PSU report explores effects of Project Turnkey across Oregon

Project Turnkey began as a way to house people who lost their homes in the 2020 wildfires and to provide a COVID-safe alternative to congregate shelters. The Oregon Legislature provided funding for communities to purchase underused buildings, typically motels and hotels, and turn them into shelter spaces where residents could stay for months at a time and engage in support services.

A recent report from Portland State University’s Homeless Research & Action Collaborative found that several measures of a resident’s quality of life, such as their ability to get enough rest, access food and make progress toward their goals, improved after their stay at a Turnkey site. However, it also found that more than half of residents returned to either unsheltered homelessness or an emergency shelter after their stay.

Anna Rockhill, a research associate professor at PSU, led the report. She joins us with more details on the Turnkey model and the role it can play in addressing Oregon’s homelessness crisis.

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. Under Project Turnkey, which Oregon lawmakers started four years ago, local communities get state funding to purchase underused buildings, places like empty motels or hotels, and then to turn them into shelter spaces where people can stay for months at a time and receive support services. The program began as a way to house people who lost their homes in the 2020 wildfires and to provide a COVID-safe alternative to congregate shelters.

Now, a report from Portland State University’s Homeless Research & Action Collaborative has provided more insight into the effectiveness of this model. Anna Rockhill led the report, she is a research associate professor at PSU, and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.

Anna Rockhill: Oh, happy to be here. Thank you very much.

Miller: I mentioned how Project Turnkey started. Can you give us a sense for how it’s evolved over the last four years?

Rockhill: Sure. As you mentioned, the genesis was the need for housing for wildfire survivors and for safe shelter, given the COVID environment. And obviously, some of those needs have dissipated over the past few years. I think there are still some people without housing as a result of the wildfires. But, as of today, all 19 of the Turnkey sites are focused on serving particular populations of people experiencing homelessness for a variety of reasons. Really, it has shifted away from the original focus. A few of the programs have actually shifted from emergency shelter to permanent supportive housing or other options along those lines.

Miller: It seems like you’re saying that there are now, even within the umbrella of people who are experiencing homelessness, different demographics of different populations that some of these different Turnkey sites are specifically serving?

Rockhill: Yes, one of the things that I think is interesting and probably important about Turnkey is the communities had a great deal of power basically to design programs that were responsive to the community’s needs, and frankly to what was feasible. Some of the programs serve a high proportion of medically vulnerable people, people who are in need of medical respite. Two of the programs focus specifically on domestic violence, sexual assault and trafficking survivors. There are some that have a culturally-specific focus. Almost all of the programs do participate in some kind of coordinated entry program – the community effort to prioritize the most vulnerable. But there are different program models, different target populations, if you will.

Miller: And am I right that all of the state money went to things that I would put more in the category of capital expenses? Taking ownership of and then retrofitting these different spaces to be temporary shelters for people, as opposed to operating expenses?

Rockhill: Absolutely. This is not the part of the Turnkey story that I have a lot of expertise around. But absolutely the focus was allowing communities to oftentimes convert a property that might have been seen as problematic – run down, maybe even abandoned – and allow that to become something that was an asset to the community.

To your point, though, operating costs were a rub for a lot of communities, right? COVID made funding available for social services, made it possible to get these up and running after they were purchased and retrofitted. But ongoing operation expenses is an issue for a lot of these sites.

Miller: It seems like, as you’ve already described, there are enough differences within these sites, it’s hard to give a unified answer. But broadly, how do these sites differ from old fashioned, typical emergency shelter sites, congregate shelters?

Rockhill: That was really one of the objectives of the study, to try to highlight that, to really sketch that out. And I think we identified a variety of ways that the … we call it the Turnkey model, that’s probably not the most useful moniker because I think “turnkey” really focuses on the fact that these were hotels that then became shelters. And we want to emphasize that it’s actually sort of the array of services and supports, and some of the ways in which those are delivered that sets this the Turnkey model apart.

