By Guest Columnist | The Oregonian
Dan Field – Director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services

I made a big leap in April 2023 — leaving a long career in health care to lead the Joint Office of Homeless Services for Multnomah County and the city of Portland. I knew I was signing on to a tough job, and I’m glad I did.

This time last year, the Joint Office was the subject of criticism, primarily the result of underspending the millions of dollars entrusted to it through the Supportive Housing Services measure, a tax on high-income individuals and businesses passed in 2020 to fund homeless services.

Beyond underspending, our workforce was tired from pandemic efforts to add hundreds of shelter beds and drained by consistent leadership turnover. The office, created to coordinate homelessness response efforts by the city and county, was caught in political crosshairs that only made the work more difficult.

I took the job understanding the struggles ahead, but with confidence in our staff, service providers and ability to invest in the turnarounds that will have the greatest impact. I’m proud to say we have made remarkable progress these past 15 months.

For the first two years of the Supportive Housing Services measure, the office didn’t meet financial goals and spent far below our commitments. But that trend has ended. This month, we close the books on Fiscal Year 2024 — and announce a much-improved result.

When the accounting dust settles, the Joint Office will have invested close to 85% of its budgeted dollars from the housing services measure — well above the 75% target approved by Metro, the regional agency that administers the tax. That’s a significant turnaround from previous underspending. We’ve put those dollars to good use, housing hundreds more people out of homelessness than last fiscal year, while also providing shelter beds, street outreach and recovery and supportive housing services.

Excluding the excess dollars carried over from previous years, we actually invested every new dollar that Metro distributed to the Joint Office in Fiscal Year 2024 — even after they sent us more money than originally forecast. We’re now on a stable trajectory to prudently manage these resources.

That sea change required a mix of strategies, both practical and political. Our leadership team developed detailed budget dashboards that help us closely monitor spending throughout the year. When a program is not on track, we adjust quickly or shift funding to other needs. We deploy staff to work with providers to track progress and surface challenges promptly.

This led to another key step — improving our management of contracts. That might seem mundane, but it’s vitally important: funding service providers is 80% of our budget. Our contract monitoring and oversight work was cited as the strongest across county departments, with our effectiveness rated highly in a recent independent audit.

On the political front, we’ve moved past old disagreements and ideological differences to focus our investments on shared priorities. This allows us to cut through lengthy political debates and move quickly on big initiatives such as partnering with the city of Portland to build and provide services at the Clinton Triangle and other shelters. Similarly, after years of impasse, we agreed to invest in Bybee Lakes Hope Center, at the former Wapato jail, to keep their doors open and continue serving 175-plus individuals each night.

We’re also making sure we respond quickly to new opportunities, like collaborating with Gov. Tina Kotek and county leadership to expand the Clean Start employment program beyond downtown and helping Central City Concern launch mobile medical vans and develop a treatment and housing facility for people recovering from behavioral health challenges.

These changes are making a difference in our community, right now. More people are accessing shelter, and more people are leaving homelessness for housing — with the services they need to stay housed.

And we’re confident in our ability to track and share those outcomes. We have worked with the Built for Zero initiative, pioneered by a New York nonprofit, to strengthen and expand our registry of people experiencing homelessness, so we know who they are, where they are, and how we can help them. We’re improving our public-facing dashboard to better track progress toward our goals and launching a pilot project to track shelter capacity in real time. Our improved data strategy was noted in a recent county audit that showed our housing placement data is now 96% accurate.

This strengthened foundation is why we must remain united — with the city of Portland and all of our partners — to continue providing pathways for moving more people to shelter, services and housing.

After years of criticism for lack of a plan, and with strong leadership from the county Board of Commissioners and Portland City Council, we now share a clear, detailed strategy for the next two years. Highlights include adding over 1,000 shelter beds and hundreds of new units of permanent supportive housing. We’ve also built key success metrics, a framework for oversight and accountability, and a governance structure that brings more people to the table.

Our ability to right the ship and do what many critics thought was impossible tells me we’re on track, and that we must keep moving forward together instead of retreating to our corners. I am confident that when the Joint Office and our community stay aligned, we can — and will — rise to the challenge.

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