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Mayors ask Legislature for homeless money By Damian Mann Updated: Nov 03, 2022 12:46 PM A A Homeless camps like this one in Hawthorne Park have become common in Medford and other cities around the state. [Jamie Lusch / Mail Tribune] A cry for help has gone out from cities across Oregon urging financial support from Salem to help solve the homeless crisis. “We asked for $120 million-plus to help cities deal with homelessness,” said Ashland Mayor Julie Akins. She is one of 10 members of a newly formed task force of the Oregon Mayors Association that sent a letter to the Oregon Legislature in October urging relief for cities across the state. The letter asks for $123,575,800 in annual contributions to cities so they can sustain and develop programs that help alleviate homelessness. That amount works out to about $40 per resident in each of the 241 cities in the state, with the minimum amount for small cities set at $50,000. In a news conference Monday, the mayors said they also want cities to receive annual funding in addition to the $123 million. The cities would use the money as they deem necessary based on local needs, because cities are the ones most directly affected by the problems of homelessness. They also plan to develop a request for up to $175 million for shelter and housing projects statewide. The mayors say the state and cities should work together to establish and expand local, community-based responses. These programs, which already are available in Jackson County, provide immediate shelter and services. The money would be used to help each city find its own solution to alleviate homelessness. Akins said cities such as Ashland and Medford have both undertaken a number of initiatives to help solve the problem but much more needs to be done. Medford has spent $18 million over the past three years on homelessness, but many cities throughout Oregon aren’t sure they can financially sustain local programs in the long term. Akins said the long-term solution is to develop some kind of low-income housing model to help fill the gap in housing throughout the state, with the shortfall estimated to be more than 100,000 residential units. Jackson County’s housing problem intensified after the 2020 Almeda Fire wiped out 2,500 residential units, many of them low-income, in both Talent and Phoenix. Akins said she proposes using Ashland’s share of the money, which would be about $900,000, as an incentive for a developer to build affordable housing. "We are not going to solve homelessness unless we learn how to solve housing,” she said. Some of the incentives could include using the money to reduce development fees or charges on new construction. As part of the arrangement, the city could provide the land for the development as long as there are deed restrictions to keep the units affordable in the long term. The deed restriction model is similar to a $20 million project in west Medford, which will feature 84 low-cost 3D-printed houses. As part of the development, residents would own the house but not the land. The 3D-printed walls are formed by robotic technology that squeezes out a cement mixture from a nozzle, creating walls that look something like a layer cake. Urban campgrounds and other temporary housing units are a short-term solution, but the long-term goal needs to be to get people in more permanent housing, Akins said. Affordable housing offered by partners such as the Jackson County Housing Authority, which has 2,000 units in the county, would be part of the solution, she said. The housing authority has developments in the works in both Ashland and Medford. Akins said it’s difficult for someone earning $15.50 an hour to afford rent, particularly when they’re dealing with the high cost of food and gas. “People aren’t going to commute here for $15.50 an hour,” she said. The letter sent to the Legislature states, “Cities are one part of what must be a statewide approach. We need state leadership to allocate direct funding that is scaled to respond to the gravity of this crisis facing cities statewide.” Reach freelance writer Damian Mann at [email protected].