The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-10-07
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (18,873 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Homelessness and Housing Committee met on Tuesday, October 7, 2025. After roll call and a reading of the conduct statement, the committee welcomed visiting middle school students before turning to its three agenda items. The first item concerned a proposed ordinance amending the affordable housing code to prohibit anti-competitive rental practices, including algorithmic pricing tools; a policy advisor presentation reviewed the rationale, cited figures on cost impacts to renters, and outlined revisions since the proposal was last referred back to committee, including a simplified structure, clarified exemptions, an affirmative defense provision, and adjusted penalties. Two additional amendments were previewed but not brought forward for a vote pending further legal review. Public testimony included support from tenant and coalition representatives and opposition or requested revisions from real estate and housing-provider representatives. Votes occurred on adopting an amendment and forwarding the ordinance to full council; outcomes are recorded in the vote ledger. The second item covered shelter funding and service levels, including budget figures for alternative and overnight shelter programs, discussion of a shortfall in anticipated state funding, and a technical adjustment ordinance; figures presented were stated inconsistently in places. The third item was open public testimony, during which community members raised concerns about homelessness outreach and coordination with the county. The meeting adjourned at 1:56 p.m.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Script. There it is.
1 Good afternoon. I call the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee to order. It is Tuesday, October 7th at 12:02 p.m. Diego, can you please call the roll?
2 Good afternoon. Zimmerman. Dunphy.
3 Here.
4 Ryan. Here. Morillo here. Avalos.
5 Here.
6 Colleagues, actually, first, craig, can you please read the statement of conduct?
7 Welcome to the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at wwe. Gov agenda. Homelessness and housing committee, or by calling 311. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over, the chair preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
8 Thank you and we need a shorter url. Let's get on that. Colleagues. Today we have three items on our agenda. Also, I notice we have some guests. Where are we all from?
9 We are from the cottonwood school. We are sixth, seventh and eighth graders. We are beginning a unit on journalism. So we thought we'd visit our city council and learn some more about what's going on in our city.
10 Welcome students. It's lovely to have you here. There was some cottonwood students here earlier. Are you guys the same group or different?
11 Same school. We just split up into two different groups so that we wouldn't overwhelm your chambers.
12 They were pretty great before, so you all have to be extra great. Okay. Enthusiasm. Awesome. Welcome to city hall. It's lovely to have you all. And this is such a better excuse than being in class today. Right, colleagues, we have three items on our agenda today. First, councilor Morillo has an amendment to her ordinance on algorithmic rental pricing for the committee to consider. Then we will hear updates from Portland solutions on shelter service levels and funding. And finally, we will have time for open public testimony on homelessness and housing issues of importance to the community. Diego, can you please read the first item?
13 Item one amend affordable housing code to add prohibition of anti-competitive rental practices, including the sale and use of algorithmic devices.
14 Thank you. Councilor Morillo proposal on algorithmic rental pricing was referred back to our committee in the spring. I'm going to hand it over to her to discuss her proposed amendments, which were posted to the agenda item last Thursday and circulated to the committee. I will also note that there are some additional amendments that may not be voted on today and may, but we will open discussion on them. So councilor Morillo take it away.
15 Thank you so much, chair Dunphy. As many of you remember, I brought an algorithmic price fixing ban that we've seen successfully passed in other cities, and we're excited to bring that here in Portland to protect, protect renters who are now facing discrimination on different levels through the use of technology. We waited, you know, we pulled this item back from the agenda last council, despite having full votes for it, because we wanted to ensure that it was as precise as possible and that the city would be protected just because of the complicated nature of this language. And we've seen that some of these large corporations have targeted cities that have been trying to protect renters via policies like this. So we're going to do a quick refresher presentation. I would invite my policy advisor, susie deuster, to come up to the dais, and she will give a quick presentation and overview to refresh everyone's minds on it. And then we'll go over some of the changes to this policy in the presentation as well. And that is all I have for now.
16 So welcome, susie.
17 Thank you. Susie dorchester, councilor Morillo policy advisor here to present as councilor Morillo said a little bit on the updates that we've made to this ordinance. And just a little primer again on why we're here, what we're trying to accomplish. So next slide please. This will be the run of show. Next slide please. So again quick primer. What is price fixing. Why are we here. Next slide please. So the most generic and straightforward academic definition of price fixing is anti-competitive agreement among competitors to raise or lower, maintain or stabilize pricing. So it's often assumed that we're talking solely about raising of rents. But we're also talking about lowering maintaining, stabilizing. It's about moving in concert competitors that are working as collaborators. This is something that's been illegal for over 100 years at the federal level, of course, the sherman antitrust act, the federal trade commission act, some of which you may be familiar with, it's also prohibited under Oregon law. So this is something we talked about during our last session, this idea that because state law also prohibits the same thing as federal antitrust law and gives the right of entities and individuals to affect their rights under both state and federal law. This question of, you know, will this lead to a deluge of lawsuits if we codify these items at the local level? It's kind of a moot point, because state law already empowers people to act in service of advancing their antitrust rights. Next slide please. So again, why are we here. So we're talking about a long established principle against competitors acting as collaborators. What is the problem. So we have a modern iteration of price fixing, algorithmic price fixing the hub and spoke model. So how does that work? It's essentially the same concept of the old style price fixing, but again done through an algorithm. So we have a service provider that serves as the hub of the hub and spoke model. It collects data. It then uses that data to train algorithmic models. Those models then recommend rent prices, occupancy levels, lease terms to again competitor landlords. Essentially the equivalent of gathering these landlords in a digital conference room to get them to collude on items like rent pricing, occupancy levels, etc. That model then enables participants to collude, align prices across changing market conditions again increasing, decreasing, stabilizing, holding units vacant to keep prices high, something that is an especially important consideration if you're in the midst of a housing crisis, as many cities happen to be. So the final stage of this is that participants profit at the expense of tenants. Small landlords that don't want to undercut their competition. They want to act in a free, open marketplace and local businesses as well. They're harmed by this as well, because businesses can't earn the money of tenants that are forced to pay. Excuse me, inflated rent prices. So next slide please. Is this even a problem? This is something we're asked with some frequency. Why does this matter? Why are we talking about this now? Well, a white house analysis in 2024 found that algorithmic price fixing cost tenants an extra $3.8 billion in 2023. This is across a number of cities, so it's an average of $70 extra paid per month. But cities like atlanta, where we saw a high concentration of service providers that act as that hub, you'll see an extra $181 per month. So a pretty substantial increase. There have been empirical studies on this matter, one cited on this slide above by calder, wang and kim. So finding again that markets with high algorithm adoption saw significantly higher rents than markets with few adopters. Also significant is those high adoption markets saw units being held back. So lower occupancy, higher vacancies, units being held back for higher prices in order to profit. Next slide please. But okay we don't care about other cities. Why do we care. Is this a Portland problem? Well as we discussed previously, two of the three largest landlords in Portland are named defendants in the antitrust lawsuits filed by the department of justice against realpage. Realpage, of course, being the largest actor in the price fixing marketplace, controlling over 80% of the market last I looked. So these two landlords collectively manage over 32,000 units in Portland, representing approximately 10% of the city's total housing stock. So that is just two landlords. Additionally, five of the seven defendants in the doj lawsuits against realpage operate in Portland, so it's not limited to these two landlords alone. And then, of course, if that's not enough, doj's supplementary economic analysis that they use to substantiate their main claim against realpage specifically mentioned Portland as a marketplace in which agreements between landlords and agreements between landlords and service providers, again like realpage, have resulted in harm to renters. So that's coming from the department of justice. Next slide please. This is a quote that I like to refer to. So again it's not just about increasing prices. It's about keeping the landlords who want to participate in this service in line. So landlords might have an instinct in the face of certain market conditions to lower prices. But algorithmic collusion, like regular collusion, encourages them to keep prices high. Don't undercut your competitors, work with your competitors, collaborate with them, and then a rising tide will lift all boats. Next slide please. And then this is just one of my favorite quotes. So this is a prospective client of realpage recognizing what this service really amounts to. This is what landlords are paying for. It's not market research. It's classic price fixing. Next slide please. So let's just talk a little bit then about what we've done to change this ordinance. Next slide please. So why update. So we had some time. We were obviously working extensively on budget and other matters. And we wanted to use that time to explore the landscape, see what other cities are doing, and look at how these experiences can help clarify how we can maximize impact with our draft and legal durability. So the amended draft reflects a lot of those lessons learned. So focusing on coordinating conduct not particular technology. And this is something we'll talk through in greater detail. And also ensuring clarity in what is not covered by the ordinance. So just little tweaks. The core is the same. But we'll talk about that. And just in this vein. So seattle's bill drafted in a remarkably similar manner to the one before you today, passed without controversy. So these lessons learned are translating into a more comprehensible, acceptable product. Next slide please. So the first change that I'm just going to talk through briefly, and I think it's the most important change is just a simplified structure. Recognizing that this is an exceptionally complex bill, probably one of the most complex bills that we'll encounter. And trying to streamline it to the greatest extent possible, but also focusing on a key distinction. Again, we're focusing on the same conduct, but we want to be really clear about what we're regulating and why. So instead of focusing on the tool, which is what we did in the previous draft, what goes into the tool? What comes out of the tool? How are you using the tool? The tool being the focus of the ordinance, we're focusing on the behavior. So again what we've talked about this entire time, we're being very clear that we are addressing the coordinated behavior between landlords and the service provider the hub and spoke conspiracy. We are not regulating every instance of a tool that could that can create some sort of confusion, I think. So focusing on how the tool is deployed in the same manner as how an in-person meeting between competitors could result in collusion or it could not, but essentially, yeah, establishing that we're prohibiting coordinated conduct in the rental market. Next slide. I think also very important, but again, not as important as the first one. But certainly up there we're clarifying the scope and the extent of the exemptions under this ordinance. So I have the text of the new ordinance up on the slide for reference. I recognize that that's a bit burdensome, but as a general matter, I think that these exemptions are better as they clarify what we are not regulating. So what does not constitute price fixing? So being very, very clear that conducting appraisals, feasibility studies, collecting or analyzing certain types of data in service of doing what is essentially