The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-01-07
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (18,011 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On January 7, work session convened by the Portland City Council took up a panel presentation on the Homelessness Response System. Presenters described the governance structure created under the renegotiated intergovernmental agreement between the City of Portland and Multnomah County, including a Steering and Oversight Committee, a Community Advisory Committee, and an Implementation Committee, each with defined membership and recommending authority. Discussion covered the Homelessness Response Action Plan (the "wrap"), organized around nine goal areas and roughly 120 action items addressing systems alignment, shelter expansion, housing retention, behavioral health capacity, vulnerable populations, strategic investment, housing supply, data systems, and communications. Presenters reported that many action items were complete or in progress, referencing key performance indicators on sheltering/housing numbers, exit rates from shelter to permanent housing, retention in permanent supportive housing, and demographic equity in service delivery; some figures presented were described as evolving or under further review. Council members asked about topics including federal delegation involvement, workforce and treatment pathways, youth aging out of foster care, home ownership pathways, disaggregation of racial/ethnic data categories, language access, shelter bed accounting, and accountability structures. Presenters committed to follow-up information on several questions, and noted upcoming budget, legislative, and committee-appointment items. No vote tallies were stated; any votes or appointments discussed are recorded separately in the vote ledger.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 We are beginning a work session.
1 It is Tuesday, January 7th at 204. Thank you for being back with us. For those of us who you were, who were here with us this morning. Thank you to folks who are here with us this afternoon. And welcome to the mayor and city administrator who are here with us today. We have a panel on the homelessness response system. Do you have your slides ready? We're seeing them, but do you have them up there? Okay. Perfect.
2 Are they supposed to project there too, or. No. They're projecting here. Keelan are we doing what?
3 Perfect. Start referencing the slides. Yes.
4 Oh. It's wonderful. That's fancy. Okay. Fancy. Perfect.
5 And, jillian, are you leading this conversation?
6 Yes. I'm starting. Okay, perfect.
7 I will turn it over to you if there are good break points mid-conversation for us to take questions. It would be great to do that throughout the conversation.
8 Yes. You have three. Okay. If you need more, I'm sure you'll tell me.
9 Thank you. Go right ahead.
10 For the record, my name is jillian shoni. I am the very new director of the homelessness response system. For those of you who don't know, I worked at the city like five minutes ago. But I'm here now working for the county, and I just. It's an absolute privilege to be able to continue to work with you all in this space. We are a small but mighty team, but our whole job centers around coordinating the collaborative, collaborative efforts between the city of Portland, Multnomah county, and a bunch of other partners. You'll hear from some of those other partners, including your own city administrator, mike jordan, skyler brock of Portland solutions. Unfortunately, travis graves, the interim coo at Multnomah county, got pulled away. So he will not be here. But he chairs the implementation committee with mike's help. And then I have a bunch of other smart people behind me from the chair's office, the joint office, as well as some of your city bureau leadership to answer questions on housing production and those sorts of things. So with that, I will just jump to our shared vision, just to ground us all as a group. This is the vision that is in the wrap the action plan, which you will learn more about in a moment. Our vision is a community where homelessness is rare and brief, where people take care of one another, foster opportunity and support livability where services are equitable, coordinated, effective, just and accessible. And I just want to point out, you know, number three in particular is where a lot of the work with the action plan is centered. And stated another way, it is it means that the system this the system needs to work for those it serves. So with that, I will kick it over to my colleague Ryan.
11 Good afternoon, council president and councilors, very glad to be with you. For the record, my name is Ryan deibert. I use he him pronouns and I am a senior advisor with the homelessness response system. So the while while we share this vision coming together between the city of Portland, Multnomah county and our various partners, fortunately we stand a long way from that vision. While we may have unique challenges here locally, we're definitely not in this situation alone. When we look at homelessness nationally. This is a headline that you're seeing in this slide from just two weeks ago, referring to national data from the 2024 point in time count, and with a picture from miami-dade county that might look familiar here if you go to the next slide. I've worked in housing and homeless services for more than 25 years now. I started as a street outreach worker many, many years ago, and for more than a decade I've become accustomed to leading these conversations by saying, on any given night in the united states, more than half a million people sleep, are homeless. This is the first year, this year, 2024, in which that's moved from more than half a million to more than three quarters of a million people in the united states who are who are homeless on any given night. That's the largest number that we have ever had in the history of data collection across our country. That it's an 18. It represents an 18% year over year increase from 23 to 24, and that followed a 12% year over year increase from 22 to 23. This year in 2024, there's more than 100,000 additional people who are homeless on a given night than we saw in 2023. Again, the largest increase there that is also reflective of record levels of homelessness among people and families with children. That was up by 39% just in one year alone. And as well as individuals with chronic patterns of homelessness, folks who are in unsheltered locations and people staying in sheltered locations. So a couple of lonely highlights in some of that national data were an expansion nationally in the number of shelter beds that were available in a given night. Though we still saw an increase in unsheltered homelessness nationally. But we also saw continued reductions in numbers of veterans who are experiencing homelessness. And that's almost entirely reflective of broad bipartisan support at the federal level to fund rent assistance and wraparound services at the scale that are needed to address the housing needs of that specific population. Veterans. So I'll hand it back to gillian.
12 Thank you. Ryan. So I think all of you are aware that the city and the county used to address homelessness separately, separately, with the county largely focused on families and the city on individuals. That ended when the joint office was created in 2016. Fast forward to today. Together, we have experienced a global pandemic. New highly addictive drugs, a housing crisis and a long, under-resourced behavioral health system. And here we are. Now to now, we have a recently renegotiated iga with an oversight structure, with goals, with key performance indicators that better align with the moment that we are in. And as an addendum to that agreement, we have an action plan that includes our shelter expansion strategy and all of the other aspects we need to tackle to build that seamless system. We all dream of where offers of help and housing are readily available, and meet people where they are at. Before we get to the plan, we're going to start with governance and oversight, the spaces where we come together and represent how we clarify and lean in to our roles and support mutual accountability. We do that through three committees created by our iga.
13 Robin, is this on? Okay. Great. Thanks. I appreciate you for the record. My name is robin johnson. I use she or they pronouns. You can also use my name. I'm a policy advisor on the homelessness response system team. Thank you. Yep. So the homelessness response system has three committees that form the backbone of the oversight for the system. The committees create tables, spaces for dialog among electeds department and bureau leaders, community partners, providers, and particularly people with lived experience of homelessness. We also have representatives of business interests and neighborhood associations, community groups and others to foster understanding, to share our to examine our shared hopes, our unique community roles, and to drive system improvement and change. These groups also measure our progress with an emphasis on racial equity and with a keen eye to how services are accessed and how services are provided. We really focus. There is an additional focus on transparency and decision making and accountability. So the first of those three systems of the homelessness response system. Sorry, I'm going to get over my nerves right now. The homelessness response system is focused on the homelessness response action plan. It's not a blue sky proposition. Not every service or system that interacts with community members who are unhoused is reflected in the a trap. It is a comprehensive plan, but doesn't cover every aspect. Of our services. So the committees I just wanted to point out that the committees have recommending authority. They don't have budget authority. And so they make recommendations back to their individual jurisdictions about aligning our our budgetary investments, our program models and our contracting processes. So what's key to his and the trap is the agreement, the iga. The partnership is key to this work and the organizations coming together, working in a spirit of partnership and commitment to problem solving. This is exemplified in each of our three committees, and it's their makeup scopes and their shared approaches. And you'll see how that spans over the three committees. I'm going to take a moment to focus on the steering and oversight committee. This is a ten member committee. It is convened by Multnomah county and chaired by chair jessica vega pederson. It's made up of ten folks, as I said, five voting members, two from the county, the chair and a county commissioner, two from the city, the mayor, mayor keith wilson, and then another councilor That will be chosen, I think, in the future. I don't think that they've been identified. Things change fast. A representative of east county, which is mayor travis stovall of Gresham. There are five ex-officio or non-voting members on the committee. A representative of the business community, peter andrews, an SHS taxpayer and a behavioral health expert who have not yet been been appointed. And it also includes two ceos of key systems. Ivory matthews of home forward and mindy statlander of healthshare. This committee, the steering and oversight committee, which monitors progress on the goals, assesses our strategies based on performance and data. Reset system level strategy when needed, again aligning those jurisdictional and investments. And then adjusting the goals annually. They have met four times since September and we'll meet again as needed at least every other month. Per the iga, the city and the county provide quarterly reports to one another through this committee, through the steering and oversight committee, and about their investments, material, program changes and related updates. The first quarterly report was published in November, and I'm sure we'll be following up with that for all of you. Next slide please. Again, at the heart of this work is the community advisory committee. It has 14 members currently that bring a diversity of lived experience, education, identity and geographic representation. The committee includes service providers, people with lived experience of homelessness, and experience in related systems that serve folks who are unhoused. The behavioral health system, folks who do engagement on the streets. And I'll leave it at that. They participate in meetings and policy tables connected to the wrap and their liaisons back to the community. And they share both what is working as a part of the wrap and our services and what is not working. They've met four times since November. They show up at every event, every meeting, every opportunity, except this one where I don't see any of our members, shockingly. And we hear from most of them every single week with ideas and questions. And I just want you to know that that committee is here to work as partners and dig into the problems that we're looking to solve. I did want to add that to our membership will be adding a member from Portland Portland solutions and an additional representative for east county. And those will be our last two members that we'll add in the coming month. And really, all of these folks, these community members, collectively leverage their expertise and they leverage their connections to other advisory bodies both across the county and the city, but also for the organizations that serve that provide services. So I'll leave it at that next slide. Thank you. Let me actually go back. One slide. Sorry I didn't I didn't hit there. I just wanted to hit their key. Their key responsibilities, which is to review and recommend strategies. They review the plan and the outcomes and metrics identified by the other committees. And in the in the plan, they also identify emerging trends that are happening for folks who are living in shelter and living outside. And one thing that they often point out to me is that very few of these trends are emerging, that these are things that community has been telling us as government and as providers for years. And so they are really coming together to amplify and uplift messages that we've been receiving for years. And so there's a great opportunity, both in their keen attention to this detail, but also the tendrils that reach out into community through this advisory council. Thank you. So the implementation committee has 12 members. They are often called the get things done committee. It is convened by Multnomah county and our interim ceo, travis graves, in deep partnership with mike jordan and sky and supported by the hrc team. They meet monthly to align efforts and push hard on the momentum of this work. When we are looking to make adjustments in major systems and that touch the lives of people, this is really the table that it happens at. They are shaking the silos that are serving our homelessness response system. The implementation. Sorry. And I want you to hear so I want to just emphasize that they drive in direct the implementation of the homelessness response action plan. They make a recommend. They make recommendations on annual investments to the steering and oversight committee that are then directed back at our individual jurisdictions. They are there to operationalize the strategies. It is also one of their key roles to engage the community advisory council. One of the things I thought was very promising, however, at the table of the soc is that the soc said, we don't just want to be hearing from the community advisory council through the implementation committee. We want to be hearing from them directly. So that was an organic development that's happened in our time as these as this governance structure has been implemented. So with regard to the implementation committee, which is really where I think the innovation and transformation is beginning to happen, I wanted to invite mike and sky to share a little bit more about that.
