A homeless man rested by the side of the Periwinkle Creek Bikepath on Oct. 16, 2022.
It took a year for the Albany City Council to allocate part of the $1 million the Oregon legislature gave the city to do something about homelessness or the shortage of housing that people can afford.
On Wednesday night, the council voted 4-1 to allot $775,000 of the amount, but chances are the action won’t do anything for the homeless that Albany residents see every day.
Some $350,000 will go to Creating Housing Coalition, the Albany nonprofit that is planning a cluster of 27 tiny houses at 241 Waverly Drive S.E. At last report the group was still working on a land-use application.
The council gave another $275,000 to Habitat for Humanity toward two houses. The organization builds houses together for families that contribute in the form of “sweat equity.”
Jackson Street Youth Shelter, across from Hackleman Park, will get $150,000. The shelter asked for the money to help pay for its recent expansion, now completed. Council discussion suggested the shelter could use the grant toward operations.
Another applicant in the running two weeks ago, when the council previously discussed this, had withdrawn. DevNW, with an office in Corvallis, had originally wanted $750,000 toward a $17 million project to develop 40 homes in Albany.
Council members Marilyn Smith, Ray Kopczynski, Matilda Novak and Bessie Johnson voted for the allocation Wednesday. Dick Olsen voted “no.” And Stacey Bartholomew, president of Creating Housing Coalition, recused herself and stepped away from the dais.
Albany and 13 other cities got $1 million each under Senate Bill 5561, which the legislature passed in a special session last fall. The law says the money was to be used “for programs or services that address housing insecurity, lack of affordable housing or homelessness.”
Wednesday’s council action left $225,000 of the total yet to be spent. (hh)
One time grants don’t do much except to create a dependence on future, unsourced tax revenues.
Like a drug, that dependence (called a money use disorder) must be treated.
A needle exchange type of program is needed to keep the high going.
Portland Metro did this through a voter approved income tax to solve homelessness.
The Albany City Council is voter averse, so they should just double the city services “fee” in water bills.
A couple million every year is a nice sterile, never ending fix to the homeless problem in Albany.
Jackson Street Youth Shelter- a dark horse in this race? I must have missed their application in earlier reporting.
DevNW is quite the juggernaut in this space, and missing out on $1MM is almost a rounding error in their operating budget. https://devnw.org/blog/read-our-2021-annual-report/
So here’s the REAL question:
What’s holding you back from a job that pays what you need to take care oof your family and keep them whole?