Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties need to create a regional approach to address homelessness, which affected more than 38,000 people in the tri-county region in 2017.

That’s according to a just-released report from Portland State University’s Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative and Northwest Economic Research Center. The collaborative released the report publicly at a 10 a.m. news conference Tuesday at PSU.

That figure is more than five times the estimates drawn from the federally authorized Point in Time counts, which are widely acknowledged as undercounts.

POINT IN TIME COUNT: Multnomah County homeless numbers remain stable, but so do the causes (editorial)

Marisa Zapata, the PSU collaborative director and the report’s lead author, said that they wanted to provide a comprehensive look at the scope and scale of homelessness and housing insecurity in the tri-county area and to include those who are often left uncounted because of federal limits on what defines homelessness.

“The great majority of people experiencing homelessness in the region are invisible,” she said.

They goal was to see the whole problem, not the just the worst cases under narrow definitions, Zapata said.

“We don’t want to identify the least amount of housing for the smallest number of people,” said Zapata, who referred to the “oppression Olympics,” in which marginalized people fight each other for a limited amount of affordable housing. “We don’t want to keep living in this emergency triage situation. Instead, we want to create a wellness plan for people and families and community. This report is just a first step.”

In addition to the homeless figure, the report concludes that about 107,000 households in the tri-county region experienced housing insecurity or were at risk of homelessness, based on their income an the percentage paid toward housing.

With these numbers, the report estimates the region is looking at costs amounting to as much as $4 billion to provide housing and services for the existing homeless, and as much as $21 billion in needed rent assistance over the next 10 years.

“We know billions can sound daunting,” Zapata said. “In cities we spend billions all the time on city infrastructure. We spend billions on our roads, our super-systems, our waterways. Housing is basic infrastructure.”

Those figures, however, do not take into account for ongoing money or personal income already being spent on households in need, ongoing service funding, or the impact of the Portland and Metro housing bonds, which total more than $900 million for affordable housing.

Marisa Zapata, director of Portland State University's Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative, and Marc Jolin, director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services, speak at an Aug. 20, 2019, news conference about a comprehensive PSU report on homelessness and housing insecurity in the Portland tri-county area. Photo by Kaia Sand

The next step, Zapata said, is to create a tri-county task force to being discussions around collaborating on housing and homeless solutions.

In 2014, Portland, Gresham, Multnomah County and the housing authority Home Forward collaborated to form A Home For Everyone, a regional strategy for addressing homelessness. The Joint Office of Homeless Services was formed from this strategy, merging county and city resources with a current budget of $70 million.

Zapata is a member of A Home For Everyone’s coordinating committee.

Marc Jolin, director of the Joint Office, spoke at Tuesday’s news conference about the ongoing work to address housing and homelessness. He said the report emphasized the urgency of continuing that work. Last year, Jolin said, the Joint Office worked to take 6,000 people off the streets and helped many more stay in housing.

“One night this winter, we were actively supporting 12,480 people in Multnomah County who were receiving locally funded assistance that made the difference between a home and homelessnesss,” Jolin said. “Four years ago, that number was just under half.”

Jolin said driving causes include multiple systems failures, system racism and a housing market that continues to outpace incomes and assistance dollars – situations that disproportionately affect people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, survivors of domestic violence and people with disabilities.

“This report tells us we can’t end homelessness until we’re willing to do what it takes, as long as it takes,” Jolin said. “That means we can’t stop what we’re doing. We know what works and what makes a difference, and we have to do more.”

County Commission Chair Deborah Kafoury, who is part of A Home For Everyone’s executive committee, told Street Roots she was not surprised by the figures, given the load taken on by the Joint Office of Homeless Services.

“Last year, we served upwards of 35,000 people through the Joint Office, so it’s not surprising that PSU has identified a similar number regionwide,” Kafoury said. “In Multnomah County alone, there are 21,000 who rely on a disability check that caps out at $771. At that rate, it’s almost impossible to find an affordable place to call home.

Kafoury said Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties are already working together to address the need.

“Our coordination across the counties is the strongest I’ve ever seen it,” she said. “We know the challenge, and we know the solution. Our highest priority now is to match the scale of the solution to the size of the challenge before us.”

The 38,000 figure far exceeds the Point in Time figures, the biennial count that occurs in winter to identify the sheltered and unsheltered population. That figure for the three counties was 7,014 in 2017, the year studied for the PSU account. This year’s count tallied a combined 5,711 individuals in the three counties.

The PSU report annualizes the one-night count figures and also applies broader definitions of homelessness, including the U.S. Department of Education’s definition, which includes school-age youths, with or without their families, who are sharing insufficient or inhabitable housing with other families – a situation commonly called doubling up. It does not include adults without school-age children who are doubling up. But these figures, too, are estimates.

The authors of the PSU report defined homelessness as “an individual or household who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence including people sharing someone else’s housing because of economic or other hardships.”

The federal government’s more narrow definition of homelessness tends to leave out people of color, the report states. The larger figures, Zapata said, give a more complete and racially equitable picture of the situation. Using only the qualifications approved by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, the numbers of people experiencing homelessness, and therefore the costs, are lower.

The report also offers tax options for raising revenue, including raising corporate taxes, creating a flat rate tax such as the Portland Arts tax, or an additional income tax on the state’s highest earners, similar to California’s so-called “millionaire’s tax.” The report did not make any specific recommendations on a preferred funding stream.

Email Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at joanne@streetroots.org.

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