. So part of what I think we continue to see is people cycling out of any type of shelter in and out of housing, because we’re not providing that longer term rent support and/or case management support … so that person can get a living-wage job or get their social security income, whatever they need to really then take over their rents.

But I’m not just saying shelter. Because people who are in shelters are still homeless. And so we also need to be looking at the recovery system and making sure we have access to beds, so that people who do need transitional recovery, up to a two-year stay, have that. But we also have got to continue to do the housing placement. And again, not just new placements, but prevention. We have far too many households falling back into homelessness. And I think we saw, in a recent PSU study as well, that evictions are really high, including amongst affordable housing providers.

Miller: You talked about a lot there including behavioral health. I want to turn, more squarely, to substance use disorder treatment in a bit.

But Sam, to go to you on this first big question: What do you think works when it comes to truly addressing homelessness, and what would you push for?

Adams: So I had the opportunity to push for a direction during my most recent time back in Portland City Hall. And what my team and I came up with, after studying the best practices and sort of lessons learned up and down the West Coast, but also spending a lot of time with people experiencing homelessness in Portland, was the TASS sites – the temporary alternative shelter sites that are the larger version of the outdoor alternative shelters. And the first one is up and running at Clinton Triangle and it’s showing very promising results. As Shannon mentioned, this kind of a shelter approach. And we didn’t get any support initially from the county on the city paying for and creating this first shelter. But now they’re on board, which is great. But we’re now seeing people being placed in the housing at three times the level of the dorm-style congregate shelter. So we know that that works. And the bigger you can get them, within reason, then the more cost effective they are.

With this learning, Dan Ryan was able to expand the smaller Safe Rest Villages, expanding one of those to 100 now. So having both some economies of scale and the success of people getting stable enough, so that our outreach workers can create that kind of connection and find the right placement for them. That’s an example of what works.

Miller: It seems like there’s been pretty broad agreement between what you’ve just said and what Shannon has said. Where do you see disagreement?

Adams: So I definitely support a phased-in ban on self-sighted camping, as these new shelters come on. And I think that, in the end, it’ll take about a dozen of them. But time will tell. But as the larger TASS sites come on, then I think in the surrounding neighborhood, there should be a ban on camping. There is no evidence that a “camp wherever you want, when you want” policy helps anybody, especially when folks are experiencing substance abuse disorder. And experiencing mental health [crisis] is at a higher level for people experiencing homelessness than ever before.

Miller: How is the ban that you’re talking about different from what is already in place in Portland’s ordinance? I mean, there is now, on the books, a time-and-place ban and that there has been some enforcement of that.

Adams: So it’s just a manner ban. It’s not time-and-place. This is an area where Shannon and I disagree – members from the community filed suit against the city for a time, place, and manner. The time and the place were taken out of the ordinance. And now, it’s just a manner, which means as long as you have a relatively tidy camp, you’re gonna be able to camp wherever you want.

Miller: Shannon, what role do you think the criminal justice system should play in addressing homelessness?

Singleton: I don’t think it has a role in addressing homelessness. I think oftentimes there may be other crimes that are happening and that those are law enforcement issues that should be addressed by law enforcement. But for the crime of just being homeless, that is not something I think warrants jail.

Miller: What about saying, “You have to move along,” and there could be a fine, say, short of jail?

Singleton: That’s kind of what we used to do. And oftentimes, there wouldn’t be a fine. People would move along or would find another location. I think one thing that we’ve missed that we used to do when I was running JOIN, was our outreach staff were actually engaged not only with law enforcement, but with the Fire Department to do education and prevention around fires, working with the Sheriff’s Department, and particularly the HOPE team. Really looking at that partnership so that when we were addressing camps, it wasn’t just outreach workers who were coming out to tell you you had to move. It was outreach workers who actually had the resources to do housing placement and/or physically help you move your belongings if that was what was needed. So I think we have to come back to some things that used to work and have gone away, and partnerships that have dissolved that I would really like us to reinstitute.

Miller: Would you support any version of a countywide camping ban, say, to be enforced by the Sheriff’s Department in unincorporated parts of the county? So the city already has its ordinance. But outside of that, is there any version of a camping ban that you would support as a member of the commission?

Singleton: There’s already one in East County and it hasn’t worked. So I think the idea that the camping bans result in less homelessness has not borne out in fact. And so that’s why I keep saying making it more illegal is not going to change what we see on our streets. We have to have places for people to go. So I really want to focus on how we solve that person’s homelessness, as opposed to how we regulate where they sleep while they’re still homeless.

