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But behind the nose rings are many sad stories. According to a three-year study of Portland's homeless teens by the Oregon Research Institute ("Sex, Drugs and Bedrolls," page 28), many have escaped from abusive families. Most have considered suicide. Some of them first hit the pavement at 11 or 12 years old. Are they needy? You bet. Has this community done right by them? Not by a long shot. County government is responsible for providing social services, but homeless youth haven't been high on Multnomah County's list of priorities. For years, the only social safety net between these kids and drugs, prostitution and sometimes death were three downtown agencies--Outside In, the Salvation Army Greenhouse and Janus Youth Programs--and their shoestring budgets. Two developments in the past eight months have dramatically changed this static landscape. In August, New Avenues for Youth opened its doors on Southwest 10th Avenue with a bulging wallet full of donations and an entirely new way of treating homeless kids. Then, earlier this year, a report on the homeless youth situation harshly criticized county government and the trinity of longtime service providers. According to the report, government failed taxpayers and homeless kids by funding programs without requiring any proof that they're successful. The three agencies, in turn, failed the kids by being too slow to move them off the streets. New Avenues, however, won high praise, even though the program was less than six months old. "The implications are, 'You guys did a terrible job, and we're going to bring in a new group [New Avenues] that's closer to our philosophy and they're going to do a wonderful job,'" says Bob Durston, former director of a program for homeless adults and currently the top aide to City Commissioner Erik Sten. Neither of these developments--the opening of New Avenues nor the scathing report--is the work of traditional social service interests. Both are products of a cadre of business types who, in every bedroll slung over a teen-ager's shoulder, saw evidence of the failure of government and social service providers. By year's end, it appears, these business leaders will have effectively refashioned homeless youth services in their own image, a task they seem to be accomplishing with remarkable ease. If the suit-and-tie crowd is right, it will be the best thing that ever happened to this city's homeless youth. If not, there will be more kids sleeping under this city's bridges than ever before. It just doesn't add up. There are up to 1,500 homeless kids on the city's streets during any given year, according to county estimates, yet in downtown Portland, there are only 30 emergency shelter beds for youth. Another 15-25 kids can flop on a cot in the basement of the First Congregational Methodist Church during the winter. For kids trying to leave street life, the choices are just as limited. In downtown Portland, there are just 55 "transitional beds" where a kid can temporarily live in a supervised setting. Portland Public Schools funds an alternative high school at the Salvation Army Greenhouse, but it only has room for 25 to 30 students a day. Last year, Multnomah County government allocated $492,000 to downtown homeless youth services. The city kicked in another $173,500. All told, local government spends 25 percent less per capita on homeless youth than it spends on homeless adults, despite the fact that youth, by definition, need more services. "We can give million[s] for OMSI," Greenbrier CEO William Furman told the City Council last month, "yet in public money we have trouble coming up with $1 million a year for the city's living room for children who are living under bridges." Last year, the Association for Portland Progress, a downtown business group, and the Citizens Crime Commission, a Portland Metro Chamber of Commerce affiliate, set out to do something about it. In April they formed a 12-person committee of heavy hitters, including Republican leader Craig Berkman, PacifiCorp executive Paul Lorenzini and retired Police Cmdr. Edward May. The committee also included people like Furman, who for years has given both time and money to programs that serve homeless youth. Former U.S. Rep. Les AuCoin and Oregonian Publisher Fred Stickel signed on as co-chairmen, lending the group even more prestige. The CCC/APP also decided to hire Andy Olshin, a lawyer who worked for the City of San Francisco's homeless youth division. He would be the group's consultant, its in-house expert on the subtleties of serving this enigmatic population. After eight months of research, the group issued a 43-page report that is hard-hitting, opinionated and packed with verifiable facts. Among other things, the report shows: * No one really knows much about Portland's street kids. Is the population getting younger, as some suspect? What becomes of these youth as they age? How many of them are drug-addicted? The bureaucrats charged with caring for this population haven't bothered to find out. Without that information, planning and budgeting is impossible. * No one is minding the till, or even asking tough questions of the agencies that receive public funding. None of the homeless youth service providers has ever been audited by county officials. Agencies don't even have to show they're meeting performance measures spelled out in their contracts. And yet their contracts are repeatedly renewed. "I would say follow-up has been spotty," says Mary Li, acting director of the county division that oversees homeless youth services. She concedes that county officials demand little more than a head count of the number of youth each program serves. * Not only has government failed to monitor the performance of tax-funded agencies, but it has let the agencies set their own rules and even decide what to fund with public money. * The most troubling criticism is also the most