14 Sure. Thanks, robin. For the record, mike jordan, city administrator, interim city administrator. Madam president, members of the council. Good to be here today. I will say a little bit about the committee, but I think contextually, it would be good for the council to know. And I'm sure some of you are aware, the iga currently between the city and the county was signed back in July of last year, end of June last year, and this committee began to meet even before the agreement was inked. So we started meeting in the spring. I think April, if I remember correctly. And by all accounts, I think everyone at the table would say it's a work in progress. Robin mentioned advice on investments from this committee to the steering group. We haven't been through a full budget cycle yet. And so I think we're still learning about what our role will be regarding those things. And for the council's information, there is also language in the new iga, which requires a convening by the steering committee annually in advance of budget cycles. For us to take a look at how we've done, look at our metrics, which are evolving, by the way, and look back to see what were the barriers to our success. Where did we have a strategy but we didn't execute well? Where were there externalities that we didn't anticipate and need to mitigate for? While that is relatively rudimentary for a big organization and system, we've never had it before. And as far as the implementation committee goes, we used to solve problems in the moment in an ad hoc way, usually bilaterally between two agents in the whole system. This is the first place that I know of that. We brought all the players, at least, that have a hand in the a trap program and sit at a table together and try to figure out, because many of these problems that we face, the barriers we run into, we're finding are multifaceted. They're not a binary question between two players. They involve others. And so again, we're still learning. It's the first venue I've been at where most of the players come, not just the city and county, but some of the private players too. And so I think we are seeing the fruits of that convening. And I will admit to you right now, at least my experience in the first kind of cycle of this work so far. We have certainly shortened the cycle time of solving problems. The convening has really helped. The staff are really great at pulling the players together around a particular barrier and getting them resolved in real time, so that I think that's a win for us. I think we're still trying to figure out how our work fits into the larger context of, of the strategic nature of what we're trying to accomplish longer term. So that's a work in progress. But I've been incredibly encouraged by just the dialog at the table and the fact that people have kind of let their guard down and people are willing to say, hey, I've got a problem with this, and I can't get past this barrier, how do we do that? And so I've been encouraged. We've got a long way to go, but very, very encouraged by the work and very thankful for the staff because they do most of the lifting between the meetings to get the right people in a room to solve a problem. And the last thing I'll say is our work, at least so far, has been very focused on the action plan items in the a trap. There's about 120 ish, I can't remember. And so we we're very narrowly focused when we discuss around those particular action items to try and resolve those. They all fit into the bigger strategies strategies. But but we're focusing our work really at the ground level, trying to resolve problems in real time. I'll turn it over to skye. She may have some other comments.
15 Thank you. City administrator jordan skylar brucker, now director of Portland solutions, for the record. Good to see you all again. I would just say echo a lot of what mike said, and I think getting past those roadblocks is really the work of the implementation committee. And so I'm really honored to be a part of that work. I think we're cutting through a lot of that bureaucratic red tape. The piece that I think is really important for you all, and hearkens back to our discussion this morning, is the behavioral health and health care systems that are at the table for this work. In my experience, in three years, that is a separate conversation and separate tables a lot of times. And we really were intentional to include those systems into this work directly. And they show up every time, and they're really excited to be at the table. And those are systems that include a whole lot of other roadblocks that we need to work through as a city, county, state, federal government. But we're all working together to try to get past some of those deep, deep issues that we're all aware of. So I think that's just something I'm personally really excited about, is there's a lot of different systems at the table working together. And I also just want to note for you all that the city administrator is obviously sitting in that committee. I am sitting on that committee, as well as the director of the Portland housing bureau. So we have different point people for you to engage with. If you have questions about it or you want us to bring something forward, we're happy to be your point, people, for that. Thank you, council president.
16 And now is probably a good time for questions. If there are any, as at this point, folks have questions at this point or should we keep going?
17 Can I just ask a quick one? Yeah, absolutely.
18 Go ahead councilor.
19 Thank you, madam president. I was there, so I and I'm still have to ask this question. How does this acronym, which is his right. How does that intersect with the system called the joint office?
20 Oh, this is this is a great question. And I was not there when it got named. So but but just for clarification purposes, you weren't in those meetings. No, but the homelessness response system refers to the governance and oversight structure, the three committees. Right. That's let's put that above the line up here.
21 That was helpful.
22 Right. As well as city council and board of commissioners and our joint sessions. So all of that is like above the line. That's the hts attached to that is the trap, the action plan which we will go over next. So put that above the line as well. Below the line is where the actual work happens, where when you invest in something and it is carried out in contracts that Portland solutions puts out or the joint office puts out, that's all below the line. Everybody who's actually out there doing the work and putting the policy investments into action. Every city entity, every county entity, every contracted partner, as well as the state as a policy and investor in metro, as policy and investor of SHS monies. For example, I am creating a graphic for myself councilor Ryan. I'm going to share it with everyone. Thank you. But I just described it verbally.
23 That's the way it helped when you did this. Yes, I think my question would be and it's what you're thinking about all the time as well, is how this up here. Yeah. And when they have wonderful discussions that are very creative and innovative and they get to the heart of the matter and they break down the silos, and I, I love hearing everything that has come to me so far in this presentation. I'm in my first meeting over four years ago. I was like, where's the behavioral health person? Where's the mental health specialist? And I was told, they're not connected to this. And of course, your head starts scratching. So it's great to finally see a really sincere, systemic approach to how to break down the silos. But how will that creative thinking then get into the culture that is down here, where all the work is being done? Look what you've started, like down here, where the work is being done. And you don't have to answer that now, as much as know that that's what people that are representing the community will want to understand in real time.
24 Well, I'm going to try to answer it, okay. And I'm going to say all the folks below the line doing the work have to operate in the status quo until the people above the line change it. So that's our job, right? Everybody above the line change makes policy decisions. You do the investments, right. And then those changes eventually end up in a contract that Portland solution puts out. Or the joint office puts out, for example. But these folks have to operate in the status quo until we change it.
25 And then the distance between policy ahas like you're discussing and actual day to day practice is a long road. Sometimes in most big cultures. So the art will be how do you get the wisdom on the ground, which it is wisdom on the ground because they're experiencing the day to day? Yeah. How will they be included in that system change work in those ahas that you're talking about in breaking the status quo? Many people on the ground want to break the status quo, too. They just want to be heard on how that could be done. So the art will be how to figure out how to bubble up that innovation. If it just comes down, it doesn't work right. If it just goes up, it doesn't work. It needs to be this messy combination of both. Because my experience with continuous improvement.
26 Well, and I think if there's any feedback, but I think we do have a lot of those voices represented on the three committees. And then robin alluded to the various community advisory committees that are in the joint office or other spaces in city and county government where information does flow in.
27 Okay. Thanks, jillian. Appreciate the dialog.
28 Briefly before we move on. City administrator jordan, you mentioned a look back that then turned into budget recommendations. This is the first year we're, what, seven months into the work? Has that look back happened? And should we expect to see that reflected in the budget conversations that we have with the mayor and with your team, or is that look back going to happen, or will that not be included in this year's budget work?