Miller: Sam, let me give you a chance to respond to that?

Adams: Yeah. The kind of phased-in geographic camping bans that I’m talking about as more shelter comes online, has never been tried. That is, we’ve never had the opportunity to do that …

Miller: Meaning, because you’re saying there haven’t been enough shelter beds or alternative shelter sites available?

Adams: And because of Boise v. Martin [Martin v. City of Boise, 920 F. 3d 584]. So, since the Supreme Court, you see now, California has local governments that have much more authority and responsibility for managing folks experiencing homelessness outside. So we’ve never had the opportunity to do it in a planful way, in a holistic way. And we’ve never had this resource of these TASS sites that are larger camps that are showing the way, in terms of how to move people from being experiencing houselessness into shelter and then into housing.

So again, we have a difference of opinion here. I think that when someone is repeatedly offered shelter and asked to move along that, yes, arresting them, taking them to jail, as a wakeup call, offering them, and services all along the way – I do think that that’s appropriate.

Miller: Let’s turn now to drug treatment. And Sam, I’m sticking with you. What’s your assessment of how the county is doing, overall, in terms of behavioral health and substance use disorder, particularly? And what would you want to do differently?

Adams: I think one of the key things that I want to know when I, if I, get elected, and that is where there are outreach workers on behalf of the county and what are they doing outreach for, and what departments are they connected to. And that’s one thing. The second thing is to come up with a care tracking system. So when those outreach workers see me talk to someone, that’s recorded. And treatment, everything that they’re willing to partake in, whether any kind of behavioral health, we start making sure that we’re offering them good offers to deal with whatever the issues that they’re dealing with. And we’re connecting them with services.

Where I go at this issue is really a steely-eyed focus on the fact that nearly three quarters of a billion dollars is budgeted for housing, mental health, for substance abuse disorder, and for homeless services. And I want that all to be put on the table, create a unified budget, put a houselessness czar in charge of all that, and look for opportunities to find savings, to fill in the gaps by looking at this in a holistic, unified budget.

Miller: Shannon, what about you? What’s your assessment of how the county is doing right now, in terms of substance use disorder treatment? And what, if anything, would you want to do differently?

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Singleton: It’s important that we address both mental health and substance abuse. Often folks have both disorders. I think that we’re failing both unhoused and housed Portlanders or folks in Multnomah County. We have a model that is primarily based on an outpatient clinic model. Having run programs for Cascadia, I know that it’s difficult for programs to pencil with having back-to-back appointments all day. But that’s also unrealistic for folks who are either newly housed or still on the streets.

So we have to change the model and get people out into the community to actually do mental health-focused street outreach. Right now, those are two different systems. Our behavioral health care is not providing mental health treatment out on the streets. It’s folks who are funded through homeless services. And it doesn’t mean that that can’t be the model, but they’ve got to actually work together.

I think the other piece that we see is a lack of beds. It’s not just sobering beds. We lack beds in the treatment continuum. We have far too few transitional recovery housing beds. We have very few permanent or longer term, like Oxford-style recovery supportive housing. And if we don’t have places for people to go for treatment, then we’re just going to keep seeing them cycle back in and out of these various systems.

Miller: You’re both talking about, in different ways, major structural changes to either the provision of behavioral health care – Shannon, as you were talking about – or Sam, a whole new position, maybe a couple of different positions, “czars.” So I want to get both of you to explain to voters why they should trust you. But I should say again, you’re not running for county chair, you’re running just to be a member … I shouldn’t say “just,” but, well, just to be a member of the commission, a legislative body, essentially.

Shannon, what can you point voters to, to say “I can actually get folks to buy into my vision,” to vote for it, and to make it happen?

Singleton: A couple are my history in the field and my actually starting new programs. I created the Mobile Permanent Supportive Housing Team. I created the Mental Health Street Outreach Team. I helped convert a transitional building for mental health support that HUD no longer funded, into permanent supportive housing. I’ve brought down millions of dollars from federal government to help support survivors of domestic and sexual violence. So I think these programs …

Miller: Sorry to interrupt, but for all those various programs that you pushed for, did you actually need to get other people to vote for them and to buy-in, or did you have the authority to do it yourself?

