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A new Portland State University study on Project Turnkey, the state-funded initiative that buys cheap motels and turns them into shelters, found 42.2% of residents at the sites returned to unsheltered homelessness after their stays.
The study, conducted by PSU’s Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative, concentrated on the 19 first-round sites from Project Turnkey. These were the sites Oregon acquired in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic and wildfires besieged communities statewide. By 2023, all the sites shifted toward helping people experiencing homelessness; together, these sites provide 865 new housing units across 13 different counties.
Of the 19 sites, 15 provided data for the study, which helped researchers track who stayed in the motel shelters and where they ended up. Researchers found that, when people still living at Turnkey sites and former residents who provided no data were excluded, 27.9% of residents went into permanent housing and another 11.6% into temporary housing. Another 9.5% landed in emergency shelters.
In terms of exit data, it’s difficult to make direct comparisons to other shelter models. Anna Rockhill, the study’s lead researcher, says there are too many variables. She points toward variance even within the Turnkey programs: Of the 15 that provided data, nine sites moved more than 40% of residents into permanent housing. But three of the larger projects had much lower rates, sending between 9% and 22% of residents into permanent shelter.
“It’s not that I don’t think we should pay attention to the numbers. We did try to contextualize the numbers in the report,” Rockhill says. “The Turnkey sites themselves are all pretty different. They serve different populations. Some of them have beds for people exiting the hospital, they’re medical respite programs; some of them serve domestic violence survivors.”
But Rockhill says researchers also examined numbers outside of exit data to understand the program more broadly. They conducted resident surveys at seven different sites and found people’s lives improved under the shelter model. About 27% of residents felt they often had enough privacy before Turnkey. After their experience, 78% said they did.
In interviews with shelter staff, the study also found that privacy could be particularly important for people with identities that might make them targets. Directors of Turnkey sites reported that residents could more easily deescalate otherwise tense situations, including acts of discrimination, if they were offered a private space.
Rockhill says compared to traditional congregate shelters, Turnkey provides a model that is more stable and more supportive of residents’ well being. “Our report argues for the value of extended lengths of stay and letting people be on site during the day in private rooms,” she says.
A separate PSU study from March found congregate shelters sent significantly fewer adults into permanent shelter. In that study, researchers found most unsheltered people greatly preferred private shelters to congregate ones. Rockhill says the study she led backs those findings—she says she’s a fan of the Turnkey model and thinks the state is moving in the right direction with pods and hotels.
“Implicitly, what this says is all those warming shelters, those overnight shelters, those congregate shelters, they’re not really doing very much good,” Rockhill says. “A lot of people, especially people who have been homeless for a while, they need a more robust response than what we’ve been providing in terms of emergency shelter. This is a piece that’s missing in most communities.”
Project Turnkey already completed its second round of hotel purchases in July 2023. At $90,000 a door, the project pays less than a quarter of what the Portland Housing Bureau and other local agencies regularly pay for affordable housing. The latest PSU findings did not study the financial aspect of the model.