29 Probably not. In this year's budget we're in. We were kind of in the middle of a cycle when we got started. And so I would be looking for this and I will defer to those who are helping us run this whole system. But I would suspect that this is a, you know, September ish convening where the steering committee, perhaps more members than just those on the steering committee of governing bodies, certainly practitioners, probably members of the citizen committee. We come together and we and we say, how did we do what? We've got metrics in the agreement. Those are evolving as we speak. I understand with the steering committee. But but looking back and just say, how did we do? We poured a gazillion dollars into that, and we didn't seem to move the needle very much at all. Why? And the answer to that why question will be critical. And the discussion about the why question is critical. Only then, I think, can we, as an implementation group, make clear eyed recommendations to steering committee and ultimately to governing bodies about investments. And where do we change strategy or where do we move an investment? What part of the continuum is blocked? And we're not moving people from the streets to housing. And it's a very complicated continuum, as you well know. And so a lot of places where we can fall apart. So I'm hopeful that summer, fall next year, this, this, this year. Now excuse me, we would be looking for that convening by the steering committee to bring us together to have that conversation, which would then influence the 2027 budget. Exactly.
30 Thank you. Yep. Thanks for that. Pause for questions.
31 All right. Okay. Now we're going to shift to the plan. So just as a reminder the plan is an addendum to the iga. And in that you'll learn about our shared goals strategies and action items. And I'll kick it over to Ryan.
32 Yeah. Thank you. City administrator jordan referenced. It's I appreciate being formal and council chambers. We've worked enough together that it's hard to not just call him mike. We as as city administrator jordan referenced the homelessness response action plan was drafted concurrently with the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Portland and Multnomah county to create the homelessness response system. It was drafted back in March of 2024 with pretty extensive public feedback. There were briefings to Portland city council and to the board of county commissioners, and it was finalized and adopted through the iga in early August. I would describe it as a short to medium term plan to address homelessness, with a strong focus on expanding services and improving alignment across health, behavioral health, employment, public safety and housing and homeless service systems, all with the aim to get folks better access to the services they need to move from homelessness quickly back to housing and stability. The plan itself really represents a systemic approach, with a strong focus on short term reductions in unsheltered homelessness. The plan is organized around nine core goal areas, each with its own detailed section of action items, 120 action items in all, and each of those action items identifies key responsible parties who who own the item, as well as a deadline collation of the collaborative roles between the city, the county, and our multiple partners that I've seen in more than two decades. That I've worked in this policy area here in Portland. And I'll turn it to maggie to briefly walk you through each of those broad nine goal areas of the plan.
33 Thank you. Ryan. Good afternoon, madam president and councilors. For the record, I'm maggie williams. She her I am a policy advisor on the homelessness response system. So to dive in on the nine goals that make up the homelessness response action plan, the map you'll see on these next slides that we've also added some key completed action items that have been completed. In each of these goals, we'll only be touching on a small number of these today, in that we have completed more than 50 of those 120. And so getting going over all of those would take all of the rest of our time. But we would be happy to follow up. If there are any specific questions related to any of those. So moving on to the first goal in the map, which focuses on systems development and alignment, the primary action items under this goal really relate to breaking down existing silos to create better alignment across government and providers, especially among housing and homeless services providers and primary and behavioral health systems. So actually getting to actually successfully completing this goal will, in theory at least, move us toward an aligned system where providers can better assist people to get to access to the care that they need. The second goal that we have here is really focusing on shelter expansion. The strategies and action items under this goal build on the joint office's leadership in developing a community sheltering strategy, including a strategy to expand the inventory of 1000 shelter beds across each of the population based systems and focus on housing placement from shelter with better staffing ratios, rental assistance, and exploring other best practices from other cities for potential pilots. The school focuses on improving housing retention, especially in supportive housing, and increasing funding for those dedicated, permanent supportive housing units. Some early action items that we've completed on this, notably significant streamlining in contracting processes with the joint office, but also some significant work that was led by the bureau of planning and sustainability to create a tool to identify potential locations for the siting of affordable housing, shelters and behavioral health services that I know that sky and we also have some folks from planning and sustainability who can speak to that more if we need to. Our third goal relates to behavioral health capacity. The work related to this goal is primarily being led by our partners in the county health department, and also coordinated care organizations building on work that the Oregon health authority has done to identify and actually start addressing some of those systems gaps. So over the course of the plan, that will mean more secure residential beds, a 24 over seven sobering center and more intensive case management capacity. Our fourth goal focuses on addressing and preventing homelessness among some of our most vulnerable populations. And we think of this as kind of our really kind of big pieces of work. These are kind of our big sort of, I guess, sub goals of all of this, because it really is trying to get at keeping these most vulnerable populations off the streets. So many of the action items under this goal work to strengthen and better align existing programs in government and with our providers focused on ending discharges to the street from health care settings and incarceration and carceral settings, and also ending aging out of youth foster care into homelessness. Each of these systems discharge practices and their relationship to homelessness is incredibly complex. So these are goals that are going out to the end of this year or the end of next year and the end of the year after, because it's going to take a significant coordination across these systems to actually reach these goals. So this is an area where our team is really acting as a convening body to bring together different parties from across different departments within both the county and the city, different levels of government, and also key outside partners to work together as a number of key tables and councilor Ryan, this is kind of getting to I think, your question around how do we start to get some of those voices? I think kind of from lower down in our agencies and departments as well as from the top. And I think it's really these tables where a lot of that is going to start happening. As for the most part, it's really not the department directors who are going to be sitting at those tables. It's the actual people implementing those programs who have been pulled into those. And that's where a lot of those decisions about how do we actually break down some of these silos, how do we really work together better that those tables are where a lot of that work is happening. So a great example of this work that we've already started working on to kind of bring together a number of teams to unstick some of those sticky complexities, is the table that we've already started convening around the criminal justice system. So we've been working regularly and collaboratively with the county's department of community justice, with the sheriff's office, with corrections, health and the health department, with the joint office of homeless services and the Multnomah county defenders to start sorting out the complexity of needs among people at risk of losing their housing who are in pretrial custody versus being released from county jails versus being released from prison. So trying to figure out where we can start getting some rental vouchers into those key systems. Our fifth goal is really focused on strategic investment. This is kind of getting to that right money question, where we're trying to use those right dollars for the right services. So primarily looking at ways to leverage medicaid investments for better access to services and increased federal match, and starting to move upstream for some more increased and sustainable federal investment in the work, especially as it relates to that intersection between homelessness and also behavioral health. There's a lot of action items that are in process in this area, but I wouldn't call any of them done at this point. We've begun convening more of those aforementioned cross-jurisdictional tables to share best practices and uncover some of those opportunities. Some of our most promising early work has been really leaning on, actually, the city and assessment of opportunities to build medicaid for outreach and navigation services. And a health share has also been a really key partner in helping work, move, work in that area. Our sixth goal is focusing on housing supply and affordability. The action items under this goal lean heavily on portland's five year housing production strategy and coordinated implementation of recent state level policy and investment shifts to increase housing production across the board. This work also points us to new local revenue for affordable housing. Production. Affordable housing production that lets us sustain our commitments to service servicing funding. Several action items have already been completed in this area, including the city's work to identify a number of commercial buildings in the central city for potential housing conversion, which has been pretty big. Our seventh goal is around data and analytics. This started with internal work to improve existing data systems to help us all get access to useful system and program level information. In October, we launched public facing dashboards for the hrs, which will be covered in more depth later. But we are also embarking on longer term work for data integration across systems to improve care coordination. And that will be not just within Multnomah county, but will also. We're working with metro because that's more of a full, community wide strategy. So as part of this goal, we're completed includes some significant action items completed by the joint office in partnership with the city of Portland and a range of shelter partners, which was mentioned this morning, I believe, around piloting a real time shelter availability tool, which just launched in the fall, and then getting to the end of our goals. We have so many goals. Our eighth goal focuses on establishing the new governance structure for the house. All of the action items in this goal area have been completed. The iga was adopted. All three of our governing committees were launched and as noted earlier, and all are finalizing their charters and ongoing work plans. Our ninth goal around communication and being a little bit more open about all of the work that we are doing. Similarly, all of the action items in this goal area have been completed. We launched a new website, public and partner facing communications to update on progress towards key goal and the goals and metrics, and launched the aforementioned dashboard. And even though we talk about there being nine goal areas, there's also this section at the end of the wrap that is basically just kind of miscellaneous strategies and action items that we are tracking as well. So a lot of those actually fall kind of further out in time, but some are actually completed already, including funding outreach services at library locations in this year's county budget. And also, we've already exceeded goals for an action item that was associated with move in Multnomah by placing and retaining 214 households with a rent guarantee for the move, and Multnomah agents and agency leasing programs. So that's that makes up all 120 action items fall under each of those goals. So to look at kind of the work that we have done over the last calendar year, this graph displays the total number of action items that were due in 2024, by the month for which they were due. You can see, as city administrator jordan mentioned earlier, that much of this work actually started significantly before the iga was adopted. As you can see by the 20 action items that were due in June. So here you can see that the dark blue on this graph is all of those items that are complete, which is the vast majority of these action items. Another significant portion of these action items is that in the purplish color, which is those that have formed tables that are meeting in an ongoing manner on that more complex work. That's just going to take a little bit longer to untangle some of that. So that makes up 90% of the action items that were due in 2024, while the remainder are just kind of being wrapped up and are really close because most of those were due in December, or they've been flagged for further review of their kind of scope of work. Making such significant progress really required focus across multiple city and county departments, as well as at health, share, home, forward and the state level, as well as metro work that we will look forward to continuing into the new year. And I will I think we're going to I was going to turn it back to you, but I think we're going to questions.