difficult to prove: According to the report, some programs made it easy for kids to maintain their dangerous street lifestyles. While no one doubts that all the providers are trying to help kids, the report argues that some of them do it so gently and slowly that the kids wind up staying on the streets for years, getting entrenched in its culture. As Olshin puts it, "The system has grown up without any leadership. It's almost like the system itself is an unsupervised adolescent." When the CCC/APP report was released in January, the providers were understandably defensive. That they were so roundly criticized, particularly by a group of powerful business interests, left them feeling threatened, embittered and spat upon--not unlike the homeless kids they serve. "We're not advocating services that are enabling kids to stay on the street," says Dennis Morrow, director of Janus Youth Programs. The trouble, he says, has always been a lack of funding. Kathy Oliver, executive director of Outside In, also told WW that the only problem with her agency is it's not well-enough funded. "I took issue with the tone of the report, too, [because it implied] we're interested in something other than self-sufficiency for these youth," she said. "Our whole goal is to prevent these youth from growing up and joining the adult homeless population." Janet Miller, the coordinator for Project LUCK, sort of an umbrella group for the homeless youth agencies, agrees that some of the criticism was unfair. "This report comes out of the mouths and heads of people who run large corporations and businesses," she says. "They come from almost a different planet." The criticism the report heaped on providers, however, was nothing compared with the beating the county took. Multnomah County is responsible for doling out money to social service contractors and, at least in theory, monitoring those contracts. Matthew Chapman, the CEO of CFI Proservices, a significant donor to homeless youth programs and a member of the APP/CCC committee, called the county's failure a disgrace. "There has been a lack of leadership at the county level in particular in dealing with homeless kids," he told WW. "I think it's morally reprehensible." As chairwoman of the Multnomah County Commission, Bev Stein bears the brunt of the criticism. Unlike some of the providers, she doesn't challenge the report's findings. She concedes that homeless youth haven't been a top priority. "You have to put this in context," she told WW. "There are a zillion issues. When I came to the county four years ago, I could have made a 10-page list of areas that I felt needed attention." Stein says she's spent her time dealing with other crises: for example, measures 47 and 50, changes to the criminal justice system under SB 1145 and issues involving homeless adults. Rather than dismiss the report as the rantings of a bunch of suits who'd rather send a homeless kid to boot camp than give him a chance, Stein has embraced the group's recommendations to get tough on social service agencies and on the homeless kids they serve. As a result of the report, all of the county's contracts with agencies that serve homeless youth will be up for grabs within the next six months. If Stein follows through on her promises, the providers won't get their money without proving they're doing a good job. The kids, in turn, won't get certain government-funded services unless they do something in return. It's tempting to question the motives of those behind the report. But no one can argue that business interests haven't been willing to put their money where their mouths are. The creation of New Avenues for Youth is a case in point. A few years ago, several longtime board members and donors at Greenhouse, which relies completely on private contributions, began to question the program's work. "We were quite saddened to see so many kids on the streets when they were 14 years old, and to still be seeing them on the streets when they were 23 and 24," explained Robert Del Conte, a former Greenhouse volunteer and director of a youth advocacy foundation. "There wasn't a concerted effort to get them off the streets." Chapman, a longtime donor to Greenhouse and one of the report's authors, says the program was unintentionally "enabling" the kids to stay on the streets. In 1996, a group of longtime supporters split from Greenhouse in search of something better. They formed New Avenues for Youth, which opened in August with a $500,000 budget, all from private donations. It's no coincidence that they went outside the local community to hire an executive director, Irene Wisniewski, a New Yorker who worked for years with foster children. Already the program has grown enough to look into offering transitional housing, something Greenhouse is only now considering after 14 years of operation. Although the program is in its infancy, homeless advocate Durston says "they're a newcomer with a lot of oomph, politically and financially." Furman and his company donated $125,000after years of giving both time and money to Greenhouse. The same is true for Chapman, who left Greenhouse and wrote a check for $164,000 to New Avenues. Lawyer Mitchell Hornecker of Schwabe Williamson and Wyatt, former Louisiana-Pacific CEO Harry Merlo and former Sen. Mark Hatfield's wife, Antoinette, are all involved in New Avenues. According to Furman and Chapman, New Avenues' appeal lies in its approach, which is completely different from anything else in this city. Any homeless kid will confirm that assessment. According to the young people who use the services, there are two kinds of programs in downtown Portland: those that act like your mother and those that are cool. New Avenues is clearly the former. The APP/CCC report describes the same dichotomy this way: programs that focus on outcomes versus programs that focus on basic relief. In simplest terms, what they're talking about is the difference between