market analysis, this is all great. These types of analyzes contribute to the pricing efficiencies that we hear so much about. These price setting tools create efficiencies of sort, but only for the people who are participating in this collusion scheme. Efficiency for whom? Right. So any landlord can and we'll talk about this more. But any landlord can continue to use a tool under this ordinance with their own data, and they can continue using market research. They can continue setting prices and capitalizing on any efficiencies that are derived from that. That's not what we're talking about here. If you look at exception five, collecting, analyzing, or communicating public data without referencing nonpublic data or otherwise coordinating decision making about dwelling units between different beneficial owners. Again, the chief bill that we're regulating here is coordinating between different owners. You can't coordinate with yourself. So if you want to have market research, you want to do your own research with your own algorithm, with your own data. That's wonderful. And just to confirm, this was certainly the case with the last draft, but we received confirmation to this effect today. But services like zillow, they're happy with this ordinance. They think it's quite clear that they are not implicated here. Zillow is public data. They're not facilitating coordination. So they're not the subject of our regulation. Next slide please okay. So in addition of an affirmative defense. So just as an additional safeguard due process safeguard aligning enforcement with antitrust, there is a situation. So previously no affirmative defense. Right now there's language that will enable someone if they feel that they have been wrongly caught up in enforcement. They can show by clear and convincing evidence that they did not know, or reasonably could not have known, that they were using a service that engaged in price fixing. So there's that additional safeguard, of course, recognizing that the burden is on the state from the beginning, or the plaintiff if the plaintiff is pursuing this case. So there's already a fairly substantial bar that a plaintiff must overcome in order to establish a claim here. But I think that having that affirmative defense is just an additional safeguard. It's not in any other jurisdictions ordinance. But again, we just want to ensure that we're accounting for all interests and equities here and working in service of fairness. So we added this affirmative defense to have that additional safeguard. Next slide please. Penalties. So heard feedback on this. And we amended them slightly to just be a little bit more in alignment with the Portland housing code. So of course we heard quite a bit before previously about large landlords facing treble damages or $10,000 per lease period or whichever is higher. Recognizing that that is not unprecedented in its size, but relative to what other jurisdictions are doing. But recognizing that this is going to be in Portland housing code, we want to align with housing code. So we did that. We aligned with housing code. Simple as next slide please. So what is the same as I said before that this is still the same core regulation. It's price fixing prohibited in any form. Recognizing that algorithmic price fixing is just the modern iteration of that traditional price fixing that was addressed first in 1890 under the sherman antitrust act. That's still the same. Still the same is that we're fundamentally at our core, prohibiting coordinated pricing systems. You can't coordinate with yourself, you can't coordinate with market research, its coordination with other competitor landlords, competitors acting as collaborators, and then again addressing that anticompetitive intent. So we're still targeting the intent and the practice of undermining a free and open marketplace, still enforceable in the same way. We didn't tinker with that section. Next slide please. So still does not. So what does this ordinance not do? Still the case that we are not prohibiting property management software market research, the good old microsoft excel or even the use of algorithms. As I said previously, you can have your own algorithm with your own data, and this is consistent with the proposed final judgments that the department of justice has reached with some of the offending landlords that they first litigated against, like greystar or property managers. Excuse me. So it still is not going to be discouraging development in Portland. This is not about prohibiting profit. This is about rewarding the landlords that secure renters with competitive designs, locations, amenities, prices, not the landlords that are spending their resources colluding and undercutting the landlords that rely on legitimate competitive strategies. And again, this is not imposing an additional regulation on landlords. To comply with this ordinance. You just need to not engage in anti-competitive conduct, which is, as I understand, the status quo. So next slide please. Questions and discussion.
18 Thank you.
19 Susie councilor Morillo, do you have any other concluding comments?
20 No. Thank you so much, susie. Great presentation. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate my staff working with the city attorney's office on this. They've been working on this for months. With the feedback that we received from community members, from folks here in this committee and from the council as a whole. And it has been very delicately and carefully been crafted to both protect tenants and to protect our city. So I really hope that we are, you know, looking at that language with the level of thought and care that was put into it. And if folks have any clarifying questions before we move forward, I guess we do that. And then it sounds like some folks are signed up for testimony as well.
21 Yeah.
22 I'd also we have two amendments that have been proposed. I'd like to lay them, not lay them. I'd like to display them for the public prior to getting testimony, so that people can also react to those. However, my amendment has not gone through code review, so we will not be voting on it. But I still want to preview the language and we'll look forward to bringing that at the full council. Additionally, council president Elana pirtle-guiney is here, has an amendment that I would like to invite her up to the dais to preview as well. To start, I would like to and my amendment has been filed. I don't know if we are able to display the language or not. That but this is coming at the request of home forward, our regional housing. What is their term? They they handle our housing vouchers on the federal level. But they asked for a little bit of additional clarification around what does not constitute price fixing and adding a little bit of additional clarity. So my amendment would change. 33.01.0 888 sub a to b sub one would break it into two parts and it would say any action related to a the operation of dwelling units regulated, subsidized or certified as affordable housing by a federal, state or local government, or b the administration of a federal, state or local government rental assistance program. This is to be explicit that this is not talking about price fixing in a regulated, affordable units. This is about private market, market rate housing. As I said, I, I think this is more just clarity than anything and would look to my colleagues to see if there's any specific concerns with this. But again, I will be moving this forward through code review and then on to the full council.
23 Thank you so much, counselor Dunphy. I would just say I really appreciate the feedback that we received from home forward on this. I don't think the original language from when we spoke to the attorneys did implicate them, but it's good to have more clarity in there. So we are fully supportive of this amendment.
24 Excellent, wonderful. And I'd like to invite president pirtle-guiney to the dais as well to discuss her amendment draft. And do we know, does the council clerk have a copy of the language for this?
25 I am not sure if you got it yet. We're working through a few things still, but I will right now. Thank you. Yeah.
26 Great. Welcome, president pirtle-guiney.
27 Thank you so much, chair. For the record, my name is Elana pirtle-guiney councilor from district two. I want to start by thanking councilor Morillo for bringing this back forward. I know we talked when it was sent back to committee about making sure that this could come forward again, and I was glad to see that happening. When this proposal was brought forward, before, there was a conversation about concerns from small landlords about the cost burden of proving the affirmative defenses, and a conversation that led from that about exempting small landlords. Those with five or fewer units. There were some concerns that were raised about how that might create loopholes where landlords could create legal entities to hold units, and as an individual, actually own far more than five units. What we've tried to do is craft language that would create the exemption for truly small landlords, those who own five or fewer units, while closing the loophole that would allow somebody to create legal entities to again own far more units than that. I shared with councilor Morillo early on that we would try to bring something forward to address this, and wanted to make sure to get that in front of you all. Today. As councilor Dunphy, we have not had this run all the way through code and legal review yet. We are in that process. And I actually had a conversation in the back of the room just a few minutes ago with the attorney about some potentially different language than what you have before you that we could use. That might work even better, but I wanted to get that before you and talk about the intent today, see if there's any concerns that the committee has so that this is something that I can bring forward when the policy, if you move it today comes to council, or if you don't move it today when you hear it next in committee for this body's review.
28 Thank you, I.
29 Appreciate that. I had a couple of questions about the specific language on here, but I'm glad that that is being sort of looked at for the tweaking. I want to turn to the bill sponsor and see any initial reaction.
30 Yeah. Thank you so much for bringing this forward. I think I'm kind of excited that we're bringing an amendment forward in committee because it's finally we're doing the thing, and that's really cool and exciting. I was able to sit with this a little bit this morning after reviewing some of the language. And I was I just had one question or I had two questions, one about how we came to the definition of small landlord as being five units or less. It's my understanding that there's not an official definition for small landlords, and that other code that the city has defined small landlords as someone that has one unit or less. Well, I guess one unit, because we have less than that. You're not a landlord, you're just a regular person homeowner. And so I'm just curious how you came to that definition.
31 In the construction of buildings, a building that has more than five units is legally treated differently than something that has five units or fewer, is my understanding. I didn't want to try to arbitrarily choose on my own. If you own a duplex, we treat you this way. But if you own a triplex, we treat you a different way and create an arbitrary line there. So I went for a definition that already existed, and what I found was that those definitions were either, as you said, at one unit or at five units. If the committee feels like there is a better number three for something like that, I'm very open. But I was trying to make sure that we didn't have more lines drawn that created confusion.
32 Thank you. That's helpful. I think I need to chew on that a little bit longer, about the number of units and how that was decided, or maybe see some of the legal justification, but I'm curious to learn more about that. The second part that I had some questions on was subsection two or a subsection one, one and two. I think that there are some words here that it sounds like you might be working with the attorneys already on defining what some of these things mean around beneficial ownership, majority ownership or common control. I just worry a little bit with how, you know, we've been working on this with the attorneys for months to make sure that this does something very specifically and that it protects our city from litigation. So I just hope that with this amendment that, you know, we craft that with attorneys over the next few weeks, if it passes out of here. And so that when it comes to full council, it does exactly what it's intended to do. And I say that learning from experience is the person who had to send my beloved bill back to the housing committee. So yeah, those were just some questions I had around what exactly that does and how that changes what the impacts are here.
33 The goal is to have it align both with current city code and with the language that you're adding to code within the ordinance that you've brought forward. Again, we wanted to get something on paper for this committee to look at. Today. We are working with the attorneys to make sure that we're using definitions that align with what already exists.
34 Awesome. Thank you.
35 Absolutely great. Any other.
36 Questions from the committee councilors, Avalos or Ryan?
37 No.
38 I'm looking forward to hearing the testimony. Great.
39 Thank you for the consideration today.
40 Thank you.
41 And diego, do we have individuals signed up to testify?
42 We do. We have seven individuals for this. First item.
43 Please call up the first group of however many.
44 Lauren armani, christopher olson, joseph gardner. And once you come up, if you could state your name for the record and begin when you're ready.
