The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-05-13
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On Tuesday, May 13, the Portland City Council Homelessness and Housing Committee convened at 12:04 p.m., with roll call confirming member presence. The committee approved bulk minutes for February through April meetings, then reviewed and moved forward the reappointment of two Development Review Advisory Committee (DRAC) members to terms expiring March 29, 2028; votes occurred on this matter, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. Discussion covered DRAC's role since 2001, its 17 seats with 13 currently filled, and distinctions from the Design Review process. The remainder of the session focused on the Mayor's proposed budget as it relates to housing and homelessness. Portland Permitting and Development described a projected funding gap, proposed layoffs, and impacts to permitting timelines, code enforcement, and equity programs, alongside one program elimination and reduced services. The Portland Housing Bureau outlined proposed budget changes, including cuts and restorations to specific programs and a new home-sharing pilot. Portland Solutions presented budget figures for shelter, outreach, and cleanup programs, discussing outreach worker coordination with county partners, camp removal funding, the Peninsula Crossing and Sunderland shelter sites, and RV removal policy. Discussion touched on coordination between city bureaus, the county, and public safety, with some budget figures described inconsistently across speakers. The meeting adjourned at 2:05 p.m.
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0 Testing councilor. Morillo. Can you hear us now?
1 Yes, I can hear now. Thank you.
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2 Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. Good afternoon. I am going to call the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee to order. It is Tuesday, may 13th at 12:04 p.m. Diego, can you please call the roll?
3 Ryan.
4 Morillo here.
5 Zimmerman here. Dunphy here. Avalos.
6 Present. Okay. Thank you. So today we've got two main items on our agenda. First, we're going to handle the reappointment process for the development review advisory committee. And then we're going to spend the rest of our meeting discussing the mayor's proposed budget and areas connected to homelessness and housing that are of particular interest to this committee. But before we do that, we're going to approve some minutes. So the first item of business is to approve committee minutes for the previous month. If there are no objections, the meeting will be or I'm sorry, the minutes are approved. Do I hear any objections? Okay. And we're going to be approving minutes for committee meetings that occurred in February, March and April. So it's a whole bulk amount. And then diego, could you just briefly tell the committee about the clerk's process for compiling minutes?
7 Absolutely. Committee meeting minutes include the disposition agenda, which documents the actions committees take on each agenda item. The minutes also include the closed caption file, a speaker list, and audio files for each meeting. Minutes are presented for approval once a month for the previous month's meetings.
8 Thank you. Thank you diego, and can you please read the next item?
9 Item. Sorry about that. Item two reappoint jill krop and peggy moretti to the development review advisory committee for terms to expire March 29th, 2028.
10 So this item comes to us from permitting and development, and I'll go ahead and hand it off to staff to get us rolling. Please introduce introduce yourselves. Thank you.
11 Thank you. Good morning or good afternoon, councilors. For the record, my name is david kuhnhausen. I'm the interim director of Portland permitting and development. I'm joined today by ross caron. He's pad's liaison to the development review advisory committee, also known as drac. As mentioned in the item introduction, ross and I are here today to request your approval for reappointment of two members of drac for a second term. Those appointees, jill krop and peggy moretti, are joining us today in person. Next slide. I believe this is the first time that we've been in front of council to discuss drax. I wanted to share some high level information about the committee before ross provides more information on the appointees. Drac was established in 2001 to act as the city's advisory body for permitting and development review. Drac works to ensure a timely, predictable and accountable development review process, and this committee has provided input on permitting efficiency projects, streamlining inter interagency and inter bureau coordination, and increasing transparency through the development of metrics, digital tools and customer service enhancements. Drac also advises on policy updates, code changes, fee structures, and other updates brought forward by all the bureaus that participate in the development review process, with the goal of a fair, consistent, and equitable outcome for all communities and development. Types drac has 17 seats that represent a broad range of community and development industry perspectives, and the committee's current membership includes. Membership is inclusive of and reflects the diversity of portland's communities and neighborhoods. Members are appointed to by council to serve a three year term, with the option of a second three year term if reappointed. As mentioned again, we are here today to recommend the reappointment of jill krop, representing the home builders position, and peggy moretti representing historic preservation position. Both peggy and jill bring valuable expertise and strong engagements to the committee, and their appointments will help ensure direct work continues for on permitting, development, review and our ongoing process for improvements. I'll now pass it over to ross to speak a little bit more about their backgrounds, and introduce peggy and jill. Hello, counselors.
12 As david said, my name is ross caron. I am the liaison to drac, and I'm also the supervisor for our communications code and policy development teams. I'm going to be sharing a little bit of background about jill and peggy, as well as some high level information about next steps. As the slide states states. Peggy is the former executive director of restore Oregon. She now works in consulting for historic preservation and nonprofit management. She's also the vice chair of the historic landmarks commission and advocates for the reuse and rehabilitation. As part of the development process. Jill krop is a licensed architect with over 20 years of experience in infill housing, as well as other types of development. She guides projects through the design, permitting and approval process. Her reappointment is supported by the home builders association, and jill was recently appointed as the 2025 drac vice chair. As david stated, both jill and peggy are here today. If you are interested in hearing from them about their interests in serving a second term, or if you have any other questions of them.
13 Thank you. Councilor Zimmerman.
14 I have one more slide. Oh, sorry about that. Go ahead. Just really quickly next steps and then drac recruitments. So if reappointed jill and peggy, jill and peggy's second term would be served from March 30th, 2025 to March 29th, 2028. So we'd be retroactively going back to the day after their first term with these reappointments drac would have four vacancies, which were currently actively working on recruitment for. So hopefully we'll be back here in front of you again soon. We appreciate your support and recommending these reappointments move forward to full council for confirmation. And if there are no additional questions or information, I'm sorry. Information from david. That concludes our presentation.
15 All right. Sounds good, counselor Zimmerman.
16 Thank you, chair, and thank you to the candidates who are here in person. I really appreciate it. Thank you for stepping up. I'll definitely be supporting. I'm wondering if we can just take this opportunity to help me learn a little bit more about drac in terms of its differences between this and design review. Yeah, I'll just leave it there.
17 Yeah. Good question. So design review really focuses on the land use process that's going to really you know, they're their primary focus. Their their expertise is in land use and planning and zoning. Drac is all encompassing. It involves all code and policy for all the bureaus that participate in the development review process. We do often get updates on land use processes at drac, but it is not the committee that makes those decisions.
18 And how long has. Okay, so that's been around for 2000 since 2001. 25 years. Yeah. And then design review has been longer or shorter. Do we.
19 No I do not have that information on hand. Okay. I can get back to you for sure.
20 I'm just the for a lay person, they they can sound a little bit similar. And this sounds more encompassing of a variety of things versus design review seems more specific and I'm getting some nods. So I feel like that I, I'm just taking the opportunity because it's a new a new committee for me. So I appreciate it and I'll be supportive. Thank you.
21 Councilor Dunphy.
22 Yeah. Thank you. A couple of quick things. First, just doesn't really matter too much. But online, the membership categories are reversed for our candidates. It says that jill krop is representing historic preservation and peggy's representing home builders does not matter at all. But I know I've known peggy for going on a decade now, and I was like, I don't think she's associated with the home builders. You had said that if we reappoint these two, there will still be four vacancies on the drac. How many total members of the drac are there?
23 17 positions, 13 of them filled.
24 Thank you, thank you. You know, that's my only question. I just want to just. Jill, you seem great. Thank you for being the vice chair and for being willing to step up again. But, peggy, I just want to lord some praise on. I have had the pleasure of working here with her when she was the executive director at restore Oregon. She is my absolute faith in knowing the right line to draw between moving our city forward and preserving what keeps us special. And I'm really thankful for you to continue to be involved and volunteer your time. So thank you both so much for stepping up for our community.
25 Councilor Ryan.
26 Yes, thank you. Chair. I want to first of all say it's good to see all of you. I want to acknowledge that drac was the oversight committee that really was the most involved with seeing through the permit task force reforms. And I really appreciated their advocacy. Is sam miller still the leader of drac? He is not. Still, he has been doing it forever. That makes me really happy. I think he's been an excellent volunteer leader for our city, and I happen to know the two people that are with us today, one better than the other, but I know they're both outstanding. So I'm just so grateful that you're both extending your service. Thank you so much.
27 Councilor Zimmerman. Is that legacy okay, any further discussion, colleagues? Well, I'll just say I don't know you both, but it sounds like you're great. So I'm really excited to get to know you more. And thank you so much for stepping up to lead at this moment. So if there's no further discussion, then I would like to entertain a motion to send the reappointment of jill krop and peggy moretti to the development review advisory committee to the full council, with the recommendation that the appointments be confirmed.
28 Second.
29 Moved by councilor Ryan. Do I have a second? Second. Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. No, I was entertaining a motion.
30 So moved.
31 Second and seconded by councilor Dunphy. Great. Thank you. Diego, please call the roll.
32 Brian.
33 Hi, Morillo.
34 I Zimmerman,
35 I.
36 Dunphy I.
37 Avalos I the motion carries. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Okay, let's move on to our next item. Diego, if you could please read that.
38 Item three discussion on mayor's proposed budget related to homelessness and housing.
39 All right. Apologies. I didn't ask for testimony in the last one, but there is no one signed up for testimony, so luckily it didn't skip over anyone. So now that we have heard the mayor's proposed budget and started to talk about the trade offs and possible amendments, this is a chance for our committee to talk with the bureaus and one another about priorities. We have staff here from permitting and development, the housing bureau and Portland solutions here to present what the mayor has included in his budget for their bureaus. And so we're going to go ahead and kick it off. And dca oliveira you want to start us off.
40 Great. Thank you chair I'll keep this brief danielle, for the record thank you committee for making this time for us today. It's very important moment in the city of Portland as we contemplate the budget and as you think about solutions for our values and goals, this is a chance for you to understand how permitting, development, housing and our colleagues at Portland solutions are delivering on our housing and homelessness crisis. Just to kind of give you a high level overview, we're going to start today with pads. This is the first chance for any committee to formally take a look at the impacts of this $11 million shortfall, and I really want to emphasize that, you know, we continue to look at solutions. But before you can consider that understanding the impacts of what that force reduction would be to permitting services, how we might have to solve for them if those cuts went through is important. And second, we're going to revisit some of the housing budget impacts. And the mayor's proposed. And then we'll hand over to our colleagues at Portland solutions for their piece of the budget pie. So with that, I'm going to stop and hand it over to director kuhnhausen.
