Home Again
A Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness
On any given night, about 4,000 people sleep on the streets, in cars, or in shelters across Portland. Homeless people include adults, youth, couples, and families with children. They are living on the streets, either temporarily or for the long-term, for a variety of reasons. They may have become homeless because of an untreated mental illness, a physical disability, domestic violence, a serious health crisis, loss of a job or a drug addiction.
Homelessness was a relatively rare phenomenon until the 1980s, when many economic and social changes converged to cause its dramatic rise. These changes included the lack of growth in real earnings for those with low incomes, a growing scarcity of affordable housing, and the closing of institutions that had long served the mentally ill.
Last year, about 17,000 people slept on Portland’s streets, in cars or in shelters. On one night in 2003, more than 450 were unable to find space in emergency shelters. Among them were at least 175 children and their families.
The costs of homelessness are many. It almost always worsens an already unstable family situation. Homeless children often do poorly in school. Youth and adults with mental illness or drug and alcohol problems get worse when they do not get the behavioral or medical attention they need. Citizens and visitors to Portland are often disturbed by seeing so many homeless people on our streets. The result: a less livable community for all of us.
This ten-year plan is part of a national movement to end 20 years of homelessness as a large social problem. Adopting the national model to local needs will result in a decrease in the number of people on the streets in Portland, and will support a regional, state, and national effort to end homelessness in ten years. The steps outlined in this plan will cost money, but it will not cost as much as it would to manage homelessness through expensive public emergency systems.
The plan lays out broad strategies, specific action steps, and a detailed work plan to guide government, non-profit agencies and other partners to aspire to these desired outcomes:
* Fewer people become homeless;
* The duration and harm caused by a housing crisis is reduced;
* More people move off the streets and out of shelters into permanent housing;
* People have enough support to maintain permanent housing successfully.
A large population of homeless people is a symptom that our community is not healthy. It is not healthy for the people who are homeless, and not healthy for the rest of us. The perception that homelessness is hurting the local economy exists among individual citizens, neighborhoods and many in Portland’s business community. That’s why the end to chronic homelessness needs to be one of our top priorities as a community.
This ten-year plan is built on three principles:
1. Focus on the most chronically homeless populations;
2. Streamline access to existing services to prevent and reduce other homelessness;
3. Concentrate resources on programs that offer measurable results.