45 Welcome. Thank you all for being here.
46 I have one.
47 Everyone. Vice chair, Dunphy council, thank you so much, Morillo councilor Morillo for bringing this forward. My name is lauren armani and I represent welcome home coalition, an alliance of over 85 individuals and organizations with a shared vision of a future where everyone has a safe and affordable place to call home. I'm here to urge. Urge everyone. I guess it's only three today to vote yes on this ordinance, to amend the affordable housing code to add prohibition of anti-competitive rental practices, including the sale and use of algorithmic devices. One of the largest issues I face personally and our community members face within our coalition is finding and keeping home, keeping a home that we can afford. Half of all portlanders are rent burdened, and 93% of evictions are for the nonpayment of rent and eviction judgments and evictions are one of the largest on ramps for folks into homelessness. 91% of the 429 people we spoke to last year who've experienced homelessness in the Portland metro area over the past five years, said that they would need rent assistance in order to stabilize in a home because of cost of housing is too high. Meanwhile, rents have skyrocketed 35% since 2020, and oregon's 2020 rent cap is at a 9.5%. Amidst historic unemployment and artificial inflation. So in addition to all that, anti-competitive pricing costs renters nationally $3.5 billion that we do not have. So Portland city council has the opportunity to deter and penalize this practice that takes money out of our communities, right? Portland has over 11,000 rental units owned by private equity. This ordinance will not hurt small businesses. I guess we'll also see what the small business amendment, how that changes the ordinance and it will not hurt mom and pop landlords, but it will give tenants another tool to fight for fight against unjust rental practices. I understand council's concern over the pending litigation other municipalities have faced in response to their ordinances. However, we have not seen those concerns play out right. However, we are seeing condemnation at the federal level. Greystar just settled with the us doj agreeing to stop using realpage, and they own somewhere between 2 and 3000 units in the Portland metro area. As councilor Avalos and Dunphy and I saw in vienna, strong rental protections are critical to a safe, affordable and stable housing ecosystem. Right? Be on the right side of history and join the 11 other cities adopting bans on ai rental software, including our neighbors in seattle and san francisco. As local leaders, you must commit to protecting portlanders, not investment portfolios. Vote yes on this ordinance. Thank you so much for your time and service.
48 Thank you. Lauren. Awesome.
49 Hi. Good afternoon councilors. I think chair Avalos, if she's still online. Hello, vice chair Dunphy. For the record, my name is chris olson. I'm a resident of district two and a member of the Portland democratic socialists of America housing working group. It's a mouthful. We'll figure it out. I want to, you know, just first of all, thank councilor, Morillo and Koyama Lane and Green for bringing this ordinance back. After a brief but necessary delay. You know, the dsa has heard from thousands of renters across Portland through primarily door to door canvasing and tabling at major events in the area. And the message that we hear every single time is just the rent is too high. Portland has become an unaffordable city for the working class, and these are the people that make the city run teachers, service workers, artists, caregivers and young families. The people that we want to attract to the city the use of profit and maximizing algorithms only deepens this crisis. These programs are not neutral tools. They are designed to coordinate rent hikes across the market, pushing prices upward and squeezing tenants out. Renters deserve fair and transparent pricing based on real market conditions, and not automated systems optimized to extract every dollar of disposable income and affordable housing market depends on real competition and public accountability, not secretive corporate software. Right now, our economy heavily favors these large landlords and property investment firms who treat housing as a commodity to be hoarded rather than a human necessity. And as rents rise, working people are forced to spend half or more of their income just to keep a roof over their head. Every dollar that goes to rent is not spent on our local economy, on groceries, from neighborhood markets, meals at small restaurants, child care and other essential services. When rent consumes the majority of household income, it starves every other part of our city's economy. High housing costs are not just a housing problem, but they are a barrier to economic growth in this city. And they suppress consumer spending and reduce entrepreneurship and make it harder for local businesses to survive. In short, housing costs are the single most significant drag on portland's broader economic viability. And portland's affordability crisis doesn't just hurt renters, it weakens our entire city. And in the case of the housing emergency that we've had, I've been reviewing since the last few days that we had declared in 2015, 2014 that the situation has gotten seven times worse. We declared a housing emergency when there were about 1500 people at the point in day count. Now there's over 7000. So clearly this is not an issue of just mental health or drug addiction. This is a housing issue, a pricing issue that rates that rent has become so affordable. Bottom line is Portland has become our home and we have the right to live here and thrive here. Algorithmic rent setting software is not a harmless business tool. It's a mechanism to displace the displacement that accelerates inequality and howls out our communities. Without intervention. We risk following the path of cities like san francisco and seattle, which they have put this ordinance in place, which is fantastic that working class people, though, are normally priced out of these neighborhoods. So I appreciate your willingness to pass this ordinance, and we urge you to vote yes.
50 Members of the homelessness and housing committee, my name is joseph gardner. I'm testifying today as a lifelong renter. And on behalf of realpage councilors, we're back. And I'm once again here to respond to false allegations about my client, accusations that have never been borne out in a court of law, and which in many cases appear to originate from a department of justice criminal investigation that was withdrawn without charges by the biden administration almost a year ago. To set the record straight, realpage does not engage in price fixing. The authors of this proposal, confronting that pesky reality, are again trying to redefine what the term price fixing means to fit their preemptive judgment. In so doing, they've written a ban that is so broad that it would prohibit a nearly endless range of widely practiced market analysis techniques and basic computer activities. You've already heard from numerous experts in previous hearings warning about the serious unintended consequences that would arise from this proposal, including driving up the cost of rental housing in Portland and chilling desperately needed investment into new residences residences in the city. You've heard that this latest draft addresses those concerns, but sadly, new language does not. The new language does not fix this ordinance. This ordinance is for fundamental flaws. The new version, for example, supposedly allows the use of public data. But the poorly worded caveats and sweeping qualifiers included in that exemption still place unconstitutional restrictions on analysis of publicly available information. Similarly, the bill's ban on all private data, its ban on historical data in perpetuity, and the creative new ban on hypothetical anticipated future data that doesn't even exist yet all create restrictions that far exceed the government's narrowly tailored interest in protecting market competition. That issue is why savvier jurisdictions tend to narrowly restrict their bans, for example, for forbidding the use of public competitor data or only banning historical data less than 90 days old. In its current form, this ordinance would not survive a court challenge, but Portland cannot afford the reputational loss from a prolonged court case and headline saying that our city has unlawfully violated the rights of housing providers. The city council has made positive strides in recent months trying to remove some of the onerous obstacles that have strangled investment and residential construction in Portland for years. If passed, this ordinance would wipe out all that recent good work.
51 Thank you.
52 Next up we have zachary lindell, kim mccarty, carrie chisholm. Kim is going to join us online shortly.
53 Thank you. Go ahead.
54 Good afternoon, vice chair Dunphy councilor Ryan and councilor Morillo. For the record, my name is zach lindell and I am a representative of multifamily northwest. We are the largest housing provider association in the state of Oregon, representing representing nearly 300,000 rental units across the state, including thousands here in Portland. Our members include property owners, managers, maintenance professionals, and others working every day to provide safe and stable housing. This proposal introduces entirely new language into portland's title 30 affordable housing through the creation of section 30.01 .088 prohibited anti-competitive rental practices. We appreciate that the October 2nd draft includes improvements over the April version. The definitions are clear, the penalties have been reduced, and section d1 now provides a meaningful protection for housing providers who can demonstrate that they did not know the services they were using, that they were using relied on private information. Those are important steps forward, and we want to thank and we want to thank you and acknowledge the progress that has been made. That said, the current draft still has a few concerns that we'd like to raise. The biggest shift in this version is that it moves from banning specific software tools to banning to banning certain behaviors, and that creates unintended consequences. Many property management companies oversee dozens of properties within different sorry. Many property management companies oversee dozens of properties with different ownership structures. By nature of their work, they have the insight into rent levels, occupancy rates and turnover trends across their portfolios. Under this proposal, that normal operational knowledge could be misconstrued as evidence of coordination or price alignment, even when none exists. We need clarity on how the city intends to avoid penalizing responsible management practices that rely on publicly available or portfolio specific data. The penalties also remain large, exposing housing providers to substantial financial risk for for alleged violations that could be difficult to disprove years after the fact, coupled with a five year statute of limitations, this ordinance effectively invites false or misguided claims and puts the city in the position of arbitrating complex market behavior long before decisions are made in good faith. That level exposure is unrealistic and would create a chilling effect on the investment and innovation portland's rental market. It's also important to be clear we do not engage in price fixing. We do not support it. The systems these systems are not designed to set or align rent rents across the different, across different owners. They analyze data such as vacancy rates, seasonal trends, neighborhood comparables and lease expirations to help housing providers make informed decisions. Managers are not required to accept or follow the software's recommendations, but insight helps ensure rents stay aligned with real market conditions rather than fluctuating unpredictably. In recent years, Portland has actually seen stagnation in rents, not sharp increases the ability to track and interpret market data responsibly helps maintain stability, consistency, transparency, all of which benefit renters. With that, we'd like to be involved in the process of speaking to you all about some of our concerns, and also in reference to our data. We do have an upcoming apartment report next week, and would love to invite you all to attend to hear the newest trends of rents and occupancy in the city of Portland. Thank you for your time.
55 Thank you.
56 Kim, if you can hear us online.
57 Yes. Thank you. I'm kim mccarty. I'm a resident of district four, and I'm executive director for the community alliance of tenants. So thank you. Council president, council vice president and other members of the council for this opportunity. Cat offers tenants tenant right education and we advocate for the rights of tenants. It's incredibly important to us that tenants in Oregon, tenants in Portland are stable, and we see growing evidence of instability just by virtue of the number of evictions that happen every month, the vast majority of them happening in the Portland metro area. We see that there are a lot of forces that are displacing. And it's and it's all creating negative outcomes, both for the individual and for the city as a whole. I'm here submitting testimony in support of the current amendment to the affordable housing code to add a prohibition of anti-competitive rental practices, including the sale and the use of algorithmic devices. We appreciate that this has come back to this committee and after the prior conversations and concerns about unintended consequences is clear to us that there's evidence that these devices can be used for price fixing, that they have been used in that way. And it's just one of the many market elements that is driving the cost of housing, rental housing beyond the means of our local residents. We are a membership based organization. It means that we're led by tenants that are experiencing these impacts, and our leadership has identified price fixing as an issue that needs to be addressed, because it's one of the pressures that's causing rents to become unaffordable. Knowing that Portland is becoming increasingly unaffordable and that we have these extreme rates of eviction and displacement, is you must take action. We must be addressing this rental housing crisis. The amendments in this ordinance are reasonable. They address the concerns, and we believe that they've addressed anything that may have been construed as unintended consequences. So we urge you to support amendments and prevent price fixing from happening in Portland. Thank you.