41 Thank you, tony. Once again, david kuhnhausen, interim director of Portland permitting and development. I want to thank you all for giving us the opportunity today to present on the mayor's proposed budget and discuss how this how this budget impacts the work that pnd is responsible for. Next slide please. So the challenging environment surrounding development in Portland has been well publicized and talked about. I've mentioned it at numerous council meetings, but as a quick reminder, beginning in 2020, the valuation associated with the permits that are submitted to pnd began to decline. And to date, we have not seen a full recovery. This is due to several factors, including high inflation that leads to high interest rates, low investor confidence, declined property values that make it cheaper to purchase a property than to build a new property. A persisting negative perception of Portland as a place to build, and volatility in the financial markets that lead to uncertainty. The bureau's fee structure is based on project valuation, and this fee structure leads to a dependency on large project activity to recover costs and to build reserves. The factors that I previously mentioned that impact the industry impact these large projects, more so than smaller projects such as single family additions and alterations. Since the pandemic began, we've seen demand for the large scale projects drop off substantially, and many of the projects that are still in the permitting process, and a lot of those have all approvals in place, but they're currently delayed while the owners wait for more favorable conditions. And some of those projects have been canceled because of a lack of desire or financial means to build here. However, the lower valuation projects, many of which are at or below cost recovery for pnd, continue to come in the door. In fact, since 2020, there has been a 265% increase in issued residential permits. So while the revenue is down, the workload is not. It's just shifted to smaller projects. That shift leads to a draw in bureau reserves in order to maintain services as the bureau's work. As the bureau's workload has not diminished, but the revenues have. Next slide please. Again, you've heard me mention this numerous times, but 98% of pad's ongoing funding comes from fees and charges for services, with only 2% coming from the general fund. The construction construction industry industry is volatile, and the bureau's fee revenue is directly tied to those fluctuations. In the 2008 downturn, pnd drew its reserves to almost $0 and as a result, needed to implement massive layoffs of about 50% of the bureau at that time. The impacts were devastating for the development industry and for the bureau. But as the economy recovered and the construction industry quickly picked back up, pad or bts at the time was left with insufficient staff to support the demands on our services, and it took years to build staffing capacity that was commensurate with the permit volume. Because of this, the permitting timeline suffered for years, and quite frankly, it was probably closer to a decade before that. We were in line after the sequence of events pad put in place policies and measures to help the bureau recognize and respond to fluctuations in the construction industry. The business, a business continuity plan was developed, and that business continuity continuity plan has been effective and useful in implementing layoffs in pad in 2019, 2020, and most recently in 2024. However, the current downturn has been different than what the bureau previously experienced, and that this downturn began during the pandemic, and issues, both social and economic, have led to a prolonged lull in permitting activity that lasted much longer than any of us anticipated. And given that many of these issues still persist today, developers have communicated that the return on investment that they're expecting related to large scale construction is not currently worth the risk. So as this large scale development activity has bottomed out, pads fee revenue has also declined, while the cost of providing services has continued to increase. These dynamics, coupled with the desire to continue to improve our permitting timelines which have improved in the last four years, led to large declines in bureau reserves and eventually the need for us to take action in order to slow the draw on those reserves. With this, pad was forced to proceed with layoffs at the beginning of 2024 of about 74 fte, or approximately 19% of the bureau at that time. Next slide please. Pad is very fortunate to have the financial advisory committee to rely on. This committee is made up of local economists and development industry experts, the construction industry industry being notably volatile and difficult to predict, makes our financial planning process extremely challenging. We go through a rigorous process to develop the absolute best projections, and we look to the financial advisory committee for their expert opinion on these projections. As mentioned this year, the conversation focused on how long this current downturn is going to last, and we were told that we would be it would be at least 18 to 24 months before we saw development pick up in any sort of meaningful way. After initial discussion on the economic outlook focusing on development, pad develops its models using a combination of methodologies including econometric modeling, and by looking at historical, historical activity levels and development patterns. Once the models and growth rates have been developed, we present this forecast to the committee and they verify those projections. As we've discussed, these revenues are tied to the overall economy, and the macroeconomic environment can have large impacts on the viability of construction. A number of factors are listed on this slide. I'm not going to go through all of these. And this is also not exhaustive list, but meant to give you an idea of the types of data we use to inform our modeling. Currently, the aggregate impact of the macroeconomic variables on development is an overall unfavorable environment, and it can take months or years for some of these trends or these statistics to reverse, and for the bureau to experience the benefits of movement to a more favorable levels. Further complicating this issue is that there's not a consensus among economists on where the overall economy will exactly be headed in the next couple of years. This uncertainty leads to the complexity of our projections, and the need for us to be as nimble as possible. We update our forecast as we learn more about the economic environment and the revenue that we see, as well as well as the revenue sources. Next slide please. So again, the unpredictable and volatile nature of these factors makes our current financial model extremely challenging to develop. We're subject to the cyclical ups and downs of the construction industry, with no alternative revenue source to add stability during a prolonged downturn. As I previously discussed after the 2008 downturn, pad needed to implement massive layoffs of 50% of the bureau. But again, this current downturn has been different from what the bureau previously experienced, as this one has lasted much longer than it did in 2008 due to the due to the prolonged downturn, layoffs were unavoidable and we had to take action last year to lay off 19% of the bureau. Despite those layoffs, the bureau continues to draw on reserves, and stagnant revenue growth and increasing costs contribute to a projected 14 million funding gap for the coming fiscal year. This is equivalent to 74 fte. The mayor's proposed budget includes an fte reduction of 12 vacancies and 53 filled positions to close this funding gap, with the remaining positions to be reduced via natural attrition and retirement in the coming year. This level of cuts, coming on the heels of last year's reduction in the staff, will leave the bureau woefully understaffed to meet the current and future needs of the development industry. Should these layoffs occur and should we expect, should we see the attrition that we've planned for the overall reduction in staffing from 2019 to current will have been 51% of the bureau, the bts corps of the bureau, I'm sorry, services will be cut dramatically across the bureau, affecting permitting and inspection timelines. Adding cost to developers is longer. Permitting equates to additional carrying costs on those loans, and some programs are proposed to be discontinued altogether as a bureau balances competing needs and desires, cuts of this magnitude will not only present barriers for housing development, but also tenant improvement permits, shelters and other project types, but it will also result in delays in addressing nuisance and public safety issues, which contribute to the negative stigma associated with Portland. And all of this occurring when the industry and all of Portland needs this work done more than ever. This is a scenario that we want to avoid as the impacts of the overall economic recovery and the bureau would be devastating, and the work that this bureau does is essential for the revitalization of Portland. This bureau is the front door for anyone interested in development related work, from small residential remodels to large scale commercial projects, and it must be adequately staffed in order to provide the much needed services for portlanders, and also to attract outside investment back to the city of Portland. Next slide please. This slide highlights the impacts to customers seeking to build in Portland. Once a customer decides to submit for a land use review, a public works permit, a building permit, the timelines for reviewing the plans against local code and state statute will be much longer than they currently are, far beyond the expectations the bureau sets for itself and the desire of our customers. As an example, reviewers in the building plan division, which is structural and life safety and site development review, average approximately 830 reviews each in in 2024. Anticipated staffing reductions will increase each reviewer's workload by 15 to 20%. That equates to about 125 to 170 permits more per year. If working a 52 week year. And while the team currently meets first review goals over 95% of the time, it's anticipated that success rate will drop significantly. The bureau will also have fewer inspectors than needed to timely inspect projects once they have broken ground. Currently, this division receives approximately 4 to 500 inspection requests daily. The anticipated reduction of 16% of that division and more if they choose to retire the age of that actual division. There's many who are eligible to retire currently that will absolutely slow down the construction of much needed housing units. Inspections will be rolled out days, if not weeks, and during times of snow and ice or extreme heat and fire, which we're seeing more and more frequently, and other factors that keep inspectors from working a full day, it wouldn't be inconceivable that inspections are more than a month out. The bureau will also be unable to key to keep complementary services, such as our 15 minute appointments. As a reminder, we hold about 12,000 of those with the public each year for free. The those meetings are intended to allow customers to ask questions, and for staff to provide much needed input on the permitting process ahead of the applicant actually submitting, with the hopes that that clarifies the actual requirements and process for the customer. Land use services and building plan review will also have to eliminate free consultations that they offer. After the first check sheet is written. For certain project types, land use services will also see delays in offering and holding early assistance meetings and pre-application meetings that are required for many land use processes. Staff and permitting services division are going to take longer to evaluate submittals and set up permits, process corrections and perform the last step of the review process to verify fees and issue those permits. There's also going it's also going to be unlikely that we'll be able to proceed with our or continue our single point of contact, which they currently offer on all housing related projects, and they'll be unable to support partner bureaus such as prosper with their small office of small business, returning calls and emails, staffing ad hoc meetings with customers, assisting on technical advisory committees, and participating in improvement efforts will also be limited. Essentially, every step in the permitting process is going to take longer for homeowners and developers to get the project fully constructed. This time adds money and affects project feasibility, as additional time adds to the carrying cost of loans taken on to finance those projects. This is going to impact all projects, including all development of housing, of all kinds. At some point, projects will probably become unfeasible and the reductions of staffing will impact the number of housing units in built in the city of Portland. With the creation of ppd, this fiscal year is the first time that the public infrastructure and the building permitting, have been managed under one roof, and progress and efficiencies gained from the restructuring of the bureau will be jeopardized, as the bureau will simply not enough not have enough staff to meet customer expectations. Next slide please. People often associate pnd with development and new and new buildings. However, our property compliance division deals with existing older housing stock, dangerous and deteriorated buildings, poorly maintained apartments that expose tenants to health and safety risks or situations, nuisance conditions and vacant homes which are often taken over by squatters. All of these conditions have a direct impact on neighborhood stability and livability, and intersect with the key issues of housing and homelessness in Portland. The bureau's goal is compliance and ensuring that buildings in our city are maintained, and that everyone has access to safe and healthy housing. The staff in this division work closely with staff from the Portland police and fire bureaus to do just that, and when necessary, this group also performs post-disaster building evaluation, as they did after the snow and ice storm in January of 2024, where they evaluated hundreds of buildings across the city that have been damaged by ice, wind and fallen trees, all at the cost of the bureau. This proposed budget also eliminates the empowered communities program. This program is an important part of pnd strategy to provide equitable outcomes to people of color and people with disabilities who want to access our services, or those who want to obtain permits, or who have compliance cases associated with their properties that they're attempting to close the work done. This work is done in collaboration with the homeowner or tenant, PPB and staff from numerous divisions and skilled external volunteers such as licensed architects and engineers. Typical projects consist of as built work done without permits, and they sometimes require a more in-depth analysis of construction, including structural assessments. Most clients in the empowered neighborhoods program, which focuses on the residential aspect of work, qualify as low income and also needs support to get actual construction work completed. The work this bureau. This group helps connect them to free consultation with those licensed architects and engineers, construction materials and volunteer labor, as well as nonprofit funding. It goes without saying that the prospect of losing this program would be a huge blow to their client base. Next slide please. In addition to the programs where staffing levels will be reduced, the bureau is also facing the reality of eliminating programs altogether. The environmental soils program provides onsite sewage and septic inspections throughout Multnomah county, and the city has igas in place with both Oregon deq and Multnomah county to administer this program on their behalf. If the program is discontinued within the city, these igas will be ended and the program will need to be transferred to either the county or deq. Much of their work is done in vulnerable communities, including the southeast, foster and fowlerville areas and along the columbia slough, just to name a few, and the identification of cesspools and septic tanks would possibly need to be conducted by a third party reviewer should the group no longer have that capacity. That adds cost and potential, and the potential to miss something in the field as the current, as the city currently retains the records for those installations. Finally, the staff and management of key equity programing at pnd are proposed to be cut as well. A couple slides ago, we discussed the externally focused empowered communities program, which exists under the bureau's equity and policy development division. Internally focused equity staff are also included in the proposed cuts, cuts, which will have huge impacts on the development and support of equity programing with the bureau. Within the bureau going forward, the equity team also oversees implementation of the bureau's racial equity plan. Next slide please. There are several more programs that are going to be impacted by the proposed cuts that we want to highlight as well. The cannabis licensing program will experience decreased ability to process new and renewals for cannabis licenses. The noise program will be reduced to just one noise officer, which will reduce the ability to address noise complaints. The building codes appeal program will lose support staff needed to move that process forward, and the bureau will lose experienced operations management and on site technical support staff as well. Next slide please. In this slide, we're going to discuss some of the immediate and long term considerations in the immediate term. The proposed budget lays off 53 fte. We have discussed on the previous slides the impact of these cuts. And it's needless to say, it's going to be substantial to our service levels, funding to get the bureau through the current downturn in development activity is crucial in maintaining our workforce and the services that we provide to the to the city of Portland. Every 1 million in additional funding equates to between 5 and 6 fte. We've already mentioned the difficulty in predicting the development activity, and natural increase in development activity could provide additional funding necessary to keep staff in place, but if we've already laid off 53 employees, we won't have the staff needed to review and inspect those projects and getting that staff back and trained, whether it's those who are laid off or new staff will be will take significant time. As previously mentioned, it took ten years, approximately, to get back to service levels that the bureau was comfortable with after the 2008 downturn. And then long term, we need to address the funding model that the city of Portland uses for development review. Revenue from fees are tied to unpredictable and volatile construction industry. As previously mentioned, we've had layoffs in 2019, 2024, and now we're looking again at another significant cut to the bureau the countercyclical funding needed to provide stability and prevent the need for layoffs in future business cycles is absolutely necessary. And without a stable funding source, we're going to find ourselves in this situation over and over and over again, always reacting to the whims of the construction industry. Next slide please. Lastly, I want to highlight one critical addition that is in the included in the mayor's proposed budget. In the current fiscal year, the permit improvement team is budgeted under the office of community and economic development service area. This team currently consists of four fte supported by one time funds, but in the proposed budget. This the work of two development review analysts. Three positions are proposed to move to pay for the for one additional year, supported by $425,000 in one time general fund monies. Beyond these two positions, the strategy manager position is slated to expire on June 30th, 2025, and is not proposed to be extended into the following fiscal year. The final position at code and policy development manager is proposed to be funded through a federal housing grant. And that work is going to continue under the Portland housing bureau. This team, the permit improvement team, has. Commissioner Ryan knows this team has been an essential partner in working directly with customers and staff to identify issues, proposed solutions and project manage improvement efforts for the benefit of all. They do deeply meaningful and much needed work to improve the permitting process, work that still needs to be done and their continued efforts would be greatly appreciated. And that concludes the presentation.
