Governor supports sustainable shelter, work group members at hearing

Presenter: The governor appeared before the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness Feb. 24 to speak on behalf of HB 3644. Based on recommendations from the Sustainable Shelter Work Group, the bill would establish a statewide shelter program administered by regional coordinators. Gov. Tina Kotek:

[00:00:20] Gov. Tina Kotek: When Rep. (Pam) Marsh suggested to me that we needed to have a work group to bring some systemization to the shelter work that’s happening around the state right now, it seemed the appropriate time.

[00:00:31] And you’re going to hear from people today in the Sustainable Shelter Work Group who came together for several months and did tremendously good work to talk about what we need in the state of Oregon to serve folks who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

[00:00:45] And (I was) very impressed with the expertise and commitment around the table… and the product that you have of their work is the bill that’s up in the committee today.

[00:00:54] Presenter: Tammy Baney:

[00:00:56] Tammy Baney: My name is Tammy Baney and I’m the executive director of COIC (Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council), Central Oregon’s council of governments, representing Crook, Deschutes, Jefferson and the cities therein; the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs as well.

[00:01:07] I am also honored to have served on the Sustainable Shelter Work Group, the ‘How We Fund’ subgroup. And as many of you know of the natural beauty in Central Oregon that has led to our region’s exponential growth over the last 25 years. 2040 projections show that Central Oregon will need to build an additional 58,000 housing units, 56,000 in Bend alone to accommodate growth.

[00:01:32] To put this into perspective, Bend added a mix of roughly 2,500 housing units in the past two years. However, this is a far cry from the 3,733 units they will need to build each year for the next 15 years to meet the need. That said, for those who can access rentals or housing, 48.5% are rent-burdened, paying over 50% of their income in housing. Quite frankly, homelessness is a housing crisis.

[00:01:58] Given these numbers, it should be no surprise that on any given night, there are nearly 1,800 neighbors unhoused in Central Oregon, and this number represents a population larger than 122 cities in Oregon. 1,244 of those neighbors are unsheltered, most living on our public lands, one area in particular called ‘Dirt World,’ hunkered down in tents, makeshift shelters, and vehicles.

[00:02:23] Most alarming is the fact that 223 are children under the age of 18 and 91 are veterans. We know that 66% of those surveyed have lived in Central Oregon longer than five years and 51% actually living in Central Oregon longer than 10 years. And we also know that this number is an underrepresentation of the need.

[00:02:43] I share this as a backdrop to our support for House Bill 3644. COIC, as a council of governments, alongside our community action agency, supports the work of our all-volunteer continuum of care organization, the Homelessness Leadership Coalition.

[00:02:58] And we work to address homelessness. Building upon the investments by local government and with the recent investments from the governor’s executive order and the Oregon Legislature, our network of cities, counties, our nonprofit and faith-based service providers have expanded outreach and life-saving services.

[00:03:16] We have kept hundreds of people from dropping into homelessness. We have rapidly rehoused over 300 households and we have added nearly 200 emergency shelter beds. Emergency shelter, particularly when most of our neighbors are coming in from our public lands, provides a warm or cool safe place to stay and access to basic services.

[00:03:36] Once stable, they can then work to address medical needs, employment goals, connect with counseling services, and we can support them in finding housing. The framework of House Bill 3644 creates a much-needed shelter program. The bill allows regions to determine the best administrative structure with approval from OHCS which will achieve the goals set by the legislature, let alone their own local communities. It builds on the assets across the state rather than a one-size-fits-all plan.

[00:04:06] This will also save precious time, tax dollars and reduce duplication as regions would not need to reinvent their structures. Instead, they can stay focused on outcomes. As the legislature debates about early childhood funding and older adult programs, education and workforce development, I will leave you with this.

[00:04:26] We must stay focused on addressing the homelessness crisis, as I can assure you that the over 1,244 unsheltered neighbors in Central Oregon are not entering the classroom ready to learn, they are not able to access critical medical resources, and they are not showing up to work mentally and physically ready to work.

