PHB hears of big cuts to emergency shelter funding

Presenter: Lane County hears of big cuts ahead for emergency shelter funding. At the Poverty and Homelessness Board Nov. 20, Homelessness and Community Action Manager James Ewell: 

James Ewell (Lane County): Well, hello everyone. Here I am again to present a disappointing funding update to you all, but I think it’s important that we just, yeah, it’s important that we just are transparent and just to make sure this group is kind of fully up to date on where we’re at with the state funding.

[00:00:29] You’ll see a large reduction in funding for homelessness prevention coming. That’s largely state legislature feeling that there were other resources to address homelessness prevention, such as the HRSN (health-related social needs) benefit and just other resources, so they decided to not invest as heavily in homelessness prevention this year.

[00:00:49] Our diversion funding has remained largely the same. That funding source is ORI–the Oregon Rehousing Initiative. And so our diversion funds, which again briefly are really flexible, low-barrier ways to get folks who have housing identified into housing. And so it’s been a really successful program, and we’re happy to see that funding continue..

[00:01:09] We did finally learn our long-term rental assistance allocation. It is slightly less than we have previously received for that program. We are working forward with the providers to account for that reduction, there are some changes to programming that we may be able to do to help with that.

[00:01:26] One example being we previously have paid the first three months just in full, but we likely will move to folks that have income immediately starting to contribute to the subsidy. 

[00:01:38] And as I know you are all aware, probably the biggest hit or gap this year is in our emergency shelter funding.

[00:01:45] Emergency shelter funding, we are seeing a reduction of $11 million from last fiscal year down to $7.6 million. There was a press release between Lane County and the city of Eugene, that some of you may have seen that outlined some of these impacts.

[00:01:59] What we’re seeing is 60 overall fewer state-funded shelter beds. We’re seeing three fewer state-funded shelters.

[00:02:06] Carry It Forward / Sandbox Shelter and then Equitable Social Solutions / Garden Way Shelter are two shelters that are closing.

[00:02:16] And I want to be clear. I know there was some confusion I think that was caused by the press release. ShelterCare is not closing their Medical Respite shelter at 969. They are able to sustain it with other funding outside of state funding.

[00:02:30] So I think some of the language in that press release kind of led to people think that program is closing and it is not.

[00:02:37] I will say (and I believe this is accurate as of today) we have been successful in getting all of the shelter residents transferred to other shelters if that was what they were looking to do.

[00:02:49] There has also been a cost to agencies as far as their staffing: 32.3 full-time FTE staff either lost their positions with those agencies completely or for some, they were able to move to other positions within that agency.

[00:03:02] The county, we have two program service coordinators that are no longer on our team as a part of this reduction in funding as well. And along with it, a significant detriment is that the shelters are no longer going to be able to have dedicated housing-focused staff and supports for those shelter residents.

[00:03:20] We anticipate we will see fewer transitions from shelter into housing, less turnover in shelters because of that.

[00:03:29] St. Vincent de Paul is anticipating in regards to Egan that they will be reducing to three Egan sites. They are working to finalize those sites and they will be working with about a 50% reduction for Egan. I don’t want to speak for St. Vincent de Paul. But I know they are doing all they can to help keep as much of that, as much of Egan as they can. And obviously, I know Egan is a very well-supported program in our community and I’m hopeful for some opportunities with that as well.

[00:04:00] We did learn that, unfortunately, the request to the Emergency Board at the state to fill the gap in funding, we learned that that e-board request was not going to move forward.

[00:04:11] So that is where we are at with the state-specific funding.

[00:04:15] There will be an opportunity with the shelter funding, just being for this fiscal year, there will be an opportunity in June, July, for that funding to potentially return to the amounts that we had been receiving. And so we look forward to that as a potential opportunity.

[00:04:35] Kaarin Knudson (Eugene, mayor): Certainly city of Eugene has been very engaged in the statewide work to stand up the sustainable shelter funding bill. We have great partnerships with our county partners in this work. And I do think that looking into the future, it’s going to be increasingly important for all communities and our state to really be able to see the quality and the efficiency and the effectiveness of the work that is happening here in Lane County.

[00:05:03] And as it specifically relates to our emergency shelter work, I think also given the extraordinary resource constraints that we’re facing, the effectiveness and the fiscal responsibility that is attached in terms of average cost per bed and the effectiveness of that work.

[00:05:19] So I just wanted to say to this group that I think it is important that we share the successes that we’ve had here and that we also be speaking into the future as an example of what it might look like to have, say, a more consistent statewide allocation in terms of funding per bed and that this is a place where other jurisdictions could learn to be as efficient with every single dollar that we have learned how to be in the city of Eugene and with Lane County.

[00:05:51] So that sounds like a small project and could be also a communications project, but I think it’s going to be really important for us to assemble that information looking into this coming year.

[00:06:03] Presenter: The state cuts $3.4 million dollars from Lane County emergency shelter funding. That means Egan Warming Centers funding is cut in half and Lane County no longer has money to pay for two program service coordinators, three shelter programs, 32.3 agency FTE positions, and  60 shelter beds.