42 Thank you so much. So for committee members, we have questions slated to go until about one so that then we can go to the next presentation. But we do have a little bit of buffer time with that. Let's kick it off with councilor Zimmerman.
43 Thanks. On slide five, you noted seven enforcement officers that look like they are in the cuts package. Am I understanding that correctly?
44 That's correct.
45 Yes. Can you help me understand the overall size of our. And I'm interchanging code compliance and enforcement. If I'm wrong on that, can you go ahead and correct me? You're correct. Okay. About how big is that.
46 So I don't have the actual number of overall employees. But as far as the reduction to that team, give me one second here.
47 I thought you were around the 17, maybe 18 person.
48 Yeah. I don't know why I'm o enforcement. 22% of the inspectors doing that work are proposed to be eliminated.
49 Okay. A little bit a little bit concerning from a derelict property standpoint, since we've turned that valve back on in this last couple of years and finally given permission back to the bureau to do the job in which we hired these people to do that job. So I'm going to pause there a little bit. And now related to it with all of this work that has happened in terms of bringing all permitting under one roof, does that roof include tree code development or is that still held within the parks bureau?
50 Title 11 still maintains, I'm sorry, parks still maintains authority of title 11. That work is done in close collaboration with rp and staff, but is not. We do not make the final decision.
51 Can you elaborate what the reasoning behind all things in the city are going to be permitted under you, except title 11, which is going to stay with the parks bureau?
52 Well, unfortunately. Title 11, title 17, title 21. Those still are maintained by the home bureau. So PBOT bts water and parks. So while there's a single permitting authority, it's not accurate that there's one decision maker for all things permitting within the city of Portland.
53 Is that the goal of the permitting improvement team is to get so we have a single point of contact, or is it that we're going to ten years down? We're still going to have every bureau having their time with each permit. How is this going to look?
54 Well, so just to answer one question and then I believe donnie wants to jump in here. We do want to be one point of contact for customers to make sure that they don't have to go to multiple bureaus to answer those questions, but in terms of the authority, that would probably be something that donnie might want to touch on.
55 Councilor, thanks for the question. The idea would be that the customer experience going into the city would be agnostic to any bureau, so ppa would be the place that you would go to get your permit, and you would, in theory, maybe aside from maybe the fire marshal is an extreme example, you wouldn't know that you were moving between bureaus because p and d would be the place that that would air traffic control that through all the different infrastructure bureaus. And having said that, there's expertise in the bureau that's important to stay there, which is why only certain elements of the permitting process went to p and d, and I think that's still, practically speaking, the right thing to do. We can always tweak that. But we're still, you know, we're still a year into this new model.
56 Got it. Okay. So that's helpful in the permitting side. Now when it comes to the code compliance, code enforcement, those property enforcement officers. And in the a little bit of work that I've done with them, I've always just really appreciated how serious they were about their work. Is it the case that each of those bureaus that we're saying has a different authority for their permitting? Do they then also have different authority? Do they have their own code compliance and enforcement officers in all of the bureaus?
57 I wouldn't be able to say with absolute certainty how their enforcement process takes place. But for right of way related work, those infrastructure bureaus are the ultimate authority for the for that work.
58 So if I if I have a shed built on my property that's in my backyard and it's out of code compliance, who is the enforcement officer that my neighbor can call to have me dealt with?
59 Portland permitting and development.
60 Okay. And if that shed is in the front of my yard or in the back of my yard, that doesn't make a difference.
61 No, as long as it's on private property that that is our jurisdiction to, to enforce.
62 Okay. Is there a certification for these code compliance officers that says I'm a right of way code compliance person, I'm a tree compliance person and I'm a I'm a shed in the backyard compliance person. Or is it generally a school of thought that is similar industry wise in terms of how you apply these codes?
63 It would be how you apply the codes. Yeah.
64 Okay. I am I won't ask you for your opinion on an amendment that I proposed in our earlier budget session. But the reason I'm asking these questions is because I have floated and made the amendment to bring title 11 under your roof and brought those employees over to your side. And noted what a big difference there is in the size of that regulation team on the tree side and the urban forestry side versus the regulation team for everything else on our properties. So I appreciate you going down that list a little bit. I, I see the path that you guys have laid out here. I am raising some concern about around the code enforcement piece. I think the mayor's budget has invested so much in livability related costs that if we turn our back on the enforcement piece, I do have a little bit of concern here in terms of nuisance properties, squatters, etc, where where I think that beth's team has been able to really turn it on and help. And so I'm thinking about that. But then I also, you know, you've painted a pretty doom and gloom picture here, david, but I am a little bit, you know, your statement about, you know, it took ten years to build back what the bureau before the bureau felt it was an appropriate service level. I just want to pause and think about that statement a little bit, given that we wouldn't be going through a reform process if we'd hit a mark that we were proud of. And I think some of the work that this council has taken before, my era here was in recognition that whatever got built after the recession has not exactly hit the mark. We are still too slow, too difficult to work with, and we have a culture that what I see here is a difficult short term, but the potential for a more responsive, responsive long term. So I know you've done a lot of scalpel work here to put together a very difficult budget, but I just I want to note that that these are not easy decisions. I recognize that and I and I appreciate the way in which you've laid out this plan. So with that chair, that concludes my questions.
65 Okay. Thank you. I've got myself next in the queue here. So I like I'm sure many of my colleagues are concerned about the decrease in capacity that pad will experience with such a drastic cut to your staffing. So I would just like to better understand from you what you think you could achieve if your cuts were decreased, and would you, would you be able to put together some analysis for us around what services we could preserve? If you received 5 million versus 7 million versus 10 million, I kind of just want to get some staggered ideas of, you know, as we are making the tough decisions to possibly put dollars back in what would be most effective to keep you guys at a place where you can deliver. And in this memo, too, would you be able to identify at what increase amount you could justify funding the empowered communities program? Because I do think that it is really important if we can keep that, especially given the level of access that that program provides to. Community. So is that something we can get from you soon as we start digging into budget?
66 Absolutely. Yeah, definitely appreciate the question. And we can certainly provide that information.
67 Sounds good with that. Next we have councilor Dunphy.
68 Thank you, madam chair. I have a couple questions. David, you mentioned conversations about needing to move the funding model of this bureau forward. Obviously, this is not sustainable. What do other cities do?
69 Well, other cities are funded in similar ways. They generally have levers in place to alleviate the same issue that we have, where we just eventually draw to zero and don't really have a backup plan. I don't know how the bureau necessarily manage to avoid the worst, you know, the catastrophic impacts that could have presented themselves in 2008. But I don't think that's fiscally responsible to draw to zero. So other other cities do have mechanisms in place to make sure that that doesn't happen. But generally speaking, they are funded based on the development fees.
70 Councilor, if I may add, there's a couple of things to keep in mind here. Not every program in pd generates fees and revenue. So now fees and revenues are floating other programs. So there's just general fund has slowly whittled away ongoing general fund. And it's not just that other cities don't use fees to revenue. It's how they're structured. So we have a larger evaluation to do. It's not just hopefully one day we're not just forecasting out and hoping our numbers hit our operating costs. We can be a little bit more strategic about that. And so I think it's about looking a few years out versus just constantly, every year hoping that we're our revenue targets hit. And then I just I have to emphasize it because it's been said, but we're at the point now where obviously there's no never a good cut. But now we're at the point where we're hitting, you know, legally required programs that have to be there. So at some point we're not making cuts because we think they're the best cuts. It's like we can't cut this program because we have to do it by law. And that gets really challenging when you're at that level of cuts to a bureau, which speaks to the challenge that we're in right now. But I just wanted to put that on the record.
71 Thank you. Yeah, we're definitely clearly have cut past the meat and down into the bone at this point. And it's hard to come back from that. Are there opportunities within the bureau right now to look at either automation or technological solutions to try and help relieve some of that burden.
