One recurring criticism of Metro's income tax to aid the homeless, which the voters approved yesterday, is that it comes without any clear plan for how it will use the $250 million/year that the tax will raise to assist the roughly 2,000 chronically homeless people in the metropolitan area or the roughly 38,000 people who are not chronically homeless, but are without a home for some part of the year.
How much is $250 million/year compared to other government budgets? Portland Public Schools, the largest school district in Oregon, spends about $650 million/year and employs 4,100 people to educate 50,000 children. The City of Eugene, Oregon's second-largest (population 171,000), spends about $580 million/year, of which about $180 million is through its general fund. Metro's operating budget (excluding capital investments through its Natural Areas bond fund, its $650 million Affordable Housing bond fund from 2018, and other bonded funds, is about $500 million/year. The new income tax equals about half of Metro's current operating budget. It represents a major expansion of Metro's responsibilities.
How, then, shall Metro evaluate whether it's using these new tax dollars wisely? And how shall the public evaluate Metro's use of this torrent of involuntary largesse? (I say "involuntary largesse" because about 85% of the voters earn less than the minimum required to pay the tax.) I'd like to propose that before Metro signs even one contract with a social service agency, a well-spirited nonprofit, or a politically connected consultant, it must establish quantitative performance measures and require each prospective contractee to commit to how it will help Metro meet those measures.
I have a few performance measures to suggest:
- Assist at least X people/year who are homeless by emergency (e.g., domestic violence, foreclosure, eviction) to be sheltered within 48 hours, and then assist them to be housed within 14 days after being sheltered
- Reduce the number of people who are sidewalk-homeless for 7 days or more to zero
- Convert at least X people/year from tent-homeless to sheltered
- Provide effective inpatient treatment for drug addiction to at least X homeless people/year
- Transition at least 75% of the people they serve to be housed and free of addictions within one year of receiving their first service
How will we know if this measure has accomplished its purpose?
- No one will be camping on downtown Portland sidewalks because the program funds are providing shelter. (Several court decisions have held that cities can't criminalize sleeping outside if no shelter spaces are available. Ergo: make shelter spaces available.)
- There will be no tent cities along the Springwater Trail. (See previous metric.)
- The open-air drug markets will have disappeared.
- Our parks won't be needle dumps.
- Several thousand people a year will have moved from street to shelter and from shelter to housing.
We've just voted to expand Metro's mission by 50%. If, three years from now, our sidewalks and parks are still tent cities, then we should admit that the measure has failed, repeal the tax, and think of something else.
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