58 Thank you. Kim corey.
59 Go ahead.
60 Good afternoon. My name is corey chisholm. I represent the 8000 neighbors of yours who are members of the Portland metropolitan association of realtors. I live in district four and I'm a renter. Since last spring, you've made substantial progress on this ordinance. You no longer ban the use of calculators and spreadsheets to set prices. You no longer ban the informal sharing of pricing information between landlords, but focus instead on agreements to set prices. You've dropped the draconian $10,000 per month penalties. Those are all strong improvements. Thank you. That said, important questions still remain one why does the city of Portland need to ban price fixing when price fixing is already illegal under state and federal law? Two the rhetoric around this measure focuses on software companies that allegedly enable price fixing. So why are the penalties targeted at local landlords rather than global software companies? Three the penalties are defined by the number of units owned by a single beneficial owner. How are units counted? Is it the number of units owned by that landlord in Portland and Multnomah county? In Oregon in the united states, worldwide for this ordinance says that public data is okay, while nonpublic data cannot be used to set prices. But sometimes data that is public becomes nonpublic when rent listings are taken offline. For example, let's clarify that public data is okay, even if it later becomes nonpublic. Five Oregon has statewide rent control. Why not just make it clear that the state says 10% is the max rent increase? Then any landlord that raises rents under 10% is free and clear, including ones that are not subject to statewide rent control. As I said last spring, the best policy is built by bringing together all the stakeholders, especially your critics around the table, to hash it out. We may not, in the end agree on whether the ordinance is required, but together we can make it more workable with the definitions cleaner and tighter, with fewer unintended consequences. I wish that would have happened in this case. We had all summer to do it. We never got a single phone call, email or text. We didn't know it was coming back here until Thursday afternoon. No one cries for the lobbyist whose last sunny weekend of the year is ruined. But please recognize that these short timelines mean that the public, your constituents, did not have a chance to study your proposals and provide meaningful feedback. Pro and con. I know this measure is likely to advance. I look forward to working with you to improve it further before it advances to the full council. Thank you.
61 Our last testifier for this item, javier alamilla.
62 Good afternoon councilors.
63 My name is javier lamia. I've been a proud Portland resident for 25 years, real estate agent for two decades, a board member at the Portland metropolitan association of realtors, and a former board member of hacienda cdc. Six months ago, I testified on this proposal. The same measure is back, and many of the same proposals remain. To be clear, I do not support price fixing. It is wrong and it is already illegal under state and federal law. But this ordinance creates enormous risks, landing hardest in the small local housing providers who own just a few units. They are community members, retirees and families who fill a vital gap in portland's rental market. Many are black and brown families who purchased a small apartment building as a pathway to build generational wealth while housing their neighbors. Confusing rules and added risk continue to push these owners to exit, shrinking supply and undermining stability in the very communities we want to strengthen. As written, this ordinance would make it possible for anyone who thinks their landlord used software to set their rents to file a lawsuit for 100, 300, or even $1,000 a month for five years, for five years for landlord who just with just a five unit building that could be $18,000 per unit or $90,000 total. That's a terrifying risk. This ordinance ordinance does not solve our housing crisis. It compounds it. It creates confusion, encourages landlords, small landlords to sell out to big corporations, and distracts from the real solution. From my work with community housing, I know that the way to bring rents down is to build more homes. More supply is the foundation of affordability. Please reject this measure or substantially narrow it to target actual, provable price fixing and ensure that small landlords aren't penalized successively. Portland should support the people providing housing, including the black and brown families, using housing as a path to opportunity, not scare them out of the market. Thank you.
64 Thank you for joining us.
65 That concludes testimony.
66 Excellent. Thank you. Colleagues.
67 I have a few more questions that I'd love to get from either councilor, Morillo or susie, or if there's anybody else that you would recommend, come back up to the dais.
68 Yeah. If susie and I think we have an attorney from the city attorney's office that worked on this, would like to come up to answer a few questions, I think that'd be a good time to do so.
69 And councilor Morillo, you have your hand up first.
70 Yeah, I, I guess I have some reflections on what was said here today, particularly from some of the corporations or from the lobbyists of corporations that are here representing their clients, particularly realpage and others who have conducted some of the most egregious price fixing that we've seen. So I want to start off by saying that this amended proposal was worked on extensively with city attorneys, and we have made a lot of adjustments to the language. We took feedback and it was made clearer. Our original ordinance never banned excel, but I see that we are still using that same tagline, which I think smells of desperation, frankly. But I also want to say that the criticisms that we are seeing that this will enable any random person to file a lawsuit against their landlord. We live in America. One of the most intense, litigation heavy countries in the world. Anyone can file a lawsuit against their landlord right now for any reason that is part of people's rights. So this doesn't change the fact that people can do that right now. That's the status quo. I have also supported things like the sdc waiver to ensure that we can build more homes in the state of Oregon, and particularly in Portland. So I do support home building, and I do think that we need that right now because we do have a shortage. But I also want to say that I'm not sure that some of our critics on this policy will ever be content with this policy because like most corporate actors, there were criticisms that this was too specific when it was brought to the state legislature and to prescriptive, and that it is too broad here. The prior criticisms were also that it banned specific tools instead of behaviors. And now we heard that they're concerned that it bans behaviors instead of specific tools. So there is a constant shift in the arguments that are being used against this policy that I don't think are being if they're being brought in good faith, they are certainly not consistent. And that does not allow us to create meaningful policy. So I think people have to choose, is this a do nothing proposal? Since price fixing is already illegal, or is this a boogeyman that is going to upend all housing in Oregon? I just, you know, you got to pick one. And I would say that it's neither. I would say that this proposal protects renters, which is what it's meant to do, especially when we live in a time where most people, especially as someone who is raised by a single mother, my mother could never afford to raise her two daughters in the city again. So I just had to say my piece to some of that, and we are open to any questions you may have for us, councilor Dunphy.
71 Thank you. Thank you, councilor Morillo. Yeah. So my first question is actually in response to what I heard in the testimony, specifically, what mechanisms exist for renters to be able to access the data that is necessary to prove that an algorithmic price fixing has occurred? How would a renter actually get that information? It can't be that they just think that it was used and then hope in discovery. What? How are you thinking about the proof of or the burden of proof for renters to either of you?
72 Well, I think that's a good question. Matt gander, for the record. Certainly some of these entities are subject to ongoing litigation. And so there is information in the public record about whether or not they're using specific tools or engaging in specific conduct that's regulated by this ordinance. The city attorney's office has authority to issue subpoenas prior to bringing an enforcement action. Outside of that. I don't have a great answer for you.
73 Fair enough.
74 Susie, do you have anything additional? No. Okay. Because it does seem like there's a pretty high burden of proof to be able to file a lawsuit in the first place. And so the, the, the risk of. Arbitrary litigation seems relatively burdensome on the renters part, at the very least. Is that fair?
75 Well, I think, you know, attorneys have an ethical obligation to file meritorious claims. And so typically, an attorney before they filed a lawsuit would contact the counsel for the landlord and attempt to understand whether or not their claim is meritorious and resolve any outstanding factual disputes. I don't know that that always happens. And so I do think that there are mechanisms within, you know, generally deployed professional kind of norms that would allow plaintiffs attorneys and defense attorneys to determine whether or not a violation could be proven at trial before the lawsuit is actually filed.
76 And is this is this ordinance does it include retrospective uses of this, or is it only forward looking?
77 So the ordinance speaks to violations that happen after its effective date.
78 Perfect. Which is I believe in things as 90 days after passage. So we would be looking at, at the very least, 2026 at the earliest for any sort of specific incidents. Is the private right of enforcement the only or the private legal action the only enforcement tool, or is there an administrative complaint process for renters?
79 The city attorney's office has authority to bring complaints in front of the code hearings office.
80 Right.
81 That is all of my questions. Councilor Ryan. Yes.
82 Thank you. Thank you.
83 Councilor Dunphy, and I appreciate all the testimony. Thanks for all of you who took time to come to the city council today to testify. There was a lot of celebration about this ordinance passing in other cities such as seattle, san francisco, denver. I think there were about nine others. Correct. And what I really just need to know is, has passing this ordinance in those other cities had a direct impact on lowering rental prices?
84 So I can take that. This is something that so the cea study. So the white house study that I referred to during the presentation, that is something that took place over the course of a year, analyzing the impact of these algorithms on multiple markets. So this is something that I expect to take shape, the research in this space to take shape over time. So again, there have been a number of studies. You can find additional ones beyond what I cited during the presentation in our supplemental economic analysis that speak to that long term empirical evaluation of the impact of these algorithms on marketplaces. But yours is a slightly different formulation. What happens when these tools are removed from the marketplace?
85 Because that's been the main argument.
86 Yes, of course. And so.
87 If there's proof.
88 Yeah. So that's something that's been very recent. Seattle's passed within the last few months. So that's something that needs to be evaluated. But again the affirmative case for the negative impact of these tools has been empirically demonstrated over the last several years across the rental markets, but also several other markets in which price fixing algorithms are deployed.
89 So I heard the celebration of them being passed, and but I didn't hear if there was a direct impact on lowering rental prices.
90 Yeah. So this is something that takes several months to study. And these have been passed recently. So this is ongoing study.
