The Idaho Statesman reported last week that the Boise City Council voted to spend $2 million on ending homelessness, as part of a “10-year Plan to Reduce and Prevent Chronic Homelessness.”
Sound familiar?
Boise’s focus on finding permanent and transitional housing for the city’s homeless follows Portland’s similar 10-year plan to end homelessness. Boise credits Portland — and Commissioner Erik Sten’s staff working on homeless issues in Portland — with convincing the city that focusing on transitional housing is the best way to solve homelessness.
“I think it’s great that other jurisdictions are looking at us,” says Jamaal Folsom, Sten’s liaison to the Bureau of Housing and Community Development.
Folsom says other jurisdictions are talking to Sten’s office about creating programs to end homelessness, including Calgary, Alberta; Victoria, British Columbia; Lexington, Kentucky; and Los Angeles.
It’s funny to model any program after Portland. If you’ve been downtown at all in the past couple of years, you’d swear our homeless problems seem to be growing and spreading.
Our biggest problem with homelessness in Portland isn’t a lack of jobs, caring, or assistance finding housing. No, the biggest problem is that almost all the apartments available in Portland are being administered by out-of-state management agencies who set the qualification to rent bar so high that a person attempting to make the transition from homelessness to homed is impossible. Oregon is one of the few states that permit credit and background checks on potential tenants, complaints of management agencies refusing to rent to people with children are ignored by the city/state, etc. Until Portland and the state of Oregon actually pass laws to protect tenant rights, homelessness will continue to be a problem in this city.