34 Another opportunity for questions.
35 Perfect. Thank you, councilor Dunphy. Go ahead.
36 Thank you. I have a couple of questions. Three of them pertaining specific to the individual goals and one pertaining to this slide that is currently up. I'll just ask the current question real fast. What happened in November? Why did nothing happen?
37 It's not that nothing happened. A lot happened, just nothing was due that month. This was all based on what the due dates were in the wrap. There's going to be even more gaps in this next year. It was just. Yeah, you can see how many of them were loaded into June. That doesn't mean they were all completed in June. Some were a little bit late because there was a lot due in June. But yes, this was there were just nothing due in November for some reason.
38 Cool. With regard to goal five, talking about fqhcs and medicaid reimbursement, are our federal delegation at the table involved in these conversations, and has that conversation also included things like social security, disability, and ssi?
39 We have not had federal partners at the table at this point. We've mainly been talking to folks at the state and then also our, you know, health care and other partners more locally. And I don't know that we have really.
40 Well, I'll I'll add that government relations, certainly on the city side of the equation, I'm going to assume also on the county. So maybe I shouldn't, I don't know, but the city government relations team does engage our congressional delegation on this topic.
41 Yeah, there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of money left on the table with social security. Specifically, I used to do social security casework for senator jeff merkley. And knowing that every homeless person on the street is entitled, for the most part, to about $750 of ssi every month, that could be geared in a systematic way towards housing, towards services seems like an enormous, glaring goal. And they have staff. Each of those offices have staff. I would really want to see for this to be successful, I think we need to have all of government at the table, and I would be happy to help play a role in that too.
42 May I just add sorry. So we have been talking to dhs, and we do have workers who actually come on to shelter sites. So some of the city shelters actually have folks who will sit and work with folks directly and pull out their laptop and get folks signed up, because personally, that's been one of my goals to get folks, anybody who's eligible for ohp or signed up for federal benefits.
43 It's hard. And I know that central city concern has a staff dedicated just to getting folks signed up. In that case, work is really involved and having the documents you need in order to get ssi or ssd in the best of circumstances is a challenge. I think that we should be putting some effort into this as a collective whole of government. Sorry. With regard to goal six, talking about housing stock, is there coordination specifically with prosper Portland and the housing bureau, as well as with the permitting bureaus on looking at those opportunities for conversion? And has that also does does goal six inform prosper Portland, or the housing bureau's investment strategy?
44 Yes, it's a short answer. We also have Eric and others who can speak more in detail to that. But yes, okay, those are all coordinated groups.
45 And my last question is regarding goal nine. Really, I guess I if we aren't talking about the work we're doing and the plans, the community doesn't know that there is a plan or that any work is being done. And so beyond launching a public facing website, that probably doesn't have the traffic we need it to in order to be successful or a performance dashboard, and are we intentionally using communications and media in a way to advance our goals in this, and to at least let folks know in a sort of systematic way, if somebody rather is somebody responsible for that communication, that public communication?
46 Short answer yes. There's a whole team of folks that are my new best friends over at the county, the awesome communication staff who work very hard to get the message out there of what we what we are doing in response to what people are seeing throughout Portland and in all of our neighborhoods.
47 So but less broadly to the entire to the county comms team. But more specifically, is there somebody on the implementation committee who is tasked with being a media spokesperson or being responsible with getting that information to the public?
48 There is not currently there is not currently a one member, but there is a coordinated effort amongst the partners at that table. But a particular lift by the county. Just one piece I wanted to add is we had over 350 people apply to be on the community advisory committee and the steering and oversight committee, and that made up a pretty big base of folks who are now getting consistent communications. And we invite your partnership in turning those communications out to your constituencies as well. I think we have two thus far newsletters. And so that that's an opportunity for partnership moving forward. And we can bring that both to the implementation committee and the community advisory committee. Interestingly, we do have a few communications professionals on our committee, on our community advisory committee who are keenly interested in doing this sort of work. And so I think there's a real opportunity.
49 Yeah, I think that if there is somebody who is responsible for it, we are more likely to see outcomes than if there is a committee that is responsible for it. And talking about the good work that we are spending countless hours and millions of dollars on is really, really important. It shouldn't be an afterthought. It should be. It should be core to I mean, it is one, you know, one ninth of all your goals. But I want to make sure that that is not those goals aren't in order. That's not the level of priority.
50 Yeah. They're not in order. And I will say while we don't have that on the implementation committee, we do have weekly communications huddles with chairs, staff on communications as well as county staff on communications. So we it is it is very top of mind. Great to have that meeting again tomorrow.
51 And I'll just warn you all, we have far more questions in the queue this time than at your last pause. Councilor Green. Go ahead.
52 Thank you, madam president, and thank you for this presentation. It may not be surprising, but I'm also going to ask about item six. Goal six increasing the production of affordable housing. I'm specifically interested in the key completed action items. 6.1.4 I'm wondering if you can say a little bit more about what is meant by funding infrastructure investment that will facilitate local housing production, including affordable housing. Yeah, just say a little bit more about that. Is it complete? What does complete mean in that? In that sense, we also have the fb director, helmy, I think online, who is much more equipped to answer about all those investments and strategies.
53 And I don't know if she's able to speak, but I can I can actually speak to that individual action item that was that was an early action item that was associated with the legislative agenda in the past legislative session.
54 At the state level, it references some of those investments that came through the state legislature, specifically in local infrastructure, that could help to support housing production. So it was a piece that we were discussing. The plan was being developed at the same time that those legislative concepts were being developed. So it was referenced there. I think it may have been one of our first complete action items, because it happened with the completion of that legislative session.
55 Thanks. Yeah, I'll always take credit for the wins you can write. No. So is that is that like sort of offsetting system development charges that that type of infrastructure piece? Okay. That's good. The other question I have is the housing production strategy. And I'm glad you guys are using that to lean on that. I think it's a great document. It does call for the use of a revolving loan fund to support housing production. We saw you know, we've seen in montgomery county, for instance, they they maintain a production of affordable housing in a very tough interest rate environment because they use the revolving loan fund. I'm wondering if you guys have thought about using that tool, which is in the production strategy, and maybe thinking think about that as an opportunity to, for tiff, spend down to sort of capitalize a revolving loan fund. Tough question.
56 I feel like that's city. Yeah, yeah.
57 Help me just popped on because helmi wants to talk about it. Tell me, will you? Thank you.
58 Yeah. Good afternoon. Helmi, historic director of Portland housing bureau, apologized for not being there in person. I am very familiar with the montgomery county revolving loan fund. It's a strong interest to us, and we've actually discussed it with home forward, who is the housing authority? It's done by the housing authority in in montgomery county, maryland. We have not discussed it yet with prosper regarding the use of tiff, but it is definitely in our, you know, sort of innovation work program is looking at potentially doing a revolving loan loan fund that could be used for land acquisition and new development. So as it basically the answer is yes, we are exploring it. We haven't made any material actions though to accomplish it using tiff.
59 Okay. Thank you director I'm encouraged to hear that.
60 Councilor Zimmerman thank you.
61 And I'm really comfortable with short answers if you can or if you're able to. So I'm curious, some of the technology that you outlined and the systems that we're trying to collect data, shelter, availability are all of our funded providers required to play in our software.
62 Not currently.
63 Do we have a goal to get to that point, right. If you're going to if you're going to be a county funded organization, you're also going to give us the data that we require to do work.
64 Yes. And I think that will be largely focused on folks who engage in this work. So it'll be part of their contract. So yes.
65 Great. And then the shelter availability tool, is it available to the public at the larger public for them to see? I know a lot of do gooders across the community are also helping place folks, and I wasn't sure about that. No. Not yet okay. I appreciated robin, your comments about I think it was something striking, silos, something along those lines. I really appreciated that. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. The I want to talk. I have two questions really around the goals for how people end or excuse me, how people leave behavioral health, health systems incarcerations and youth. You have those outlined as 2025, 2026 and 2027. And I am somewhat curious about the thought around those timelines, because my instinct is that we would probably be better at the thing that's actually in 2027, because it's a smaller group of people and more accomplishable. And yet it is in our 2027. And so if there's anything where in a system that is already downstream in the in the worst case, this is the one aspect of it where we can get upstream at our youth placements. What is the age that a person ages out of foster care, and why is it our last goal in the timeline?