72 Technological, technological solutions? Absolutely. And that's part of what the permit improvement team is working on. Last year, we stood up a conditional logic format for new single family homes to make sure that projects being submitted were accurate and complete, rather than a, you know, a packet of paper that oftentimes was missing information, wasn't complete, wasn't filled out. There was nothing there to verify that until we actually had it in our hands. This process makes sure that those submissions are accurate and complete, so that it keeps us from having to go back and forth with the customer. That and this. This shortens the time for the permitting process. So it took some time to get that stood up. We have a template in place to do just that. And now we just need to implement that on other project types as well. So that's definitely the technology solutions is definitely being looked upon. And if you you know, as donny mentioned, all of these cuts are extremely difficult to, you know, to process and to prioritize. But you might see that there are no cuts proposed in our technology team because we need to we need to that that work to continue.
73 Great. Yeah. And I'll just, you know, note that for folks listening at home, the bureau is still mostly accepting paper permits until 2020. We didn't let a good crisis go to waste with the pandemic and move to a digital system. If there's a opportunity for us to move something forward here, I think we should. To that same end, though, I heard a lot of conversations around cuts to staff and the increased burden that will be left on the staff who are remaining. Are there conversations about potentially doing less, temporarily suspending certain types of regulation? Certain types of procedures that you all regulate?
74 Yes, there are there. We've had numerous conversations about how to. To move the responsibility. So at the end of the day, we want to make sure that the buildings that we're reviewing, that and that are constructed in the city are safe for the occupants. And so how who does that work and how that work is done, making sure that that goal is still in place and is met, but with the recognition that it that we might need to look at how that process works and what things can come off the plate. Absolutely. We've been discussing that.
75 If there are specific policy requirements that this council needs to consider in order to remove non-life and safety regulations, if there are procedures that are outdated, if a temporary. I've heard colleagues talk about temporarily suspending design review, if there are things like that that need to accompany this budget package as a policy matter, I would be very interested in working with your office or your team on that. With regard to the environmental soils program, when the iga is between Multnomah county and dick, do those igas come with cash? Do they pay for us to be in charge of those?
76 Yes, but we are the. That program has been underfunded for years. We often have to ask Multnomah county to, you know, to implement their fee increases. We are not at cost recovery there.
77 Okay. And my last comment I'll make I'm just going to telegraph telegraph project to you that I'm going to be introducing an amendment to restore the coordinator one position at the noise office. Later this year. I'll be introducing a policy package with regard to our music economy, and I simply cannot accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish with that, being a one person office. So that is my intention, and I hope my colleagues will later support that. Thank you very much.
78 Councilor Ryan. Yes.
79 Thank you, chair Avalos. First of all, it's good to see everyone. Thanks for being here. We all want a strong new pad to provide services that allow permitting to go smoothly and attract new development projects, transforming the culture from the city wide silos that former bts I know did your very best, without much authority to provide that type of seamless system. However, thank goodness we move forward and now we have this integrated system at pad and you're continuing to do that transformational work. I think this new culture and system will allow us to implement creative ways to help alleviate those issues and concerns for customers. This is one reason I will be bringing a budget amendment that will allow self self-certification for some building plans and permits, and will be continuing to work with your bureau on that. We have also received feedback regarding proposed cuts to commercial building inspectors that would likely affect current and new construction. Where could we refocus these cuts to lessen impact on housing productions?
80 It's a great question. As as I mentioned, all of these cuts are are difficult. I I'd appreciate some additional time to take a look at that and look at the org chart and provide a response.
81 That's such a fair response just on my mind. So I want to make sure I said that today. I also want to note how attached I am to the permit and improvement project, as my former office added the budget notes to build this team in 2122 and again in 2223. We need a team to help continue the reform work of the permitting process. That said, I think the two of you in leadership really are what's important here in my conversations with you. I know that you get it. And so I trust whatever you will say to me here. And so I want to keep that momentum going. And I hope you two remain in leadership. That all given I'm seeing a one cut position and would like confirmation that this will not affect the ongoing reform work that you both are overseeing.
82 Correct?
83 Correct.
84 That reform work continues.
85 It will continue. You're you're you can we can move forward with that suggestion from the mayor's budget.
86 Assuming that the decision package to add the two one time funded positions to keep them going, the answer is yes. If that decision.
87 That's very big. Thanks for affirming. That's from going one time, one time money paid for those positions. So you're supporting that. We carry over two people into this position. And with the two of you at the helm, that's enough capacity for you to continue to do this work.
88 And under director leadership, we got grant funding to fund a third position. So there's three there's three positions that will continue that permit improvement work. We're at the point now where we think that those positions are best suited to be working within the bureaus to do the implementation. Now the 30,000 foot kind of scan is not complete, but it's ongoing. We feel like now it's ready for implementation.
89 So there's a third position coming from restricted fund. Yeah okay. Great. That's why we do these meetings. Thank you. That's the questions I have.
90 Counselor Zimmerman.
91 Thanks, chair. I want to follow up. I noticed in slide five that you have five equity positions that were cut. And I'm the equity office also being a central office in the city. My question is about whether or not the bureau has caam's procurement and hr. That is bureau specific and not centralized. And if you have made any proposed reductions in our transition from the old system to the new system, where we have a pyramid of central services that are designed to support your bureau in those areas.
92 We have very limited staff in all of those areas. We have two, we have a public information officer and a graphic designer. She's working primarily on our website improvements. So going back to the technology improvements. So we have not made cuts in those areas because the staff is so limited already.
93 Okay. Similar with procurement and hr.
94 We have no. Well yes, we don't have a specific hr department.
95 Okay. Great I appreciate that. And then the five folks, the five positions in equity, does that encompass the entire staff of that division.
96 With the exception of a employee who helps with our recruitment process?
97 Okay. I would put recruitment in in hr. Are we talking about recruitment of employees?
98 Yes. Right now not so much recruitment, more support. Unfortunately we're not recruiting anyone. But yes okay.
99 Yeah I think that would fall in an hr duty a lot of times. But okay, I appreciate that. I think I'm going to continue to ask that of a variety of bureaus in terms of our shared services and our move toward centralization, since it didn't seem to really come off the pages in the mayor's budget, we're going to force it through questions. So. All right. Thanks, david. Yep.
100 Councilors. I don't see any other folks in the queue. Any more questions for this presentation. Otherwise we can move on to housing bureau. Cool. Thank you so much.
101 Thank you very much.
102 Okay. Next up we have the housing bureau. Director. Historic is coming up. And they will be presenting for about five minutes. And we've got about five minutes for questions, but we've got a little bit of buffer time. Okay.
103 No, please. I'm just saying. Okay, great.
104 Get away.
105 Good afternoon. Chair Avalos, vice chair and committee members. For the record, I'm helen, historic director at the Portland housing bureau. We'll go to the next slide during our presentation to this committee on March 11th, 2025, proposed a $1.2 million cut to the general funded programs. The mayor's new budget has now been revised and now includes a smaller cut to ph of $800,000 in hb programs and the addition of $500,000 in general fund for a new program. In addition, the mayor's budget proposes about 7.3 million in cuts to joint office funding for joint office homeless services. And while this funding for the joint office passes through homelessness, funding is primarily overseen by Portland solutions, so director knapp will be available to address any funding changes for the joint office. I'll quickly go through the proposed cuts and the proposed additions. The first cut is a $400,000 cut, one time reduction for first time home buyer program that would result in 3 to 5 fewer down payment assistance loans for lower income, low and moderate income households. The general fund is a flexible funding source that allows us to implement a down payment assistance loan program across the entire city without geographic limitations. Since most of our d pals, as we call them, are limited to tif districts, the general fund cut does reduce the area in which we will be able to provide loans. The second cut is a one time reduction in repair grants for low and moderate income homeowners. This program is typically funded with federal funds, which we augment with general fund to allow the program to exceed the limits of the federal fund and fund things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Portland housing bureau originally put forward a $400,000 general fund cut for eviction legal defense, but that funding was restored by in the mayor's budget proposal. The mayor has also proposed to add $500,000 for a new home sharing pilot program, which we anticipate will assist up to 60 individuals in finding housing through home sharing. Those funds would allow for an initial start up of a home sharing pilot, including staff position, research, propose and implement the operational legislative changes that would be necessary to establish a home sharing program, as well as external materials and services. Funding to partner with a community based organization that we would work directly with for, that would work directly with prospective homeowners and landlords. So that's the sum total of our budget changes.
106 And, chair, if I may, one addition and councilor City administrator jordan's initial recommended proposal, there was an additional $400,000 cut to the housing bureau for the eviction loan program, and that cut was restored back in in the mayor's proposal. So that's a change since the last time.
107 I did, I think I included.
108 That, yeah. I just wanted to clarify. Okay. Thank you. No, you're right.
109 That's all. As far as questions go.
110 Sounds good. Let's go ahead and start with councilor Dunphy.
111 Yeah.
112 Director.
113 The home share initiative. You know, I, I am reminded of I think it was 2018, 2017 before you were here, but a small upstart company claiming that they wanted to come in and give grandma, who has a spare bedroom, an extra opportunity for some extra income. That company was called airbnb. Clearly it did not end up becoming a home share platform. More than more than anything else, it is. It is largely responsible for taking a number of our units off the record, off the market in general. How do we know that this is not just that wearing different clothing?
114 So home sharing is provided by both for profit and nonprofit companies. We've looked at home sharing programs across the country, and they vary in their in how well they deliver what you might think of as an affordable housing social good. I think our objective in doing a home sharing program would be to seek out a nonprofit entity that is focused on particularly targeted clients, perhaps seniors, as an example. That has been very effective in boston.
115 I just I will note my skepticism. I, I trust your instincts on how to implement something like this. But in a moment where we are cutting, this sure just sounds like airbnb or the potential to become airbnb in the future. And that is something that I also worry about, is sometimes these programs start strong. They lose public attention after a number of years, and then the private market does what the private market does. So I just want to flag my skepticism upfront.
116 Thank you councilor. It may be that after the staff does their analysis of potential regulations, oversight, that it's not right for the city of Portland, this money is truly a pilot to see what what may or may not work for, for our community.
117 That's right.
118 Thank you. I kind of have a follow up on that because dca oliveira, could you please clarify for me who the community partner is in home share the home share pilot? Because what I understood was that this was being created to the benefit of a private company called padsplit, which again, is, as councilor Dunphy is expressing, agree that I have skepticism as it has a similar model to airbnb. So could you clarify?
119 I'll let the director respond, but at this point we've contemplated no partner. This is truly money to do the research, to hire a staff person, to contemplate a pilot with whoever we might deem as appropriate. But if you want to follow up.
120 Yeah, I mean.
121 Our objective would.
122 Be to do a competitive selection process. We've looked at a proposal by padsplit. This is not funding for that proposal. They would have an opportunity to propose. Quite frankly, their proposal is for households serving 80% of ami and below, which is higher than we normally do. So it's unlikely that would be the kind of program we would implement.
123 And what do you see as the relationship between this potential pilot and the home connections program that supposedly does similar things at the county?