[00:04:47] Emergency shelter, safe parking and all elements of the bill in front of you are crucial to solving homelessness. I ask for your support of House Bill 3644. Please hold us accountable. We will achieve the goals. Thank you.

[00:05:02] Presenter: Jimmy Jones:

[00:05:03] Jimmy Jones: My name is Jimmy Jones. I’m the executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency here in Salem, and the vice president of the Community Action Partnership of Oregon, and I’m here this afternoon to speak on behalf and in favor of House Bill 3644.

[00:05:16] My agency operates two of the Project Turnkey motels, those are 75-room motels. We also operate the navigation center here in the city of Salem. That’s another 75 beds. In 2018, we had zero shelter beds as an agency, and today I’m sitting here with 302.

[00:05:31] My partner DJ Vincent from Church at the Park also has a nearly another 300 beds. Our region has grown from 200 shelter beds to more than 1,200 shelter beds between around 2019 and today.

[00:05:43] I don’t know where most of you were 10 years ago, but I was thinking earlier this morning, 10 years ago this week, the legislature was in session, and the budget that was appropriated for the two primary homeless accounts back in 2015, which was the Emergency Housing Account and the State Homeless Assistance Program, EHA and SHAP.

[00:06:00] The EHA budget was about $15 million for the biennium. And the SHAP budget, which was the state’s primary sheltering fund back in 2015, was $3.4 million for the biennium. And you can read that number a lot of different ways. One of the ways that I read it is that we really were not yet taking this problem seriously across the state.

[00:06:20] Presenter: Noting that Senate Bill 850 required reporting on the deaths of homeless individuals, Jimmy Jones.

[00:06:27] Jimmy Jones: You look at the Oregon Health Authority’s website. As a result of a Senate Bill (850) from a few years ago, they have begun to track homeless deaths in Oregon. I’m very proud of this activity. We are the only state that I know of that tracks it consistently on a statewide basis from year to year.

[00:06:42] In 2023, we had around 650 deaths of unsheltered homeless individuals outside. In 2024, that dropped by nearly 100 back to around 550. So what we’re doing is working. It’s making progress. We’re housing an awful lot of folks, but this is the next step in making sure that we have the greatest accountability possible in the system.

[00:07:01] Cindy Timmons: My name is Cindy Timmons. I’ll be honest. I was honored to be asked to be part of the Governor’s Homelessness and Housing Work Group. I brought a rural perspective. My office, I am a Umatilla County Commissioner and my office is in Pendleton. I live in Milton-Freewater, Oregon. And if you don’t know where that is, it’s about 10 miles south of Walla Walla.

[00:07:22] The first thing I learned when being part of this group is, is that one size does not fit all. That’s for sure. We’ll get into that in a minute.

[00:07:31] But, I just wanted to bring up a couple of points. One, with this bill, I’m very, very pleased with how this turned out. We need flexibility and funding, and one of the reasons is car parks, RV parks, I think it’s termed as safe parking, that’s not going to happen on the east side of the Cascades. We have ordinances against that.

[00:07:53] And so we need flexibility and funding in order to help those folks in our counties. As of right now, our local community action agency, which is called CAPECO, they cannot plan a course until we get to the end of the legislative session to know how much money that they have. So it would be nice to know we have secure funding and the longevity of it.  

[00:08:18] The regional coordinator: wonderful idea. And the stage has already been set for that in rural Oregon.

[00:08:26] Nobody’s mentioned transportation, but I live in a county that’s 3,200 square miles and I have some frontier towns with absolutely no services. And so when folks show up in these towns, they’re given a meal. And they’re taken back out to the highway, and we’re talking about a two-lane road here, and they’re told, ‘Don’t come back now, you hear?’…

[00:08:48] Morrow, Gilliam, and Wheeler County have no shelter beds. Union and Wallowa County, they have emergency shelter, but they do not have like Pendleton, like Umatilla County does. And even we, we’re kind of slim pickings, but you know what? I think we do a very good job with what we have. So I just wanted to make sure that you knew that transportation dollars were huge.