91 Okay. I have a comment about one of the amendments. That was the one that came from council president pirtle-guiney. I'm leaning towards favoring that amendment. Actually, I think if commissioner Daley's had such a provision back when or eight years ago, we would have had a lot less unintended consequences with that one, as many people know that have been out there listening to those in the housing world, many, many of our landlords sold their units and that gutted affordable housing stock in our city. So I like that we have an amendment that's being a lesson learned from whenever that was, I wasn't here. You were here. Was that 2017? Yes. Okay. I have to say, I was a little disappointed to hear that the critics were not included. Why this was in recess and being worked on. So it was helpful to hear that this morning, this afternoon. I don't know where we are this afternoon, so thank you for that feedback. Those are all the questions I have at this moment.
92 Excellent colleagues. Any other comments or questions at this time? No. So I want to say a couple of little things. First, I want to just acknowledge that I have deep concerns about the use of ai in our market economy. Broadly. I was reading an article that was talking about the use of ai in grocery stores, tracking how long something remains in someone's basket affecting the price that they get at the at the checkout, we are hearing about the use of ai for currently with a facial recognition tracking and with a license plate tracking. I as the economy is struggling to move forward both locally and nationally, there's an impulse to squeeze every penny out of it as possible. And as it's said repeatedly today, the number one cause of homelessness is economics. And currently the most common legal filings with with regard to housing is eviction, not lawsuits against landlords. People who are listening to this may know this. I have mentioned this repeatedly. I am a landlord. It is not a passive job. It is not a job that I mean, I don't know that I'm even doing it that well, but I'm doing my best to try because it's not something that you should be doing casually. I do have concerns about. Perhaps an older adult renting out an adu or a duplex side of a duplex. And so I, depending on the language of the final language of president pirtle-guiney amendment, I may I am leaning towards being supportive of keeping our mom and pop shops and truly small landlords harm harmless in this, but I also recognize that in many cases, smaller landlords actually have some of the worst violations because they aren't they don't have the capacity to be able to be as responsive as professional. So I intend to not bring the two amendments forward for a vote at this moment that were proposed from the dais, and we'll bring those to the full council. I just want to acknowledge that housing costs are out of control broadly, and. Supply will help, but supply will not lower rents in a meaningful way for most people. I traveled to I was one of the counselors who traveled to vienna, and I had an opportunity to speak with the. And I've said this before, and I'm sorry if my colleagues are bored of this one, but I spoke with a member of the national parliament who is the chair of their social housing, and I asked her what they're with vienna having a 100 year head start on Portland, what should Portland be doing? And one of the very first things she said is define the the rights of tenants and the responsibilities of landlords. And I think that this is a meaningful step in that direction. I really appreciate councilor Morillo your thoughtful edits to this. It has strengthened the policy in many ways. It makes me feel much more comfortable with this policy, and I think it's very clear what it is doing and what it is trying to do and what it does not do. So I really appreciate that. With that, I'll check and see if my colleagues have any further comments, I just.
93 No, no.
94 Okay. So with that I would like to entertain a motion to replace exhibit a, as shown in the proposed amendment dated October 2nd, 2025.
95 So moved.
96 Councilor Morillo moves to replace exhibit a, as shown in the proposed amendment dated October 2nd, 2025. May I have a second. Second counselor? The motion has been moved by councilor Morillo and seconded by councilor Avalos. Is there any discussion? Will the clerk please call the roll?
97 Dunphy.
98 Hi, Ryan. No.
99 Morillo.
100 Hi, Avalos.
101 Hi.
102 With three eyes. The motion is accepted. Excuse me. The motion.
103 The amendment is adopted. Thank you. You're welcome. I would like to entertain a motion to send ordinance document number 2025045, as amended, to the full council with a recommendation to pass.
104 So moved. God willing, this council passes more policies.
105 Councilor Morillo ordinance number 2025 045, as amended, to the full council with a recommendation to pass. May I have a second?
106 Second.
107 The motion has been moved by councilor Morillo and seconded by councilor Avalos. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? Dunphy I.
108 Ryan, no.
109 Morillo I.
110 Avalos I.
111 With three eyes. The motion carries and the ordinance document number 2025 045, as amended. We'll move to full council with a recommendation to pass.
112 Thank you all who showed up to testify. Thank you. Staff. Diego, can you please read the next item?
113 Item two shelter funding and service levels update.
114 Thank you. We have asked the Portland staff to share an update with us on shelter funding and how this impacts the current service levels and shelter bed availability. I have skyler, brock, shannon fairchild, and brandi westerman here. With that information, we'll pause for a second to say goodbye to our our students. Goodbye, students. Thank you for joining us. And I will turn it over to you. Please feel free to get started.
115 All right.
116 Thank you. Before you start. Hello. First of all, thank you for leading the meeting. And apologies that I'm not theirs. I'm unwell. I'm going to go ahead and hop off now, but I will be watching on youtube. Thank you for your help.
117 Feel better.
118 Thank you, councilor Avalos. Unfortunately, we will need to pause for just a moment for councilor Ryan to return so that we have quorum, and so I will.
119 That's okay. I'll wait until he gets back. Okay. Go ahead.
120 Thank you, councilor Avalos. Appreciate you sticking through it while you're feeling really sick.
121 Sorry.
122 Go ahead. Thank you.
123 Team okay. Thanks. Council chair. Vice chair. For the record, my name is skyler becker. Knapp and I serve as the director of Portland solutions. Joining me today, as you mentioned, is shannon fairchild. She's our finance manager in the office of the city administrator. And we have brandi westerman, who's our emergency humanitarian operations director, who's going to be available for questions and discussion at the end of our presentation today, we've been asked to discuss the city's shelter services, budget and service level considerations for overnight and alternative shelter programs. Just as a recap, that is only one piece of the Portland solutions budget. So we're going to be focusing on shelter exclusively today. We'll review the adopted fiscal year 2526 budget passed by council, and then review the state funding issues that we've brought forward in a memo to council. We will then discuss the fall technical adjustment ordinance and before finally saving time for impacts and discussion. As you might recall, city shelter services manages and programs are alternative 24 seven shelter, as well as our overnight shelter program. For the fiscal year 2526, we were allocated approximately 39 million for alternative shelter. We receiving resources from the state, the county general fund, metro supportive housing services carryover from fiscal year 2425. Arpa, which is the federal resource carryover and one time general fund resources. You'll see them here listed out for the overnight program. We were allocated approximately 26 million, with resources anticipated from a mix of state metro supportive housing services funds and funds from the opioid settlement agreement. We've highlighted some issues of note to that budget that we want to bring to your attention in this presentation. First, we had expected nearly $11 million in state special resources. That was to be split between the alternative as well as the overnight sheltering programs, as you have learned, that anticipated money was not allocated by the state. And I'll speak to that more in just a moment. Second, we had caught an error before the passage of the budget on the cost for sponsoring recovery beds at bybee lakes hope center. That error is being addressed in the fall technical adjustment ordinance. So you'll see all three of those elements highlighted here. As I said, the mayor had done quite a bit of work and engaging a number of parties to fund his overnight sheltering program. External funders. Some of those anticipated resources were to come from the state. In particular, we were anticipating that 11 million split between the overnight and alternative shelter programs. Those resources did not materialize in the final versions of either the state's main homelessness bill that they passed out of committee, nor the omnibus bill at the end of the fiscal year, that final bill that they vote on. There have been some questions about timeline of understanding. What information did the city have? When did we know it? As you remember, you passed your final budget on June 18th. Subsequently, the state advanced their bills out of chambers in the following two weeks without the anticipated monies present, so that 11 million was not present in those bills that were subsequently brought to that chamber as part of reconciliation, there was a chance that that money might arrive in a final version of one of those bills. The omnibus bill is often called the christmas tree bill. At the end of session, sometimes money is slotted in just kind of at the last minute. So we were just looking to see if that happened. Unfortunately, neither bill included those funds when signed by the governor in July and August, although these anticipated funds did not materialize. We're grateful to governor and her leadership in helping allocate over 18 million in sheltering funds to the city this year from the state. I'm going to now pass it over to shannon fairchild to discuss the fall 2025 taw requests, just to outline some more of these elements.
124 Good afternoon, shannon fairchild, finance manager for the office of the city administrator service area. So there are six changes that we're requesting in the fall. Tao. First, we're requesting approximately 2.58 million in general fund encumbrance, carryover. The fall tao process provides us an opportunity to request new appropriation from our prior year general fund discretionary spending to cover purchase orders that were created last fiscal year. But with the work is going to be completed this current year. So it's a little complicated. And this is what we refer to as an encumbrance carryover. So as you might remember, we presented to this body as well as the finance committee and full council that we would be coming back to council to carry forward approximately 2 million, an estimated general fund encumbered resources in the fall. Tao. After our initial estimate in the spring of this year, the actual amount of general fund underspending that is encumbered is approximately 2.58 million, and that underspending is made up of workforce development grants and the shelter sites that will continue through this fiscal year. A purchase order for construction at southwest, nato and menlo expansion sites, purchase orders for the continuation of waste collection at shelter sites, and a shelter operator contract for overnight shelter. In addition, in December of 2024, the city was required to encumber remaining ARPA dollars that must be used by December 2026, and so that ARPA money was encumbered for the fall or, excuse me, for the northwest nato site. And we're requesting we are asking for those encumbered funds to be added to the alternative shelter budget in the fall. Tao, in conjunction with those additions, there are four reductions adjustments. The first is an adjustment that lowers the amount of available carryover by about 175,000 from our original estimate. And so it brings the total available to from 3.4 million to 3.25 million. Second, as I spoke of earlier, there was an error on how much settlement money would be available to fund recovery beds at bybee lakes. So this correction reflects the funding that's actually available this fiscal year. Finally, we're we are also reducing both the alternative shelter and overnight shelter budgets to reflect the state resources that we did not receive. With that in mind, I'm going to address what the adjusted budgets will look like for each of the sheltering programs based on our requests. Sky will then take back over to look at ways that Portland solutions has mitigated service disruptions to the shelter programs. If council adopts the requests in the fall, the fall tao is requested. The revised 2526 budget will be as follows. For alternative shelter, the new budget will be approximately 36.6 million, which will be a reduction of 2.6 million from the adopted budget passed by council in June. The overnight shelter budget will now be 20.8 million, which is a reduction of 5.4 million from the 2526 adopted budget. Sky will now address how Portland solutions is dealing with those differences.
