Council Sets Ambitious 2020 Policy Agenda

Revised 19 February 2020

By Sarah Owens and Michael Livingston

Originally published 2/14/20 under the title "Homeless Crisis Meets 2020 Policy Agenda."  Revisions reflect actual events of the work session.

The work session on the 2020 Policy Agenda was originally scheduled for January 21, 2020, but things kinda got out of hand with the emergency declaration that had been tacked onto the agenda the week before, and the 2020 Policy Agenda was postponed.

Deliberations on annual Council Policy Agendas are not supposed to open with emergency declarations.  Policy agendas are about planning, and emergency declarations and appropriations are, well, the opposite.  So it was probably a good thing that it was postponed, even though the emergency continues through March 31.  

The policy agenda replaces the "wish list" in the budget process.  It's supposed to encourage discipline and restraint.  The wish-listy items covered in this year's staff report came from a  November 18, 2019 work session.  The idea behind the policy agenda was to let staff know what to focus on in the coming year, and give staff a chance to tell councilors what's wrong with their proposals before they're put in the budget.  Sometimes, the strategy works.    

In attendance were Mayor Bennett and Councilors Ausec, Hoy, Nordyke, Nanke and Kaser.  Lewis, Andersen and Leung were absent.

Council added a "single property urban renewal area" (the 10 acres set aside for multifamily) for affordable housing, removed organized camping (new $) as "we've already voted against it."  They went against staff recommendation and retained both the sobering center and the mobile crisis response unit (new $).  They retained the low-barrier shelter/nav center (new $) and deferred expanding the work of the Downtown Clean Team (new $).

The mobile crisis response unit or "Community Response Unit" (CRU) as United Way of the Mid-Willamette Valley is calling its pilot project (see various project updates in the Downtown Good Neighbor Partnership meeting notes here).  CRU is  currently expected to begin July 1 and end October 30 and cost about $500K/yr to operate.  United Way is actively fund-raising for the van.  CRU will not be sustainable without funding from the City, which logically would come from the police or fire departments, something neither Chief Moore nor Chief Niblock appear to support. 

Bennett wanted to know how CRU would fit with the Marion County LEAD program.  Chief Moore advised the Council that the LEAD program was simply "a couple of individuals who go out on the streets and try to contact probably almost everyone there and trying to perhaps convince them to better their lives and try and get into some sort of treatment or something to defeat the demons that might keep them on the streets."

Staff essentially recommended that the City trade its 2017 sobering center wish for the shelter/nav center, but Bennett, Nordyke and Kaser wanted to keep the sobering center despite being told the project was effectively "dead" due to the $.5M/yr operations funding gap.  Bennett said he was concerned not to "lose the impetus of having the space" for it at 615 Commercial Street (aka The ARCHES Project building).  For the story of the apocryphal sobering center, see "Let's Make a Sobering Deal" (1 December 2017);  "Sobering Thoughts" (15 June 2018);  "Sobering Center Sustainable?" (10 November 2018);  "Sobering Ctr Operating Gap Widens" (13 January 2019);  "City to Build Despite Ops Funding Gap" (25 January 2019);  "City Admits Sobering Ctr Might Be 'Unattainable'" (12 March 2019).

Portland Central Concern recently closed its Portland sobering facility and ended its van transport service, citing "concerns for the safety of patients and staff, who they said were no longer able to give the level of medical care required by most people who arrived at the center."  See Bailey, E. "Central City Concern closes Portland sobering station."  (6 January 2010, The Columbian.) 

The agency said they received more and more patients in the midst of a mental crisis, agitated from opioid or meth use or a combination of both, leading to increased safety risks.

“More and more, we’re seeing people ending up in the sobering center when they should be in places where they can be given medication and a higher level of monitoring until their crisis subsides,” Dr. Amanda Risser, Central City Concern’s senior medical director of substance use disorder services told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an interview last week. “We don’t have medicine, we don’t have padded safety rooms and we don’t have the resources at the sobering center to do the hands-on intervention that happens in psychiatric centers. It just isn’t an acceptable risk anymore.”

She said the agency recently implemented new screening criteria for accepting patients that weeded out people at high risk to threaten or harm themselves or others.

Risser said the station accepted eight to 10 people a day before the new screening was implemented and but just two to three afterward.

Update:  Bernstein, M. "Whistleblower reveals serious injuries, lax oversight at Central City Concern’s Sobering Station."  (27 June 2020, Oregonian/Oregon Live.)

possible site of low barrier shelter at 1185 22d St SE

Regarding the low-barrier shelter, the staff report speculated that the City "could partner with a non-profit service provider for operations and possibly contribute to operational costs through general fund grants or TOT grants" (emphasis added).  Staff estimate a 100 bed low-barrier shelter would cost $1.36M/yr to staff and maintain.  That's over and above the cost to lease/purchase.  As with the sobering center before it, staff are encouraging councilors to hope that "there may be state funding available to support operations."  In addition to the low-barrier overnight shelter, the City's hoping to fund a (separate) 24/7 navigation center, probably in what's known as the ARCHES building at 615 Commercial Street NE.  The nav center would probably include 30-40 low-barrier beds for clients enrolled in ARCHES housing programs.