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Imagine you’re addicted to drugs and sheltering under the Steel Bridge. Then imagine you decide to get warm and you go to CityTeam’s new building on Northwest Davis Street in Old Town.
You remember when this place was a strip club called Magic Garden. Now, it looks more like offices for a hipster tech company, with fir floors polished to a deep amber and raw black ironwork. You live in a first-floor dorm with bunks. If you want to stay and kick your habit, you move up to a four-person room on the second floor, where an atrium brings in the day through skylights. Complete a 12-step program there (CityTeam is faith based) and you ascend to a two-person room on the third floor. You get a job and save at least $1,500. Then, if you feel ready, you leave to restart your life.
That’s the vision of Lance Orton, who says he “did the kickin' chicken” six years ago on the concrete floor of CityTeam’s old shelter on Portland’s inner eastside, shaking in pain as his addiction waned—then found God soon afterward. Now Orton, 49, a wiry man with a thicket of brown hair, is head of CityTeam Portland (it was founded in San Jose, Calif., as a rescue mission in 1957). Under his guidance, CityTeam bought the Overland Building for $4.7 million in June, a steal given the way it’s been buffed out.
To repurpose the building and complete his dream, Orton went to Multnomah County, which received $140 million from Metro’s supportive housing services tax in fiscal 2024. CityTeam’s annual budget is $1.1 million, including the cost of feeding and clothing people under the Burnside Bridge every Thursday night. And Orton had a building. It just needed a remodel. But Multnomah County turned him down, twice.
Why?
In an email to WW, a county spokesman says CityTeam just didn’t score so highly as other service providers looking for funds in a competitive selection process.
Orton says he’s still puzzled that the county, flush with cash at the time, didn’t use some to fund a successful shelter with drug treatment on site, in a building that was more than shovel ready.
“I thought we were a shoo-in,” Orton says.”We’re creating 120 beds—30 for shelter, 40 for our treatment program, and the rest for graduates from it.”
CityTeam’s experience raises questions why Multnomah County, which is staring down the twin crises of homelessness and addiction, rebuffed an overture from a faith-based group to tackle both issues in one place. The county denied CityTeam three times when it applied for funds to cover part of the $2.5 million it needed to turn an office building into a rehab shelter.
Orton has plenty of fans, including Homer Willliams, a real estate developer who has been trying to tackle homelessness for almost a decade, and Keith Wilson, Portland’s new mayor.
“CityTeam, led by Lance Orton, provides essential support and services for our most vulnerable residents and has made a notable impact on our community,” Wilson said in a statement to WW. “Their move to Northwest Davis allows them to build on this vital work, furthering their mission to transform lives for those living on our streets.”
Orton serves on the board of ShelterPortland, the nonprofit that Wilson founded to tackle homelessness before becoming mayor. Wilson says he finds Orton’s expertise in addiction and recovery “invaluable.”
In a joint interview, Orton and Williams both wondered if the county passed on CityTeam because it’s a Christian organization and Portland, in general, seems hostile to faith-based remedies to addiction.
“The faith model really works in recovery,” Orton says. “I came in as an atheist and walked out the door in love with God. He saved my life. We don’t talk about that because you get thrown out of every meeting in Portland if you do.”
Dan Field, director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services, says there is no bias.
“Faith-based organizations have always been steadfast partners in our work providing social services,” Field said in an email. “Just look at our contracts with the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities of Oregon, among others. We want to work with any and all providers who can help with this work.”
The irony on Davis Street is that the county considered buying the 1889 Overland Building and turning it into a shelter itself in 2023. Jessie Burke, who owns The Society Hotel nearby, says she opposed the purchase because she didn’t think the county could manage the problems that often come with a shelter: sidewalk sleepers, needles, mental crises. But she’s comfortable with CityTeam because Orton convinced her that his customers wouldn’t bother hers.
“Any social services agency that runs a tight ship, I will work with,” Burke says.
By Orton’s telling, CityTeam has a track record of getting people clean and keeping them that way. About 80% of its participants are still sober and housed after three years.
Orton knew the CityTeam shelter on Southeast Grand Avenue was obsolete. He found the Overland Building and managed to gather the $4.7 million to buy it, then began searching for remodel money. He held an open house last year to share his vision. Sharon Meieran, then on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, and current Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards came. They told him about a notice of funding availability, or NOFA, from the county with $5.2 million up for bids to create housing for drug recovery and recommended he apply for it.
He did, but to no avail. CityTeam got a two-paragraph letter from the county health department on April 19, telling Orton it would “not be moving forward with funding your application.”
Orton emailed the health department to ask why CityTeam got rejected. Alex Leeding, a senior program specialist, wrote back April 25, telling him that evaluators wanted to see “a bit more emphasis on how this project would assist both the target population and those with substance use disorders, especially through the referral process and aftercare.”
The email baffled Orton because he thought the target population was people with substance use disorder or alcoholism. The county says it was aiming for people with less than 30% of the area median income, with disabilities, or who had been chronically homeless. It also encouraged “culturally specific” providers to apply.
The evaluation panel also “had concerns” about access to “medication-assisted treatment” because CityTeam eschews sobering drugs. Orton, for one, says he fears another dependency. Buprenorphine, an opioid that’s used to get addicts off other ones, is designed to deny the high while easing the wretched symptoms of withdrawal. Orton says he’s skeptical.
“I’ve abused it,” he says. “You can abuse it just like any other pill. It’s an opioid. I’ll find a way to abuse Clorox. That’s why we’re addicts. We know how to do that shit.”
Unbowed, Orton applied for funds again in late summer after the county held a Zoom call with providers and described a new NOFA with no dollar amount. He asked for $500,000 to help pay back a $1 million short-term loan that CityTeam took to pay for the building. He struck out again.
“While this was a strong proposal, we were met with many other opportunities that better met our system goals,” Anna Pendas, a county program officer, wrote on Oct. 29.
Despite the losses, CityTeam has received some county money in another part of town. In early 2024, it stepped in to purchase a building for Community of Hope, a women’s shelter opened by a coalition of churches in North Portland in 2014. The county committed $400,000 to that purchase and kept the money in place after CityTeam got involved.
Back in Old Town, where Multnomah County balked, another funder jumped in. Just last week, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines granted CityTeam $3 million for the Davis Street project. Orton says he turned to the bank in part because of the “challenges” he was having with local sources.
(Correction: An earlier version of this story said the CityTeam shelter was on Southwest Ankeny Street. It’s on Northwest Davis Street. WW regrets the error.)