Now to a follow up on our story about
Houston solution to their homeless crisis.
They used a housing first approach
to move 25,000 people off the streets
over the past ten years and the mayor
told us most of those people are
still in their apartments right now.
The idea was to get people into
apartments directly from the street
without having to go through shelters and
without having to be clean and sober.
Seems like it's working in a big way.
Check it out.
Their count of homeless people per 10,000
people went from 21 per 10,000 and 2011 to.
Seven per 10,000 in 2021.
During that same time period,
Multnomah County's rate went from 23 people
per 10,000 to 63 homeless per 10,000 people.
Those numbers nearly tripled
in Multnomah County.
One viewer Jen was thrilled
by the housing first model.
Yes, housing first is an amazing
model and we should be utilizing it.
The vast majority of housing in Portland
is designated clean and sober. She wrote.
And that is an important niche.
But people not sleeping on concrete are
more likely to consider recovery than those.
Offering outside,
well, Jen,
you will be happy to know that our
area also has adopted that housing.
First model had a chance to talk
today with Shannon Singleton.
She's the interim director for
the Joint Office of Homeless
Services in the Portland area
in Portland. Housing first,
looks like both we need to have
additional development of new apartments,
but it also looks like us moving
people in with those types of
rent subsidies and the long term
rent subsidies into some of those
market rate existing apartments.
So it's a both.
And and I want to be clear that part
of again the comparison to Houston
is their development and ability to
add and a lot of new apartments to
the mix is what made their numbers
continue to drop year over year,
which leads to our next e-mail question
Kate wrote into ask a simple question.
We still never heard where all those
one bedroom apartments came from.
Kate's referring to Houston,
and it's a good question Kate.
Thanks for sending it.
It appears that they had
a surplus of apartments.
They're in Houston when
they started their program,
and probably more available
apartments than Portland,
the mayor told us though it is getting
harder to place people now than
earlier in the program because they
are running out of apartment space.
Singleton,
with the Joint Office of Homeless
Services said in the past nine months,
the office here has moved 2770 people
off the streets or out of shelters and
into housing in the greater Portland area.
And she said her office has supplied us
or her office did supply us with these stats,
showing that.
Over the last seven years,
nearly 33,000 people were moved into housing.
The office warned the numbers are a bit
fuzzy because the way things were tracked,
they suggest 10% lower is probably
closer to the real total,
but it is impressive,
and it made me wonder why are homeless
to population per 10,000 people
went up when Houstons went down?
Remember that is it because the
local homeless population is
growing and there's just not enough
available apartments right now.
I was hoping for a number at least.
It estimated range from
Singleton as you'll see,
though we never got there.
I did edit this answer for brevity.
Yeah, I was wondering about that myself
and we had some viewers who asked.
OK, where are all these
apartments gonna come from?
Do you have any guesses of how many
available apartments there are?
So we we are both doing
with the housing bond development
and I would say again, all of this
has been very intentional over time.
Part of what we did with the Portland
housing bond was to say we really need
a local funding source to build housing
for people at our lowest income levels.
The market has never solved for
zero to 30% of area median income,
and we don't expect that to suddenly change.
And but do you have a educated guess
on how many available apartments there
are in the greater Portland area?
I I don't off the top of my head.
I would really continue to look
at the reports that we see out of
the Portland Housing Bureau about
the state of housing in Portland,
and particularly the the cuts that
they take around affordability levels.
Those are the spaces that we can also
start to see what is available out there.
But frankly, what is our deficit
and how do we as a community?
Address the housing development needs
well. I did take a look at the
latest report I could find from
the Portland Housing Bureau,
and well, it does have a lot
of interesting information.
It does not estimate the number
of available apartments for
people who are homeless or even
for those who are not homeless.
Here's another question from a viewer Robert,
he wanted to know who pays
the rent in Houston.
Well, Robert, that answer is taxpayers.
Some of the money in Houston is local.
Some comes from the state,
some from the federal government.
Same thing in Portland,
and it's all taxpayer money by the way.
The reason I wanted to know about
available apartments here is if we
are years away from having enough
for those who are now homeless.
That, in my opinion we need to be honest
about it and move to other options.
In the meantime,
if there is enough space and we just need
better coordination between all the groups,
trying to help,
well then that needs to happen.
Immediately,
renters and homeowners are losing patience,
and they're tired of waiting
for distant solutions.
That's my opinion anyway.
What's your take?
You don't have to agree with me,
that's fine,
but let me know what you're
thinking about that you could
send an e-mail to the story at
kgwn.com or leave a voicemail
503-226-5090. I look
forward to hearing from you.