Multnomah County houses 300+ people facing homelessness after extending deadline

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) -- After extending its deadline another year, Multnomah County announced a new housing pilot project exceeded its goal of housing hundreds of people living on the street.

In 2023, Multnomah County launched Housing Multnomah Now, a pilot program run by the Joint Office of Homeless Service that focused on helping people living in tents, vehicles, and shelters transition into stable housing.

Thanks to outreach workers adapting to changes in homeless camps, and with help from a new mobile app, the county announced Tuesday that the pilot exceeded its goal of housing 300 people by June 30, 2024 -- ending up housing 306 people facing homelessness.

“We aim high in our response to the crisis we are seeing on our streets. That’s what the community expects and should expect,” Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said in a press release. “With this program, we experimented, adapted, focused on geographic diversity, and delivered the results we promised.”

When the pilot launched in 2023, Vega Pederson's goal was to house 300 people by June 2023, but she later extended the deadline to June 30, 2024, as the plan fell short and housed a total of 38 people by late February 2024.

Housing Multnomah Now initially focused on serving people in large campsites in the central city and east side, starting with an encampment in Northwest Portland near the Steel Bridge.

According to the county, outreach workers adapted to "changes on the ground," including a reduction of large campsites, which led project leaders to shift their focus to other locations such as Thousand Acres in East Multnomah County, Portland's Old Town, and the Gateway neighborhood.

“Early in the pilot, providers found that people were no longer stationary in large campsites, but were instead more likely to be reached in smaller, scattered campsites. That shift in camping patterns made the original program design difficult to scale as intended,” Multnomah County said in a press release.

During the pilot, the county assigned different goals to local nonprofit organizations helping with the housing effort.

Some of the nonprofits involved in the pilot told KOIN 6 News that one of their main challenges was working under the county's time crunch.

“It's kind of a whirlwind process and program but we were able to reach our organization's goal to house 50 individuals who were predominantly folks who were living outside,” said Marie-Therese Senecal, operations and program manager for Housing Multnomah Now at East County Housing, which focused its efforts in the Thousand Acres Area.

“Working Thousand Acres, specifically that geographic location and that encampment, was really interesting, because there was just such a history there; folks who have been living there and have really established homes for themselves there and community for themselves,” Senecal explained.

“It's not always as simple as just sort of offering someone a place to go, it's really learning to consider the individual situation and all of the things that are tied up in their community, and where they feel safe, and where they feel at home, and to not take anything for granted when it comes to what we have to offer,” Senecal added.

Another challenge some of the nonprofits faced was finding landlords who were willing to accept their clients who may not meet traditional rental screening criteria and get accepted into housing in a timely manner.

Zahraa Alrikabi, a housing coordinator with the nonprofit Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, which helped with housing referrals for the pilot, explained, “With IRCO, because we started super late, I think we initially started doing intakes mid-April.”

“It was very shocking because our first person was housed on May 1, and we weren't getting any responses from landlords for, I think two or three weeks. And so, it was mainly the end of May, beginning of June when we were getting all the other clients housed and accepted into homes," Alrikabi said.

Housing Multnomah Now also piloted new ways of conducting outreach by bringing housing navigators, case managers, and rent assistance directly to campsites. Outreach workers also used an app that allowed them to input data in the field and geotag the locations of their interactions.

“These program changes show that we are able to adapt to the realities of our community. The crisis we are seeing on our streets is urgent, and it demands we provide a flexible, responsive approach,” said Joint Office of Homeless Services Director Dan Field. “We didn’t rigidly stick to something that wasn’t meeting the needs of our community. We made adjustments intentionally that allowed us to work quickly while still serving our most vulnerable community members. These pivots also helped free up desperately needed shelter beds, allowing more people to come from the streets into shelter.”

"With Housing Multnomah Now, we responded to changing conditions on the ground to meet people where they are. When we realized it wouldn’t be possible to hit our original deadline, we didn’t throw up our hands and scrap the project — we made adjustments to our approach and continued working toward our goal of housing 300 people. We saw promise in the model, and we knew it wasn’t worth discarding just because we didn’t hit our original deadline," Joint Office Director Field told KOIN 6 News.

"In the end, having ambitious goals and timelines got us where we are now," he added. "We housed more than 300 households as a result of our efforts, and we will continue to use what we’ve learned to help resolve homelessness for many others."

The Housing Multnomah Now pilot ended June 30, 2024, and will not house any more people until the next fiscal year; however, outreach workers in the program will continue to offer case management and support services for people who were housed during the pilot.

"Housing Multnomah Now was a game changer for supporting our participants' transitions into permanent housing opportunities. It's been one of the most seamless outreach tools available to us since the pandemic started,” said Katrina Holland, Strategic Engagement Officer and Interim Director of Housing Services at Urban League of Portland, one of the housing placement providers. “The flexibility, large sums of dollars planned for rent assistance, and program structure responsive to culturally specific needs was very helpful in being able to meet our participants where they are and hope for the future."