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Officials from three layers of regional government have expressed dismay at the request by three members of the Portland City Council to draft paperwork to withdraw the city from its contract with Multnomah County in which they jointly fund a fight against homelessness.
The Oct. 16 move by Commissioners Rene Gonzalez, Dan Ryan and Mingus Mapps made it clear: They want out of the Joint Office of Homeless Services, the office jointly funded by the city and county. The two bodies signed a three-year contract this summer after a year of contentious negotiations, with the county to give the city more say in and oversight of the office’s spending decisions.
That means the City Council, if it votes for a divorce in the coming weeks, will be ending a contract that it signed just three months ago.
County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson panned the move as an election stunt. (Mapps and Gonzalez are running for mayor; Ryan is running for City Council. The election is three weeks away.)
“It’s clear these officials—candidates desperately vying for your vote this month—have their eyes on their own future and not our collective one. Disappointing,” Vega Pederson said in a statement. “This stunt does not and will not change the actual work we’re focused on at the county to shelter, house and support everyone in our community for a safer and better Multnomah County.”
Vega Pederson’s dismay was to be expected, given that she is widely seen as controlling the office’s spending. But Gov. Tina Kotek criticized the move, too, calling it “obstructionist infighting.”
“We do not have the luxury of just talking about problems—leaders have to bring forward solutions,” Kotek said. “People who are sleeping outside, people who struggle to afford housing, and everyone concerned about our houseless neighbors aren’t served by obstructionist infighting.”
The bulk of the Joint Office’s budget comes from the Metro supportive housing services tax, which flows through the county coffers. The Joint Office’s budget this year is composed of $170 million in SHS tax dollars. The city of Portland contributes only $25 million to $40 million annually to the Joint Office.
City officials have complained for years that the county dominates decision-making at the Joint Office. Those tensions increased as the two governments negotiated a new contract for over a year. But in the new contract signed this June, the City Council made it clear that it wanted the ability to abandon the contract if it felt the Joint Office was falling short of the city’s expectations; the council said it would reconvene in 90 days and assess whether it wanted to remain in the contract.
The contract allows the city to remove itself at any point, with 90 days’ notice to the county, without financial penalty.
The three commissioners did not provide any alternative plan if the city extricates itself from the Joint Office by a majority vote in the coming weeks. If the council does approve a departure (Commissioner Carmen Rubio and Mayor Ted Wheeler are strongly against leaving), the divorce would become effective after the new 12-member City Council is seated Jan. 1, 2025. Only Ryan, if he’s reelected, would retain a seat on the expanded body.
How the new City Council would navigate the divorce, or try to reinstate the contract, is difficult to predict.
Metro President Lynn Peterson says she’s heard crickets from the three commissioners about wanting to receive a portion of the supportive housing services dollars directly. Other cities have made that request, Peterson said.
“In the year that we have been working on potential reforms to the SHS system, I have not heard from Commissioners Ryan, Gonzalez or Mapps on any policy proposals related to SHS,” Peterson said.
It’s also not clear what reforms at the county would cause the three commissioners to reconsider.
Gonzalez and Mapps did not respond to a question about whether they’d made specific requests of the county that, if granted, would reverse their position.
Ryan said he would reconsider if the chair “supported the city formally assuming operational control of individual shelters with direct funding from Metro SHS dollars.” He said he also wanted to clearly define the county and city’s tasks, and to see the county act urgently to open a sobering center and “take a serious approach” to the deflection system that’s supposed to keep people arrested for drug possession out of jail.
In a phone call with WW, Joint Office director Dan Field said the Wednesday vote “took us by surprise,” especially because he’s met regularly with Commissioners Gonzalez and Ryan about the Joint Office’s progress in recent weeks. Field says he thinks it’s unlikely that, if the city were to leave the Joint Office and ask Metro for a chunk of the SHS dollars (that’s not allowed, under the current measure), that Metro would be amenable to the request.
“Under the current SHS measure, which won’t change until next May at the earliest, cities can’t just march up to Metro for a check which they legally cannot access,” Field said. “I don’t think Metro is going to look favorably on any city that wants to use SHS dollars on camp cleaning, public space management and shelter.”