Title
Community Members Experiencing Homelessness (Goal 3)
Body
RECOMMENDED ACTION (Motion):
Staff will provide an overview of the efforts to address Homelessness and support a discussion by the City Commission on the proposed goal.
BACKGROUND:
Goal 3: Enhance the Livability of the Community
Community Members Experiencing Homelessness
* Work with regional partners to develop programs and strategies and to identify
additional funding to reduce and prevent homelessness in the community.
The Police Department, which includes Code Enforcement, is on the front line of homeless issues daily. Police respond to citizens concerned with homeless issues and incidents involving homeless people in need or crisis. While all police officers respond to these incidents, the police department has a dedicated officer whose full-time job is to aid homeless people in finding services, to work with the homeless on livability issues, to help homeless people who are the victims of crime, and to find solutions to the various livability issues that exist around homelessness. The homeless liaison officer is also a resource to other police department members, code enforcement, and others in both the business and residential community that need help with livability.
Code enforcement mostly deals with the removal of homeless camps. In 2018, code enforcement cleaned up about 90 homeless camps, which takes an average of four hours per camp to complete.
Aside from the Police Department, other City departments will continue working with a variety of agencies and providers to facilitate temporary or permanent housing.
• The Planning Division and Clackamas County Health, Housing, and Human Services (H3S) received a $220,000 Metro 2040 Planning and Development grant to create a master plan for Clackamas Heights to house residences at varying levels of support and serving the nearby community. The one-year planning process is anticipated to begin in July of 2019.
• City staff will continue to inform residences of service providers which may assist them. A recent example of this includes connecting the residences of Clairmont Mobile Home Park who were in fear of losing their homes to H3S and legal aid.
• The Planning, Development Services and Building Divisions will continue to assist organizations to understand how private strategies to address homelessness, such as tiny homes in church parking lots, comply with development approval criteria.
Other goals within the biennium complement this goal of identifying programs and strategies to reduce and prevent homelessness. The Comprehensive Plan update will provide an avenue for the community to identify how to meet the needs of the citizens and researching the feasibility of construction excise tax (CET) provides a potential funding source to implement programs to implement housing strategies.