66 Let me let me speak to the ordering of the timelines first, and then I'll defer to other folks who may know the youth foster system better than I do to answer the last of those questions. So you saw a smiling and nodding because as we've come into implementing the work, we've we've held the same question about the way those timelines are organized, the youth foster system, while while it is complex in its own right, it is much less complex and much smaller in number than the numbers of folks who are accessing various inpatient health systems. So we've actually been working with our implementation committee to consider recommendations to actually switch the timing of those two, because we think we may need longer to meaningfully implement with our health system partners, given the complexity of that system. So that was the smiling and nodding. Yeah. Was like, we're with you. And I love that. In terms of the youth foster system, does anybody know that specifically off the top of their head.
67 So we'll get the exact answer for you because it's at different. It can be at different points for folks. Some folks leave voluntarily. So that's always an option. And there is currently a state initiative to serve serve youth who have been involved in the child welfare system through age 21. So with potentially with housing services. And so that's new that the Oregon department of human services is exploring. And we have strong partnership from dhs, both here in Multnomah county and at the state level, working. We staff most of the tables collaboratively on the team. But then additionally, this one, we have a lot of state partnership. So it's so it's lending to what Ryan is alluding to of why we can move it, I appreciate that.
68 I certainly keep me in the loop if we need to move on the child piece, because I feel like anybody who's spent any time in the er in the last few years knows that to meet your goal for 2025 is a lift I'm not sure is rooted in reality, but the youth one seems far more realistic. Thank you for that. And then I guess my other piece that kind of goes along with it. Are we good at it? Are we good yet at having a wraparound for a youth who who is leaving a system but doesn't have those other deep needs? It's just like all of us at youth. If we were on our own. Financial hardship is and oftentimes as part of our reality. And to do that unsupported is going to be hard, right? But are we good at this at all, or is this building a new system to recognize that 18 to 21 and maybe even 26 is a new area for us to focus in?
69 From a human services perspective, which is my substantive policy background. We have the system that we have, and we have committed partners at the state and at the local level. And I think that that is one of the things that we've recognized across this plan is that every single action item brings together a disparate group of practitioners who are great experts in their fields. And so part of the innovation, part of in my in my 20 years in human services, this is one of the most exciting policy propositions and tables to be at, because folks are coming. And so with particular interest in the youth system, that has been very, very siloed in terms of just looking at even a piece of having a housing navigator to work with youth or work with a culturally specific community or with elders. So I think that there is a lot of opportunity for further collaboration, and none of us are going to speak to whether or not we're good at it. That just depends on each of our seats and perspectives. But we are committed to making remarkable change in this plan, and happy to have your interest, particularly in the youth piece.
70 Okay, I hope I hope we can get to the point where we do say if we're good or bad at something, right? So in a world of crisis, we've got to be able to admit the things we can take care of now and the things we have to like, rally around. And so one of my, my hopes in this new system was that the steering oversight, the implementation and even the community group to some levels could have more frank conversations than I think has happened in this community in a long time. I think we're here because we avoided tough conversations. So I'm looking for that opinion eventually, and I'm ready to hear it. If even if it's in a different room at a different time. So thanks. That's all my questions.
71 Councilor I would just add, I will say personally, I think we have missed the bridge from folks who are exiting foster care into new systems. So I think you can talk to a lot of providers, but I think exactly to robin's point, it's a small system. It's been underfunded, but folks do have services until they reach that age out stage. And I think I know that this goal was predicated on recognizing we have this young adult piece that really has just been missing from a lot of our service delivery models.
72 Yeah, I mean, I think as a as a community, we have extended health care benefits to people to 26 under under family plans. Right. So we have acknowledged that youth is a different age maybe than our system has historically recognized. And I think that that was probably rooted in some pretty deep research and what people are experiencing. And so where we can have this be supportive in a similar, similar realm, I think is interesting, you know, the type of housing that that my fellow counselor has proposed and other things at a youth level is about as upstream as we can get so that folks aren't entering a system that they will never leave. So thanks.
73 I got a couple more people for you, counselor Clark.
74 Thank you, madam chair. Actually, counselor Zimmerman stole my thunder. I was it's amazing the work that you've done to create this homeless infrastructure to improve it. And I was very, very happy to see that you're working upstream and the three areas your overarching goals is exactly what I was going to bring up as well. But can you give us any more information on the numbers of people in those three categories, what that represents? I'm just so glad you're working on prevention at upstream that that is a question that we have asked so many times.
75 Counselor Clark and that's actually one of the initial hurdles that we were dealing with. It's counselor Zimmerman, to your question of whether or not we are good at this, it's we're not starting from a blank page on any of this, but there are a lot of unanswered questions. And one of them is, how big is the problem? And I think we're closest to knowing how big the problem is for youth foster care. But in terms of the like, exit from carceral settings and exits from health care settings, yeah, it's not a blank page there. They are working on it. But being able to answer the question of how big that problem is, that's not something we're currently able to answer.
76 Is it the same for the hospital system as well?
77 Wow, Ryan, did you just want to speak to inflow for a second? Yeah. What we do and do not have our arms wrapped around.
78 Yeah. So broadly, you'll start to hear as we continue to engage. I mean, we're committed to quarterly joint interactions between city council and the board of county commissioners. So there's lots of opportunities to continue this conversation, both collectively and individually. But you'll start to hear a lot of this framed around both inflow folks coming newly into homelessness and outflow, folks who are moving from homelessness back into housing. And on the on the inflow side, we have we have a number of touch points where we can see how that or where that inflow is occurring. The joint office is doing a good job, particularly in this year's point in time count building. In some questions about why people were newly coming into homelessness and as they develop a more robust, by name list of folks who are newly becoming homelessness or newly becoming homeless, we're understanding more detail there as well. But as we, for instance, start into started into this work with the health care systems, some hospital systems are able to give us pretty good data about the number of folks they think they're discharging, either to a shelter or sometimes to the street. Other hospital systems have less of that data readily available. And so we're starting with that sort of cloudier picture of it's in this broad range and starting to really work down to actionable numbers and populations. So a lot of why you see so much of this work in ongoing tables right now is that a lot of that is in the discovery phase and in the and in the problem solving and barrier busting phase.
79 All right. Well, thank you very much I appreciate it.
80 Councilor Ryan.
81 Thank you, madam president. I don't I'm going to look at the goals as well, but I'm trying to find what I'm going to mention in the goals. And maybe they're there and I just can't see them right now. So earlier today we had a long work session on this topic city wide. Maybe you all saw it. And I was waxing on a bit about having people move from dependance to independence. And one of the key roles in that is to become socially and economically mobile. The goal in our society would be by age 24, then everything would be perfect, right? So in this space, we of course should be aspirational to do that as well. But I'm not seeing anything in the goals right now about workforce, and I'm not seeing anything in the goals about what's the right word, moving people from, say, being addicted to being in a sobriety program and a treatment program. That's a messy journey. But progress is perfection, and it always helps when people start that journey of trying to be sober one day at a time. But I'm not seeing anything in the goals in that. And when I don't see those goals, I don't know how we're ever going to really see improvement and move forward. So are they in there? And I just can't see them.
82 Yeah. Thank you, councilor Ryan. Yeah, it is actually covered under goal five, which is one of the ones that it's around right dollars for right service, but is also getting into that question of workforce. I don't know why it's not called out better in the actual name of the goal, but there are strategies underneath that are related to workforce bureaucrats.
83 We talk about things like where the funding comes from, and that's a habit I've noticed since I've been in government. But the public would like some tangible descriptive language. And so I guess my feedback would be if it's in goal five, can we say it, please?
84 Yeah, I will say yeah. I will say that the strategies underneath are a little bit more explicit in some of these cases. And that's one of those cases where one of us it's a little bit more explicit there. But we have actually. Yeah, already started speaking with work systems and getting them connected. And some of this work along as part of the table that we're going to start forming around one of our action items that is expanding regional workforce investment and development priorities to focus on workforce opportunities for individuals living in shelter, transitional housing and rapid rehousing and work systems has already been doing quite a bit of work around that. So we're working on figuring out kind of what our baseline is there and what more we need to do on that work.
85 I get the technical system goal here, but it would be great to have the pragmatic goal as well, and they go hand in hand. I haven't met anyone that's becoming sober that doesn't need to have a robust workforce plan, so it helps when you're busy doing healthy things that are productive.
86 Councilor Kanal.
87 Thank you for being here. It's good to see you again, jillian as well. And I have a few questions. I'll start with a really technical one about the chart of with the months on it and just looking through the document, which was dated June 2024, when the actual plan came out, there were some there that are currently marked as completed, but they weren't marked as completed then, even if their deadline was then, is there a way for us to tell how many of these were completed by their original deadline versus completed by now?
88 That that is a report I can pull, but that's not something we have been tracking. Just some of that has been with the realities of we had a lot of things due in June, and there was also, you know, a new budget coming through and all of that. And also our team formed in June and so many things were done late at that point. But that is something I can pull if that's something that you're interested in.
89 Yeah, I'm interested in it from the perspective of ensuring that when we create new goals, we're creating them realistically for people who are, you know, as you as we pointed out earlier with councilor Dunphy's question, there was a stacking of goals in that month and none in November. So how can we help with that over over time? I have a question on the additional goals, and if you could give us a status update on 8.8.1.1, which is the eviction representation or prevention conversation at all.