125 Thanks, shannon. First, I want to make clear that our budget is unique and that is not once been the same from year to year, so that's a little different from some other programs in the city. We're given a mission. We estimate the amount of resources needed to execute that mission, and then we work within our appropriation to accomplish the programmatic priorities of our electeds. That said, to make up the differences in alternative shelter that shannon just outlined, we first were in the process of negotiating contracts that we had pulled back from the county and pulled to the city. As you might remember, the county held several of our site operator contracts, which we found to be inefficient with a wide variety of contractual differences. So in the spring, we opened an RFP process request for proposal process to pull those contracts back. And as of July 1st, we now hold those contracts of all but one of those sites, those negotiations which standardized contract and cost parameters, as well as reducing the budget to actual spending in the alternative shelter budget, generated approximately $2.1 million in savings. I just want to emphasize these savings. Together with the 2.58 million general fund encumbrance carryover that shannon outlined, will allow the city to maintain existing service levels at the alternative shelter site. So one of the things this committee asked for us to bring forward was the outline of these numbers for this budget cycle and the technical adjustment ordinance, but also service levels and if there were any service level changes. So I just want to give a shout out to brandy and her team, who did an amazing job to really ensure that we didn't have any lower service level delivery within the new parameters of the money that we were receiving. Our shelter services team, which previously only worked on alternative shelter, now oversees the overnight shelter program as well. So this is a unified shelter team that director westerman oversees that coordinates work at a really high level. Those labor costs have been reallocated to the overnight shelter program budget costs to reflect the work that's being done by the shelter services team. This also saved the alternative shelters budget. Approximately 548,000 and costs. So just to reemphasize this one team, we didn't add new members, oversees these two very large programs. So I really want to thank them for incredible work creating those efficiencies. And as shannon said, the difference between the budget you passed and the proposed adjusted budget is about 2.6 million, which is what we've made up between the contract negotiations and the labor appropriations. So there's no impact to us to service levels at alternative shelter sites. For overnight shelter. We're attempting to make up what is really about a $5.1 million difference. Bybee lakes is going to be addressed separately. So we've dealt with the $5.1 million difference with in about four different ways. So I'm going to outline those four different elements. First. Instead of developing new brick and mortar data centers, we've partnered with existing day centers to expand their capacity and services offered. We announced about a month ago our partnership with join that has more than doubled the number of hours that they are open and greatly increased the services they provide. Opening on weekends is critical to the community and those we serve. As you all know, second, by opening outdoor day centers such as the new northwest glisan site called the oasis, which we invite you all to visit this week if you are able. We're able to serve more people than a brick and mortar at a cost effective rate with infrastructure that is transferable to other sites. For example, this past Friday, urban alchemy hosted a resource fair for our city's homeless. With a turnout of nearly 600 people, we're seeing approximately 150 people cycle through that site on a daily basis right now. Third, with emergency overnight beds, we have focused on flexible capacity. So being able to flex up when demand is high and flex down when it's not, we're on track to have 1500 beds available by December 1st. The mayor's goal, an announcement to your offices, will be forthcoming later this week and publicly announced next week on some additional sites that we're adding. Finally, the team is still working on day storage, but to make up some of the budgetary deficit, we're planning to reduce the number of storage sites while also combining day storage with other services to make it more cost effective. Brandy will be happy to explain more about this if you have any questions about those specific services. I just want to make clear that the role of Portland solutions is to be a resource for our community, delving into the tough problems and issues our city faces, maintaining service levels, even in a constricted budget environment, is a hallmark value of our work. Being creative and working with the resources we have, we believe we're delivering programs that our city can be proud of. Again, just emphasizing whatever we are given, we will work within those means to accomplish as much as we possibly can. We appreciate your time and look forward to questions and discussions. Thank you.
126 Thank you colleagues, do you have any questions for our panel? I have a couple, but I'll defer to you all. All right. So thank you team I'm bad at math. Please help me out this real quick. I just want to make sure that I'm hearing this correctly. We have approximately $13 million in reductions that we are having to do because the money didn't come from the state and also some some things.
127 It's 11 million.
128 Okay. Great.
129 See state of state resources. We didn't get there.
130 Thank you. So we have approximately $11 million in reductions. This is going to through shifting resources and some savings from previous years and things like that that will maintain our existing shelter resources as it is. But and I'm seeing I mean, my math is bad again. So. This still creates a roughly 5 million, $6 million hole in where we were anticipating. Right. Does the is the mayor adjusting his overall goal or plan or outreach strategy? Does this affect the number of beds per overnight shelter? Does this affect the the distance between day centers and where these new locations are going to be sited? How? I guess from an administrative standpoint, how are we actually seeing those $6 million or whatever it is to to the effect?
131 Yeah, no, it's a great question. I'll give a little bit of background and then maybe pass it to director westerman. And we also have ruth levine here too, if you have specific budgetary questions. So I should have mentioned that. But we anticipated about that 2620 6.5 million for overnight sheltering capacity. This is a new program. So whatever resources we're given, we'll try to accomplish what we need to with whatever resources we have. So I think especially this program, because it's new, we were able to rightsize the service delivery model to the amount of money we received. So I just want to state that as context. But within that, some of the pieces that we have found to be efficiency savings that I mentioned were expanding existing day services. So building a new day center, brick and mortar day space, very expensive. So expanding existing capacity where there's already a provider, where there's already a site and expanding that so they can serve the same number of people we might have served at a brick and mortar. We can now serve by expanding joins capacity, for example. So really trying to figure out what makes the most sense given these constraints. The day storage piece is also huge. So developing brand new brick and mortar day storage is going to be more expensive than adding that capacity to an existing day space or an existing building or somewhere where we're providing shelter. Maybe we'll also provide the storage capacity. So really trying to think through, and we're still actively negotiating those different pieces. So we're able to say, oh, this fits within our budget or this does not fit within our budget. And so brandi's team is doing a really good job of analyzing all those different elements. The flex capacity I'll just touch on. So what we've seen in this community, and we see across the country is an increased demand in winter months, especially when there's rain, when it's cold for sheltering services. So within the mayor's plan, he chose December 1st for a reason. He is really looking at winter. He's looking at those harsh conditions on the street and wanting to make sure he has enough capacity to meet everybody's needs and really offer shelter bed to anybody who wants it. We are looking at some capacity for shelter beds that will be just available in the winter. So if we need to flex up, if we need to keep those through the spring, we could, but we save a little bit of money if we don't necessarily keep all of those open year round, if that's not necessary. So we're really evaluating on a moment by moment basis what capacity we need and then making some savings accordingly. So we're making some assumptions. We're watching, you know, the capacity and the utilization. And then we're also talking to service providers to say okay, what are you seeing. What are people demanding. Do we need more capacity. We can flex that up and bring that online, say severe weather hits. We want to be able to flex up that capacity. So those are just a couple of the elements that we're looking at from an operational perspective.
132 I have nothing to add. You did well. Thanks.
133 Thank you. She taught me well.
134 Could you talk a little bit about the the I mean, it makes sense obviously doing expanding existing infrastructure rather than building new makes sense. Expanding outdoor rather than brick and mortar makes sense today. Do you and and I also the reducing day storage new locations but expanding existing. Do you worry that that will make these services less attractive to the people who want to use them? I worry specifically about outdoor day centers being cold in the middle of the day. Even if you have heaters and tents over, it's still not pleasant to just stand in the middle of a parking lot and or, you know, open space while it's actively pouring winter rain. Have you heard from the people we're serving, or the service providers or any or also neighbors around those areas about what that might impact the the overall goal?
135 Yes, it's a short answer, but I want to speak.
136 To it. For the record, I'm brandy westerman, the humanitarian operations director, and I think your your question is a very good one. Thank you. Councilor in in large part, the outdoor day space is a bit of an experiment for the Portland area. This is new. This isn't something that we've done before. What we're seeing is a large number of people appreciating that safe outdoor space to be at, and including people who might not feel comfortable going to indoor spaces. This is allowing a little bit more of that kind of freedom, open air. And we know that we're just at the beginning of portland's long, rainy season. Even on the days that we've seen rain, we've seen quite a few people coming into the space and recognizing it's going to get colder. And I think we just need to really watch that closely. We do have intention to increase some of the indoor opportunities during the coldest period of the winter for that very reason, so that there are alternatives. If we find that folks are saying this is a bit too cold, this is uncomfortable, then we have a place indoors that's also safe for folks to go to. But I think we're going to see this is the first winter operating an overnight shelter or an outdoor day space. And I think we're going to learn a lot.
137 And we will add heaters and other infrastructure elements, obviously.
138 Yeah, I will just I will just flag that I it makes me worried to know that we are making the services slightly less attractive to folks who are in need of those services desperately. It makes it slightly less attractive to the neighbors, I think, because I know that there's been some consternation about the outdoor day centers and the surrounding areas from some neighborhood groups, and if we are making them higher service, then that may make their concerns even worse. I also worry that by making some of these services slightly less attractive to the people who will be using them, that increases conflict between enforcing the the camping ban. And I am I'm very worried about anything that that we know will make it harder for folks to be successful in getting into housing, into new jobs, into the services that we need. And I just want to note that I will be paying very close attention, because specifically, I don't want to see us. Making short term decisions based off of our budget that ultimately make the situation worse. So I know you all are very aware of that. I am just saying that so that it is said and that we can have further conversation about that. So thank you for making the best of a bad situation and trying to be flexible and experimental and keeping our values in mind. So I really appreciate that. Councilor Ryan. Yes.
