Houseless not Homeless

Before the morning fog fills the streets of Portland volunteers pour into community kitchens and get to work.

It's a cold October morning in Portland, OR, one of the cities that has been worst impacted by the houselessness epidemic. No street in downtown is unaffected, even the most expensive high-rises in the city will have a tent underneath them, it has become inevitable.

Most people you talk to in Portland have houselessness in the front of their minds, after all you can't drive to work without seeing a tent, and almost everyone has a family friend that volunteers at one of Portlands multiple soup kitchens. In schools houselessness is a big focus, for example, I took a class focusing on houselessness, and for assembly we would often have speakers come in to talk to us about what is being done to end houselessness. Apart from that, most of us had volunteered at least some of our time to some intiative trying to solve the houselessness epidemic.

Portlanders have been hard at work finding solutions. There are two main approaches the people of Portland have taken: policy and direct action. Policy is focused on putting pressure upon the local, state and federal governments to institute new policies to cut houselessness. This can be a long process, and for many the rewards don't compensate for the effort and patience required.

On the other hand many have opted for direct action, this can be achieved through two main routes, support and housing first. Support can be anything from collecting funds through William Temple Houses thrift shop to serving those in need breakfast at Blanchet House. Housing first organizations are those providing housing directly to houseless people, often with the money they collect from donations, the most prominent of this organizations is Transition Projects.

When people think policy they mainly think about federal politics but in reality federal politicians have abandoned the problem of homelessness almost completley, with very minimal work being done on it.

Since federal politicians have long ignored the issue of homelessness, the citizens of Portland have taken to local and state politics. Homelessness was a main campaign issue in the 2022 gubernatorial race, and is cited as one of the main reasons why democrat Tina Kotek won over independent Betsy Johnson, with the latter ignoring homelessness and advocating for law enforcement response in the streets of Portland.

Many community organizations like Transition Projects aim influence legislation, with Transition Projects going as far as having a full time employee who's sole duty is to influence local politicians into making more pro homeless laws. Many pro homeless groups organize protests and fundraising efforts to sway politicians. This is incredibly effective as Oregon recently passed HB3124 (Expanding the notice time needed for camp evictions by 2 days) and HB3115 (Defining requirements for basic housing), two trailblazing laws that are in the forefront of homeless law in the nation.

But policy change can be slow, and it is often not as sweeping as the voters expect it to be, this is why a lot of Portlanders are taking work into their own hands.

A lot of this work is part of the traditional framework that has been working to help the homeless for the past decades. Soup kitchens like Blanchet House, fundraising initiatives like the William Temple thrift shop and corporate initiatives by companies like Nike and Columbia are pushing to give homeless people in Portland more dignity. They aim to give homeless individuals the resources they need such as food, clothes and mental health support.

But while the traditional framework does a good job at giving those that are in a state of homelessness dignity new solutions are needed to bring people out of homelessness.

Homelessness is a cycle that is almost impossible to escape from. Most people enter homelessness through the loss of a source of stable income, this might happen because of macro economic factors that might result in their firing or because of mental health disabilities that don't allow them to work anymore.

It is also important to determine that homelessness doesn't define an individual. Nowadays it is preferable to use terms like houselessness or individual experiencing homelessness to describe people who find themselves in this situation.

The thinking that occurred to the people of Portland is that the cycle has to be broken at some point. The easiest and most sustainable point to break the cycle at is homelessness. The idea is that the origin of the issue might as well be its end, this is called the "housing first" approach. This is why a group of activists in Portland got together to start Transition Projects, a non-profit that aims to give transitional housing to those finding themselves in a state of homelessness.

Transition Projects aims to give as many people who are experiencing homelessness in Portland shelter and resources so they can escape the cycle of homelessness. They own various buildings in the Portland area, most of which consist of single occupant apartments, with a bathroom and a kitchen. Some of their buildings are designed for families, with multi-room apartments.

When occupants are taken in the goal is for them to leave in 2 to 3 months. They are given complete liberty, which draws many in who don't want to go to traditional shelters where you may not be able to leave, and thus are given dignity. Transition Projects gives them a case coordinator who will evaluate their situation and help them find the resources they need, including, but not limited too:

• A source of stable income
• Mental health resources (in house mental health available too)
• Hygiene products and meals
• Job and career training
• Peer-support groups

Transition projects is also using unused spaces in the city to build tiny homes, building various small communities of people in transitional housing where there used to be abandoned parking lots (like in the example above). When walking through this area you can hear music playing, people laughing and dogs barking; it sounds and more importantly, feels like a small village.

