Tim Becker (503) 823-6784
Timothy.Becker@portlandoregon.gov
Today, Friday, Jan. 17th, Mayor Ted Wheeler welcomed a delegation of City of Eugene elected officials including Mayor Lucy Vinis, Lane County officials, members of the Eugene Chamber of Commerce, the Lane Transit District and other regional partner agencies, to showcase actions the City of Portland is taking to lead the way in addressing the homelessness crisis.
The focal point of the visit by the Eugene delegation is a tour of Portland’s new River District Navigation Center, a model facility that offers hope and stability to those that are most chronically homeless on our streets. Opened in August 2019, the Navigation Center is home for up to 100 people at a time hoping to change their lives, offering a safe place where for weeks at a time they can sleep, eat and access services that provide connections to vital health, employment and more permanent housing. Since it opened, it has served 240 people.
The tour and deeper conversations that followed offered information and insight into all that Portland is accomplishing and innovating in partnership with Multnomah County through the Joint Office Of Homeless Services (JOHS)—that funds and oversees the ongoing operation of the Navigation Center and other facilities—to address homelessness on multiple fronts in the region. On any given night, the JOHS and its partners are housing more than 12,000 people who would otherwise be homeless, double the number just four years ago. The JOHS also has opened hundreds of new shelter beds in purpose-designed, services-enhanced facilities since 2016, and also continues to innovate new models of providing outreach to people without shelter. Last year, it launched a new multi-agency program, called the Navigation Team, that provides intensive services to long-term campers while working hand in hand with the Navigation Center to offer those campers safe shelter beds.
“When people come here, it’s not just a place to stay," said Mayor Wheeler. "This is a place where our most vulnerable neighbors are navigated to services they need to get off the streets."
“We’re doing our homework here to understand how you’ve done in Portland, what has worked, learn from your experience and hopefully take away the best possible solutions we can for our own community,” Mayor Vinis said. “We’re looking at how this is a collaborative effort, all the different players that have come into place, the number of people that are served and how they cope with the large number of people that are coming in and needing services.”
Furthering an initiative to open the first-ever low-barrier shelter in Lane County, The City of Eugene and its partners are looking at not only the Navigation Center program model, but also at how the Navigation Center and other shelters work together through collaboration and coordinated implementation under the administration of the JOHS.
To download video of Friday’s visit including comments from Mayor Wheeler and Mayor Vinis, click on this link.
Video includes:
- Sound Bite with Mayor Ted Wheeler: “I’m really happy that Eugene has a close working relationship with its county the same way we do here, and what they’re going to learn about this facility behind us is this is a partnership between the city, the county, non-profit services providers and private sector business leaders who’ve all stepped up together and all collaboratively owned this issue. So partnership, collaboration, focused resources connecting people to the services they need to get off and stay off the streets, that’s the formula for success.”
- Sound Bite with Mayor Lucy Vinis: (“We’re looking at how the partnership works, how this is a collaborative effort, all the different players that have come into place, the number of people that are served and their sense about the satisfaction of moving on, acquiring the services, accessing the services they need, how they cope with the movement of a large number of people moving in and out and needing services; we’re concerned about that, we’re interested on thoughts about impact around the neighborhood, how it has felt to the City as a whole to have the center , so I think at the whole broad macro and micro level we’re looking for some answers and insights.”)
- Eugene Delegation and City of Portland staff outside Navigation Center today
- Interiors of Navigation Center (file video)
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