We draw a contrast in the report between the congregate shelter model, where it’s important, it gives people an opportunity to not sleep outside, increases safety in significant respects, those sorts of things. But people can’t be there during the day, they often have fairly limited lengths of stay – a month or so. There often aren’t adequate services provided on site, there might be a case manager but there’s 200 people, those sorts of things. Turnkey represents … we called it different things over the year-plus of the study: “emergency shelter on steroids” or something just shy of transitional housing models. It’s a really robust array of services, and a real focus on grounding service provision in relationships, enhancing stability for folks, giving them the time that it takes for a lot of people – not everybody – to become stable and to be able to navigate, I would say, the byzantine social service system that the folks who were here [Corvallis “Situation Table” interview] right before me were talking about.

Miller: I’m glad you brought that up. For folks in the podcast, that’ll make no sense because you live in an on-demand, a la carte world. But for folks listening as we go, what did you make of that? I’m curious how much that jived with what you’ve already been researching and learning for years now, as they were saying, the sort of siloed world of social services?

Rockhill: Absolutely. And it’s funny, too, because one of those people ran one of the Turnkey sites in Corvallis actually, so was a part of the study.

I think one of the questions we get most often about the report is the quantitative data around how successful these sites are at exiting people to permanent housing, right?

Miller: For folks who haven’t seen this yet, more than half of residents, when they exited these Turnkey sites, they went back into some kind of homelessness … meaning, they were either unsheltered, or they went to an emergency shelter. That’s one of the numbers that stands out to people, it’s been one of the headlines in some of the coverage. I just want to give folks a sense for what you’re talking about.

How do you interpret that, how do you make sense of that?

Rockhill: That’s an important metric, absolutely. It’s important not to just give people a place to be inside. But we should hold programs accountable for what they do for people’s wellbeing in the intermediate and longer term as well. Housing obviously is a really important part of that.

And, to the previous point about the social service structure if you will, and silos and those sorts of things, what it takes to move from homelessness, whether you’re living outside, whether you’re couch surfing, escaping a domestic violence situation, is a lot. How’s that for a scientific term? But then if you think about the fact that a significant proportion, in particular, the most vulnerable among the people experiencing homelessness, are dealing with mental health issues, behavioral health issues, or at the very least some pretty significant trauma. It’s very difficult to just go from the streets to find an apartment. And the systems that people have to navigate are complex. Service providers don’t talk to each other. They don’t often know what services other people are getting. There’s duplications of efforts, most of the time I think it’s people falling through the cracks, not people getting too much.

But so one of the things that I think is so important about the Turnkey model is it is cognizant of both those sorts of complexities, the burden that is on people try to move towards appropriate, more stable, affordable, longer term housing situations, and all the rest of the package that it takes to achieve well being, so that you can maintain that housing. Turnkey has providers on site that can form relationships with the guests that are staying at the shelter, so then people are more likely to trust systems and follow through. If an appointment gets canceled, it’s more likely to get rescheduled. All those sorts of things are possible within the Turnkey model in a way that you cannot do in traditional shelter.

Miller: The centerpiece, though, of mayoral candidate Keith Wilson’s campaign was that he would greatly increase the number of emergency overnight congregate shelters. He’s no longer a candidate; he is mayor-elect. What do you think of this potential direction for the city to a kind of doubling, or tripling, or quadrupling down on that traditional model?

Rockhill: I think we need everything. It’s not that we don’t need more emergency shelter. What I worry about is that to a significant extent, it is a zero sum game. We have very limited resources. Just as an individual, not speaking as a representative of Portland State University, I worry that the push to sort of these emergency overnight shelters is more about getting people experiencing homelessness away from businesses and away from neighborhoods like mine in Laurelhurst, and less about really helping people achieve the stability and to be able to access the resources, … and again, navigate the byzantine systems out there to end up in a living situation that is supportive of their wellbeing.

I don’t know enough. I read a little bit, but is he saying that we’re going to do that and not this other stuff? I think what the contribution of our report is that it takes the wisdom that so many providers and people with lived experience have about what it’s gonna take for a lot of the people, some of the most vulnerable folks, moved into a stable situation. They already know how to do it. We wrote it up. Hopefully, we detailed it, explained it. Hopefully, it’s a compelling picture that we paint. That’s what I hope people take away from the report.

Miller: Anna Rockhill, thanks very much.

That’s Anna Rockhill. She is a research professor at Portland State University.

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