Portland showed off a homeless shelter last week. The city’s largest homeless shelter will hold an estimated 140 sleeping pods for 200 Portlanders experiencing houselessness. The shelters are versions that contain bathrooms, showers, laundry facilities, a dog run, and a kitchen. Some of the pods and bathrooms are also being made ready for residents with disabilities.
Lawmakers met at the new Clinton Triangle Temporary Alternative Shelter Site. It is located at Southeast Gideon Street and Southeast 13th Avenue. Those in attendance were upbeat. The homeless crisis is real in Portland. Some have taken to social media to show the large number of tents and mobile vehicles parked on the side of streets being used for shelter.
Gov. Tina Kotek promised to deal aggressively with the homeless crisis. She approved spending more than $6 million in state dollars to address this issue in the metro region. This permitted Portland to purchase the sleeping pods. Multnomah County, Portland’s main county seat, pledged to commit more than $4 million out of its annual budget toward the program.
The new Clinton Triangle Temporary Alternative Shelter Site was first approved by Portland City Council in November. It was joined with a proposal to ban street camping by 2024 which has been a contentious issue that has caused delays. It was originally designed to only offer tent shelters, but the state threatened to withhold funding until the city committed to building sleeping pods.
There are a few ideas that is being used to control the housing issue. Housing Multnomah Now offers incentives to private landlords to rent to previously homeless tenants with rental assistance from the county. Every idea requires funding. The program’s rollout has been slowed due to state funding delays. The Rose City is expected to open a second mass outdoor shelter by the end of this year. No one has reported the location of the next new shelter.