124 Well, that's something that we would be researching, really looking at whether it's appropriate for the city to do a home sharing program. What what I'll say going into this is that we, you know, we view the elected officials of the city as being the voice of the people of Portland. And the mayor has consistently instructed us as a bureau to look for more cost effective ways to do the work we do. Home sharing is one such idea that we've never done, we've never really implemented. And so with that sort of trying to think about being creative and cost effective, we think it would be an appropriate thing to run a pilot program and then say, is this working? Is this a is this right? That said, we're always struggling robbing peter to pay paul, if you will, trying to figure out what are the priorities for the bureau. And so our, our, our focus on the home sharing is to start in a very targeted way and try to be as thoughtful as possible in the implementation.
125 Thank you. Yeah, I have a lot of questions about that. I mean, I think ultimately concerned about at a time of budget crunch, trying something new. We've got some programs that are working. And on that note, director Eric, there is no money in this budget for the preservation of affordable housing units that are desperately underwater. And you've been warning us about this for a while now, but I'm particularly concerned about the units participating in the north and northeast preference policy. So I have introduced an amendment, but I'm curious if we were able to move the funding from this new pilot program to support the preservation of units that already exist. Would that be helpful? Could you use those additional dollars to help prevent losing affordable housing? I think ultimately my concern is not losing things that we already have online, as that would just obviously be detrimental to the larger housing stock and availability. So could you speak to that?
126 Yes. Thank you. On on may 8th, we actually did hold a meeting with the developers of the of in the preference policy area to discuss their concerns over the preference policy implementation. The there is approximately $1 million in rent arrears for all the properties that are in the preference north northeast preference policy. There's a variety of reasons for those rent arrears, but one of the one of the concerns that was strongly and unanimously expressed by the developer community was that in order to implement the preference policy, it's a slow lease up. It actually creates a slow a time lag in getting the units leased, and that results in nonpayment of rent both at initial lease up as well as at turnover. And the there was a request for us to consider putting in place a lease up sort of vacancy, a vacancy support. So any developer that could not lease up within 45 days as a result of trying to get a preference person, somebody off the preference policy waitlist, we would step in and be able to provide a sort of a support for that rent so that they could pay their debt service. And I have leslie goodloe here, who is one of our who's the one of the executive team members at Portland housing bureau who oversees the preference policy. If you have more questions about the specifics of that. But that would be a there's a strong support for that particular use.
127 Thank you very much, councilor Ryan.
128 Thank you, chair Avalos, I really appreciate the earlier questions about the home share. I think what we got from you is that you're in exploration mode, and I'm grateful for that because the elder housing elders are the fastest growing population in secure housing with housing insecurity. And I've experienced that with my own family. My mom was on limited income in southern california in the 90s, and she was too prideful to talk about it, but the conditions weren't great. And then suddenly, through her social network, she found a home to rent in. That was one fifth, I think, of the cost that she was spending on the apartment that didn't provide very good secure housing. And so I've seen I think this is organically been going on for some time. I don't think this story is special, but it's not unique. And so I hope that we do really dig in deeply here. And we know there's a nonprofit that has that name in it. So I think what I'm hearing is we have not made a decision on how, but we know the why is important, and you want to have a game plan to address that. Is that what I'm hearing right now? Or you can say it better than I can. And you and I encourage you to do that.
129 What? What? Yeah, I think we think that there is a need to explore this and to understand it more deeply. Very interested in doing that and appreciate the mayor's pushing us towards that goal. So, you know, we have a we have a strong interest in that in doing home sharing. That said, as I mentioned earlier, there's always a challenge to define the priorities. So, you know, whatever the mayor and council decide are the priorities for the city is what will implement. And I think that home sharing in any case will stay on the radar for us.
130 Yeah. And governments focus on, you know, 0 to 24. And elders always has to be the primary responsibility for local government. And caring for elders so they can age in place is a high priority. So I look forward to the findings and how we can keep moving forward on this. Thanks.
131 Councilor zimmermann.
132 Thanks. Similarly, I have a positive view about this home share pilot. I tried last year to get the county to have a similar push and we were not successful, so I'm happy to see it. And I haven't got any any concerns relative to what some others on the dais said. I've never heard of padsplit or whatever the heck that was called, but I have heard of home share Oregon, and I have heard the stories about about people who, you know, are in their home now but are in for, you know, the best term, you know, empty nesters or whatever. The right thing is that this has been a good experience for them. And also having an organization who can help match families or individuals with those who are opening. So I think it's a good thing. I'm glad. I'm glad it's in there. And I think that it's a learning point. I want to shift a little bit and I'm, I'm maybe I missed something, but is this your budget presentation?
133 Well, this is we were asked to return. This was actually presented previously in March, and we were asked to return specifically to just go over again with this committee, the 2 to 2, the deletions and the additions. And what's changed since March is that the mayor restored funding for the eviction legal defense program. So that's no longer a cut.
134 All right. So we heard something in March before a budget came out that we're now considering part of the budget presentation. I would say this is so different from what we just got from pnd. And. And perhaps that was the case, but I'm not feeling like we hit the mark here. I don't think this was a budget presentation. And relative to budget presentations happening in a certain timeline, in a certain season and relative to the proposed budget. This, you know, I've got I've got the mayor's proposed budget here, which has $244 million. And we have a slide that talks about just the last 13 or 1.3. So. I, I don't think this meets the mark. I don't think this was well served amount of time. And I'll just leave it there.
135 Councilor I'll just I'll take responsibility. Just full disclosure, we were basing this decision to have this level of detail to focus on ppd and Portland solutions, but hasn't had as much time. And also, tomorrow will be with you all as the full council for the service area. But again, I'll take responsibility for the sort of truncated version of this, of this presentation.
136 Yeah. Hold on, let me see. Okay. I don't have any one else in the queue. Any other thoughts about housing bureau's budget? Okay.
137 So if we're going to if we're going to call this budget presentation, I'll ask you the same question I asked the other bureaus. Do you have any other centralized services, comms, communications, human resources, equity that you've made reductions in as we move toward the centralized model.
138 We have been participating in the reorganization of the city. We don't have specific staff reductions for those positions at this point. That is a process that's we're going through. We don't have. We are we are not seeing a staff reductions at chb as part of this budget. And very aware of the difficulty faced by our colleagues in other bureaus that are facing very severe budget cuts and appreciative that we are not facing that. That said, chb has the largest budget and the smallest staff in the community and economic development service areas, so we don't have a lot of room for cuts, but I, you know, really do understand the difficulty faced by other bureaus and in the challenges they're facing, particularly pnd, certainly.
139 I mean, you have a unique budget in the way that capital works. So I'm not making a size of budget comparison there, but just just help me out in terms of understanding what, what I would call centralized services. Do you have do you have a comms department? Do you have an hr department? Do you have a procurement department?
140 We have one communication staff person. Actually we had two communication staff person and we allocated one to the to the city administrator's office, the deputy city administrator. And we kept one within our bureau. We're going through the dialog around the centralization of communications. And I anticipate that we will give up the position that the second position that we've already given up, we expect that to be a permanent reduction in our fte. And then in terms of equity, we don't have that analysis done yet. That is in process.
141 But you do have that.
142 We have we have one equity.
143 Officer councilor, I think to get to your question, the housing bureau does have a payroll person, equity staff. It's all pretty lean, similar to ppd over the years when bureaus take cuts. Unfortunately, it's internal services that typically hit first. But just do that.
144 Analysis, you know, based on yesterday's thing and a reminder that we have an hr bureau of 113 employees, and we have 112 hr professionals across the bureaus. So if my questions seem pointed, it's because I'm looking for them. And I agree that I think you will probably give up your comms person to the centralized system so that that decision can then be made about what is the right size of columns in this organization. But because we aren't having a very detailed budget season, the digging may feel a little more pointed than we are used to, and it has a purpose. So thanks for answering those. I appreciate it.
145 Councilor Morillo.
146 Thank you chair. Avalos. Sorry guys, I'm really sick right now so apologies for not being on camera. Thank you for the presentation. This was really helpful. I was really glad to hear. That the eviction defense loans have been brought back in the mayor's proposed budget, and while we have heard that eviction, defense and rental assistance is really important in housing people and keeping people housed, I know that previously under commissioner Ryan, php was able to distribute $1 million in rental assistance through the pandemic, and that was helpful, I think, to over 13,000 families. Does the Portland housing bureau still have the capacity to do this if funding were to become available?
147 We have the capacity to implement. We currently do not have any funds. Those funds came from ARPA. The I'm sorry, I don't even know what the acronym stands for, but it was a federal funding during COVID to provide rental assistance. And so we do have the capacity to implement a program if it were reasonably sized, if it were as large as the upper program, it would be challenging. However, we don't have the funding for that now.
148 Thanks.
149 What does reasonably sized mean to you, director?
150 I think a program that was a million. If we had $1 million in funding for rental assistance, that's something that we could implement with our current staffing. I think if it started to get beyond $1 million, we would have to really look at our staff implementation capacity.
151 Thank you. That's helpful. Colleagues, last call for questions. Thank you for your time. Okay. Lastly, we are bringing up Portland solutions. Come on up. Go ahead when you're ready. Thanks.
