Gov. Kotek announces money allocations for regions to combat homelessness

By PETER WONG
Oregon Capital Bureau

Gov. Tina Kotek on Monday announced specific amounts of state aid to help designated regions of the state create more shelter beds and rehouse more people who are now without housing.

But in making her announcement Monday, she praised some regions for being specific about meeting end-of-the-year targets, but singled out Portland/Multnomah County and Clackamas County for shortcomings in the plans they submitted to the state.

The amounts for the 10 counties within the regions specified in Kotek’s executive order of Jan. 10 total around $80 million, though the counties asked for just under $100 million.

The following areas of Oregon will receive the following amounts for rehousing families and creating new shelter beds by Dec. 31, Kotek announced:

Portland/Gresham/Multnomah County: $18.2 million to rehouse 275 households and create 138 shelter beds.

• Eugene/Springfield/Lane County: $15.5 million to rehouse 247 households and create 230 shelter beds.
• Central Oregon: $13.9 million to rehouse 161 households and create 111 shelter beds. This region consists of Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson counties.
• Salem/Marion, Polk Counties: $10.4 million to rehouse 158 households and create 79 shelter beds.
• Medford, Ashland/Jackson County: $8.8 million to rehouse 133 households and create 67 shelter beds.
• Hillsboro/Beaverton/Washington County: $8 million to rehouse 121 households and create 61 shelter beds.
• Clackamas County: $4.4 million to rehouse 130 households.

 

“We believe we can go above them, but we must hit that mark,” Kotek told reporters after the announcement.

Excluded from these totals are Oregon’s 26 other counties, which will share $27 million that the Legislature set aside for them in a larger $217 million budget plan for homelessness and housing needs that Kotek signed on March 29, along with housing policy legislation in House Bill 2001. The goals she outlined are for a total of 600 new shelter beds and 1,200 households rehoused by Dec. 31.

“These communities have been working hard,” Kotek said. “They have been setting up multiagency action groups to take up the issue of how they can meet additional outcomes with resources from the state,” primarily from the Department of Housing and Community Services.

“Plans were submitted. After those initial plans came in, the (state) agencies reviewed them and had follow-up questions with these emergency areas – and that is how we came to the funding decisions that are being announced today.”

She singled out for praise the plans submitted by Lane and Washington counties, and by the three-county Central Oregon multiagency action group.

Their plan, she said, was “another strong example of partnerships across communities to come up with a detailed plan of how they were going to meet their goals of additional shelter capacity and rehousing more of their residents.”

Assuming that contracts are made final with the counties or groups of counties, Kotek said, some money should start going to them by the end of April.

Kotek said the $217 million allocation was just a start. She said lawmakers will have to come up with more money if Oregon is to reach a target of rehousing a total of 3,600 households by the end of the two-year budget cycle in mid-2025. She also has urged the Legislature to start laying the groundwork for Oregon to meet an annual housing production goal she has set of 36,000 – 80% greater than the annual average over the past five years.

“Our emergency proposal was predicated on following it-up with a strong two-year budget,” she said. “This (1,200 households rehoused) is just a third of the goal we want to see by the end of the biennium. We will need those resources from the Legislature. We’ve got work to do. Just because we got some big stuff passed early does not mean that we are finished.”