services that come with strings attached and those that don't. They're also pointing out the difference between services that prod a kid toward ending his homelessness and those that are more hands-off. New Avenues for Youth is the only agency that exclusively uses the former approach. The story of a 16-year-old girl who spoke with WW provides one example. When she arrived in Portland last summer after spending months on the streets elsewhere, she hung out at the Outside In drop-in center for a while, but in October, she stumbled into New Avenues. There, a counselor immediately tried to draw her in, first approaching the girl on her knees because she looked so traumatized. Gradually, the girl agreed to talk to the case manager in her office. The girl needed medical help and emotional support in addition to basics like food and shelter. But she also needed a place to call her own. In January, they cut a deal. She would spend two hours a day at the New Avenues school. In exchange, she would have the privilege of keeping her possessions in one of New Avenues' lockers. The girl's work is far from over. However, it's safe to say that without constant prodding from New Avenues, it would have taken her much longer to talk to a counselor, and meanwhile she might have sunk even deeper into the street lifestyle. Had New Avenues not tied strings to privileges, she might not be in school. The point, says program directorDaniel Pitasky, is that kids need to know there are consequences to their actions. Moreover, they need to show they're moving forward if they're going to use up precious resources. "This isn't a place to just hang out," he says. "After working with a case manager, if a kid continues to say, 'All I want is your showers or your washing machine,' we'll say sorry. It's the hardest thing we do." Greenhouse and Outside In operate much more loosely. Young people can come to their drop-in centers for everything from catch-as-catch-can counseling in a quiet corner to a nap on a ragged couch after staying up all night on speed. If a kid doesn't want to see a counselor, Greenhouse and Outside In won't prod him. "Our philosophy is we meet kids where they are," explains Oliver. "We don't start out by being punitive or with a tough-love approach. It's more of a harm-reduction approach." The idea, explains the county's Li, is that "if you leave the door open, eventually somebody is going to come in. If they come in enough times and develop some trust, you can move on to the next step." Jerry Fest, director of Janus' programs for homeless youth, says both philosophies are valid. But, he adds, some kids have been traumatized so much and have been on the streets so long that they simply can't follow a rigid structure. "These kids will not be going to school tomorrow," he told WW. "That's not even a rational therapeutic plan for them. So do you not provide them any services until they miraculously get fixed?" The providers, county officials and the report's writers all agree that a good system needs both kinds of services. The problem is that it's tough for the two philosophies to peacefully coexist. Pitasky cites the example of a 16-year-old drug addict: New Avenues had him within inches of entering a treatment program--then he balked and went to another program for services without strings. When New Avenues told the other program about the problem, a counselor there said the program wouldn't refuse him services. "The answer was, 'We have a different philosophy about that,'" Pitasky told WW. Since it opened, New Avenues has relied entirely on private donations. Now it's looking for a county contract as well. The timing couldn't be better. Stein has promised to add $100,000 to the homeless youth program budget--a paltry amount, but one that at least shows some commitment. The city is likely to add $100,000 to the pot for homeless youth services, plus an additional $1 million to help build new transitional housing. Business leaders have promised to come up with $200,000 more. While Outside In and Janus (Greenhouse doesn't receive public money) say they're happy to see additional funding, there is some worry that they won't be the beneficiaries. Based on the recommendations in the report, the county has agreed to focus its funding on providers like New Avenues, who use a structured, strings-attached approach. "Anything we're funding now is on the table," Li says. "Knowing we can't fund the whole system, we're going to prioritize. What I think will happen is we will move away from some of the relief services.... We're [also] going to ramp up the expectations." To be sure, it's a cold calculus. "Unfortunately, when you're talking about these esoteric dollars and cents, you're actually talking about kids and who aren't we going to serve," Li says. It's a question local government has considered before. About six years ago, the city and county began a "reconfiguration plan" for their adult homeless programs as a result of criticism from the business community. In response, the city built four new shelters (one of which opened earlier this month)and required operators to use more of a strings-attached approach. The change didn't significantly increase the budget for operating homeless adult programs, and services were focused on those most likely to benefit from them. At first, the agencies that worked with homeless adults were skeptical of the new rules. But like Durston, who ran Transition Projects during the transformation, most now agree that services are better. However, Durston argues, the solution is not so simple as the business community would like. He says the trend toward demanding social service agencies to operate like corporations is a "fad." In the real world, he says, turning a skin-and-bones nonprofit into a business is next to impossible. "I looked around at the crummy computers and the staff that had never been trained and I said, 'How do I do that?'" |