Singleton: I did not have the authority to do it myself. This is as a provider, and me really coming with what the evidence and research was showing us, and what I was hearing on the ground, to create new programs and new models. And then I think, additionally, people can look to who supports me in this campaign. Both the county employees and the city employees have endorsed me and said, “You are the person that we believe can help us move forward as a county and really live the values that we have to serve this community.”

Miller: Sam, what do you want voters to think about, in terms of the question of evidence that you can actually make your visions a reality?

Adams: Well, I’ve been endorsed by The Oregonian. I’ve been endorsed by Willamette Week because of my proven track record of taking on tough issues, oftentimes, through big bureaucracies, bringing people together and getting change [to] happen. A good example are these temporary alternative shelter sites – TASS sites. When my team and I started that effort to bring them to life, we had one vote on council and that was Mayor Ted Wheeler, and a lot of opposition and concern from other folks on council. So that’s an example over the course of months that we were able to get support, not only for that, but for a diversion program [and] also the city’s first commitment to housing production goal. So the fact that I’ve been endorsed by The Oregonian and Willamette Week, calling for big changes at the county, and that I’m the best candidate to see those changes through. I am used to a long-term having to come up with three or five votes, and that will continue.

Miller: Sam, one of the issues that you’ve brought up is that you want to change the chair’s unilateral ability to decide on the agenda. The current rule states that quote, “No items will be placed on the final agenda without prior review and approval by the chair’s office.” And if I understand correctly, it takes a unanimous vote to pass something that the chair didn’t originally support for the agenda. What’s wrong with that? And what change would you push for?

Adams: You just accurately read, quoted from an administrative rule, the administrative order. The actual Board rule that was voted on by the entire Board says, “Any elected official of Multnomah County can place an item on the Board agenda.” So you had the chair come up with a rule that contradicted what the board passed for itself, in terms of its own operating procedures. And that’s really important because there are only four legislators on the county board, and then the chair.

And the fact is that we’ve seen a watering down of democracy at the county in recent years, where the chair is calling the shots and there isn’t adequate oversight. Because people who are just the commissioners and not the chair – which, again, constitutes the Board at Multnomah County – they don’t have a way to put something on when they want to see a particular issue get oversight. Sharon Meieran, months ago, asked for her resolution to get on the Board’s agenda. That was a pilot for the AMR ambulance response times with a different staff configuration. She was told “absolutely no” by the chair. Many months later, that near exact same proposal was finally approved by a majority of the Board.

Miller: Shannon Singleton, do you agree that this is an issue? And would you want to change it?

Singleton: Yeah, I agree it’s an issue. I think it needs to change. But what I really want to talk about … this is not what voters are talking to me about at the doors. What they want to know is how are people going to work together? They think the county commission, and watching the Board meetings and the fighting that’s going on, is not effective. They don’t like to see the continued fighting and finger pointing between the city and the county.

And I think that’s the real difference here in this race. I’m a leader who’s coming forward, who knows how to do things collaboratively, work with folks who I may not agree with, and get things done. And I’ve done that, both at the state, as well as in roles within the social service system. So, yes, it’s something that needs to change. And I think, more importantly for the voters of District 2, I’m that leader who’s gonna be there for them that they’re asking to stop the finger pointing and turn the page on those old politics.

Miller: Sam, what do you think you would bring to the commission temperamentally?

Adams: Someone that is committed to the rule of law, in terms of how the commission functions. Part of what I did was when I became a candidate for this job and I heard that the chair just says “No” to an elected commissioner’s desire to put something on the agenda for discussion – it’s just for discussion – I knew right away, pretty clearly, that that was not allowed under Oregon law. I went out and got a pro bono attorney, a law firm Stoel Rives to concur with that and go into even greater detail. So I think getting us back to the kind of working board that follows the rule of law is really important, for one example.

Miller: What do you say, Shannon … is there anything that you think the county is doing well right now? I mean, a lot of this has been … especially if we talk to city council candidates or city council members, they’ve got plenty of gripes about the county’s roles and responsibilities right now, where they feel like it’s falling short. What do you think the county is doing well?

Singleton: I think there’s a couple of things. One is I’m really excited about the Burnside Bridge project and the fact that they’re tying their workforce development and training efforts back into anti-poverty programs. I’ve been talking about that this whole campaign. There’s opportunities to get people trained up who are touching the county systems into family wage jobs. And Burnside is one of the first projects to step up and actually make that explicit investment. So that, I think, is going well and I look forward to seeing how effective that is.

