A motel in Northeast Portland that temporarily houses seniors and people in poor health on the verge of homelessness will revert to a COVID-19 isolation shelter as omicron outbreaks occur across shelters in Multnomah County.
The Portland Value Inn, located along Northeast 82nd Avenue, will end its current use as temporary housing for around 40 vulnerable people in mid-November.
Multnomah County leased the motel as a COVID isolation shelter throughout the pandemic. This spring, with the Joint Office of Homeless Services acting as management, the county turned it into transitional shelter for homeless seniors and people with disabilities, allowing them to stay for weeks or months until they found permanent housing.
Denis Theriault, a spokesman for the Joint Office, says residents will be offered spots in shelters or housed permanently, if possible.
“The transition is meant to help stabilize capacity and bed use across the shelter system—something continued outbreaks have challenged, especially as omicron itself evolved to become more transmissible and cause more breakthrough infections,” Theriault says. “The plan is to operate [the motel] as an isolation space for up to two more years as needed.”
The Jupiter Hotel, which for most of the pandemic was an isolation shelter funded by the county, reverted to private use in May.
People living at the Portland Value Inn are alarmed. One motel resident named Lori, who asked that WW only use her first name, says she and her neighbors are “freaking out” after receiving a letter notice about the closure in late September.
“They gave us five weeks to figure something out....We have nowhere else to go,” says Lori, who’s lived at the motel for a year. “So many here are looking at being in the street with nothing in the middle of winter and no shelter beds available....We are Portland’s most vulnerable seniors and disabled, and they won’t make it through the winter.”
Theriault insists no one will end up on the streets for lack of a shelter bed, though he says COVID outbreaks at the shelters to which the Joint Office is looking to relocate people have delayed some placements. Thirty-nine residents still await placement.
Meanwhile, a county-owned shelter in a former pharmacy in North Portland has shut down for a nearly yearlong renovation into a long-term transitional shelter. Fourteen of its tenants will move to a motel shelter in Southwest Portland; 10 were placed in housing with rent assistance, and another 11 moved into shelters.