90 Just pulling up language. Where oh yes. Yeah, that that is one of those items that we have a few of those items that that work group has been assembled. That is all that the action item said was that that work needed to be assembled. And so it has been marked as complete with the recognition that that is ongoing work. So that is being led by a county human services at this time. And we have talked extensively about what city administrator jordan likes to call the. So you finished your action items. So what document that the intention is to send out basically a survey of some kind of, you know, you finish this action item. What more work did that create? What is still ongoing? What budget needs might there be basically as a way to recognize that the a trap is in and of itself, very necessarily a flexible and adaptable document and plan because, you know, yes, we have an action item here that's around assembling a work group on eviction prevention, but there's no other action items or goals around that. And so figuring out kind of what is the next iteration of this, because as Ryan mentioned, this is a fairly short to middle term plan in a lot of ways. And so figuring out what's next is a big piece of that. So that work group exists. But what is coming out of that is that's still kind of in the works.
91 So do they have a deadline in terms of their work?
92 It's the again, the action item just said to assemble. So there wasn't actually a directive of work on that after that. So they had assembled by the end of July and they will continue to do that work. But they don't really have any other work that has a due date on it. So we just need to keep up with what they're doing and figure out what's next.
93 If I might add, just to add a piece of clarification, rent assistance and eviction prevention and rapid rehousing, this is this is work that is happening in happening ongoing, the way it is reflected in the trap plan is just a blip of that work. And so one of the things I just wanted to share with you all as counselors, and thank you so much, councilor, for the question, is that really the plan uplifts pieces that might have been the hottest potatoes at the moment, but they're in. What we talk about often is a trap 2.0 of doing a broader and more comprehensive planning document that would reflect some of the historical documents that we've looked at extensively, and then some of the really innovative and forward thinking documents that our partner jurisdictions across the country are implementing as well.
94 Yeah. And I'm asking this just two pieces of context. I'm asking this question. I was looking at goal four and the target populations, and I imagine that those were chosen largely because of the percentages of each of those groups that end up becoming homeless. But in terms of raw numbers, renters as a broad category is probably the single biggest place you can predict that you're going to see people eventually become homeless from. And so having this conversation around eviction prevention, I think is important. And I'd love to see, sort of piggybacking off of what you mentioned, that, maggie, that that city administrator jordan brought up, as well as what my district colleague, councilor Ryan brought up, that the future goals be phrased in terms of outcomes instead of means to ends when there is an a trap 2.0, because that's going to help us understand and even, frankly, to determine future recommendations. Even if there was a deadline that is also a means to an end. This is sort of a means to a means to an end. And so getting to a place of just being able to assess that, I think is really helpful for us. Clarification on goal number five, and this is from the actual document itself. There's under the outcomes using a contractor to identify opportunities to maximize federal match for mobile crisis response services is that contractor's work include general support for seeing how psr can get to bill medicaid, or am I reading that incorrectly? Yeah.
95 So that is work that's ongoing right now actually through Portland solutions. So not through a contractor, but actually just a member of my team that's been coordinating work with central city concern based on their ability to currently build medicaid. So they have that administrative infrastructure in place. And piggybacking off of that for our mobile crisis response. So chat and psr have been in those tables and in those discussions, along with bruce goldberg, who is kind of the outside expert through his work with oha. So he's helping advise some of those pieces. But we're bringing in state partners. They've asked us to actually compile a recommendation that they can then bring to the federal partners to ask for any changes that need to be made, or how we could facilitate that process. It's a small piece of the billing medicaid bucket that I think we want to address through this goal, but it's a piece that's actually happening right now.
96 Okay. In a past life, I helped coordinate that conversation at the public safety service area. And I know that the two of us that coordinated that are currently working in city hall, so I'd love to make sure that they're connected back as they no longer have their two reps there in number six. The goal six. There's 20 commercial buildings to be identified for conversion to housing, and that seems to have been achieved. Is there a is this. I think you've probably answered it in the last question, but is there another round of that happening of identifying more commercial buildings for conversion?
97 Kuhnhausen is probably the best to answer that question, but as of several months ago and shabrie vickers, who I thought was here with prosper, prosper got two conversions across the finish line through investments. Fall of last year in old town into the 80 and 120 army range, which was phenomenal. Those projects would not have happened if prosper wasn't at the table with sort of that, that final financial piece to make that happen. And then what the permitting bureau does is they help building owners who want to consider their buildings for conversion work through the numbers. And last I checked, there were 17 individual buildings that had come to the city to ask for help in direction. I'm not sure any of them have figured out how to get across that financial finish line. As of this moment, I don't know if.
98 No, I don't think they're across the finish line, but they are in active conversation, so it'll be a part of okay, what options do we have for funding pulling it all together and the city assisting them in that process and seeing whether it pencils just to be frank.
99 Yeah. Thank you for that. And then last question and I think it's kind of been half, half asked. So for the for the captioning service out there, I want to be clear, but. By councilor Zimmerman, the first question was around the shelter availability tool. And I just want to piggyback and say maybe for a trap 2.0 or whatever, having it be accessible to the public is really vital because we can do this for a lot of different types of there's a lot of examples we can cite of, of these sorts of things, but a map ideally where you can see the restrictions or barriers that may exist, as well as the number of available shelter beds updated on a on a live basis would be really, really helpful. And I think that's something I heard a lot from constituents over the course of the last year. And I'd love to be able to help say, I asked this question and hopefully helped make it happen. And if there's anything we can do to help on that, I'd love to be part of it. And that is my last question.
100 Madam president, I'm recognizing that we have 40 minutes left and you have another section. Two other councilors have questions. I'd like to let them ask their questions. And if we have time to get full answers now, that would be fantastic. If we don't, if you can give a short answer and then follow up with longer answers, we can make that work as well. Councilor Novick.
101 I actually have a series of questions that I don't really expect answers to today, although if somebody has them, that would be great. Their questions. I sort of wanted to get out on the broader table, and in part I have to confess the questions I wanted to share with my fellow councilors. And given the public meetings law, I kind of thought I had to share them in this public meeting. Some of them are about homelessness, some of them are about housing production. The first big one is, given our shortage of affordable housing, is there a natural level of homelessness we should expect? Is there kind of a national average of for every 1000 unit shortage of affordable housing, we can expect x numbers of homeless people. If so, are there some places that beat the average? How are we doing compared with the average? And I'll just rattle off the rest of them. If housing is, some say, as a game of musical chairs, how useful contemporary rent assistance be if it doesn't increase the amount of housing, does it merely affect who wins the game of musical chairs, not the number of people who lose? Denver recently tried giving a bunch of homeless people various amounts of cash, and reported that a lot of them found housing. Have we looked at that? How did their results compare with our results we get with things like temporary rent assistance? Is it possible that giving people no strings money is more effective than giving money to landlords? Turning to housing production, we constantly bemoan the fact that it cost a gazillion dollars per unit to build affordable housing. Are there cities where land is as expensive as it is here, but it only costs half a gazillion dollars a unit? If so, what are they doing differently? Or is the gazillion per unit an immovable national figure? There's a lot of discussion about barriers to building housing. Do we have any way to make guesstimates based on looking at other cities of how much housing production we might expect from removing a given barrier, like if we cut the time for processing permits in half, can we expect an extra 1000 units a year? If we eliminated height limits? Could we expect another two 342? If we eliminate a design review, can we expect another 258? I realize I'm asking for a comical level of precision, but I just want to get a reality check of can we look at what other cities are doing and see what we can expect from each reform? Is there a city that has, for example, really fast permitting, no height limits, no design review, and a big housing shortage and they're producing housing at a rate 400% faster than us. And so the big question underlying all these questions is, I think that there's an assumption among a lot of folks that the reason we have a big homelessness problem in Multnomah county is that the city, the governments are incompetent, that we'd solve homelessness if we all just stopped sucking. And I really hope that that is true. My fear is that we're dealing with one manifestation of a national problem, and even if we did everything right, we'd still have a big homelessness problem. So these questions are designed to get at the question of whether my hope or my fear is more grounded in reality. Thank you.
102 Noted. We have your questions, and I already did hand a copy to Eric engstrom behind me for the bureau of planning and sustainability. So we will be in touch.
103 And if you could get answers to those questions to all of us, we would appreciate that. Thank you, councilor Smith, I believe you have the last question for this section.
104 Thank you, madam president. Jillian, do you have any any hopes to move upstream a bit in moving from homelessness to home ownership conversations as an action item?
105 Home ownership and action items related to that are in the housing production strategy. Okay, I will leave it at that for now and have the housing bureau follow up with you. But thank you. Yes.
106 Great. Let's move on to the next part of your presentation. Thank you for fielding all of those questions.
107 Oh thank you. Okay. Where are we? Oh key performance indicators. So and I think we can do this fast madam president. So each of the nine goals and 120 action items are meant to be in direct service to these key key metrics that you see on your screen, sheltering or housing about 2700 people by the end of 2025, increasing by 15% exits from shelter to permanent housing by the end of 2025, and then 75 of people retain their permanent supportive housing 24 months after placement. Next slide. I'm going to move through this one quickly because through a couple of questions from councilors, we discussed this, and we are in agreement that they need to be revisited in terms of due dates. We will do that next. You can track our progress. Maggie mentioned that we have a dashboard. That dashboard is now live, and we are in discussions about how we can build that out to include other data points to make for you and the board of commissioners, and also the public to track our progress. And then with that, I'm just going to hand it to Ryan, who will walk through those key metrics on our progress to date. Thanks.