I think there’s other things as far as our work in the SUN schools. Generally, there’s not enough support. But some of the ways the programs are functioning, and particularly the partnerships with our culturally specific providers, are effective. What I want to know is what else needs to happen for those to be even better and reach more kids?

Miller: Sam, what do you think the county is doing well right now, things that you’d want to actually perhaps expand on?

Adams: So I recently spent an afternoon on a ride-along with the sheriff patrol that constitutes the transit police, [which] used to be a function of the city of Portland. Now, it’s a function of the patrol unit of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s office. And it is a much smaller unit than it used to be when the work was done by the Portland Police Bureau. But this is a group of folks that are hardworking, compassionate, spread very thin, responsible for the overall safety of the region- wide transit system, working with civilian outreach workers on the system as well and civilian guides. They do an amazing job of problem solving in the moment, and sort of knowing what to enforce and what to de-escalate. Just an amazing group of folks, and I would work to expand that.

Miller: Shannon, as you know well, I’m sure, the majority on the current city council wants to start the process to decouple from the county-run Joint Office of Homeless Services, something that you were the interim manager of not that long ago. It’s too early to know what the new city council is going to do. But in a lot of conversations I’ve had with candidates over the last few weeks, many of them were on board with that vote, just saying it’s time to break it off. Now, others said essentially, we’d want to put the county on a short leash and we would consider a divorce in the near future.

What’s at stake in this partnership and would it matter, from the county’s perspective, if the city were to break it off?

Singleton: I think it matters from the person’s perspective, the community member who needs those services. I worked at the Portland Housing Bureau when we had two different systems and the city primarily funded adult homeless services, and the county funded family and youth. And part of the challenge, when I was running a woman’s shelter, was often the women had kids. But to get them connected and into the family system, those two systems didn’t speak to each other.

So I think that there’s real impacts on the human beings on the ground. I think additionally, with the idea of shifting right now, I don’t know that there’s the intentionality and thought that that means, unless the city decides to then just move that funding themselves into the same programs. We will have not only staff who will lose jobs, but we’ll lose shelter beds, and we’ll lose programs that are currently operating. And I think the idea of having to close shelter, because of what feels like a very political decision and right before we hit our cold season, is really misguided.

Miller: Sam, what do you think is at stake in this partnership? And what would you do as a member of the commission, because of that belief?

Adams: So I was very optimistic when the Housing Response Rapid Action Plan came out, the HRRAP that serves as the sort of underpinning, the foundation for this reboot of the relationship between the city and the county. And I would like to see the system stay together. I would like to see the county continue with its responsibilities. But we have to win over the city. You know, they’re the ones that decide whether or not they wanna continue this. And so it would be up to us, if I’m on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, to win over the city with actions and to win over the city with sort of concrete commitments that there’s no backtracking on.

I’ve been disappointed with the speed and the depth of the implementation so far with HRRAP, the new housing action plan. And so I watched that hearing with the city and I understood their concerns. And I think that if I’m on the county, having worked in the city for a very long time, I can help the city and county work better together on this issue, and on all issues.

Miller: Just briefly, you’re both running for just a two-year term. It’s to fill out the second half of the term that Susheela Jayapal vacated when she chose to run for Congress. Sam first, briefly – what can you pledge to District 2 voters that you’ll have accomplished in two years?

Adams: So, right now the county has proposed that when they close down the St. John’s Library – being very hyper-local here – this would be one of the few places that anyone has seen where they didn’t offer a temporary library service. So that’s first in terms of very hyper-local issues. I want to see a reduction of homelessness encampments in North and Northeast Portland, would be another thing that I would work towards.

Miller: Shannon?

Singleton: I think it’s a couple of things. One, again, with the mental health street outreach, we need more folks. People don’t see them in community. We actually need more than the four or five staff who are doing that.

Miller: And you’re saying in two years, people would see an increase in that street outreach?

Singleton: Absolutely. And then the other is, I really want to work with the city of Portland. I continue to hear from our small business community that they’re facing these high levels of vandalism and they’re not seeing closure on those cases, even when they know the person who did it. And so the small business community is getting hammered and we have to figure out how to make sure that they’re actually getting the services that they’re asking for.

Miller: Shannon Singleton and Sam Adams, thanks very much.

Singleton: Thank you.

Adams: Thank you.

Miller: Shannon Singleton and Sam Adams are the two candidates running for District 2 on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.

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