"... But we can make it better. We can make it easier for people to get off the street. They do have a fairly good housing situation."Nashville's city officials and those who disburse funding to agencies that assist the Homeless would do well to review Portland's recipe for success. Now granted, the numbers themselves come from the city and this immediately makes them suspect in my mind, but if the percentages are even close to reality, Portland is doing something right.
The question puts Larry Bishop on the spot. The formerly homeless man looks relieved that it is being asked in a quiet place with no one besides a reporter to hear his answer.
Mr. Bishop, 59, leads guided tours of the shelters, social agencies, soup kitchens and other fixtures of this city's Old Town-Chinatown district to emphasize the humanity of the homeless. "I want the façade dropped of, 'They're all drunks and alcoholics; they're all criminals.' They are not,' " he says.
The question for Mr. Bishop, who has been largely homeless since 1967, is whether he thinks Portland will succeed in its 10-year plan to end homelessness, a goal that is supposed to be achieved by 2015.
"I hope I don't get into trouble," he says, chuckling in an alcove off the dining room of the Sisters of the Road Cafe, where the main lunch dishes - today's menu includes pasta with chicken sauce, salad and garlic bread - go for $1.25. "No. They will never end it. If you stop and think how long it has been going on anyway, for years, back in the Civil War days, Depression. ..."
His voice trails off, then picks up. "... But we can make it better. We can make it easier for people to get off the street. They do have a fairly good housing situation."
In fact, Mr. Bishop is among the 1,200 people who have been placed into permanent housing since the Portland homelessness program officially began on Jan. 1, 2005.
In addition, 1,681 families have been assisted in moving into permanent housing. About 700 units of permanent housing have been opened, with 300 more in the pipeline. The gap between the newly housed and the established housing has been filled because some have been helped into existing housing. Officials note that homelessness counts have dropped 39 per cent.
As a result, a lot Canadians are coming to look at this city at the junction of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers - and not just for its renowned brewpubs and rose gardens.
Liora Berry, a homeless-progra
Last week, Victoria followed Calgary and Ottawa in creating a commission to end homelessness. The target in the B.C. capital is to complete the job within five years. It was announced after a delegation from B.C. spent three days in Portland, about 500 kilometres south of Vancouver, meeting dozens of officials to try to figure out what this affable, charming city of about 600,000 people is doing right.
The Portland approach boils down to three key principles: Focus on the most chronically homeless; streamline access to existing services to prevent and reduce other homelessness; and concentrate resources on programs that offer measurable results.
It is all paid for by a complicated mix of municipal, state, federal and foundation money that is adding up to about $10-million a year for the city (a total $32-million for the region), according to one of the programs' key architects, city commissioner Erik Sten. Mr. Sten recently announced his resignation from municipal politics after a 12-year run on council that began when he was 28.
"Part of why I chose to leave is that I think we're at a good place - that somebody else can step in and take over," Mr. Sten said in an interview.
Canadian visitors have been charting Portland's progress closely. "We see a lot of Canadians. We e-mail with a lot of Canadians. We get a lot of calls from Canadians," says Sally Erickson, another homeless-progra
"They're asking for information on the 10-year plan. They're coming and talking to us about a variety of things, everything from specific programs to why would the police invest in this, to what are the benefits to the business community, and social-service provider relationships."
Mr. Sten, whose council responsibilitie
The most recent group was a delegation from Victoria, who were in Portland earlier this month. Nancy Taylor, a senior adviser on intergovernment
"We've struggled really hard to understand who has the best approach, the magic bullet to address homelessness," Ms. Taylor says. "And Portland has always been a model held up, at least for the last two to three years, in having some successes."
Ms. Taylor says staff from Victoria were in Portland a few years ago on another issue, and came back saying "the dirty little secret about Portland was the number of homeless people."
Things appear to be different now, she says, in a way that had the B.C. delegation desperate for answers after some time in the Oregon city, especially after they went out for a few evening walks and drew comparisons to the B.C. capital.
"On any given night in Victoria's downtown, you cannot go a block without coming across folks who are huddled in doorways sleeping.
"[In Portland] I did not see a single individual," she says. "I saw individuals with blankets. I did not see them sleeping in the streets. They were in transition from one place to another with blankets or pillows or whatever."
Victoria, Ms. Taylor says, could learn from Portland about the value of co-ordination, setting targets and rallying a community towards those targets and focusing on a "housing first approach" - the mantra in Portland - and targeting programs more precisely to those who need them.
"Personally, I think it's easier to rally people towards targets than it is to nebulous goals," she says.
B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman is skeptical about the idea of fixed targets, suggesting in a brief interview this week that he preferred to do "real stuff" than work toward deadlines.
"If you look at our commitment, it's way more immediate than the Portland commitment," he said at an announcement where the B.C. government said it would buy six single-room-occ
Mr. Coleman suggests Portland is building more new housing where B.C. is going into the market to acquire it. In Portland, the emphatic target came with some reservations, and officials hedge a bit on exactly what it means.
"What we envision is that at the end of the 10-year plan those people who are on the street will be in homes and those people who experience a housing crisis will experience just that, just a short-term housing crisis," Ms. Erickson says.
Mr. Sten says part of the push for an end-homelessness stand had to do with a federal willingness, under the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, to be more generous with funding for municipalities that endorsed such targeted plans.
But as the plan was being drafted over two years leading to its launch in 2005, Mr. Sten says he had doubts. "I actually didn't necessarily think we could get there. But I had this one moment where I was debating with some of my staff [over], 'Should we actually say it's a 10-year plan to end homelessness?'
"I actually said, 'I don't think it's a worthy goal to aspire to reduce homelessness.' Homelessness should be unacceptable," Mr. Sten said.
"We said if we're going to have a 10-year plan to end homelessness, let's have a 10-year plan to end homelessness. Let's try and go for it. I think we're on path."
Off the street, under a roof
On Jan. 1, 2005, the City of Portland and Multnomah County launched a 10-year plan to end homelessness, itemizing some goals that were supposed to be completed by Dec. 31, 2007. Here's a summary of the progress on those goals by June 30, 2007 (the most recent numbers available).
