VOTE411 Voter Guide

Too often, Multnomah County decision-making lacks focus, urgency, partnering, and accountability.

That is why I’m running.

Take the urgent need to end homelessness and expand mental health treatment.

It’s not because of a lack of money right now. Taxpayers have raised their own taxes pouring more than half a billion dollars into ending homelessness.

But we aren’t getting adequate results.

Why!? A key reason is because we have a patchwork system with scant accountability.

You can read more here. Quick summary of key reforms:

- Require joint budgeting, oversight, and accountability for the upwards of $650 million in homelessness, housing, mental and addiction health programs now budgeted mostly separately by the County, Home Forward, and cities.

- Establish a single care tracking system for people who need services. We need one system to access all services, so clients can get the services they need, caregivers can follow up with clients, and taxpayers can see if services are actually being delivered.

- Start NOW to replace the drug and alcohol sobering center. For five years, outreach workers and first responders have no place to drop off those in crisis.

- Require a yearly public report card of joint efforts, not just siloed ones. You should be able to see what is being done—if joint accountability measurements exist (currently not many do), if these goals are being met, and what actions are being taken to meet or exceed them.

I am unsatisfied with Multnomah Couty's four-year delay in reopening the sobering center. First responders and civilian outreach workers have no appropriate place to take people experiencing acute drug reactions. I support the proposal by Commissioner Julia Brim-Edward's plan to start the process now to site, staff and open a new center in months not years.

It’s not because of a lack of money right now. Taxpayers have raised their own taxes pouring more than half a billion dollars into ending homelessness.

But we aren’t getting adequate results.

Why!? A key reason is because we have a patchwork system with scant accountability.

You can read more here. Quick summary of key reforms:

- Require joint budgeting, oversight, and accountability for the upwards of $650 million in homelessness, housing, mental and addiction health programs now budgeted mostly separately by the County, Home Forward, and cities.

- Establish a single care tracking system for people who need services. We need one system to access all services, so clients can get the services they need, caregivers can follow up with clients, and taxpayers can see if services are actually being delivered.

- Start NOW to replace the drug and alcohol sobering center. For five years, outreach workers and first responders have no place to drop off those in crisis.

- Require a yearly public report card of joint efforts, not just siloed ones. You should be able to see what is being done—if joint accountability measurements exist (currently not many do), if these goals are being met, and what actions are being taken to meet or exceed them.

1) Creating a central database of available shelter beds that is public-facing.

2) We need to drastically increase the number of walk-in shelter beds. Currently most are reservation based with 2-3 week waiting lists.

3) We must use SMART Goals for every budget line item (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Timeline). The public is getting restless with increasing taxes and what seems to be no returns on investment.

4) We must develop more tools for our first responders to assist those living outside. This includes the central database of available shelter beds, advocating at the State for a definition for gravely disabled, funding for individuals in need of care facilities or adult foster care.

I work in Old Town. I am surrounded by people in constant mental health crises, and nearly everyone needs to be in a sobering center, but instead they roam the streets. So my guess is this facility is voluntary, not mandatory.

What I would change is that we have to stop normalizing public use of drugs, and stop normalizing people being high walking the streets, or people in a mental health crisis to become the community's responsibility. We all care, but this is not something the public is trained to do. We must begin enforcing some basic standards of behavior in the public realm, and give first responders the tools to transport those in mental health crisis or high on drugs to care.

We must prioritize bond measure dollars for chronic homelessness needs first and foremost. Currently a majority of the dollars are being spent on preventing homelessness by investing in affordable housing, which is why the voter is not seeing much change outside.

We must create a central database of available shelter beds accessible to the public.

We must drastically increase the number of walk-in shelter beds.

We must be able to use housing funding for adult foster care and long-term care facilities.

And we must have public, nonprofit and private sector all building housing simultaneously.

Informed public & accountable government. I want to make it easy find, access, and understand what we do with taxpayer dollars. I will update our county’s out-of-date technical infrastructure. This would the commission's work and lower barriers to public participation.

Green New Deal for Multnomah. The changing climate coincides with a renewed need for better public investments after decades of neglect. I see a Multnomah that prioritizes housing availability and affordability, livable wages, new green jobs, and future-proof infrastructure investments.

