A Path Forward on Homelessness

Portland Chooses a Direction

Should supported camping, emergency shelter, or housing be the first step in getting people off the streets? The debate between shelter-first and housing-first advocates has dominated Portland politics for the last four years, obstructing progress on either goal. Portland voters resolved the debate firmly on the side of shelter with the election of Keith Wilson as mayor.

Portland Mayor-elect Keith WIlson, courtesy of his campaign.

Shelter versus Housing. Shelter is generally defined as a place that provides temporary protection from the elements. In contrast, housing provides a place of permanent refuge. Housing-first advocates usually argue that a temporary respite does nothing to solve the underlying issues that drove a person to homelessness, making the temporary solution of shelter a permanent one. Shelter-first advocates say that the greater cost and time to construct housing leaves people cold and hungry today. Retail businesses and those with downtown offices have mostly supported shelters, as unsheltered homeless people create negative perceptions of business districts and detract from their ability to bring customers. Similarly, law enforcement interests support shelter, because it more speedily reduces the public order issues that unsheltered homelessness creates.

Unsheltered homeless in Portland, courtesy of Shelter Portland.

A Vision of Shelter for Portland. Mayor-elect Wilson’s first priority is to provide Portland’s roughly 4,000 unsheltered people with emergency, night-only shelters in existing businesses and nonprofits. Using a model similar to Egan Warming Centers, which open only in below-freezing weather, the Portland program would offer people shelter across the city year-round on an emergency basis. The mayor-elect proposes to pay for the proposal by redirecting $25 million of the $300 million the city currently dedicates to services for the unsheltered. Mr. Wilson noted that the cost of low- and medium-barrier shelters runs about $16.30/night, versus almost $190/night for the existing transitional alternative shelters in Portland. Over time, these night-only shelters would be supplemented with day shelters, prevention services, homeless court programs, and the rapid construction of low-income housing. His plan proposes to add 2,000 shelter beds within the first year.

More controversially, Mr. Wilson proposes to end Portland’s programs for handing out tents and tarps to the unhoused and, eventually, to enforce anti-camping laws. He has been clear that enforcement is not his first priority and will have to wait until beds are established. Nevertheless, the potential move away from entirely optional shelter to enforced shelter has many critics.

When I served in the Legislature, we were considering then-Speaker Tina Kotek’s bill to require local government enforcement of anti-camping ordinances to be objectively reasonable in light of the available shelter beds. She disagreed with me that it would ever be appropriate to move people off the streets through the use of law enforcement in the future, regardless of the number of shelter beds available. (Please leave open the possibility that I misunderstood her or that her views may have changed.) Mr. Wilson’s plan reflects the clear desire of downtown residents and businesses to remove homeless encampments and prevent people from sleeping on the sidewalks.

The increase in homelessness in Portland, courtesy of Shelter Portland.

Obstacles on the Horizon. Setting aside the issue of enforced compliance, Portland’s shelter plan has a number of unresolved questions. President-elect Trump shares Mr. Wilson’s desire to ‘clean up the streets’, but prefers the supported camping model Mr. Wilson rejects. Temporary night shelters often rely on volunteers (as Egan does), rather than paid staff. Shifting temporary shelters to full-time ones will require a substantial outlay of funds to pay for staff. Further, while businesses and nonprofits may volunteer space, the reality is that temporary shelters tend to be rather hard on the buildings that host them, which is another driver of increased costs. Previous plans have also focused on large congregate shelters to reap economies of scale. However, the mental health and substance abuse problems of many of the unhoused make big shelters impractical, as more is definitely not merrier when some people want to sleep and others are unable or unwilling to keep it quiet. Finally, while most people support sheltering the unhoused, few want a shelter in the building next door.

In fairness to Mr. Wilson, these are solvable problems. The federal government does virtually nothing to pay for supported camping and does fund shelter, making it unlikely to be effective in shifting Portland’s priorities. The state government has been willing to waive zoning requirements for shelters in the past. At Egan, in our largest sites, we seek to have separate sleeping and “awake” rooms to minimize conflicts. The staff and damage issues do drive cost, but the existing homeless support programs are often quite expensive because of their novelty and lack of scale. Doing the math, $300 million/year for 4,000 people works out to $75,000 each, a sum of money more than adequate to provide basic shelter. Further, Mr. Wilson has claimed that private donors have offered to supply the $25 million necessary for the initial effort, perhaps allowing the program to get off the ground and postponing the inevitable budget battle for a year.

Deaths among the unsheltered homeless in Portland, courtesy of Shelter Portland.

Moving Forward. Portlanders’ resolve to tackle the problem of unsheltered homelessness is undermined somewhat by the limited role of the mayor in their new system. Instead of the past “strong mayor” system, Portland will now have a more traditional weak mayor system with a strong council and city manager. Put bluntly, the mayor-elect’s authority comes more from the support of the electorate and the use of the bully pulpit than his actual authority within the city government. Nevertheless, his public mandate is a strong one, as voters firmly rejected candidates who favored a housing-first approach, as well as those who favored an enforcement-first approach. Mr. Wilson has his mandate. Now he has to deliver.

Competence and the Cabinet

President-elect Trump’s cabinet picks to date seem focused more on loyalty and public persona than experience and work ethic. In politics, we call this the show horse/work horse divide. Show horses focus on the public-facing parts of the job, while work horses do the difficult work of internal leadership and change management.

Obviously, the country stands divided on many issues, and the election went to the Republicans, so I won’t critique them on their policies. Nevertheless, few current nominees seem to have any experience running large organizations. I won’t pretend to be concerned that they won’t accomplish many of the changes I think are unwise to make, but I am concerned that they will fail to accomplish many of the things that I believe need to be accomplished. I see a high risk that they will unintentionally damage the institutions they will lead (if confirmed or appointed during a recess).

For instance, the Secretary of Defense-nominee, Pete Hegseth, is a well known culture warrior who will certainly make life difficult for transgender people in the military....I think that's a bad path, but that is what the President-elect wants him to do. However, Project 2025’s Department of Defense chapter also prioritizes procurement reform and military innovation, ideas I wholeheartedly support. But how can someone who has never been involved with defense procurement or military reform be successful at that task? Further, while the President-elect wishes to prioritize political loyalty among general officers, which he may do legally under his power to appoint officers, his plans for wholesale replacement of the senior ranks of generals will significantly weaken our readiness and ability to respond to foreign threats. And most think that's an important role for our military.  Here’s hoping that the Deputy Secretary-nominees have more experience.

Recommendation - Finding Areas of Agreement with People You Disagree With

I recently read the VA chapter of Project 2025 and Wounding Warriors: How Bad Policy Is Making Veterans Sicker and Poorer by Dan Gade. (He was one of the potential VA Secretary nominees when I started reading the book). While I found much to dislike, I also found a few things I agree with. Project 2025 promotes privatization of VA health care to a degree. Gade forcefully criticizes the VA disability compensation system as subject to fraud and fostering dependency. While I disagree with these overall themes, I agree that the VA’s over-complicated disability compensation system should focus more on rehabilitation. Further, veterans absolutely should have access to private sector care when the VA cannot provide it in a timely manner. Those are things we can make progress on collaboratively. For those of us on the left, it’s going to be a grim four years. We can make it a little brighter by working collaboratively on the issues we agree on, even while we resist others.

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