152 All right. Good afternoon chair. Councilors. For the record, director Portland solutions. And I'm joined by hank Smith, our deputy director. We have a packed agenda. So it includes an overview of the proposed Portland solutions budget and fte, followed by breakdowns of budget for general ops, overnight shelter, alternative shelter, the street services coordination center, the impact reduction program, and the public environment management office. Next slide please, because I know we all enjoy a budget spreadsheet. We've drafted a holistic view of the Portland solutions proposed budget that you see on your screen. While our fy 2425 budget totaled 82.4 million, you will notice that our fy 2526 proposed budget amounts to 93.5 million, while proposed budget numbers for two Portland solutions programs are increasing. So the sscc and the shelter services programs, irp and pmo budgets maintain base level services and will have lower budgets overall when compared to funding levels for the current year. Revised fy 2425 budgets for this fiscal for irp and pmo reflect program and encumbrance carryover that was budgeted in the fall technical adjustment ordinance. Last fall. Irp also received additional funding and resources for campsite removal services on ODOT property for this fiscal year. The bulk of additional money in our budget is for the mayor's overnight shelter program, totaling $24.9 million and a 2.05 million ask for outreach fte to support the overnight shelter, engagement zones, housing placement and retention, and unsanctioned camping response connecting our most vulnerable to services and support. Next slide please, to give you a sense of how our proposed budget looks across each of our programs. We've provided you with this chart. We know that council has been interested in the visibility for one time funding, so we've highlighted all the one time funding in yellow. The boxes that are in yellow are one time, so one time funding amounts to about $68 million, which accounts for approximately 72.6% of our overall budget. Hopefully that is easier to conceptualize. We also wanted to provide you with an overview of our fte. So in fy 2425, Portland solutions had 27 fte. In the fy 2526 proposed budget, our fte would expand to 41 fte. I want to take a moment just to break down that 14 fte difference with new fte within this proposed budget, so one fte would be transferred from the enhanced service district coordination program, and one fte accounts for an extension of a limited duration admin specialist. Three to support the administration and execution of program delivery. One fte would be an extension of an analyst. Three for programmatic support for the overnight shelter program, and one fte is currently a vacant position in the program. Ten fte is being proposed for additional outreach staff that would be housed in the street services coordination center. So those ten additional outreach workers. And finally, I just wanted to let you know that 32 of our 41 fte will be limited duration or temporary fill positions. Let's take a look at the breakdown for each program area. So starting with general operations, like many programs, we are expecting an 8% reduction from ongoing city general funds for operations and administration, resulting in about $72,000 of a cut that will come from operational materials. There is a technical addition that is actually an extension of an existing limited duration admin specialist three position, which costs about $205,000, all in in one time city general funds. In addition, the enhanced service district coordinator program will be realigned and is now going to be part of Portland solutions. So that's moving that one fte that I mentioned from the community and economic development service area under Portland solutions. Our next program is the overnight shelter program. So this is an addition of 24.9 million with 15 million appropriated by metro, 4.8 million from state resources that are going to show up in other budget documents as city general funds. I'm happy to dive into that later. If you have questions. Director historic touched on it in her previous presentation and 5.1 million in other state resources that is slated to come through the state's omnibus bill at the end of their session. Due to differing budgeting schedules, the state resources have not yet been allocated, but we have confidence in their passage in our receipt. The monies for the program will be allocated as follows 15.3 million for overnight shelter emergency shelter beds, so totaling 1500 as the mayor has mentioned, 8.9 million for two day centers and two managed outdoor spaces, $400,000 for two day storage facilities, and $300,000 for 1.5 fte to administer the overnight shelter program. While this is all one time money, the mayor has indicated that he is working on a plan for long term funding and management of this program. Next, let's turn to the alternative shelter program. So we've typically delineated between the tasks and srp sites. And we're proactively grouping all of our 24 seven sites here as alternative shelter sites. In the fy 2526 proposed budget. The total for this program amounts to $38.6 million. 19.2 million is expected from state resources, with another 13.3 million being allocated for fy 2627. That's a biennium allocation, so allocating 13.3in this fiscal year and then 13.3 in the 2627 fiscal year, 10 million is expected from the county's general fund, 3.4 million in metro hhs carryover from this fiscal year into the next 2 million in city general fund carryover from fy 2425 $4 million in city general fund as a one time ask from an ongoing policy set aside. And finally, $2 million will be asked for from the fy 2425 encumbered city general fund program monies that will be requested in the fy 2526 fall technical adjustment ordinance process. So this coming fall, I also want to note that we're in the process of decommissioning the peninsula crossing site, which will close to participants this week. That land will be used by habitat for humanity, who will be building affordable housing units on that site. This will be an affordable home buying program and administered by second. I'll note that the mayor's proposed budget does not include funding for sunderland rv park. Further, to improve operating efficiency, we are pulling all contracts for city shelters back to the city. We've learned a lot over the last several years about operating our shelters. This direct contracting will allow us to trim budgets responsibly while focusing on that core service delivery model. This was very important to the mayor. On this slide, we'll discuss the bybee lakes decision package. So the city is committed to a $1.3 million supportive partnership with helping hands, who have delivered 5024 over seven beds. Focused recovery, among other services. These monies come from the opioid settlement funds. $331,000 was allocated. This fiscal year, was already appropriated in the last budget, and 993,000 is proposed in the allocation for fy 2526. So it is coming before you. Hank is now going to speak to our other three programs.
153 Thank you sky. Good afternoon councilors. So the street services coordination center, this is a detailed look at the proposed budget for the sscc. Specifically the proposed budget for adhs funding for a city outreach team expansion. As sky previously mentioned, this means filling one already vacant position on the cc and adding ten more, taking the outreach team from four to a total of 15. What this means is an increased capacity for the work already being done out there on the street, and also increase outreach around new city shelters and new day centers to mitigate neighborhood impact and increase utilization of those new sites. It is critical, as we have more services to offer, that we have people on the ground building relationships and trust who will direct people to those services and encourage participation there. Additionally, other city staff and contractors who interact with people living outside will be able to ask for outreach assistance from our city outreach team more often. This frees up first responders and brings services and resources to high impact camp removal operations. Situations where non city outreach teams have been reluctant to engage in the past, but where outreach is often a welcome and well-timed intervention. More city outreach also fills a gap in service expected as the county is cutting back on outreach services in their budget proposals. Part of that cut at the county is a loss of a joint office, contracted navigation team, a team of 25 outreach staff from several private nonprofits who receive direction from the city via the impact reduction program. The city had spent about $2 million a year in in the past to partially fund the work of the of that navigation team. You'll also see $300,000 in the budget to continue the reunification program administered by the cc. This program has funded tickets home for ten people so far in 2025. Finally, 1 million from the cc total proposed budget will go directly to PBOT to support derelict rv removals. Next slide. Okay. The impact reduction program, the proposed budget for the irp, maintains the city's camp response efforts. While the overall budget numbers are lower, this is not a budget reduction. The fy 2425 budget received added funding and carryover dollars from a fall technical adjustment ordinance. Addition based service levels being maintained this year and in the future year, but could be at a slightly lower capacity when compared to current fiscal given the extra dollars the program has had in this year. Although not finalized, ODOT is. Odot funding is expected to be at least $2 million. Odot funding to irp is expected to be at least $2 million, but that amount could be higher, which could mitigate service reductions. Next slide. Thank you. The public environment management office, similar to the irp projected budget, pmo's budget is lower in comparison to fy 2425, but that is due to the end of some one time grant funding and a one time fall tao addition based service level is being maintained, but could be at a slightly lower capacity when compared to current fiscal, given the extra dollars the program has had previously added to. Pmo's proposed budget is $740,000. To pay for more sidewalk cleaning around shelters and in several business districts across the city. All right, that concludes our presentation. Thanks for your time. We look forward to answering your questions.
154 Sounds good. Looks like I'm first up in line here. So I want to talk a little bit about these outreach workers. And we started to talk about this yesterday, sky and what you said to me yesterday. And what I'm also hearing from you, hank, is that these ten new outreach workers are intended to make up for the 25 that the county is losing. But what we are hearing, what I'm hearing from community advocates who do this outreach work, as well as some folks at the county that they don't know why these ten new outreach workers are being funded, nor has there been conversations, according to them, about how they fit in with the county or what the community is already doing. So could you add some more context about what these ten new positions are taking on? Are they taking on more work that's already being provided by the county and by community partners? And I think the larger question for me is how does this help us in the long run with meeting our iga that says that the city is working toward off ramping from providing these kinds of outreach and shelter services?
155 Yeah, absolutely. Chair, thank you for the question. So we are in deep discussions with the homelessness response system staff. So gillian shoshone specifically, as well as chris neil, the new coo at the county, who is being tasked with the outreach coordination project, basically. So that was started about six months ago, and we were in discussion with county staff about how that would work. They've met with our outreach team. They've met with us multiple times. But now chris neil, as the new coo, is going to take over that project. The chair is tasked him with really engaging in that process deeply with the city. I'm really excited to work with him on that. They are looking at maybe a geographic approach to outreach, which is not really been something they've done in the past. Our team would be coordinating with those outreach workers, any existing and kind of continued outreach workers through the county. But we are performing slightly different functions. And so I think hank and I can go in maybe a little bit of detail to how our teams work a little bit differently. I think people hear outreach and they think it's a similar function and it's really just not. And we did a work session at the county at the direction of commissioner Singleton earlier this month or late last month about outreach. And so it was nice to hear all the different flavors, if you will, of outreach. The city presented just about our team, but as well about psr and chat that don't provide traditional outreach but are really in the community and are engaging with similar individuals. So what we were able to talk about is that we've been a gap filler in a lot of ways for the existing outreach that nonprofits were providing. We're working with the highest acuity individuals on the street. We're coordinating with psr, we're coordinating with chat, we're coordinating with police. We're coordinating with different entities to really meet the needs of the hardest cases, I would say so. Our team was designed to be very nimble and very small, to be honest. I mean, we only had four individuals. That was intentional. We wanted to direct their work. We wanted to make sure we could address those highest need cases. The folks that are on our outreach team have worked in this town for decades and in different roles, providing behavioral health outreach. They're able to perform different commitments. If folks really need to go to be hospitalized, it's a it's a higher level of outreach service. So I think they'll continue to coordinate, as they have for decades with different nonprofit outreach teams. And I think both of those functions are really important. The iga really speaks to the shelter services being transferred over. I think in my estimation, the city will always be engaged in some type of outreach service, whether it's psr chat, you know, coordination with, for example. I just think we're always going to be on the ground in a, you know, alternative to public safety response and also public space management, because that is our function. So I do think we are providing a slightly different function, but we will coordinate and continue to coordinate, I hope, a better way to be honest with this outreach strategy that they're putting in place. Anything that you would add.
156 I would just add that we stood up that street request program so somebody can either go onto the city of Portland website and request help from a street outreach worker, or call 311 and request. And we still get hundreds of calls every month. And we do deconflict with with others to make sure. So if they're already in contact with outreach, we don't necessarily need to have a new outreach worker go. But still, we find many, many folks who are not in touch with outreach, and we use our team to go make contact. So it's not an immediate 911 style response. We have other programs for that kind of acuity. But we're we're using our outreach team to really to find those folks who are saying, please come help, help me, I need help, and we need I mean, the program has received more requests for help than I think we originally expected. And so we work to make contact within a couple of weeks if we can. And then I would just note that our city outreach workers have been have proven a lot of effectiveness working side by side with some of our cleanup crews, assisting police when they have high tension situations involving folks who might benefit from street outreach. And so when they go somewhere, they're always they're looking to establish that relationship and then continue on with that person to get them connected to the service structure. And these are folks who maybe have refused offers of services before. And so we direct our outreach team to really not give up to, to maintain a kind of assertive engagement that is, I think, different than the other flavors of outreach that sky mentioned. And so we're asking them to do these kind of hard jobs that it's proven. We've seen a lot of benefit from that kind of outreach, getting folks who maybe have been in camps that have received a lot of calls, had a lot of cleanups, have been really challenging for outreach, previous outreach to help. We've seen them be effective in getting those folks into some of our city run shelters. And on that path of stability.
157 Thank you. I have one more question, and then I'll put myself at the end of the queue and let my colleagues ask some questions. But if we could turn to slide eight, the one about alternative shelter, and I would love some information about the graph, because what I'm looking at is I see on the left you've got this giant pot of 47.4 million that is labeled intergovernmental revenue, and the total was 56 million. And then for the proposed budget, it goes all the way down to 38.6 million. And then I don't see that yellow, that intergovernmental revenue. So I just don't understand what's going on with these two numbers. Could you explain that a little more?