Impactful progressive policies. Tough questions lead to better outcomes. It's harder to say "we don't know" and seek out meaningful change than to cherry-pick data to justify one's cause.

After 3 years without results the county restarted the sobering center procurement process with a another 3-year timeline. Every day without a functioning facility puts lives at risk. We are in the midst of a 90-day fentanyl emergency, yet one of our most critical services, a sobering center, is MIA. There is no way to get back that lost time, but we can try to make up for it. To me, that is not additional micro-management of the health department, but efforts to enable existing facilities to create more beds immediately. For the future county can design contracts to better articulate baseline standards, tighten timeframes, and give frontline workers the resources necessary to assist those in need.

Housing first is a proven way to end homelessness. Where I see room for improvement is in implementation. Data-informed policies include ground truth. New insights lead to new questions in a cycle of actionable steps.

For example, JOHS reports that the average tenure of front-line service staff is less than 1-year. Pay is below a living wage for most staff, making it difficult for them to stay.

We cannot expect to solve homelessness when we cannot pay the people who are supposed to solve it a living wage. Multnomah can change the contracting process to mandate at least a living wage for all staff funded under county programs. I will seek out similar reforms that elevate my commitment to solving homelessness beyond lip-service.

As Multnomah County Commissioner for District 2, my priorities would center on:

o Youth and Working families o Community safety & livability o Homelessness o Addiction services & Mental health o Fentanyl crisis o Immigrant & Refugee services o AMR Response Times

As Commissioner for District 2, I would center equity and the voices of the ethnic and diverse communities most impacted by the on-going issues that affect community livability and safety. I would support and advocate for the revitalization of the business community in downtown Portland. I would also continue to support and advocate for the immigrant and refugee community to obtain stable and permanent housing.

I believe the most pressing needs in behavioral health at this juncture are inclusive of:

o Limited services for kids and youth o Declining services in rural communities o Limited long-term spaces for individuals facing serious behavioral health issues o The mounting issues of substance abuse rampant in the community

The issue of behavioral health services is further exacerbated by the homeless crisis, fentanyl crisis, and the lack of investments needed to scale up and expand services.

Filling the needs of the behavioral health gap would be inclusive of:

o Expansion of behavioral health services to include early detection and prevention o Explore additional funding to hire more staff to provide direct support for community members

The current plan fails to address one imperative question: How?

o What is the economic plan and how will this impact working families? o What are the benchmarks to determine if the new housing strategy is effective? o What real lessons were learned from the Housing Multnomah Now Initiative? o How will the new strategy prevent past mistakes?

My vision will be inclusive of leveraging resources from internal county departments (JOHS, DCHS, etc.) that currently work with homeless communities, provide rent assistance, and outreach services. I would create a financial accountability committee empowered to review and analyze how the budget for homeless services are utilized with benchmarks and key performance indicators to measure success

I have three priorities: housing, healthcare/behavioral health and safe communities. Multnomah County sits at the center of these three priorities. I have decades of front line experience, working directly with people to get into treatment, find permanent housing from a shelter or the streets, and providing mental health services. I know what works. We need to shore up our courts and frontline public safety services and get to the bottom of what’s driving troubling incidents in our jails.

Honestly, I’ve never had a client who needed an incentive to get sober, but now that this law is in place I welcome the opportunity to create a deflection system that actually works for the people we serve. What I have experienced is that we build programs in ways that make it almost impossible for people to use them. That has to stop. I had a client at JOIN who asked me to help her get into detox. You had to arrive early to get a bed so I picked her up at 4am at her camp, went to the center, waited in line, and she didn’t get in. The next day, we did the same. The third day I went to pick her up and she said she didn’t want to be disappointed again and didn’t want to go. She later died on the street. We need to do better and I know we can.

We need more of everything, and it needs to be coordinated. We need more housing, we need more shelter, we need more behavioral health interventions and retention services. We have an opportunity in this moment, with the Supportive Housing Services measure in place, to make great strides. It will take focusing on making progress, instead of bickering over the best way forward. We know what works. What we need to do now is show voters progress, and build trust with the people sleeping on our streets that we are serious about turning the corner on homelessness. I want to be clear. This will be hard and it will take time.