Low wages, high staff turnover, stress and low morale are rife among the staff at homeless services nonprofits, according to those who work in the field. So the Joint Office of Homeless Services is looking to the upcoming budget process to help fund solutions.

“There is an urgent need to stabilize our nonprofits,” said Marc Jolin, the director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services, during a Dec. 17 budget presentation to the executive committee of A Home For Everyone. “They’ve grown aggressively. We’ve asked them to achieve more and more. What we’ve been hearing is that it’s a strain.”

A Home For Everyone is an advisory group for the Joint Office composed of homeless and housing experts. Its executive committee approved recommendations to prioritize next year’s dollars for programs that reduce racial disparities among the homeless population, preserve budget money and programs that receive matching dollars from the state and federal governments, and prioritize services that prevent people from becoming homeless.

The 2019-20 budget will not be approved until next summer, but planning is already underway to draft the Joint Office’s budget and create different funding scenarios in the case of an increase in budget dollars, stable funding or a budget cut.

The issue of staffing concerns surfaced repeatedly.

“If we want to better meet the need, we need more staff and more resources,” said Bobby Weinstock, the housing advocate for Northwest Pilot Project, a social service agency that houses low-income seniors. “I think the whole system is feeling that.”

As the recommendations for how to prioritize the budget were being drafted, Jolin said, there was discussion of abandoning the recommendation to address staffing concerns in the budget, for the sake of continuing prioritizing programs that prevent and end homelessness.

Yet there are growing concerns that if the issue is not addressed, the services homeless and low-income people receive will worsen: Clients will have multiple case managers due to high staff turnover, shelters and other programs may be understaffed, and programs will slowly become less effective and more dysfunctional.

“We’re not going to see good outcomes … if we can’t stabilize the organizations,” Jolin said.

There are increasing concerns with being able to retain employees, prevent high turnover and fill job vacancies. Sources for this story say it is also a struggle to provide appropriate training, support, and ongoing training and education for employees so their job skills change and advance.

In the social-service world, the stresses and demands of the job, which involves working closely with people while they are homeless and experiencing great stress, is inherently taxing, especially during the past few years as the Portland area has experienced a crisis in the affordability and availability of rental housing.

Low pay, characteristic of nonprofit work, is also cited as a factor, and it affects the ability of case managers, shelter workers and other employees in the social service world to find affordable housing.

Morale, sources say, is consequently low.

Stacy Borke, a member of A Home For Everyone’s executive committee and the senior director of programs for Transition Projects, one of the largest social-service agencies in Portland, said that many of Transition Projects’ employees have a second job. Other employees live “doubled up” with family and friends, in their cars or even in a shelter.

“Our staff experience significant housing stress and instability,” she said. “We’re feeling it fairly acutely as an organization.”

Borke said the starting wage for a case manager at Transition Projects is $17 an hour; the starting wage for people who work in shelters is $14 an hour.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Out of Reach 2017 report, a person needs to earn nearly $24 an hour to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Portland, based on federal affordability standards.

Michael Buonocore, the executive director of Home Forward, the federal public housing agency for Multnomah County, said he has heard similar concerns from his staff.

Home Forward recently concluded negotiations with the unions representing Home Forward’s employees for a new three-year contract that stipulates wages, benefits and other aspects of employment. During those negotiations, Buonocore repeatedly heard concerns about wages, housing and the increased costs of living in Portland.

“We heard a lot about how difficult the local economy has been,” Buonocore said, including stories of staff who are driving farther distances between home and work and concerns about whether they will be able to continue to afford living in their current home. “There is no doubt in my mind that … it’s just really rough for people.”

Weinstock said that at the heart of any effective social service is the relationship built between the case manager and the client experiencing homelessness. Often, the case manager learns a great deal about the client’s life. The relationship is not a transaction of information – sign this paperwork; here’s a list of housing units – but one that can be personal.

There also needs to be trust and consistency, Weinstock said, both of which are built over time.

“That relationship needs to stay in place so (the client) can move from homelessness to housing. If every month or two the person trying to make those difficult changes in their lives is working with (a different case manager), it’s very destabilizing.”

Approximately 80 seniors call Northwest Pilot Project each week, Weinstock said. Sometimes, it can take the agency’s staff a week or more to return the phone call, start with a new client or refer the person to other services.

Weinstock said his organization is trying to hire two or three additional housing placement specialists, as well as increase the number of volunteers and graduate students studying social work to work at the agency.

Weinstock said he hoped the new hires would make it possible to return the phone calls within a few days to a week. Each housing specialist at Northwest Pilot Project works with 50 to 60 clients at a time, which means the new hires would also expand the agency’s capacity to assist more low-income seniors.

Another factor affecting staff morale is the sheer amount of time an agency now works with homeless clients.

Ten years ago, Weinstock said, Northwest Pilot Project, like many social service agencies, could find an affordable apartment for a homeless or low-income person to rent within two or three months.

Now, given the shortage of affordable housing, it can take Northwest Pilot Project’s housing placement workers a year or more to find an apartment.

“That’s stressful, not just for the (client), but for the staff, too,” he said. “You’re trying to keep that person afloat for a couple years. That puts stress on the system.”

As it develops its proposed budget for the next year, the Joint Office of Homeless Services has been instructed, like all agencies at the city of Portland and Multnomah County, to present a budget showing a 1 percent reduction for the city and a 3 percent reduction for the county.

Deborah Kafoury, the chair of the Multnomah County Commission, who is also a member of A Home for Everyone’s executive committee, would not necessarily commit to providing budget dollars for increased wages.

“Those are conversations we are going to have to have,” she said. “We can’t keep adding more and more responsibilities without adding more financial investment.”

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