108 Yeah, I can briefly walk through the current state of those metrics. We've had some really good robust conversations as well regarding these. The trap in our work around it is not intended by any means to be a static piece of work. It's intended to allow us to check in. How are we progressing toward these metrics and where we're not meeting the metrics? What changes do we need to make to actually be making progress where we're exceeding those metrics? Why? What can we understand about what's what's going well so far? So gillian shared those top line key performance indicators, the quarterly data for each of these next four slides that we'll close out with. These are all data as of September of 2024. So the close of the third quarter of 2024, we're actually pulling together the data from the last quarter of 2024 right now, and are going to have those updates ready by mid-february. So to walk through the first measure, this is the this is the goal that's focused on increasing the number of people who are sheltered or housed through our collective work. So in January of 2024, there were about 5400 people who were known to be experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Multnomah county. So by December 31st of 2025, the eight trap goal is to shelter or place into housing 27,699 more unsheltered people. So a number equivalent to half of those who were known to be unsheltered at the baseline. So in the two years prior to the eight trap, that's 2022 and 2023, we sheltered or housed about 16,000 people, a little more than 16,000 people in those two years. So for an order in in order for us to meet this goal, then by the end of 2025, we'll need to shelter or house 2700 more than that, or about 18,800 people, give or take. We're currently on track to meet that goal, but we're going to need to continue the expanded shelter and housing placement activities that are outlined in wrap in order to maintain that progress. So in the first three quarters of calendar year 2024, we sheltered or housed a little more than 9000 people, putting us in three quarters at about 48% of our two year goal. So that's that first metric that we're following. The second metric acknowledges that there are significant disparities in in the among the people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness here in Multnomah county. This is true nationally. It's true locally as well. Systemic racism is a significant driver of those disparities and how they manifest both here locally and nationally. The goal, as it's set under the homelessness response action plan, is to ensure that the percentage of people that we are sheltering or housing by these priority populations, by race and ethnicity, by age, are equal to or greater than the percentage of people who appear in the unsheltered population. So the way it's displayed here, the goal is that the blue bar, our actual data in terms of who were sheltered or housed, would be greater than or equal to the gray bar, which is the baseline population experiencing unsheltered homelessness. We're currently meeting or exceeding this goal for all of the priority populations, with one exception. So in the most recent quarter, those who identify as black, african American or african were 21% of those who were sheltered or housed, though they represent 23% of those who were unsheltered at baseline. Addressing that's going to require additional focus in our quarterly report. There's a lot of detail around some related actions that are currently in process through both our our partners at Portland solutions, as well as especially in partnership with the joint office of homeless services. Including adding 25 units of youth shelter for immigrant and refugee youth run by africa house. Just to give you a sense of the total numbers, this on this goal, there's about a 2% difference between the 21% of folks who are sheltered or housed, 23% of people who were unsheltered at baseline. That 2% difference equates to about 200 people. So let me move to the third measure. They trap seeks to improve exit rates from adult shelter to permanent housing by 15 percentage points. So that would be from a baseline rate of 26% of all all adults exiting shelter, moving to housing and moving it from that baseline of 26% to 41% of adults exiting shelter by the end of 2025, we're not yet on track to meet that goal. The current exit rates from adult shelter to housing are actually below the original baseline as of the third quarter at 23%, so that's three percentage points below our pre trap baseline. The trap calls for a lot of specific focus in this area. The joint office has additional funding coming online to support the goal. They're working closely with Portland solutions together on short and long term strategies to support the goal. So we anticipate we'll have improvements in this outcome as implementation continues. And we have additional recommendations to the steering and oversight committee about how to move this more quickly. And for our last measure that we track. And again, each of these is available on our public facing dashboard. We'll also follow up with that full quarterly report that has all of the detail for each of you to review as you'd like. So the last of these measures is ensuring that people retain permanent supportive housing. The goal is that at least 75% of people who move into permanent supportive housing retain that 24 months after they move into housing, and where we have consistently exceeded this goal at currently, at 84% of people who are in permanent supportive housing at 24 months after their placement, any questions at this point, councilor Smith?
109 Go right ahead.
110 Thank you. Could we go back to the demographic slide. So I want to go under the black and african American or african. I don't think that we can put those together. We need to disaggregate those pieces because I need to figure out what is the number for african, whether it be african refugees or immigrants versus black or african or african-american, because there is a difference, because they have different challenges around support services and wraparound supports. And as you know, african Americans have one of the highest homelessness rates in the city. And so I need to see where we're at and where we need to go, because that's not going to be an accurate number. Okay.
111 We have we'll get back to you on that. Thank you.
112 Counselor Zimmerman.
113 Thanks. Madam president, in terms of the exits from adult shelter to permanent housing, I am curious which type of shelter we're seeing in the whole system that has the strongest percentages for that exit. And then also I'll throw it at the six month rate or whatever makes sense in the data.
114 Yeah, I'm happy to follow up with you on that. I don't have it available right now.
115 And the question is coming from the concern that I hear often from some of our housing providers, right, that certain people are not ready for housing because they have fallen so deep into some very challenging situations, and that when they move into housing, it is not only disruptive for them, but then other residents. And sometimes we then lose units because of damage, right? If you have a stack of units that all flood out, we've got 12 new homeless people when we should have had one less. So that would be really helpful. Ryan. And then the last question I have is, you know, within the last couple of years, we've had some trouble with shelter providers being clear about the number of beds they were funded to provide versus the number of beds that they have occupied each night, versus the number of beds that they say they are staffed up for. And those all seem like they should be straightforward numbers, but they become very convoluted and very confusing. And some of it came from they still had either staff reductions or they had capacity reductions from the pandemic era where they reduced capacity in the room. But it is 2025, and I'm curious if we have any of that hangover still happening or if we've got everybody funded and staffing everything they've been funded for, or how we can know where we have problems.
116 And we will get back to you on that.
117 Councilor Ryan.
118 Yeah, well, councilors. Thank you, madam president. Councilor Zimmerman asked the question. But then, Ryan, your answer, I think, confused me because I thought I heard that 24 months into permanent housing, there was a 84% success rate. Correct? I did hear that. So maybe the sub indicator breakdown is what councilor Zimmerman was getting at. Like where did they come from? I would assume that it would tell us a lot. Yeah. On what their experience was moving into that permanent housing.
119 Yeah. And I think and this is helpful because I can clarify that I've got commissioners councilor Zimmerman's question correct. So I think there are the two, there are the two indicators. So of the folks who who move into permanent supportive housing, do they keep that housing two years in? The separate indicator is asking of adults who come into shelter. How many adults exit to a form of permanent housing, whether it's permanent supportive housing or other permanent housing that they can call their own? And so, as I understood it, counselor Zimmerman was wanting to understand are there some shelter models that have been more successful with housing placement rates in this bucket, as opposed to permanent supportive housing as a strategy to help keep people in housing?
120 Did that work for you?
121 It does. You know, our conversation earlier was that we have some very expensive models of sheltering, and we have some more affordable models. Eventually, I'd like to know if the bang for the buck is making sense at the very end of the equation. So thanks for helping clarify that, counselor, and the profile of those and writing their resilience takes more investment.
122 And so getting down to that earlier when you had the goals up, I was taken with the accountability of who's on first for each goal. And I know it takes a team, so it's not one person. That said, it would be helpful to know who's tracking that, who's the leader of the innovator, who's doing the cat herding to move that goal along. Is there such a thing? Because I found if you don't have a sponsor of a goal, it can. It's difficult to track the accountability.
123 I was thinking of the previous question, counselor Ryan. So I apologize because the joint office is doing some of this evaluation about around success in rapid rehousing work. So that's some of what councilor Zimmerman asked and some of what you're asked. So know that that analysis is happening.
124 That's great.
125 Thank you. Did that answer your question?
126 It brought more clarity to the riveting conversation that you were that we were having about really understanding what our questions were. And this is awesome. And so we actually would check in to see if we heard each other. Right.
127 We also talked about this a lot when we were doing the shelter expansion strategy work group last year. So I think the joint office probably has some data around that. That is what you would find valuable.
128 But why you were thinking about that? The new question I asked was where the accountability is, who's on first for each goal? And I stated, it's not one person, it's a team. But there's usually a cat herder that's moving that along. And it would help to have that transparency in each goal. On who's tied to that.
129 Okay. Yeah. And I think there we can say that's very specifically the we are the cat herders, the team has is we hold the accountability around these system level goals, working closely with the steering and oversight committee, the implementation committee and the community advisory committee. So that's where you create that transparency. We're reporting back on a quarterly basis. How are we doing relative to these goals. So we're working closely with our partners at the joint office to collect and report the data. And then we're bringing it forward in those quarterly reports. We're also then facilitating those conversations with our implementation committee partners to say, why are we seeing what we're seeing, what needs to change to get a better outcome, and then making those recommendations to, to strengthen our collective system response?