139 Thank you.
140 Co-chair Dunphy, I really appreciate your questions about the day services, because increasingly, the overnight shelters are opening up and constituents are asking. So I really appreciate that line of question. I want to just acknowledge skye, shannon and brandy. You all are very nimble and very adaptable as a team, and I can't think of a better leadership helping us to be more urgent in this humanitarian crisis so you don't get enough attention for brand. I remember what you were hired to do, and then I just keep seeing you adapt to. What ever is called for. And oftentimes our public servants don't always get acknowledged for that type of flexibility. So thank you very much.
141 Thank you.
142 I appreciate it. This was fascinating conversation in general in the math is hard to track. It's you can be great at math, arithmetic, even higher end math and still be challenged. When we look at the different revenue streams and how we negotiate with our different local partners, you could say it was set up to be flawed for the city of Portland when it was passed, because all the money goes to metro and then it goes to the county, and then maybe if we scream loud enough, we might get a little bit. Since we are first responders and the public assumes all this money is ours anyway. So I just want to acknowledge that it's always been challenging to track the flows. And we had a mayor that had the audacity to really hustle and work, in my opinion, tirelessly to try to receive more funds from local government based on those systemic challenges. And I thought he's done a really good job of pursuing that. And here we are. So, so the delta is confusing and that's okay. I'm going to get through that. But I was confused about the bybee lakes conversation. I'm probably really attached to that because I constantly talk about how we ignore the biggest problem I think facing our region, which is our addiction crisis and our state continues to come in last place, as does the county in terms of response to this addiction crisis. And bybee lakes has a is targeted to do recovery beds. Is that true?
143 Correct.
144 So please tell me with whatever the bouncing ball of revenue that was floating around, does it mean that we're cutting services or recovery beds?
145 No. So councilor, thank you for bringing that up. So I'm going to explain it the way I understand it. But shannon will correct me if I say anything wrong. Basically, we had a set amount to contract for those or grant for those beds. So certain number of recovery beds for the rest of the fiscal year for this year. And we had given some of that last fiscal year and that wasn't reflected in our budget. So we had already paid them some money. And we're just trying to reconcile that amount. So we pay that the same total we would have paid. But we paid some last fiscal year, and we're going to pay the rest this fiscal year. But it has we have to make a, you know, a procedural adjustment basically to reconcile what we actually already paid out. So it was an error, like a scrivener's error, basically.
146 Well, you had me at no recovery. We're not cutting recovery.
147 I promise you.
148 And I really just needed to verify that I think why you're here, what I hear is the city's flexibility and nimbleness. And I just need to know who our partners are. I think the county's deflection center is really not a great story right now. And so we're increasingly called upon, which is why we need recovery beds to be those first responders in this humanitarian crisis. What are the conversations like with the county and about their response in doing outreach work? Now that we have more services? I always said, where's the county outreach workers when we had severe weather? Where's the county outreach workers when we have overnight shelters? Now, where's the county's outreach workers when we have day day centers, where's the county outreach workers? Fill in the blank at all over the mac stops on the east side. Where are they? Are you in constant communication with them?
149 I would not say constant. I can tell you they have recently gone through a process to create geographic locations where a certain organization will kind of own that zone, so to speak. So that's been a long time coming for eight different zones across the city. We are in communication with our outreach coordinators. So the folks who coordinate all those different teams in terms of hotspots that our teams are seeing or wanting to know what engagement they're doing in a certain area. So certain parks, maybe certain areas within those zones, we see really increased need of presence, and we will communicate with our coordinators so that they can disseminate that information to the outreach teams. We don't communicate as directly as we have in the past with the actual outreach workers. For all of those teams. Some of our team members do have personal relationships with those team members and have worked with them for years. So that engagement does occur in an ad hoc basis. But we're really working with their coordinator. So I would say right now that's what's happening. I think there's a desire from all parties for increased coordination. And so I'm kind of pushing for that.
150 Well, I appreciate that you're pushing I've been pushing for that for five years. And so it's just really disappointing to hear that it's still not a system that clicks. And that is so not your fault, the three of you. So I just had to air that out in terms of our own systems that we built. We have a Portland street response, which has become more and more of a system within our first response unit. They have skill sets to meet people where they are. And I haven't heard how Portland street response is being deployed into this system. And that would be helpful to listen to at this time.
151 Absolutely. I think one of the pieces that might be just most helpful is an example from last week. Our outreach team in the morning goes out to different shelters, overnight shelter sites, and when folks are exited and closes down for the morning, they help folks navigate to different services. If an individual is having a mental or behavioral health crisis or might be aided by Portland street response, they will call Portland street response themselves. We had teams that responded actually to two different instances at different shelter sites in a morning last week. We're able to transport one of those individuals to, I believe it was the deflection site and really help engage with those people so that our outreach team is able to kind of continue their work in the surrounding area. So I think that was a great example of how we're building a better partnership and coordination. And my team specifically texted me that they were really appreciative of that collaboration and partnership. I think that's a little bit new. They have psr now has longer hours. They're able to transport. There's just some additional services there they're able to provide. And I think that's enabling them to be a little bit more responsive when our team is calling, but also the public is calling. So I think we're really seeing that in real time. Chat is another great partner.
152 I forgot to mention.
153 Yeah. No I think it's a it's a great point. We, the mayor and I actually met with a lot of different crisis response teams last week, some at the county, some at the city to try to figure out where the gaps are in all of those different systems. We're still work to do. I think, as you all know, there's still work to make sure those teams are more cohesive, that we're addressing the individual needs. You know, not everyone works 24 seven. Not everyone can transport. Not everyone responds when there's a weapon present. So who do you call, when and how do we fill those gaps? That's still a work in progress. So I'm working closely with stephanie howard and the public safety service area, and trying to make sure that we're filling all those different gaps that we're seeing. It's definitely better than it was. And I think every week, frankly, I'm seeing more anecdotal evidence that we're collaborating in a better way.
154 And I do see you as the team that can help float between these different. I don't know how the silos get built so quickly, but they get built and so you can really help break those down.
155 We'll do our best.
156 Yeah. The last thing that I need to ask, because it's always on my mind, is night time outreach in general, but especially at the bottle drop locations. I think what causes portlanders to scratch their heads is they see this active drug market, if you will, that is always connected to the cash, because that's what you need. Cash, instant cash as an addict to get your supply. And so they take place there. I'm not saying anything that anyone doesn't know that hasn't opened their eyes. Whether driving by you name a plaid pantry, if you will. And so what is our what do we do with that? Do we just do we drive by it? Like who's doing outreach? Who's connecting? Again, back to the fact that we'd like people to know that there are choices and we're opening recovering beds, for example, at bybee lakes. Tell me more about the strategy when it comes to this type of crisis on our streets. How are we how are we showing up for that?
157 Absolutely. I think it's a great microcosm of kind of all of those different pieces of the puzzle. So one thing that we worked on this past week was with the Oregon bottle redemption center. Folks kind of at the state level, are going to be providing $500,000 to the behavioral health unit to partner with different nonprofit organizations, including ground score, on the new people's depot location. So there will be an alternative redemption center. It's a new thing that the state passed, that the people's depot is able to. You're able to deposit cans, and they're able to have those returns processed through them. Ground score transfer piece is going to be running that location. And we're trying to provide all those resources. So we already have partnerships with the pier company used to be mha. And you know, central city concern will often do outreach around those locations. Our outreach team is out there. Psr is often called the police are very involved in kind of what's going on around those locations. But I think this partnership will be a good test case of different resources deployed by the city, different resources deployed by nonprofits, different resources deployed by the state, and to see how those interplay together. Yesterday I had a meeting where we were strategizing how we would connect all the pieces of that puzzle. So outreach workers who already work in that area, it's going to be near clinton triangle, our urban alchemy outreach team, Portland love, will already be working in that area, is already familiar with some folks that are in that area. They will be working with glitter, which is a subsidiary of ground score trash for peace that will pick up trash and engage with individuals. Our outreach team also works with mha peer company. Sorry they changed their name. I keep having to remind myself of that. And different providers who will connect people to deflection center to those different resources. But then bu and PPB will also be present and have some additional shifts that will be provided. So they are able to connect folks through their service coordination team, who might be really difficult kind of cases and folks that they've seen over and over again. So we're trying to add all those different elements around that new site. And I'm hoping that will be a little more service rich and coordinated than we've seen in the past. So I'd like to replicate that at those different locations.
158 You mentioned the deflection center a couple times, so now I since I said something not too charitable about it a few minutes ago, why are we sending people there? So, I mean, are you giving feedback on how it can improve? I mean, the early data was rather grim.
159 Yes. I think we are getting a lot of feedback. I'm not on the leadership committee for that, but I work with a lot of the folks who are, and what I hear from them is there's some really frank conversations happening about how to expand service delivery there and who is eligible for services at those sites. So I think one big piece of the puzzle was allowing nonprofits to also drop people off at that site and actually access those services. That was kind of an unnecessary, I think, barrier to entry. And a lot of like peer company or central city concern or our outreach team. I think having access to drop people off at those locations will help increase the utilization, frankly, at those sites, I think there's also a deep conversation happening with what services they're connected to and kind of what's required of folks when they're at the deflection center. So as they go through that deflection process, okay, what are we requiring of individuals? What services are those that are eligible to kind of meet that criteria. And I frankly, I think it's I think of it similarly to our outdoor day space of what are you hearing from folks who are using the space? What are you hearing from the provider at the space? What are you hearing from the providers who are dropping people off at the space? What are you hearing from law enforcement who's also dropping people off? What are you seeing as the outcomes and services folks are getting connected to? And then how do you pivot the model to actually accomplish the goal that you're intending to accomplish? So a lot of those conversations are happening. I know the chief is deeply in those negotiations. I really have heard a lot from the pier company and those folks who are trying to just make sure it's a better service. And I think really pushing people to think differently about how those services are delivered.
160 And I hope that includes talking to other counties that are getting much better results.
161 Yes. Well, and the pier company is an excellent example because they also are part of the group that works in Washington county with their deflection program. And so I think it's an interesting case study. If they get to see the side by side comparison and then learn and maybe steal kind of the best elements that we're seeing in other counties as well.
