Revised: December 2018
By Sarah Owens and Michael Livingston
It's the first full week after Labor Day. Time to put away your summer whites and begin bashing the opposition for not having accomplished anything since last session, whilst you, on the other hand, have been working tirelessly for the good of all.
It's also the halfway point for the Mid Willamette Homeless Initiative Task Force; 6 months in, and 6 to go. After 10 hours of meetings of the full, 20-member Task Force plus 2 staff, video-taped by Keizer TV and attended by 27 presenters, about a third of the 29 "technical assistants" who were not presenting, and 65-70 others (some attending more than one meeting), at least 5 to 10 hours by the co-chairs in executive session and about 20 hours of committee meetings, public comments from 10 different people (maybe twice that, if you count the committee meetings) and more than 100 different documents handed out or posted to the Task Force's website, what has been accomplished?
As Commissioner Carlson put it, the Task Force has been "just kind of dabbling in topics", waiting for the committees to come forward with recommendations.
Recommendations for what, is unclear. Recall that, as discussed previously, Mayor Peterson told the Statesman Journal last January that she wanted the Task Force "to identify areas, projects or programs that aren't working as effectively as they need to be, stop any waste that is occurring, and redirect those funds and those activities." A few weeks later, Commissioner Carlson told Willamette Wake Up that it was important to support the area's social services providers because "they're doing great work" and the task force was not "here to suggest that what's happening now isn't working." Then, even as Salem, Keizer, Polk and Marion Counties were in the process of adopting a charter that identified the Task Force's purpose as being "to identify and launch proven strategies that will reduce homelessness" in those regions, Carlson was saying she wanted the Task Force to put "meat on the bones" of the Marion and Polk Counties' 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. However, before anyone could dust off their copy of that Plan, she was circulating preliminary drafts of what was to become an entirely new Strategic Plan, setting up a committee structure based on the plan, and directing each committee to return to the Task Force in September with at least two plan-related recommendations.
We've attended, or listened to, all but one of the meetings of all seven committees (not the Health and Housing Committee, which is an outside group that has agreed to give the Task Force its recommendations). All but one (Public Safety) are chaired by a member of the Task Force, and, with a couple of exceptions, their meetings all resemble mini-Task Force meetings, which is to say that they have been heavy on presentations and short on informed discussion. The committee members seem not at all sure why they are there, and their discussions are like murmurations of dunlin in slow motion, circling, circling, circling -- never or only briefly landing anywhere.
By our count, only two committees have voted on recommendations, for a total of five.
The Committees at the Halfway Point
The latter was charged to develop strategies that address foreclosure and eviction prevention, crisis intervention, vacant homes/property and credit recovery, but the committee chair, Mayor Peterson, said she wasn't interested in the crisis intervention/credit recovery pieces. She wanted to tackle financing collaborations for public and private dollars to increase affordable and multi-family housing instead. So she and her hand-picked committee of three local bankers, a property manager and a real estate mogul met once in May (theirs was the first committee to meet) and talked about how complex the problems were and how difficult it would be to find solutions they could support. Shortly thereafter, she decided to merge their meetings with the Affordable Housing Committee, as their goals were so similar, and exit Mayor Peterson from any more work in committee. (Recall that the Mayor has only a few months left in office and that she said last February that she expected the Task Force to take action after two or three meetings and was not interested in extensive planning).
The Affordable Housing Committee (chaired initially by Ron Hays, later by Councilor Bednarz because Hays got busy with Mountain West Investments Corporation's development of 180 units of affordable housing at 3350 Portland Road, among other projects) has met for four hours, most of it spent listening to Hays talk about how large the problem is and how complicated it is to finance affordable housing profitably. Other than supporting Mountain West's efforts, the committee are all at sea about what they might do beyond meeting and talking. Though Chair Bednarz is clearly troubled by the problems of poverty (his wife is a social worker and on the board of MWVCAA), he is just as clearly not willing to work to increase collaboration among housing providers (David Leith asked twice for this, nicely, during the August meeting), or put an affordable housing bond measure on the ballot (Hays asked three times, nicely). "Politically, I'm not sure that's possible", is how he put it (audio of August 29 meeting at ~00:57) when he was forced to respond, but his meaning was clear. (Recall that Chair Bednarz, who has for many years made a comfortable living investing in real estate, lost his bid for reelection, and, like Mayor Peterson, will be out of office in a few months.)
