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Multnomah County experiment that asked landlords to rent to homeless individuals succeeded — but quickly ran out of money

By Nicole Hayden, The Oregonian/OregonLive
Published: November 14, 2022, 6:00am

Mornings are chaotically delightful in Doll Crain’s new home. She lives with two housemates and their two dogs, Lady and Sue, who run circles around their six-bedroom house.

Crain often yells a reminder to her roommates, who work for the same housing nonprofit she does, that they need to “go, go go!” or they will be late for work.

“We hold each other accountable,” Crain said. “I am so glad I got housed with roommates instead of by myself. I would have been much more depressed with the transition because while it’s good, it’s also traumatic leaving your community.”

Crain was homeless for a decade before receiving a one-year rent subsidy in June through a pilot program called Move-In Multnomah. Established by the county soon after homelessness experts and advocates called for such an approach, the program sought to encourage more landlords to help reduce homelessness. It promised a year of guaranteed rent to landlords who agreed to rent houses or apartments to homeless individuals, coverage for any damages and a supportive staff member to help landlords and newly housed residents navigate any challenges.

The county used nearly $4 million from the region’s new homeless services tax to place people into 214 homes in the span of just four months.

Crain had been living in an RV near Sandy River Delta Park east of Troutdale with a crew of other friends who also had their own RVs. She’d nearly given up on the possibility of being placed in housing. But through the new program, she was approved for rent assistance at the end of May and moved into a privately owned home in Southeast Portland in a week.

The program enabled the county to slash through red tape and long wait times typically associated with providing housing for vulnerable people. Historically, subsidized housing has heavily relied on federal housing vouchers. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler in recent days has spotlighted a study he commissioned that found it took five years on average to get into federally subsidized housing managed by Home Forward, Multnomah County’s housing authority. While that isn’t the only avenue for affordable housing in the region, it is the largest collection of affordable apartments that people have access to.

Move-In Multnomah, by contrast, housed applicants within weeks.

But building out a program like Move-In Multnomah to a scale that could serve all the county’s unhoused residents would require large sums of money. It’s estimated that the annual costs to house one person or household is $16,636. That does not account for any needed repairs at the end of the year.

The pilot program’s funding to house more people ran out at the end of the summer. Without an ongoing funding stream, Move-in Multnomah will close when the one-year subsidies run out next year.

Second chances

Crain, who grew up and went to high school in Portland, was a physical education teacher for years before she opened a boxing gym that she ran for four years. Her interest was rooted in a lifetime of doing gymnastics. But after a string of abusive relationships, she closed the gym and soon became homeless.

She said one of her partners became violent and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

“I left him while I was still living on the street,” she said, “I started learning a bit more about me.”

Now, Crain feels reenergized and stronger emotionally after being connected to a relatively new homeless services organization, Cultivate Initiatives.

She learned about the small Portland nonprofit that helps people access housing and other services through a friend who worked there. The program helps people build job skills and transition into more stable, long-term jobs.

Crain was hired as an intern in February, and when the Move-In Multnomah program launched, staff at the nonprofit convinced her to apply. At first, she was skeptical, but she moved into her new home within a week of applying. And since then, she has been promoted to run Cultivate Initiatives’ intern program.

“It was quick,” she said of getting housed. “I think we talked about it once and then I got keys to the home within the week. It was crazy. It changed my life. I would tell people to just stick with it and trust the process. When you are out there (living on the street), you get told a lot of stuff that doesn’t happen. So, it’s easy to dismiss it if it doesn’t work out right the first time.”

Crain initially filled out the assessment to start the federal housing process five years ago. She was approved for a housing voucher, but was denied by an apartment complex based on her poor credit score and marijuana-related felonies from nearly two decades ago. Those charges would no longer be classified as felonies after a change in the law dropped them to misdemeanor crimes.

“I thought that was it,” she said. “At that time, I didn’t know I could have appealed that decision or asked someone to help me. I just thought that was it and I didn’t try to pursue it again.”

Renewed hope

The Move-In Multnomah program gave the many people it housed a renewed sense of hope and belief in the local safety net.

Cultivate Initiatives was one of many local housing nonprofits that partnered with the county on the Move-In Multnomah program. Cultivate Initiatives’ clients were housed within one to three weeks, said Connor Hyde, the program’s housing specialist.