162 Yeah, our houseless neighbors deserve that.
163 Thank you. Thank you.
164 Councilor Morillo.
165 I thought you had your hand up before me.
166 Sure. I'll let you go first.
167 Okay. What a gentleman. I appreciate you. Thank you guys so much for being here today. So it sounds like the current service levels are not going to be changed despite the reduction in state funding. So does this represent a loss in ramp up that we had originally planned, or how many fewer people are going to be served now?
168 It's a great question, randy, do you want to talk about the expansion?
169 I can I mean, in terms of the alternative shelter, there's not an impact or a loss of capacity as a result of this because we've been able to find the savings through other mechanisms and standardizing service levels, those kinds of things, in terms of the the overnight shelter piece, I think given that the weather is now starting to change, we're going to have that capacity that was originally planned for 1500 beds available for folks. By the time we we enter into December and the weather really starts to get colder and people want to come inside. At this point in time, with all of the open overnight shelters, anybody who has a bed or wants a bed has access to a bed now, so there are open, available beds each night. We have not reached a level of full capacity where we would have to turn anybody away.
170 Gotcha. Okay. Can you describe a little bit where you found the cost savings?
171 For alternative?
172 I think for alternative shelter in particular.
173 Yes.
174 Yeah. So what what we did so previously some of the, the sites had site operators that were contracted by the city. Others had site operators contracted by the county. And as of July 1st the city is contracting the alternative shelter site shelter operators. In that process of going through a competitive RFP process and then contracting with each of the individual organizations, we looked across the portfolio at the the levels of service and the cost of service, and we worked across all of the shelter operators to kind of bring things into alignment. So in cases where one shelter operator might have been paying a lot more for meals than others, we brought those down and brought those into alignment so that we had kind of a lower cost across the board for that. Other areas where we were able to find savings, we set a standard for the participant to staff ratio, and we looked at ensuring that general staffing meets a ratio, a minimum ratio of 25 to 1, and that the the care, coordination or case management staff meet a ratio, a minimum ratio of 15 to 1. And so by bringing that kind of staff ratios into kind of a standardized level, that still ensures that each individual guest has regular access to a case manager and that the site can be safely managed. We were able to find savings in that way.
175 Thank you. That's really helpful. And when you say that everyone who wants a bed right now currently has one, I guess I'm a little bit confused by that, because I thought that our house or our unhoused population was a lot higher than 1500. So can you explain that for me a little bit?
176 Yeah. What I what I meant by that is that currently with the overnight shelters that are open tonight, there are open beds available for folks. So if there are individuals who want to come inside tonight, we have beds for them.
177 Thank you. Appreciate all that clarification.
178 And I will note we are low on time. So I just have one last question. And this is a budget specific question. The 2.58 million that is being asked to carry over is that the total amount of unencumbered or encumbered carryover from the entire city budget, or is that just a specific portion of what we are anticipating in the towel?
179 It's just shelter. So we're just.
180 Just from this program. Like this is its own budget. Not everybody else. All in. No. Great. That's lovely to hear. That's just what I needed to hear. Okay. Thank you. Anything else that we need to know before we leave?
181 I don't think so. If you have any further questions or if your colleagues have questions, please direct them our way. We're happy to answer.
182 Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for being here.
183 Thank you.
184 Diego, will you please read the next item?
185 Item three homelessness and housing community feedback.
186 Thank you. This is our time to hear back here from community members on their concerns about I. Let's try that again. This is our time to hear from community members about their concerns, ideas or feedback regarding homelessness and housing. And diego, could you please call the individuals who have been signed up to testify?
187 Yes, we have two signups. First, claire courtney, followed by karen cheer. Great.
188 Come on up.
189 You're welcome to start when you're ready.
190 Good afternoon. Claire. Doesn't seem.
191 I don't think so. We received a cancellation this morning, but I just wanted to make sure.
192 Okay. My name is karen cherry. I am a business owner in district four and a member of stadium hood. And today I'm going to talk about carla. Carla is a 66 year old homeless woman who interacted with me back in may when she stole from my store. She was subsequently cited and and released that same night. And recently yesterday, she came back into my store and was trying to purchase a wine, and obviously she was trespassed from the original arrest. And and so we told her to leave our store and not come back again. And so because she trespassed and she had a failure to appear warrant for my, my case against her, I called dispatch and told them and that I wanted a police officer there to arrest her for trespass and for the the warrant. And and in doing so, I ended up following her until I could get an officer to our location. We ended up at mcdonald's on Burnside and where she purchased some food. And so she ate in there for like 30 minutes. And and while I was waiting outside, still for the police, nobody called me. I did update dispatch on her name because I didn't know remember her name at the time, and the fact that that she had multiple warrants, actually, for failure to appear for her court on other cases. And so anyway, I was just standing there outside the mcdonald's, and carla walked right up to me and started talking to me. She didn't know who I was and and proceeded to tell me that her wallet got stolen and she didn't have her ebt card, and she was wanting to go to dhs to get a new card. And so I, you know, was conversational with her, kind of played along with what was going on because I knew I was like trying to stall to get the police there. Right. And and so I'm like, oh, well, I can walk with you and, and we can go together. And so she's like, okay. And and so we did we walked from the mcdonald's all the way to I think it was like fourth and taylor or something. And I don't know, can I have more time to talk about my story since there's nobody else. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And so so as we're walking, we're chatting and stuff. And she actually is a very nice woman. She's got a master's degree. The reason why she's homeless woman is because she had a horrible divorce. And and so but she likes to keep to herself. Right. And so it was kind of, I guess in a way she trusted me. And I don't know why. I mean, I guess I'm a caring person and I do really care about people. And maybe she saw that in me. And so we just talked about life and stuff as we were walking all these blocks there, and we'd stopped at a convenience store. She is an alcoholic, and so she bought some alcohol to drink along the way. And and so we get to the county side of dhs, and apparently they shut it down at 430, giving out ebt cards. And we got there at 433. And they couldn't make any exceptions. And so the security guard said, you can go around to the state side on the other side of the the neighborhood and or on the other side of the the building, and they close at five. And so we get around there. And there was already, I would say like seven people ahead of us. But I waited with her, you know, and kind of interacted with some of the homeless people there. How they're saying that, you know, it's very difficult for them to.
193 To rush you. But I got to.
194 A minute, almost a minute 30 over.
195 So I just thought that we had 20 minutes to talk about it. And there's nobody else here talking. So I will try and hurry my story. So one thing that I would like to recommend, and I don't know if you can talk to the county as a council, talk to the county and, and or the state, but potentially having a kiosk for people to get a renewed ebt card if they've got it stolen or lost or whatever, all you'd have to do is set it up some somewhat similar, I guess, to an atm machine that that, you know, they put in their name, their date of birth, their social security number, and then it just pops out their card. That way we don't have to tie up a person or multiple people to do that. So that was one suggestion. The other thing that that as we were walking. So we ended up not being able to get her card, she had actually had just gotten out of the hospital when she came into my store. And as we were walking, I was trying to get her to go to a shelter because she literally she had nothing. She had the clothes on her back. She was very dirty and smelly and and so I was trying to get her to the northrop shelter, the new shelter. She didn't know anything about it, didn't know where it was or anything. So we walked back up and she's like, I don't want to go in the shelter because there's like bedbugs and lice and people are dirty and, you know, they're always like screaming and stuff. And so she was just adamant that she didn't want to do that. And so she was getting super tired. So she sat down at a bus stop bench and, and we were just chatting. And I'm like, well, because she, she does have family. She has kids and grandkids. And I said, well, why don't you be with your kids, you know? And then she tells me that she has pancreatic cancer, and that's why she's been going into the hospital to get treatment for it. But she said that she doesn't want her kids to see her in that condition. And so that's why she's not seeking their assistance and stuff. And and so, you know, I was like, really encouraging her to go to a shelter and get help and stuff. And she was just adamant not not to do that. And, and so I just how do we how do we reach these people that don't want to get help or don't want to get into shelter, you know, and so at the end of this whole thing, actually, like, I, I didn't want the police to show up because they still hadn't shown up yet. They hadn't called me. And this was three hours since my initial call that carla and I were spending together. And so at the end of it, I was like, you know, forget about my whole my whole case against her and stuff, you know, like what she's going through is absolutely horrible, you know, and I it's going to make me cry because I hate to see people suffering like that, you know. And how do we reach out to those people and get them help? You know what I mean?
196 Yeah. Thank you. Karen.
197 Can I can I just play one thing, one thing that carla said yesterday and this, like, it really started making me cry, too. This is carla. Oh, gosh darn it. Sorry. My phone was connected. I don't know why it's not blinking, but basically she said that nobody in Portland cares. They could care less about these people on the street. And I think we need to change the paradigm of that. And we need to get more outreach workers out there talking, literally talking to these people instead of just saying, oh, yeah, we've opened these shelters, or we have these day centers or whatever, you know, because nobody's doing that.
198 I really appreciate you. Like, you know, I know you've you've been here a number of times and have been so frustrated with the city's response and the county's response. And I appreciate you demonstrating this sort of. Maturity in how you approached the situation and connecting with this person as a human being. Councilor Ryan.
199 Yeah, I'm just curious. Karen, have you gone to a county meeting and given testimony.
200 Multiple times?
201 Okay.
202 Multiple times. Thank you for, you know, they just they don't they don't do anything. Jvp sits up there in her little high horse with her $154,000 security guard and doesn't do anything. She's worried about libraries and libraries and preschool, for all you know. And like, where is she in this whole homeless thing? What are they doing? You know, and I hear the budget thing that you guys just talked about, you know, and they're like, why are why is the city that does infrastructure having to deal with the homeless stuff as much as why is not the county and somebody needs to call them out on that. Thank you. Big time. Big time. So thank you for letting me speak longer than I was.
203 Supposed to. Thank you. Karen.
204 That concludes testimony.
205 Thank you. Our next meeting of the houseless and homelessness and housing committee will be on Tuesday, October 21st. At that meeting, we're going to hear a report on appointments to the design review advisory committee, and stay tuned for other items that will be confirmed confirmed on the agenda. I will now adjourn the meeting of the homelessness and housing committee at 1:56 p.m.