By Marshall Hammond
Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pedersen delivered her State of the County address to a large audience at OMSI on Monday, April 29. The address, which was the second since Vega Pedersen’s took office in 2022, covered a wide range of topics. But at the forefront were issues related to Portland’s housing and addiction crises.
Citing gains the county made in the past year and goals outlined in her county budget proposals and other ongoing programs, Vega Pedersen painted an optimistic and ambitious outline of what she hopes to accomplish in the next year.
“One thing we know about this moment in history is that our big urban centers have been struggling,” Vega Pedersen told the audience.
“The pandemic made the problem worse, but it was all already hard–brought on by multiple crises decades in the making: a lack of federal investment in affordable housing, a drug called fentanyl that requires a new fix every few hours, a shameful lack of sobering and treatment beds throughout our state, the escalating costs of healthcare and childcare, and new anxiety and instability in our lives and in our families,” said Vega Pedersen.
The address came on the heels of Vega Pedersen releasing her executive budget proposal for Multnomah County April 25. The $3.96 billion proposal contains a 24 percent increase in funding for homeless services, bringing the total funds allocated for housing placements, rental assistance and other support services to $285 million.
Some of those funds will go toward fulfilling goals laid out by Vega Pedersen and Mayor Ted Wheeler in their Homelessness Response Action Plan. The joint city and county proposal includes housing and sheltering an additional 2,700 people, adding 1,000 more shelter beds, increasing the number of adults leaving shelter for permanent housing by 15 percent, making sure 75 percent of people placed in permanent supportive housing are still there 24 months after placement and reducing homelessness, specifically among people of color and members of the LGBTQ community, all within the next two years.
“This plan brings together everyone to work from a shared roadmap: healthcare providers, our justice system, housing providers, service providers, crisis responders, our government partners at all levels. This is collaboration in action,” said Vega Pedersen in her address.
Vega Pedersen delivered the State of the County address on the same day that Governor Tina Kotek’s declared 90-day Fentanyl Emergency officially came to an end. A 121-page “crisis-response report” on the fentanyl crisis was released by county, state and city offices May 3.
Vega Pedersen said the emergency period was a “time when we’ve made huge changes to how our governments work together, from policy to street-level services. We have brought new urgency, solutions and lived-experience to this emergency.”
The proposed budget includes funding for $29 million state, county and city administered deflection, sobering and recovery package that is designed to “deflect people away from the criminal justice system and into the services they need when changes to our drug laws through HB 4002 fully goes into effect on September 1,“ said Vega Pedersen. House Bill 4002, passed by Oregon legislators March 4, re-criminalizes possession of small amounts of hard drugs such as fentanyl and cocaine.
As an illustration of the progress the county had made over the previous year, Vega Pedersen told the story of a formerly houseless Portland woman named Vicky. With support from the county’s Behavioral Health Resource Center, Vicky moved into temporary housing at the Clinton Triangle where “she now lives safely with her son and will soon be connected with more permanent housing,” said Vega Pedersen. Her proposed budget includes “$12 million to help people move out of shelters and into housing, $1.8 million to help people find the shelter and treatment they need and get the resources they need while they’re there and $13 million to increase beds for shelter during emergencies.”
In addition to the plans to alleviate the county’s homelessness and addiction crises, Vega Pedersen highlighted the need for “upstream investments in systems that change our society in the long run.” These include making “huge investments” in the Preschool For All (PFA) program, which provides free preschool to children in Multnomah County. The proposed county budget features a 57.8 percent increase to the PFA fund “due to $199.3 million of additional beginning working capital (mostly related to the Dedicated Savings strategy) and an additional $10.4 million in tax revenue.”
The PFA program seeks to achieve free universal preschool in Multnomah County by 2030. “Through PFA, we’re giving child care centers, family child care and school districts grants to improve and upgrade their buildings and infrastructure. Without these grants, many would never be able to afford it,” said Vega Pedersen.
At the close of her speech, Vega Pedersen mentioned one more daunting project that Portlanders will have to face in the coming years.
“As Commissioner Beason shared so well in a board meeting last week, we have an earthquake ready Burnside Bridge project that will take 14 years from start to finish,” said Vega Pedersen. “Many of the structural challenges we’re solving for right now have been with us for decades. Why should we expect these to take less time to change than it takes to build a bridge that will serve us for the next 100 years?”
“We have to do both,” Vega Pedersen continued. “We have to build the bridge and fix our structures so they can support people better. And we have to do this work with urgency. Because even though it may take time to change these structures, the work must happen today.”
Jessica Vega Pedersen delivers the State of the County address. Photo by Multnomah County.
