Homeless shelter at risk of closing asks county for public funds

By Karli Olson

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    PORTLAND, Oregon (KPTV) — A homeless facility in the former Wapato Jail building in north Portland is now at risk of closing, unless they can secure funds from the public sector.

Leaders of the Bybee Lakes Hope Center are asking Multnomah County Commissioners for a $3 million grant, as well as $500,000 in each quarter of the 2023-2024 fiscal year.

Until now, Helping Hands Re-Entry Outreach Centers has operated the referral-based re-entry program as well as a short-term emergency shelter entirely on private donations.

Founder and President Alan Evans said the private sector funds have been drying up, largely due to the tax passed by Metro voters in 2020, which allocates funds to the county’s Supportive Housing Services Fund. He said that means donors were less willing to give more on top of that tax to support the services the facility offers, even though the shelter does not benefit from that fund.

This year, Evans said, it all came to a head.

“We started seeing that our operating expenses were far outweighing the donations that were coming through our door,” he said. “Our forecasting gets skinnier and skinnier, and we realized about a month and a half ago that our financial forecast said we might not make it to the middle of September.”

Bybee Lakes Hope Center has 318 beds (178 of them currently filled) with around 60% of those in the re-entry program moving on to jobs and permanent housing.

They only pay a dollar a year to occupy their current facility, thanks to funding from philanthropist Jordan Schnitzer.

“Am I surprised that it got to this point, yes,” Schnitzer said. “Because the Helping Hands organization has demonstrated results of performance. Is its operation the answer for every homeless person? No. There are dozens of different programs, but this is one that has demonstrated success and runs very cost effectively. So why wouldn’t the city, the county and the state jump on this, and say, let’s use this as a role model of a facility that has demonstrated success, and let’s use some of the taxpayer money to help continue this operation?”

Evans said their average yearly cost to operate is $4.5 million, and they’ve been knocking on every door they can to get the funds to continue.

“We cannot do this by ourselves. Our counties and our cities and our state has to invest in the organizations that are providing services to those communities,” he said.

Evans said the response from Multnomah County Commissioners has been positive, and they gave encouraging comments during Thursday’s commissioner meeting, but he’s uncertain whether they will approve that funding in time.

“People want to be heard, they want to be loved, and they want to be given opportunities to change their life,” Evans said. “We’ve been fortunate enough to provide that service for a very long time and our heart breaks that we might not be able to continue to do that.”

FOX 12 reached out to the Multnomah County Commissioners to find out where they are in their deliberations about the proposal but has not yet heard back.

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