[00:09:15] So bottom line, shelters need to know that they have operation funds. Funds need to be flexible. On-site case management: We need to stabilize people. We need to bust those barriers. And we need to provide life education classes for client success. And that’s been mentioned several times here today.

[00:09:37] A regional coordinator, you bet. In fact, we’ve already got one in place in our end of the state. And it is important that that regional coordinator is selected by the region that they are serving, not by the state. And fortunately, that happened with our LPG (Local Planning Group) group, and they’ve been extremely successful.

[00:09:58] Presenter: Rick Russell:

[00:09:59] Rick Russell: I’m Rick Russell. I’m a pastor from Redmond, Oregon and serve as the executive director of a sheltering organization. I’m here today to speak in favor of HB 3644, and I am grateful that funding is included for vehicular sheltering.

[00:10:15] I think you know the concept: We provide a safe, secure, legal place for people who are living in vehicles and pair them with a case manager to work towards stable housing. Last year we served 140 individuals and over 50% of the people who come into our program will leave our program for permanent housing. 

[00:10:34] Women, women with children, and assault survivors often feel safer in their own vehicles than they do in congregate shelter settings. Our participants are looking for safety above all else: that they would not be harmed; that their belongings would not be stolen; that they could park without fear of neighbor comment or law enforcement intervention.

[00:10:57] Safe parking is a less expensive form of sheltering than many other forms. And communities, smaller communities in our region that have been skeptical or resistant to provide new shelter options, are sometimes more open to safe parking alternatives because the site setup is simple and temporary and provides a way for small communities to pilot something new with a lesser commitment.

[00:11:20] Central Oregon lives with a significant wildfire risk, and part of that risk is that we have folks living in vehicles in high fire risk areas. We need more locations for people to leave the forest and to come into a structured environment.

[00:11:37] A recent survey by Deschutes County Behavioral Health staff conducted near the forest of Sisters found that over half of the people living in that area would come into a safe parking program if there was space available.

[00:11:51] And when people experience safety and stability, they move from 24-hour survival mode to long-term thinking and planning toward a better future. And that’s where we’re there to provide that stability and work with them toward that stability. And so I encourage your support for vehicular sheltering. And I appreciate your time.

[00:12:10] Presenter: In the House Feb. 24, Gov. Tina Kotek:

[00:12:13] Gov. Tina Kotek: We haven’t solved all the problems, but we have created a system that needs to be sustained and maintained and the state has to have a role. So what you see in the bill and the hard work of the work group is systemizing what has been happening, taking a regional approach, taking a approach that says we must get people housed in different types of ways determined by the communities through their consideration of what works best.

[00:12:42] The state is a partner. We’re not telling folks what to do. We’re guiding and saying we need some consistency across the state. We have to have measurable outcomes. We need to know how the dollars are producing the outcomes we need and that we’re going to walk side by side to do this work.  

[00:12:58] And so I know when you’re looking at this bill, you’re going to see the things you like: You’re going to see local participation and partnership, regional collaboration, clear metrics, outcomes and reporting that will be part of this system. And it also includes a financial ask of $219 million. That is a portion of the larger $700 million ask that’s in my budget around serving folks who are experiencing homelessness.

[00:13:28] It is one critical piece… Shelter is not the goal. Rehousing is the goal. And so, I believe without this bill, we’re going to keep churning and causing a lot of inconsistency in the system. Let’s be clear with Oregonians what we need to be doing. Let’s fund it. Let’s support the work of partners around the state who are doing this hard work.

[00:13:48] And I would urge your support of the bill. It’s a really good bill and it’s where we need to go next. So thank you.

[00:13:55] Presenter: The sustainable shelter bill gets its first hearing in the House.