Money in the Portland Housing Crisis
The city of Portland declared a housing crisis, beginning all the way back in September of 2015. Since that time, the city has spent an accumulative estimated 290 million dollars. Bear in mind, there is an estimated approximate 4000 homeless people in Multnomah County. Over the course of the six year crisis (till 2021), this money provided:
-An estimated 1400 additional shelter beds in preexisting facilities (aggregate)
-An estimated 3000 permanent shelter units (often but not always homes) (aggregate)
Meaning that the average cost of permanent shelter ultimately clocked in at approx. 100,000 dollars, and took 6 years to provide that many utilizing the existing system. This figure includes the HereTogether program.
Interesting expenditures included:
- 500k spent specifically to construct benches and other deterrents in locations to stop homeless camps being erected.
- 7m to fund trash cleanup on sites
- approx. 30 million in mental health services
- Unknown amounts in portable toilets and expansion of public hygiene facilities (part of a 38m bill)
- 5m to Portland Street Response, emergency services tailored for these vulnerable communities
Additional programs like Portland Metro can be found here, but are not included in these figures:
https://heretogetheroregon.org/solutions/
Ultimately, they also have similar or even more expensive results.
On April 29th, 2021, an additional affordable housing project was unanimously voted in by the Portland city council to construct "tiny homes", an affordable shelter with amenities to actually house the homeless.
These homes are concentrated in "safe rest villages", the new program. These were new facilities utilizing property scouted and purchased for this purpose. Currently, this program has an estimated cost 16 million and secured at least 3 locations totaling 180 homes, complete with amenities including hygiene, laundry, recycling, health and WIFI. Clocking in at a comparatively meagre 16 million... if the projected costs hold.
The earlier programs often provide full homes for families, so the comparison is not entirely fair. However, if large portions of the homeless can be housed faster and so much cheaper with these villages this should be the first step.
The takeaway, I believe, is that a slow piecemeal approach we have been doing is ultimately vastly more expensive than simply fixing the problem by providing housing as rapidly as possible. NIMBY and a lack of political will, the source of much of the obstacles to building homeless accommodations, is literally taxing to both the homeless and the taxpayer. Even if compassion plays no role in your decision making, it is ultimately just more efficient to house and get these people in a position to join society productively as fast as possible. It is in your interest to solve this rapidly and comprehensively as a taxpayer, even if you can't empathize.
-James Guthrie
Government SRV website:
https://www.portland.gov/ryan/safe-rest-villages
FY 2019 budget (includes figures from 2017-2019):
FY 2020 Budget:
FY 2021 budget:
Very helpful article:
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