While we are fortunate to have a collaborative regional approach to housing and homelessness services provision in Central Oregon, we have not had consistent or diversified continuum funding (many communities receive supplemental dollars from city and county governments), nor has this funding increased in proportion to the number of individuals experiencing homelessness. Like other communities across the country, Central Oregon is experiencing a severe housing shortage which has led to a housing affordability crisis making it even harder to house formerly homeless clients and use available housing choice vouchers locally.
Homeless Leadership Coalition measures our homeless response system’s performance using HUD defined System Performance Measures. The purpose of these measures is to help communities gauge their progress in preventing and ending homelessness. Our 2020 SPMs reveal the following opportunities within our homeless response system:
- The percentage of individuals accessing local services who are categorized as 1st time homeless (having not engaged in a local program in 24 months), is 65%.
- The average length of time homeless (measured from program entry to exit) has increased from 38 days (2016 SPMS) to 104 days (2020 SPMs) for those accessing services through emergency and transitional shelter programs.
- Since 2018, the number of successful program exits from services to housing placement have declined from 37% (2018) to 33% (2020) and at the same time Central Oregon’s number of those experiencing literal homelessness has increased from 787 (2018 Point in Time Count) to 1,098 (2021 Point in Time Count).
- According to our 2020 system performance measures, 23% of people exiting to permanent housing from an Emergency Shelter in our community returned to homelessness within 2 years.
2020-2024 Regional Health Improvement Plan Priority Area
Future State Measures
1) Create a way to accurately measure individuals experiencing homelessness
2) Increase Housing Choice voucher holders able to find and lease a housing unit
Accurately measure the number of Central Oregonians experiencing homelessness and launch a regional By Name List of individuals experiencing homelessness.
Recruit, hire, train and retain the desired positions.
Improve Housing Choice Voucher success rates and take advantage of all received Emergency Housing Choice Vouchers.
Strengthen and improve the Coordinated Entry system by staffing the program, improving training, reporting and quality measures.
A Year One Report for this project will be available in October 2022.
A Year Two Report for this project will be available in October 2023.
Please check back under "What We're Learning" to see the outcomes of this project after the Final Report is submitted in November 2024.