Multnomah County Initiative to Move People From the Streets Into Housing Meets Its Benchmark

One year after the fizzle of her ambitious initiative to move people directly from the streets into apartments, Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson can claim a victory: The program appears to have at last met its initial goal.

The Joint Office of Homeless Services, which Vega Pederson oversees, announced Wednesday morning that it has successfully housed 306 people with its Housing Multnomah Now initiative, exceeding its initial 2023 goal of getting 300 people indoors.

The JOHS announcement says Housing Multnomah Now focused on serving “people living outside in tents, on sidewalks and in vehicles—including people who recently moved into shelters from the streets” and covered Northwest Portland, Old Town, Gateway neighborhood and the Thousand Acres area in east Multnomah County.

The effort at “rapidly rehousing” people sleeping rough meant the county contracted housing navigators, case managers and other social workers to visit campsites—including high-profile locations like “the Pit” at the west base of the Steel Bridge.

From its launch in February 2023, the initiative was beset by delays and setbacks. As WW reported last November, “months dragged on as outreach workers rushed to sign leases—a challenge given the fact that many of the campers didn’t have identification cards, let alone furniture.”

Vega Pederson had initially pledged to house 300 people in less than six months—and suffered an embarrassing round of headlines when the June 2023 deadline passed with just 38 people placed in apartments.

The second year appears to have been more fruitful, and the good news arrives just as officials with the city and county, which both fund the Joint Office, are in the final stages of negotiating its future.

The city and Multnomah County have long been haggling for more than a year over the contract that binds the two governments together in funding the agency. Yesterday, the previous contract expired. Multnomah County commissioners approved a proposed contract for the next three years, but then the Portland City Council passed multiple amendments that it wanted included in the finished contract. Now the county board will have to assess the contract again.

The county’s ability to swiftly and surgically use its large supply of homeless services tax dollars is the subject of perpetual scrutiny. City officials, including Mayor Ted Wheeler, want more money directed toward their own system of getting people off the streets: large encampments, run by a California contractor, that also have a mixed track record of funneling people into permanent housing.

Later this month, the agency will enter its final housing placement data into the Homeless Management Information System, which, as WW reported, it finally gained access to earlier this year.

Vega Pederson hailed today’s benchmark.

“This program’s success means a great deal to the people whose lives have been impacted—and we know there are many more who need and deserve these resources,” Vega Pederson said in a statement. “Today, we celebrate the success, carry the lessons we learned forward in the larger work of the Joint Office, and redouble our efforts to break down silos, identify and fill gaps in our systems and commit to continue making more of these resources available.”

Correction: Due to an editor’s error, this story originally misstated the year of the program’s launch. It was 2023, not 2022.