130 And I would say, as one of the cats that's been herded, maggie does an excellent job of making sure that you have reminders and that you're have everything on schedule and anything that we might possibly need. So I would just say from a project management standpoint, maggie is hurting a lot of cats right now.
131 Madam. Madam president, if I might just just a little more color to your question, counselor, you may recall in our discussions regarding the intergovernmental agreement, one of the big issues on the table was accountability. Who was ultimately accountable for performance and who had governance authority to actually be accountable. Yes. And it's a very daunting question when you're looking at multiple governance governments with independent authority. And so I just wanted to make sure everybody kind of understands the context of that really important question who's accountable who, who's in charge of it and who has who has the appropriate responsibility and authority to get this stuff done. And I think what you're getting the picture here is that everybody does, which makes it very challenging to tab accountability. And it is one of the dilemmas that I think we face at the at the macro level for this effort. And we didn't solve it in the iga. We came closer with some of the mechanisms we put in place, but we still haven't quite solved that one yet.
132 Thank thank you, city administrator. And I recall that conversation and I know we're trying to avoid that pointing fingers roll. And so it's good to keep the conversation fluid. One thing that worked for me in a past life was at those meetings. You'd go around the room at the end to say, what is your responsibility in between meetings? And that really helped move the needle, because then people came to the next meeting. They weren't just showing up and taking up space. At the next meeting, they actually delivered on something in between. So when we bring that type of real life accountability to this systemic infrastructure, I hope that you consider that type of tactical and theater, if you will.
133 Yeah.
134 Councilor, as I mentioned earlier in my comments and was just mentioned, these folks who work with gillian are the ones who take it upon themselves to make sure that stuff happens between the meetings and tabs, the people who are accountable and gets them in a room to try and solve the barrier issues that we're running into. Is it perfect? No, but I think we are a lot better than we were a year ago because of the relationships that are being built.
135 So and this answer is more crisp than it was a few months ago. So thank you.
136 I think we're at a pause in questions. So if you all want to continue, that'd be great.
137 Can I just add one quick thing?
138 Okay, so councilor Smith, I wanted to just provide a little bit of additional context to your request that the racialized demographic categories that are reported on are those that are consistent with the federal five racialized identity categories. And so I just want to add two notes. One is that when people come in to receive services, they are not required to provide that information. And we don't always have a way to break people's racialized identity categories out into their specific. They're chosen. They're they're chosen and assigned specific racialized identity identity categories. At the state. There is a new broadened a tool that broadens the federal five categories into what's called real de that isn't used consistently across systems nor providers. And so I just want to I think this is just important for the whole, for everyone to know that when we try to, when we make attempts to really answer these questions really specifically, we do not always have the tool to answer those questions specifically despite our best efforts. And so I just wanted to be really clear that this system relies on the federal five versus what we have at the county, which is a ten, a ten category tool, and the state, which has more than 35 racialized identity categories with subcategories.
139 Is that an equity tool that you use?
140 Those are actually from the county, the county? No, it's just they call it the visibility initiative. They're moving towards the real de tool that is implemented by the state or mandated by the state. And in some federal instances.
141 But it's but you all desegregate the african from african Americans in black, right? In the in the county tool in yes it is black, black and african American and african are the same.
142 Are two separate in the county.
143 Right.
144 But that may not be reflected in the in the tool in the h. H m I s tool, nor in the tools that the individual providers are using.
145 But don't we create the tool?
146 No, not the federal tool. Okay. The federal tool is provided to us by the federal tool is.
147 Go ahead.
148 I was going to say this is the specific research that we're going to follow up on is to what degree within our data systems here locally, can we split the data out in the manner that you're talking about versus can we not.
149 So that's the and just so that I have a clear understanding of where you're at. Do you think that this is important. Do you think that it is necessary to separate black and african American from african? Because the folks that you deal with at africa house are different from the folks who you are working with, say, at self-enhancement urban league folks, it's different. And they require a different set of wraparound supports and information. And if we're talking about language difficulties as well. So we need to know if those things are the things that are causing homelessness because there's, there's a, a gap in terms of communication. So I think it's important I just wanted to make sure that our partners think it's important too, because there is a difference, and we need to make sure that we have that difference and we can make that difference whenever we create a tool that we and then we know who to reach out to. Because one of the things that you can do is you can look at this tool. And what if 18% of the folks that that you are meeting the goal for are african, and then the black and african Americans are still not being reached. And so we don't know how to reach those folks because we don't know that they're not being reached or that they're, they're they're exceeding our expectations. So we know where we can level off the, the funding. And so that's what I always think about. How do I figure out an equity tool that's going to be fair to the people that we are actually trying to assist? And if that assistance needs to go to africa house a little bit more or to erco, then we're we're on track and we can meet some of those goals that you're talking about. Ryan. Exactly. Okay.
150 Thank you.
151 Go ahead, counselor Ryan.
152 Thank you, counselor Smith. I really appreciate the dialog you just had. We dealt with this in the 2010, in education space. And so we had to create locally the distinction that counselor Smith was talking about. But we had to do the same to actually some very compelling results with asian and pacific islander. So why we're on this topic? Let's make sure we do it for asian and pacific islander as well.
153 Thank you.
154 And yeah, thank you so much for that, counselor. Ryan, I just want to bring into this space. I wanted to bring that point very specifically into this space because racial equity is a key goal of the wrap, which requires culturally specific and culturally responsive services that we can only provide if we understand the circumstances of community members based on their racialized identities, like the. Those class classifications were created by white supremacy and we as local governments, it is incumbent upon us to dismantle those systems by looking at the data at the level to which you're speaking. And so I want it to just be a shared understanding amongst us, that we don't always have the tool to look at it that way, but it becomes one of the things that we are absolutely required to do to move these systems along. We have great partnership at the state. The county has done a tremendous amount of work, as has the city. And sometimes we're we're restricted by a federal, a federal tool that we're handed and required to use. And I'll just say from a service provider perspective of which I am not representing, but I do talk to many of them, that getting folks to provide their demographic data at the point of entry can be challenging. And so I just wanted us to share that in this conversation today to help, to help set our shared expectation of how we how we talk about equity, racial equity in terms of this plan.
155 And, madam president, I just want to be clear. We don't know if it was created by white supremacy or not. I don't know who created it. You all created the tool. So who are you talking about?
156 I think robin was referring to the HUD tool that's created by the federal government.
157 No, but who was she referring to when she said that this was created by white supremacy?
158 So just to be clear, counselor Smith, thank you so much for the question. What I was referring to is that racialized identities to racialized identities are a tool of white supremacy, are a tool, a tool.
159 Okay, that's not what a tool is. But I just want to be clear on who you were calling white supremacist.
160 Oh, my. My apologies if that was misunderstood or misstated on my part. Thank you.
161 Councilor Avalos, did you have something to add to this conversation? Yeah.
162 Just one more note on the another layer, I guess for equity is language access. So I don't know that I heard too much about, like the availability of all of these services in various languages. Could you speak to that? And if you don't have an answer now, that's fine.
163 But thanks so much. I don't have an exact answer, but what I will tell you for any, any, any service that receives one federal dollar, there's a title and entitlement to language access. And I do believe that in our contracts we have information about what language is that services are available in a provided provided in. But we'll get more information on that and get back to you. Thank you, thank you.
164 If you all want to wrap us up.
165 Yeah, do it quickly. So, so in addition to the ongoing work, the herding of cats to work, the plan shelter expansion strategy is at the top of the list. You've heard a lot about that recently, so I won't go deep on it. But there's budget implications. So we will all be having that conversation in the context of our respective budgets. You know, the qse renegotiation conversations are alive and well and ongoing tbd on what the outcome there is, but it will have, of course, have implications primarily for the joint office working together to advocate for Salem. Multnomah county has passed its legislative agenda. I think that is on y'all's to do list. Am I correct with your government relations team? But regardless, once they are both done, we will come together to figure out how we are going together down to Salem to make asks around shelter or behavioral health, housing, those sorts of things. And then, of course, we still need to complete the full membership of the steering and oversight committee. So mayor wilson gets to choose a city councilor to join him. Chair vega peterson gets to choose a county commissioner. And then there's two non-voting spots we still need to fill. I emailed the mayor's team and councilor Pirtle-guiney pirtle-guiney your team this morning with the two individuals who will be we're putting forth as our taxpayer and behavioral health expert for the non-voting membership seats on the soq. So that's probably the first action that will come before you in the context of all of this. And I'll just leave it at that. Any other questions before we. Okay.
166 Thank you so much, jillian and the whole team for being here today with us. I know that this is a topic that a lot of folks have talked about over the last few months, and I think you heard a lot of what we're hoping for in the ongoing goal setting and making sure that this is a big part of our ability to meet some of the goals we have for the city as a whole more broadly. So thank you for being here. Thank you for presenting this. I think there's a lot more opportunity for conversation as we move forward, and we do have those appointments on our radar. So we'll make sure that you get folks as soon as we can.
167 Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.
168 Councilors. That is all we have on our agenda for this work session. So I will close the work session and just note that we do have another work session tomorrow. And you should be getting some information from my office about that hopefully later tonight. So I will see you all tomorrow. Thank you.