Oregon lawmakers passed a $200 million bipartisan housing and homelessness package Tuesday night, sending it to Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk for final approval.
The $200 million outlay from House Bills 2001 and 5019 will bolster rent assistance, expand shelters, protect homeless youth and catalyze housing development, among other initiatives. The package also makes several policy changes intended to defray the affordable housing crisis, including giving tenants more time to pay overdue rent and holding local jurisdictions accountable for producing more housing.
The Senate passed both bills on a 21-7 vote Tuesday evening, less than a week after the package was overwhelmingly approved by the House. The package is among Kotek’s top policy priorities for the session.
The rapid and lopsided passage of the first bill represents a major victory for Kotek, a Portland Democrat who made housing her signature issue during her record-setting nine years as speaker of the House. The fact the money measure passed the Legislature in March, with millions slated to be pumped out to communities starting this week, is highly unusual and shows the sense of urgency in both parties to address the state’s pressing housing shortage.
During debate on House Bill 5019, first-term Sen. Aaron Woods, a Wilsonville Democrat, said “the people of Oregon need us to act. We cannot allow the status quo of homelessness” to continue, he said. “This bill will help us build more housing, get people off our streets and make our communities more safe.”
During debate on House Bill 2001, senators said while they largely supported the bill, it wasn’t enough.
“Investments made in this bill are important but temporary,” said Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend. “I support (the bill) but we need to make housing a priority to solve the problem and give people permanent housing … we need a bold and robust housing package to follow the homelessness package.”
Knopp and Sen. Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, both said more mental health and addiction resources need to be created throughout the state as well.
Kotek is slated to sign the package quickly, allowing $30 million to be pushed out to local communities immediately. Those initial funds will go to eviction prevention, rent assistance and some state staffing costs. The remainder of the funding will become available July 1, the start of the next fiscal year.
The money will be on top of any funding that makes its way into the general housing and homelessness budget for the coming two years. Service providers view the emergency funding as a down payment that will allow them to quickly scale up their work while they wait on typical state funding.
The largest portion of money, $55 million, will be used to secure apartments for unhoused people. That money will go to nonprofits and landlords to help 1,200 unsheltered people become housed, largely by paying the rent for them to live in privately owned apartments.
Multnomah County plans to use its portion of the funding to resurrect a pilot program it initiated last summer that paid landlords to house unsheltered people while providing landlords assurances such as landlord-tenant mediation and money to repair damages. They hope to house 300 people through that.
The next largest portion of money, $34 million, will go toward rent assistance aimed at preventing evictions. State officials project the rent assistance will prevent 8,750 families and individuals who are currently housed from becoming homeless. That equates to nearly $3,800 per household.
Multnomah County aims to prevent 2,000 households from becoming evicted.
The bill also brings back some pandemic-era renter protections that have since expired. It will require landlords to give tenants 10 days’ notice instead of 72 hours before initiating an eviction, provide tenants with information about their rights and resources upon notice of eviction and accept payment of rent after eviction court proceedings have started.
Policy changes will also require judges to throw out an eviction case if a landlord refused to accept rent payments, including through a rent assistance program. Judges will also be required to seal some eviction records to avoid causing barriers to future housing for individuals.
Another $25 million in the bill is earmarked for to support youth through housing, shelter, behavioral health care and other supportive services. Most of the funding will expand the state’s host home programs that are like foster homes but are for older teens and grant them more independence. Some money will also be used to expand local youth housing and shelter programs and add emergency housing funds for families with school-age children.
The package calls for $23.8 million to expand low-barrier shelters statewide to serve those who aren’t able to immediately access housing. The funding will add 600 beds across a state that has an estimated 12,000 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, according to the last federal count of homeless individuals.
Multnomah County will get 150 of those new shelter beds, though the city of Portland will not be allowed to use the funds for the planned mass city-run tent encampments, the first of which is slated to open this year.
In addition, $27 million will go to 25 rural counties, enabling them to create 100 new shelter beds and house 450 people. It is estimated there are about 5,000 unsheltered people across the 25 rural counties.
But Bonham and Sen. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford, said more funding for rural communities needs to be considered in the future.
The package will also allocate $20 million to produce affordable modular homes. The factory-built homes are intended to avoid the delays that typically come with building homes and apartments from scratch. The projects could be tiny homes, backyard dwelling units, duplexes or full apartment complexes.
The bills will also relax land use restrictions to allow for more rapid construction of housing in urban and rural areas. That includes eliminating some permitting requirements and prohibiting appeals to housing development plans if the local government has followed the state’s plans.
In a push for more local accountability, the state will now have some increased authority over local development plans. State officials will annually assess and set housing production targets for cities with more than 10,000 residents and can intervene if those cities fall behind.
The bill also provides $5 million to develop housing for agricultural workers.
Nicole Hayden reports on homelessness for The Oregonian/OregonLive. She can be reached at nhayden@oregonian.com or on Twitter @Nicole_A_Hayden.