Transition Projects funding comes from a variety of sources, including private donations and government grants. Unfortunately, Transition Projects can't help everyone, government grants are very restrictive and don't allow for people suffering from substance abuse (the risk of remission is 40-60%), and private, unrestricted funds are very limited. Transition Projects priority is families and marginalized peoples, leaving many still waiting to be helped.

In conclusion, the people of Portland are doing a lot to try and end homelessness, from volunteering in soup kitchens to building and supporting transitional housing units. But homelessness is going to take a long time to be fixed, and we still have to see if these efforts are in vein or not.

I (Alfredo Roman) am a student at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. I had the pleasure of living in the Portland area for three years in which I saw the effects that homelessness was having in the city. I created this StoryMap with the goal of educating people in other areas of the world on what Portland is doing to end homelessness.

I used a variety of digital tools for this project. I created 3 flourish visualizations to aid people in understanding what I believe is the cause for homelessness, making sure they popped to the reader and are easy to understand. I also used a TimelineJS to tell the story of large policy bills in the US aimed at reducing housing insecurity. Additionally, I created various graphic design elements such as the cycle of homelessness and the definition of transitional housing, to make the main points in the reading section easier to understand and help them grab the readers attention. Finally, I used a map comparison to show how Transition Projects had developed an area in Northwest Portland and turned an old parking lot into tiny homes.

I am really happy with the end result. I think I did a great job at answering my main question and used many, varied tools to help push my point across. My main difficulty and time waster was the design elements, I had to create a whole new template in ArcGis Storymaps and a document outlining what colors I wanted to use in this site to maintain consistency. I am very happy with the result of this attention to detail though, I think the dark green (Oregon Ducks Green) lures readers in and pays homage to the traditional colors of Oregon. Creating the visualizations went really well, I think I will definitely use Flourish in my future endeavors as it is a very easy software to use.

• City of Portland; Home Forward; A Home for Everyone; Multnomah County; City of Gresham; Conklin, Tiffany Renée; Mulder, Cameron; and Portland State University. Regional Research Institute, "2019 Point-in-Time: Count of Homelessness in Portland/Gresham/Multnomah County, Oregon" (2019). Regional Research Institute for Human Services. 63.https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/29201

• Townley, Greg, et al. “Engaging Unhoused Community Members in the Design of an Alternative First Responder Program Aimed at Reducing the Criminalization of Homelessness.” Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 50, no. 4, 2022, pp. 2013–30,https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22601.

• Ding, Hao, et al. “Homelessness on Public Transit: A Review of Problems and Responses.” Transport Reviews, vol. 42, no. 2, 2022, pp. 134–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2021.1923583.

• Reppond, Harmony A., and Heather E. Bullock. “Framing Homeless Policy: Reducing Cash Aid as a Compassionate Solution.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, vol. 18, no. 1, 2018, pp. 284–306, https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12156.

• Adam Millard-Ball. “Viewpoint: Turning Streets into Housing.” Journal of Transport and Land Use, vol. 14, no. 1, 2021, pp. 1061–73, https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.2021.2020.

• “What Is Housing First.” Housing First Europe, 29 May2022, housingfirsteurope.eu/trainings/housing-first-guide/what-is-housing-first.

• Nickelsburg, Monica. “The Cities Making a Dent in Homelessness — and What Seattle Can Learn From Them.” GeekWire, 28 July 2018, www.geekwire.com/2018/cities-making-dent- homelessness-seattle-can-learn.

• Bored, Hillary. “Oregon Governor Candidates: What Would They Do to Address Homelessness?” Oregonlive, 28 Oct. 2022, https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2022/10/oregon-governor-candidates-what-would-they-do-to-address-homelessness.html. 

• Griffin, Anna. “Our Homeless Crisis: A Timeline of Shifting Federal Philosophies and Approaches toward Poverty.” Oregonlive, 28 Feb. 2015, https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2015/02/timeline_of_federal_housing_ef.html. 

• Peele, Sophie. “Oregon's New Law to Protect Houseless Campers May Not Change Portland Policy on Sweeps.” Willamette Week, https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2021/06/10/oregons-new-law-to-protect-houseless-campers-may-not-change-portland-policy-on-sweeps/. 

• Portland State University. “Homelessness Policy.” Homelessness Policy | Portland State University, 2022, https://www.pdx.edu/homelessness/homelessness-policy. 

I affirm that I have upheld the highest principles of honesty and integrity in my academic work and have not witnessed a violation of the Honor Code.