State Issues "Historic" Housing Plan

By Sarah Owens and Michael Livingston

OHCS Dir Salazar and Gov Brown 2/11/19

On February 11, the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department (OHCS) issued the Statewide Housing Plan (Plan), which the Governor announced at a press conference.  The Plan aims to eliminate housing instability and homelessness in Oregon. 

Asked to explain what the plan would mean to the average person ("there have been so many plans"), Governor Brown said the plan was a "road map" for the legislature, and that  her focus for the session was getting families with children "off the streets", "building more permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless", and "making sure that we take care of our 1,400 veterans that are homeless."  Brown said her budget for permanent supportive housing is "more robust" than what the Plan calls for, and that the state had never before invested at this level ($400M) in affordable housing.

OHCS Director Margaret Salazar said the Plan was unlike previous plans because of its "historic engagement across state agencies and across sectors."  She said ending homelessness is really about "wrapping together all that the state has to provide."  "That's the real difference [in the plan]", she said, "it's not just what our agency can do...it's about how [all] our [state] agencies can come together to support a common goal, and work in the same direction."  Salazar also said that OHCS had never produced a statewide housing plan at this level of engagement and data analysis.

Although Brown's priorities include the chronically homeless, the Plan's do not.  The Plan's priority populations are unsheltered veterans and families with children.  We asked Jimmy Jones, the Executive Director of the Mid Willamette Valley Community Action Agency, whether he agreed with prioritizing these populations.  (By statute, OHCS distributes state homeless assistance funds through local community action agencies.  MWVCAA received roughly $4.5M in homeless assistance from OHCS in FY 2017.)  His response (by email) was:

No I do not.  I appreciate that the state is willing to invest in Permanent Supportive Housing, which is part of the Statewide Housing Plan.  We desperately need to get 50 of those 500 units that the state intends to build in Marion County.  But generally families experiencing homelessness are lower needs individuals, who have other resources, and veterans as a whole already have a great number of federal resources that make their wait times far shorter than non-veterans.  Every local, state, and federal homeless resource needs to prioritize unsheltered chronic homelessness, especially frequent users of service engagements.

Read an executive summary of the Plan here.