Kaiser Permanente Northwest announced Monday that it's donating $2.27 million to seven nonprofit organizations to help homeless people with mental illness and addiction problems find a permanent place to live.

The announcement was made on Martin Luther King Jr. Day as bitter cold continued to grip the greater Portland area and public officials and social service workers have scrambled to open emergency shelters in an effort to prevent the deaths of more homeless people. Since Jan. 1, four homeless people have died of exposure in Portland.

Catholic Charities of Oregon, one of the nonprofits to receive the grant money, plans to use it to pay an outreach worker to build trust with people. An example is a woman who camps with three to four others in Portland and doesn't trust shelters as a safe place even in wintry conditions, said Margi Dechenne, Catholic Charities' housing transitions program manager.

The woman could be 50 to 70 years old, but also could be much younger because years of living on the streets have taken their toll, Dechenne said. When outreach workers bring her coffee, she turns to her fellow campers and asks if the coffee is safe to drink or if it's poisoned, Dechenne said.

The woman walks with a limp because of a large sore on her leg and is regularly robbed or manipulated out of her Social Security disability checks, Dechenne said.

"She's at the point she will talk to us now," Dechenne said.

Each of the seven charities named by Kaiser will receive $325,000 over the next three years. Geographically, the nonprofits reach from Cowlitz County in the north to Lane County in the south.

On top of Catholic Charities of Oregon, the charities are: Catholic Community Services of the Mid-Willamette Valley and Central Coast, Love Overwhelming, Outside In, ShelterCare, the Urban League of Portland and Willamette Family Inc.

Kaiser decided to focus its money on housing for homeless people after hearing that the lack of a stable home made it virtually impossible for them to get meaningful treatment, said Andrew McCulloch, president of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Health Plan of the Northwest.

McCulloch announced the grants at the Transition Projects' Clark Center, a Southeast Portland shelter that aims to find homeless men permanent housing. More than 100 Kaiser employees volunteered there Monday to paint and fix up the building on the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge.

About 1,000 Kaiser employees volunteered around the region Monday.

Multnomah County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury attended the press conference, saying the donation was a good step toward the goal of eliminating homelessness.

Kafoury said the county, the city of Portland and the federal government have made major progress in the past year by: doubling the number of publicly funded, permanent shelter beds to 1,260; getting 4,000 people off the streets and into shelters or permanent housing; and helping 9,000 people avoid homelessness in the first place.

"Keeping people from becoming homeless first is the most humane way," Kafoury said, noting that can be done through programs, such as a month of rent assistance to someone struggling to avoid eviction.

Sunday night into Monday morning, Kafoury said 800 people stayed in severe-weather shelter beds, which were opened because of the most recent cold front. Kafoury said officials had been talking about shutting down many of the beds on Tuesday, but they may postpone that given a new forecast for freezing rain.

-- Aimee Green