Mayor praises Gov. Kotek for statewide approach on housing, homelessness

Mayor Lucy Vinis is excited about the 2025 legislative session, as Oregon moves toward a statewide framework for addressing both housing and homelessness. At the Intergovernmental Relations Committee Sept. 4:

Ethan Nelson: Over the course of July and August, in addition to lots of good vacation and time away, there was also a substantial amount of work that’s been happening. We hosted a tour of Eugene’s shelter system and we were able to really help the legislative committee really understand that Eugene is different than every other community in the state, due to the numbers of unhoused individuals in our community.

[00:00:43] The size of our resources is a lot less than the size of the resources in Portland and Multnomah County. And so when you’re trying to draw comparisons, there really is no comparison. As you all know, many times Eugene is the per capita highest concentration of unhoused individuals in the country, not just the state. And so we really wanted to get the committee to understand that.

[00:01:09] Mayor Vinis participated. We had a lot of shelter providers engaged in participating. We also were able to help the committee leadership understand why we’ve been successful with the model that we have related to the car camping and the rest stops and Everyone Village and the ‘village model’ and how city of Eugene’s investment in coordination is paying off.

[00:01:37] And there’s people from Portland who are asking questions about ‘Why aren’t you experiencing these types of numbers, including like overdoses and stuff?’ Well, our program is different. We have a lot of coordination, and when somebody comes into the program and if they’re unsuccessful in one shelter model, shelter providers coordinate and are able to move that person to where they’re going to be successful.

[00:02:01] Ultimately, we’re seeking to have the types of shelter, which we provide, which we found to be innovative and successful and cost-effective, to be incorporated into the state’s framework and also become eligible for state funding in future biennium budgets.

[00:02:20] And so we feel like that was a very successful event and follow-up. Out of that, Rep. (Pam) Marsh (chair of the Interim Committee on Housing and Homelessness) created a sustainable shelter work group, which Mayor Vinis is one of three representatives. The city of Bend has similar interests as Eugene related to seeking state funding so we’re really coordinating to have a very targeted message within that work group so that, when that work group’s recommendations come on out and are the basis for a bill or a statewide framework that would be adopted and funded that our thumbprint and our influence has been put in there too.

[00:02:58] And so right now, what the governor and what Rep. Marsh is doing a lot because of our input and our advocacy over the past year has been to say, ‘We need a framework statewide.’

[00:03:09] ‘We need to be able to identify what the full spectrum is of services and interventions from when somebody is unhoused on a right-of-way, on public property, to when they are in market-rate housing and there’s shelter provision and services the entire way through.’ We need to build that and then we need to adequately fund it. We need to identify who’s responsible for what. And that is what this framework is.

[00:03:39] Councilor Greg Evans: Okay. So basically just reinvention of the county a few years ago, with the TAC report. We’re looking at it from a statewide perspective.

[00:03:50] Mayor Lucy Vinis: We worked with the League of Oregon Cities to advocate for, you know, sustained— We wanted 10 years of funding to support the homeless services cities were doing. It went nowhere. And the governor was very clear last year that she just wasn’t going to support it. It was a model that she didn’t like, that she just didn’t think would work.

[00:04:08] And to her credit, she had turned around and said, ‘I turned you down on that because I want to do something better. I want to do something more thorough and more complete.’ And so this is her coming back and saying, ‘Yeah, I wasn’t willing to just take this that I didn’t think was adequate or appropriate and I want to create a better framework for it.’

[00:04:25] So I think it’s a huge step forward for us as a state and I’m really, I’m pretty excited about the leadership there and the commitment by the governor too, and Rep. Marsh. I’ve been on a committee of hers before and she just gets the work done. She’s really good. When she says, ‘We need recommendations by December,’ she’s going to have them. So I’m pretty excited about the whole endeavor.

[00:04:48] John Q: The legislature is expected to address the Supreme Court decision on homelessness.

[00:04:53] Ethan Nelson: The Supreme Court’s decision in the Grants Pass case and a relook at House Bill 3115… 3115 was a codification of the Boise v. Martin case that, with the Ninth Circuit’s courts really said, , cities can’t take action, , on enforcing, , camping laws or anything unless there’s a place for people to go and the state, , came to the statute.

[00:05:17] And so currently the city of Eugene’s code and our practices all align with the state statute. There’s nothing that the Eugene City Council can do at the local level that would change what we’re doing right now. It needs to be a change in state law.

[00:05:34] Mayor Lucy Vinis: The legislature and also the governor’s office (are) talking about a framework for sustainable shelters. That’s one framework. And then the second framework is how do we respond to the homelessness and there’s this intersection.

[00:05:48] And it’s at a really important intersection. And so as we’re having this conversation, constantly coming back to that intersection, that we’re not doing one piece of this, which is the sort of enforcement side of it, we’re actually doing this other piece, which is how do we provide more opportunities.

[00:06:03] John Q: In this case, she said she’s okay with giving up some local control.

[00:06:07] Mayor Lucy Vinis: How do we have a coherent system for addressing a statewide problem and this is a place in which I’m not so bullish on local control, because I think Eugene suffers from that.

[00:06:19] If we have different systems, then you just have a laboratory pattern for someone who’s on shelter looking for the most lenient system. If you really want to share the burden and the responsibility for addressing this, you have a statewide program where there’s consistency across the board, and both things happen. It’s married: How you’re dealing with homelessness who are still unsheltered and how you’re providing shelter. Those two things are married together, and they’re done, and it’s statewide.

[00:06:45] Going forward, if you’re looking at where we want to be 20 years from now, it gives you a consistent landscape to work with. And a patchwork where every city does its own thing, you’ll never get there.

[00:06:54] John Q: The League of Oregon Cities is also working on the statewide framework.

[00:06:59] Ethan Nelson: There are interests at work across the state to have these conversations and come up with a statewide framework with LOC, other cities, more than likely the Association of Chiefs of Police, sheriffs, law enforcement, there’s probably going to be a package that gets worked. We’re going to continue to see more, and will gather more information, the closer we get to the session.

[00:07:26] John Q: Over the summer, a second legislative committee also visited Eugene.

[00:07:31] Ethan Nelson: The legislature is focused in on producing the transportation package and so there was a transportation tour and then here locally from the legislative committee and then we provided testimony.

[00:07:47] And the focus on those is really ODOT’s sustainable budget and coming up with funding for the projects that were approved in 2017 but do not have adequate resources. ODOT has been telling the legislature for a number of biennium, ‘Here’s where our funding needs are, and here’s where our revenues are, and there’s a gap.’ And so ODOT is now at this point saying, ‘Well, okay, we’ve been telling you, we got to the point where we don’t have resources to do maintenance and the work we need to do.’

[00:08:18] And so last year, it was a short session, you remember, and the transportation issue was, ‘We don’t have money to do winter storm removal.’ And so the legislature hustled and provided additional funds to get through the winter.

[00:08:36] John Q: Mayor Vinis will participate on the legislative sustainable shelter work group, as the League of Oregon Cities and others help craft a statewide framework for addressing housing and homelessness.