Hyde, who was a property manager for more than a decade before transitioning to the nonprofit world, pursued apartments with rents in the $1,000 to $1,200 range. He wanted to ensure that people could still afford to live in their homes after the subsidy ended. Only in a few cases did they sign leases upwards of $2,000 for larger homes if clients had large families or were willing to live with roommates. Crain’s home was one of those. Hyde said his clients in the Move-in program have all increased their income or are on their way to doing so.

“A lot of people were making money before but had a sense of hopelessness,” Hyde said. “So now that they have a sense of confidence and have proof that they are housed, we hope people will keep that in mind as they work to build income over the next year. Also, we tried to make sure we housed people in places they really would want to stay whether that meant being close to their job or services. One woman had ducks, and we actually found a landlord who also had ducks, so things like that build community and make people invest in the long-term.”

Hyde said at the start of the Move-In Multnomah housing process, the nonprofit found that many of the people they helped had been on housing voucher waitlists for years.

Denis Theriault, spokesperson for the city and county’s Joint Office of Homeless Services, said people can wait for long periods of time when affordable housing isn’t available. That was particularly a problem when federal housing vouchers were the primary means of housing low-income people and before a host of other options funded by the state, county, city and Metro became a big part of the mix, he said.

With the additional options, he said the average wait time in 2021 for a person approved for subsidized housing to move into an apartment was only 2.5 months.

Many unsheltered Portlanders, however, say they have given up hope after getting disconnected from their caseworkers during the long waits for housing that have at times spanned years. But faster programs like Move-in Multnomah don’t leave time for people to get lost within the system, according to Hyde.

An eager landlord

Lambert Adjibogoun, who owns the home that Crain is living in, was eager to participate in the short-lived program. He already had a personal goal to rent to people who are sometimes excluded from access to quality, affordable housing, so the program complemented his values, he said.

“I believe in second chances and that is why I had this property in the first place,” Adjibogoun said. “I believe if you give people a place to live, then they will show you the best of themselves. If you are able to solve someone’s housing problem, then they are able to better maintain a job or find work.”

He said he knows that many landlords are hesitant to look past what they typically think are red flags such as past evictions, criminal histories, no steady income or credit issues. But in his experience, giving people a chance has led to positive outcomes for his properties, even before the county’s program launched.

Sandi Jernstrom credits her safety and housing progress to Portland’s new non-police street response teams.

“Those people I have rented to have taken better care of my properties than any other people because they don’t want to lose their home and they want to prove themselves and they want a chance in life,” Adjibogoun said.

But what really sealed the deal for him about the Move-In Multnomah program was the guarantee of a staff member from the county who would be there to help during tough patches, he said.

“I don’t know what will happen after the first year of rent assistance runs out (for my tenants) but I don’t plan to ask them to leave,” he said. “However, I do hope that the county will make the support staff permanent. That is critical, having someone to help because I might not be an expert when certain problems arise and maybe the residents might make a mistake and having that support means we can all move through that.”

More money needed

But more cash is needed to make Move-in Multnomah a long-term program. To provide just rent assistance, without support staff or damage guarantees, it could cost nearly $80 million to house for one year the estimated 5,228 people who are currently homeless in Multnomah County, according to the most recent federal count. Experts say that the actual number of homeless people in the area is likely much higher.

Shannon Singleton, the interim director of the joint office, said the county would love to scale up the program and is currently exploring how to better work with landlords. She said the county has their general rapid rehousing program, but it doesn’t offer landlords the same assurance the county will cover tenant damage or provide staff support in cases of landlord-tenant conflict.

“We had landlords coming to the table (for Move-In Multnomah),” said Singleton, adding that landlords stepped forward when media covered the program’s planned launch. “When that doesn’t happen, there is a lot of legwork for the individual caseworker to find a landlord.”

Singleton said that while Move-In Multnomah likely won’t relaunch as is, she thinks landlord retention will be integrated into existing county housing programs and scaled up to better serve people in need.

While housing nonprofits that the county contracts with to house people can set aside funds for things like damage guarantees, without an additional influx in revenue, it would take away from the pool of funds available for rent assistance.

For now, Crain is thankful to have been one of the lucky ones. She has already started saving money to prepare for when she’ll be responsible for her rent. She is confident that as long as her roommates stay, she will be able to cover her portion of the bills on her current salary.

This will also be her first Portland winter living indoors in nearly a decade and she plans to make the most of it.

“It’s emotional,” she said. “We are going to have Thanksgiving at our house, but I will also continue to go back out to where I used to live and take food and blankets to my friends who are still homeless.”

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