158 Yeah. And I think rob can probably put the slide up on that. Thank you. So everybody can see it. But there's a bit of a decrease in terms of closing not having sunderland accounted for and then closing peninsula crossing. So you'll see some of a decrease there. The we're moving basically to a different model of resources. So previously funded by different ARPA funds, different county funds. It was a kind of a mix of different funding streams, but not a lot of the state revenue that you see in the 38.6, the metro kind of carry over. And that $10 million from the county is explicitly called out. So I think just the different flavors of money is what we're trying to show you there. We can break that down. More specifically, I think the handout that you all should have also shows kind of the flavors that are in this fiscal year, but we're happy to break that down for the current fiscal year that we're in, I guess, 2425, if you're interested in that as well.
159 Okay. I'll leave it at that for now, but I'll dig in later with you. Councilor Dunphy.
160 Thank you, madam chair sky. Hank lucas, other folks who are here, I just wanted, first of all, say that you all are providing some of the best quality services for the folks on our streets. And you are creating systems that are meaningfully changing lives. And also, your presentation made me feel really despondent. I can't help but notice that we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars over in the city on things that are traditionally not our line of business. And you said, you know, you envision a future in which we are always going to need outreach workers and always going to be doing this, but historically, it is not our our book of business to be doing these things, and we're supposed to be working. That's the benefit of having different governmental partners. We're supposed to be the bricks and sticks. If that's no longer the case, we need to have a bigger conversation as a region. But I can't help but notice how this is just feeling like the bottom of our society is falling out, and we are having to make incredibly hard choices to try and meet the folks on our streets who are not getting served by the federal government. They are not getting served well by our county partners, who are supposed to be in the first position on this, and we are sacrificing parks maintenance. We're sacrificing permitting staff. We're making huge sacrifices to do work that is not portland's job. And, you know, if you talk to Clackamas county, they're point in time. Count said they had 200 people like that is because literally people are driving homeless people to the county border and saying, good luck, Portland will take care of you. It is deeply unsustainable. It is also just some of the hardest work I have had the pleasure of doing. Drive along ride alongs with the chat team, going and visiting all these facilities. It is so hard and this is the inevitable outcome of the way our society has been devaluing education, devaluing the trades, taking away opportunities for young people, not taking care of mental health. I'm just I think that you all are doing an amazing job of trying to piece together millions of dollars to meet the moment, and thank you for doing that. Something has to give somewhere and I don't see an end to this also. And I know that you all it's not again, it's not our book of business. So we shouldn't necessarily be defining what success looks like. But right now we are we are deep in a problem. This is a huge societal level challenge, and it doesn't seem to be getting better. And we've got to figure something out. We got to get a federal partner that can actually be helpful. And here locally, we have to get on the same page with our colleagues at county. And I'm looking forward to next week's joint work session. So thank you for the work you're doing. It is thankless. The community says, why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you more responsive? I wish the community could see the beautiful dashboards that you all have to see, the scale and scope of the problem, and the amount of work that is going on. And I'm glad, honestly, that you're not investing a ton of money into patting ourselves on the back and telling our story. You're out there doing the work. We've just also got to figure out ways to tell our story. And I do wish the media who were here earlier are still here, but they're not. So the folks watching at home, you all are. I'm deeply impressed and I wish you didn't have to do this work. That's all.
161 Thanks, councilor. I will just say I'm not usually the voice of hope, but I did mention the outreach workers who I do think the city will be in some version of that business for a long time. I don't necessarily think we need to be in all of the business that Portland solutions is in, and I think if you ask any member of my team who work a lot of hours and work very, very hard at their jobs, that they hope they're working themselves out of a job, I think that's our intention. We're a, you know, limited duration, really nimble project, and we're really trying to turn the tide. I think we've seen some success. I will say I got here three years ago and it was a different time. I mean, commissioner Ryan or councilor Ryan can speak to that too, as councilor Zimmerman. So I think we have seen some positive changes. There's still definitely some despair. And I think the federal side of that is part of that analysis. But I do think we are working better with the county and with metro and with the state than I've ever seen us work. And so that is a change in three years. And I do think we are looking at other funding streams so that we aren't affecting the city general fund in the same way, frankly. And that's definitely top of mind for us as well. So thank you. We appreciate it.
162 Councilor Zimmerman.
163 Thanks, lucas. You're in the you're in the seat here. But so with respect to the irp reduction, I'm seeing the 4.8 million is a reduction in the budget coming up. I want to make sure I'm understanding this the right way. I thought, sky, that you had said were basically holding firm to help me out and understand it. And what I'm really getting at is of the 8126 camps that were cleared in our community last year or this current year, I'm trying to understand what that 4.8 means, and if that's going to go down significantly, because you're going from 21 removal crews to 17.
164 Thank you. Lucas hillier, manager of the impact reduction program. We started the fiscal year with $3 million of carryover. So we had a sugar rush happening at the beginning of the fiscal year and last fiscal year. What would take it would take three crews two days to clean camps. We've dug ourselves out of that hole, largely from from the pandemic. And what we were seeing is more camp removals taking place. But those camp removals are not taking as much time because we have reduced the accumulation of material on the streets. So numbers will go up, cost per removal are going down. We are at 19 crews right now from the 21 high water mark, waiting to see what happens with the state budget. So the gray bar on the right hand column, we're anticipating that to be $4 million. 2 million is what is in the iga. So that's what we put on our budget documents. Should that take place we'll be able to go into next fiscal year as status quo without any major reductions. I think there is a I talked a lot about a diminishing return on investment in this work. If we if we have 6000 people living outside and we don't really have places for them to go, there is a point of time where we're just throwing good money after bad here. And I think we are we are hedging that by by this reduction, we are getting ourselves in a place that's that's slowly rightsizing to where we need to be.
165 Okay.
166 I think councilor One thing that hank and I asked lucas when we knew about the slight reduction from this current fiscal year, was, what's the impact? What is that going to look like on a day to day basis? And it really is a reduction of about one crew, lucas said. And so our day to day operations would remain mostly the same. And because those camp removals are not as intense and as large basically as they have been in the past, that really won't cause a day to day operation.
167 We were so dug in when you got started, lucas, that I know you've shared that with me. You're jogging my memory now in terms of our efficiencies and our growth in this, and the more rapid we put the Green postings, the less likely things get entrenched and take a week to clear. Correct. Thanks in terms of ODOT so that 2 million that's in the grade. That is a that is a reimbursement. So right, as the person who's got a significant part of I-5 and 405 in my district, when we clear that area we are still getting reimbursed, so to speak, for clearing ODOT land. Correct. Is that okay? Thanks for that. And it is going so much better right now under governor kotek than it previously did in our experience. So I am deeply appreciative of that. And the fact that they've, I think, refilled that account a couple of times. Correct. Hank, what was the number in the rv removal and destruction fund that you had cited? I missed it, but I know it was.
168 1 million from scc to PBOT to subsidize their rv removal. It's not the only funds they use for rv.
169 Okay, great. I think that I want to know when you use it all up and come back and ask for more, because we've got to get these things out of the community and we've got to get our other county residents of our other counties to stop dropping them in our border, knowing they'll be quickly inhabited. Sky, to the point that you made about directing their work on the. I agree a lot with what councilor Dunphy said. Our book of business is encroaching on what was the iga was really about in 2015 when it came about, is moving us away from some things. But directing their work was a term you used. I'm just wondering how often or has it ever occurred where a county outreach worker refused to participate in a project that the city of Portland was asking for support on from an ideological standpoint?
170 Yeah, it's definitely occurred.
171 Yeah.
172 I ask that knowing you were going to say yes, because I think it's important for us to understand. Last week we had a tent that popped up right on fourth avenue, right in front. It was blue. It's a nice looking tent, and it popped up on city property. And that's in my district at the central library, also in my district, for the last several weeks, the same camp has been in the same spot with a bonfire on a brand new built facility, on a brand new built sidewalk with expensive and I think, 24 hour security patrolling that block paid for by the county on a county library. And they refused to address the person. And if you go to that library, it's one of the greatest places to buy drugs right now. The reason I'm bringing up this is that the tent that was in front of city hall last week, on Thursday, I think was gone by Friday afternoon.
173 I would just like to share that specific case I think is a great example. So our outreach team was able to make contact with that individual and actually knew him from decades of service in the community and knew that he liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and knew what kind of service he might accept. And so he's now in an alternative shelter site, and we were able to connect him to those services. So I think it's a great example of our team's work.
174 It's a great example of our team's work. It's also an example of the necessity of this county to have the ability to drive the work. And that's why I'm going to be supportive of us encroaching on what I think is the county's role here. But frankly, the county's perspective can't even clear a campsite that is burning on their own property with 24 hour security because they don't share our perspective. That outreach should result in an outcome. And I just have to highlight it as as one of the examples of where I continue to wonder as we go down this path, what the point of the amount. I think it's 31 million. I should have asked the housing director of money that we send to the old joint office, because that perspective is a huge problem in my district, and I don't have a partner in the county to clear their own property, let alone a random property. And our perspective. And so we're hiring up outreach workers. We're now funding. More shelters. I will remind the community that we, the city, are the ones who started the test sites because of the refusal of the county. So I just go back to what is the point of our contribution to the joint office right now, because it's being lost on me.
175 Yeah, councilor, I would say so. The money we will be sending over and I don't need to get deep in the weeds, but if people are interested another time, I'm happy to dive in. But we'll send about $25 million over. It's less than the 31 million because of a 5% cut and a swap out of funds from the state. That just makes it easier, basically, for us to administer those funds. But that is a significant amount of money from the general fund. And so I believe the city administrator and the mayor are very interested in reevaluating that intergovernmental agreement. And I think want to discuss that with all of you. I think they want to get through this budget process, to be honest first, and then have that discussion about what the future looks like. I do think the joint meeting next Friday will be a really good opportunity for you all to dive into the budgets of both jurisdictions to really see what is being funded. I think the county is doing some really good work. I also think we are supplementing in some gaps that we see. And so that's, I think, a decision for you all to have with kind of commissioners, maybe a dialog with county commissioners on how what work you think needs to be done and then how we fund it jointly. I do think metro is very interested also in a regionalization of some of those policies. And so I think they're starting up some more discussion tables around what that looks like. I know there's a lot of funding that goes into those services, and so they really want to seat at the table to maybe regionalize some of those processes. But yes, there is a significant amount of money. It goes toward a lot of overnight or sorry, congregate shelter at the county. And so a lot of 24 over seven congregate shelter is paid for with that general fund money. It's a historic allocation basically from when we started the joint office.
176 Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. I, I do think I appreciate you just articulating some of those reasons why we've come a long way in terms of the origins of the joint office agreement. But I know how frustrating it has been for city teams who have been told no by county nonprofits because they just had a philosophical difference. And I think we've just got to get real about that in terms of how we're moving. I don't think Portland solutions and pmo and irp and scc would exist if things had been successful in the county model. They wouldn't. Right. You are. You are so right that your whole team is working to work themselves out of a job. I want to shift over to pmo just for a second related to some of this, but also certainly different, right? Pmo is not clearing camps, but pmo certainly helping neighborhoods recover. Do you have any concerns right now? I want to make sure that the, the fte and so much of what they do is, is materials and services, right? Graffiti, cleanup, etc, etc. Do you have any concerns about that program being diminished at all in this upcoming budget year?