Goal 2 Committee - Transitional Housing and Shelters
This committee, chaired by David Leith (the only member of the Task Force beside Jon Reeves to sit on three committees), was supposed to develop strategies to address gaps in transitional housing and shelter beds. Of course, this assumes there are gaps, which was fine with the committee, who, except for the chair, are all transitional housing or shelter providers. However, after two hours of no-agenda meetings spent discussing, among other things, the demise of Home of the Brave and the difficulties with the long-planned Westcare veterans' shelter, UGM's, St. Francis Shelter's and the Center for Hope and Safety's plans to expand, and the advantages in more local housing providers using Servicepoint, the region's Homeless Management Information System, they had no recommendations, though they did agree that the bottleneck created by the lack of affordable housing is the immediate problem.
Goal 3 Committee - Support Services and Education
Verena Wessel chairs this committee, which is run by Commissioner Carlson. It is Carlson's only committee, and its charge is to develop strategies to enhance coordination and reduce gaps in support services. After two meetings, they voted to recommend that the Task Force "bring financial education to high school and middle school students" and "identify a training curriculum" that can be offered on-site to people in shelters and transitional housing. Carlson subsequently rewrote them to read:
1. Assist the school districts within Marion and Polk Counties to offer effective and relevant financial literacy training in selected schools through proven curriculum materials and community trainers.
2. Assist NEDCO, Maps Credit Union, and others in implementing site-based financial literacy training at selected community nonprofit organizations (UGM, Simonka House, St. Francis, etc.).What constitutes a "proven" curriculum in today's world was never discussed. Although Carlson was unable to persuade the committee to recommend that the Task Force pursue her idea for a $30K/yr homeless Network of Care webpage, which would have duplicated 211info, she did manage to get the committee to recommend that the Task Force "explore Community Data Link as a tool for improving regional service coordination and referrals." CDL would also duplicate 211info.
This third recommendation stands out as extremely odd for several reasons. 1) It assumes that 211info is inadequate and the model cannot be made to work, 2) it was made without notice to or consultation with 211info, 3) it was made without discussing the results of a survey of more than 100 providers about their experience with 211info, which was provided to the committee in advance of the meeting, 4) it was made with little or no information about CDL, six minutes after it was first mentioned, 5) it reverses the committee/Task Force roles, that is to say, it's a committee's job to "explore", not the governing body's.
Finally, on September 8, three members of the committee passed two recommendations in the last five minutes to promote WorkSource Oregon "as a hub to strengthen collaboration among local workforce development providers or agencies" and Cherriots' efforts to "train providers on how to connect clients and transit services."
Goal 4 Committee - Public Safety
This committee was charged with developing strategies and new approaches for addressing public safety issues relating to homelessness, including runaway and homeless youth (RHY). It's not chaired by a member of the Task Force, so Commissioner Carlson's been helping out when she's available, even though she's not on the committee. After the first meeting, they decided to focus on RHY strategy.
After the second meeting, the committee voted to recommend that the Task Force "expand RHY services" and, at Carlson's urging, "endorse 'Phase 1' of the Marion County DA's strategy for dealing with drug charges" (referred to as "Step 1" in the DA's presentation). She also suggested they set up a "grant-writing" sub-committee, which she promptly joined. On the agenda for that meeting, but not reached, were were these proposed recommendations: "expansion of detox beds", "community education - panhandling - product vs. money", and "fund organizational work vs. [giving] money to panhandlers."
Goal 6 Committee - Veterans
This committee is focused on housing and supportive services for veterans. Co-chaired by Commissioner Wheeler and Task Force member Steve Bobb, the committee has had two, very well-attended meetings. These meetings were much more upbeat than those of the other committees, partly due to the relative wealth of resources for this population, but also because of the enthusiasm of the participants. No recommendations have come out of this committee.
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| Meeting Matrix |
The Task Force's smallest committee is chaired by Jon Reeves and called the "Focus Groups/Coalition Coordination" committee. According to the "Meeting Matrix" (which has had several iterations), someone, presumably this committee, was supposed to have begun conducting focus groups and community forums last March, and provide feedback to the Task Force in September. But, that didn't happen, as they say. The first community forum is set to take place at CANDO's September 20 meeting.
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