177 No.
178 We okay. So we're going to continue to solve problem solvers. We're going to continue to put up some, you know, street lights and graffiti cleaning and hold those neighborhoods events.
179 Yep. Exactly.
180 That's great news. I know that I hear from all of my neighborhoods that this is their most common and greatest impact and connection into city government. So I just want to give a shout out to everybody who's worked to make pmo successful. I think that's all for me.
181 Thank you. Thank you.
182 Councilor Ryan.
183 Yes. Thank you, chair Avalos from 2020 and September until the end of 2022. So to until January 23rd, this was where I lived. And to see it evolve. So we actually have a system. The early days of that actually began with Laurelhurst park really did desperately need to be cleaned out because neighbors just couldn't access it. And I was able to learn that all of our bureaus that should play a part in that weren't used to working together. And so it was quite a lift. And then, mayor wheeler, I said, we need a better system. And that began the beginning of the sshrc. And it just keeps evolving. So it is satisfying to hear that the city has been bold enough to call out the problem and do hard things to build a better coordinated system, and there's so many people in this room to thank because of that. I want to start off with that. My concerns are, as you can imagine, attached to some weeds because I experienced them. So the peninsula crossing safe rest village, you know, we put up not eight villages in 18 months from passage of legislation to getting them serving portlanders. And we've saved a lot of lives. And that was a really hard to do, because at that time, no one wanted them because they were bad. Shelters were all bad at that time by some in the lobby. And now I'm noticing some of those same people are like, don't close those shelters. So I'm good with the evolution here. My, my concern. And this was always part of the plan with, with peninsula crossing was to have habitat come in. And so since I had housing bureau, we were able to do a coordinated work there. But now the irony from those neighbors who were pretty not that happy about having a village in their neighborhood, but we did promise them that the peninsula crossing trail that they hadn't been able to access for 13 years would be accessible, accessible to them again. Residents of university park neighborhood are really happy about that. Now. They're saying they're worried about the village closing, and how will we ensure that we keep that trail clean and safe for the families that are enjoying riding their bikes there again? And so the park rangers were at one of these neighborhood association meetings. They spoke up. They're part of that team. Here's where I'm at. What role will pmo play or or Portland solutions? I don't know what to call you guys sometimes. How will you ensure that we continue to coordinate that good neighbor agreement, meaning it's just a standard good neighbor agreement that when you have a bike trail in your neighborhood, it would be wonderful to have it accessible to the children and families that would enjoy it. How can they be assured of that?
184 Yeah. No. Councilor, it's a great question. So we're coordinating with parks right now and making sure park rangers are patrolling that area. But we are also going to have continue to have those pmo kind of problem solver meetings for that specific area so people can alert us. We've also committed to just having outreach teams that go to that area, too, because I think the neighbors, as you mentioned, have really appreciated that urban alchemy will do kind of walking beats in that area and just walk the area. And so we're committing to also having our teams still engage in that area as well. But lottie, who you know, is coordinating all of those efforts with park rangers, so she's doing a great job.
185 And habitat for humanity was at the same meeting. You could tell they had a different contract, if you will. So they were going to take care of the their property behind the fence, but didn't have any scope beyond that. And that didn't satisfy anyone in the room. And so the rangers did their best to say we'll keep doing our job. But to hear you say that and to make sure that you're hurting the cats, to ensure that this is done, and we don't blame others, but we keep this coordination going. Now that moves me to sunderland. So I'm accepting the mayor's plan on one hand. But I'll tell you, commissioner Hardesty and I went through a lot of meetings to secure that land for this purpose of being helpful in this humanitarian crisis. And so when the port and PBOT and all the different meetings that we had to do in igas to make that happen, that was that's like some currency that we don't want to let go of. So how do we utilize that space for the humanitarian crisis? Like when I hear it's closing, what does that mean? And then what will that how will that space be repurposed and similar? The sunderland neighborhoods are saying, like the neighborhood in university park, how can we ensure that the conditions and livability around that space remain, how they are today, as opposed to before that village was put in place?
186 Yeah. Great questions councilor. So I we have left it open basically for you all to decide. But I think we have a buffer of time. So the PBOT and the port police or the port have allowed us to kind of extend our lease on that.
187 It's good with this. I've talked to them directly several times about this. So they're not an obstacle.
188 Yes. No. So we don't have an obstacle for the actual lease of the land. Right. So we have sufficient funds to basically keep it open until the end of September if we wanted to. If it doesn't get funded, we will start the decommissioning process in July. If it does get funded, then we will make sure all the spots are filled and then continue operations throughout the fiscal year. But the mayor didn't put it in his proposed budget and is leaving it to council to decide whether they want to fund that for the remainder of the fiscal year. Hank and I proposed adding that buffer time until the end of September, so you all can make that decision.
189 I think I'm creating a miscommunication. I'll own that part so I'm less attached to at this moment, keeping it open as it is. But I'm making it really clear you don't let go of an asset like that to address the humanitarian crisis. So my question to all of you and leadership of this work is, how are you planning to repurpose that space for people who are homeless?
190 Yeah. So I.
191 Find space. You're experiencing that now with temporary shelters, blah, blah, blah. We all know this is one of the hardest things to do.
192 Yeah. So I think we're open to different ideas. We've looked at different possibilities. I will say from a public space management perspective, we have committed to continuing to partner with the port police like we have on northwest northeast 33rd. That's been pretty successful to make sure that there's there aren't rvs camping kind of in the vicinity, which neighbors have been really appreciative of. So I think we're continuing to manage that public space around, if we want to use that space for something else, I think we're open to it. We don't have any development funds right now, though, so I do think it's a question of resources, but we're always happy to partner with the port and PBOT, and I think they're really willing partners right now for that piece of land.
193 Okay, I'll follow up on this because I am concerned that I'm not hearing a plan for that space.
194 I think.
195 We close it.
196 We don't.
197 We do have a plan at peninsula crossing because it was established beforehand. It was a it was a thoughtful strategic plan. I'm not hearing a thoughtful strategic plan at this moment for the use of that space.
198 I think we have not been told to develop any future properties. The mayor has told us we don't have development funding for future properties, so I think that hasn't been our focus. Our focus has been overnight shelter creation and existing properties.
199 Okay.
200 Let's make sure we don't look embarrassed when they all move out. And we have this land and everything becomes what it was before we opened it up.
201 Absolutely.
202 And right now I'm concerned that's the path we're on. I will move down to this when I hear about PBOT and the 1 million going in the story. Is this with the derelict, what's the right word that you.
203 Call derelict rv removal?
204 No one's happy with the current practice, so probably no one. And so you they move. What is it, a mile on a good day. And then in a few days or whatever, they seem to come back or they go back and forth from two spots. So what is the plan to improve that system with PBOT? We had a meeting last year on this, and it became kind of embarrassing to continue to get into the details of what the actual practice was, and it's pleasing no one. And I really mean that, like the businesses in st. Johns that we were visiting with last week say, it's just they're like sad because they see it moved a little ways away and then they see it come back and they're like, why? What's going on? What's the what's the end game here?
205 A couple aspects to that because it is a complicated policy issue, but they're not all just move to a milder this year. In the first months there have been an average of 54 rvs towed off the right of way, and most of those end up getting recycled through the process. To explain recycled for.
206 People it goes to, they are towed to a lot where we have a contractor disassemble them and recycle or reuse whatever parts they can, and the rest go to the landfill. That cost is usually about 3000 or so per rv. So 54 month when you when we portlanders look at the scale of the problem is not enough, right? And I appreciate councilor Dunphy's acknowledgment that folks, you know, it's easy to cross a jurisdictional boundary. Right. And for rvs especially, and it's not lost on us that a lot of rvs we tow have plates that are not from Oregon, but it is what it is for us, right? We're just dealing with the issue in front of us. There is a policy that the previous council was able that passed where we're able PBOT is now able to send bills to the last registered owner of an rv for the cost for towing and destroying that rv. Right. Because we see a lot of rvs just left out in the open, given away for free because it is expensive. If you have an rv to deal with it. So take note to the public that those invoices will be going out sometime. The prediction is sometime in June, so we'll see. A lot of people may be surprised by getting a bill in the mail that says, you owe the city of Portland x number of dollars, and in some ways, we hope that that that does become public. Right. So that folks understand you have to responsibly deal with the your rv at the end of its life. Anyway, that's one aspect. Obviously. We built a shelter, the north Portland shelter, sunderland as well for folks in rvs. We've refined our policies at those shelters. So at north Portland shelter site, when you go in, you have to sign an agreement that when you leave, the rv will not go with you. It will go to the storage lot of the city. And then you have to follow the appropriate legal processes to recover it, which means you have to show it's it has the appropriate registration.
207 That makes sense. We've learned lessons from the pioneer work that we did.
208 But there are there's so we're dealing with two title two codes in city ordinance, right. Title 14 public space, title 16 parking. There's a lot of city attorney involvement about private property and what we can do and how much warning we give. And so we've proposed a task force and rv task force. Side note to also hopefully talk about the similar complicated issue of derelict boats in waterways. But to bring folks together where at the same table we have the city attorney, we have PBOT, we have Portland solutions, maybe somebody from the mayor's office. Right. So that instead of kicking the ball around and being like, well, that's not my job, that's yours. We're able to just talk about it in one place and hopefully spot some opportunities for more efficiencies, all done with the humanity and legal lens. Obviously, we have to bring to it.
209 I appreciate that that was that's actually my point is the system was messed up and it was never going to improve until you brought all those people together. I would suggest I know you said, I believe 740,000 for pmo. You're satisfied with that. Is that the investment that we're putting into pmo to clean up sidewalks?
210 Yeah. Go ahead.
211 That was a number that we so we said to pmo or the mayor asked us how much would pmo need to help maintain some cleanliness around the new city shelter sites. We're planning to stand up. And so that was the number we gave to the mayor's office to say an additional funding of 740,000 for pmo allows them to conduct that level.
212 This is where your work and some of the public safety system come together. So what you're hearing, again, from storefront owners all over the city is that they're so dissatisfied with the system, they cannot they're not seeing improvements. And they just want to know that when someone breaks a window and keeps repeating crime in their area, that there's a coordinated system between public safety and the work that you're all doing. So that's what I keep hearing over and over again. And we'll be bringing something to the dais that helps coordinate that practice with the budget note, because that's where I think we still have a systemic issue, and there seems to be some inefficiency. That just means that we haven't had the opportunity to bring all the right people together. But this is a real big concern out there, and that's one of the reasons people aren't renewing their leases. One, because they're one broken window away from being bankrupt. And two, they don't trust that when they do resign the lease that things are going to improve. So we got to make this so urgent or we're going to continue to see more vacant storefronts. Thanks.
213 And councilor. I will say, just if you have constituents who are interested in problem solver meetings, we do usually have police at those meetings for those exact purposes. So we have seen some success with that. Connecting people to police.
214 Thank you so much for your time. Thanks, colleagues. We are over time. So at this point I will end the meeting of homelessness and housing at 2:05 p.m. Thank you.