by Julia Shumway, Oregon Capital Chronicle
December 9, 2024
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Just before a tour of an Astoria homeless shelter late last month, Gov. Tina Kotek met with a single father living there with his children.
He’d been paying rent for five years in nearby Seaside when his landlord terminated his lease without giving a reason. The father and his children were homeless, in a remote coastal region of Oregon with the state’s highest per capita rate of homelessness. Until 2023, it had no permanent shelters even though more than one in 50 Clatsop County residents were homeless that year.
The father is among thousands of people statewide who’ve been at least temporarily housed through Project Turnkey, an Oregon program that turned $125 million into nearly 1,400 new shelter beds, mostly by buying and converting existing hotels and other vacant buildings into shelters like the one in Astoria.
Shelter units provided through Project Turnkey cost about half as much as the statewide average for affordable housing, and U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici has proposed congressional legislation to expand the program nationwide.
Kotek, who was speaker of the House for the first round of Project Turnkey, advocated for it in the Legislature. She still supports the program, among other options.
Her 476-page budget proposal, released Monday, includes a request for $217.9 million to maintain existing shelters but it has no funding to build new ones. Instead, her 2025-27 recommended budget prioritizes increasing rent assistance and eviction prevention to prevent more Oregonians from slipping into homelessness and efforts to permanently rehouse people.
“We don’t have all the money in the world, so I am still staying focused on (where) we’ve made commitments,” Kotek told reporters during her Astoria visit. “We have to sustain them. We have to continue to fund things through the next biennium. And I also want to build what we have started, which is a statewide system where there is a clear financial commitment with our local communities to say, ‘You’re going to provide a continuum of care for folks who are experiencing homelessness. We’re going to be there with you.’”
In Clatsop County, Kotek visited the Columbia Inn, a converted 21-room motel that opened in October 2023 with Project Turnkey funding and shelters around 50 to 60 people each night. She also toured the nearby Owens Adair apartments, which has 46 units for low-income seniors and will add 50 more through an ongoing construction project.
Both the shelter and the apartment expansion exist in part because of state action: Lawmakers allocated $2.8 million to help Clatsop County buy the Columbia Inn as part of its 2023 Project Turnkey expansion, and Owens Adair is able to add units on an adjacent lot in part because of legislative changes this year that allowed cities to adjust parking minimums in the interest of building more homes.
The Owens Adair apartments, in a historic hospital overlooking the Columbia River, have a waitlist of more than 300 people. The expansion will reduce that waitlist.
“It’ll help for sure,” said Hsu-Feng Andy Shaw, the county’s housing authority director. “It’ll help generations of people in Astoria.”
As part of its efforts to meet Kotek’s goal of building 36,000 homes per year, the Legislature ordered cities to fast-track housing permits and allocated money toward infrastructure improvements needed for housing. In coastal cities like Astoria, where the Columbia River and the Youngs Bay prevent growth in three directions, developable land for housing is even harder to find than in other parts of the state.
“If you see a vacant lot, there’s a reason,” Astoria Mayor Sean Fitzpatrick said. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, center, talks with Northwest Oregon Housing Authority executive director Hsu-Feng Andy Shaw on the site of the future Owens Adair II affordable apartments. (Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Turnkey results
A recent analysis by Portland State University of the first round of Project Turnkey shelters found that slightly more than half of the people who left Project Turnkey shelters before Dec. 31, 2023, returned to homelessness — either by using emergency shelters or being unsheltered. More than a quarter of people who left those shelters moved into permanent housing and 12% moved to temporary housing.
Those rates vary by site. In Astoria, Clatsop Community Action executive director Viviana Matthews said about 50% of the people who have left the Columbia Inn moved into permanent homes.
Statewide, Portland State University researchers found that families with children were twice as likely to move from shelters into permanent housing than single adults. Nearly half of the sheltered families with multiple adults and no children returned to unsheltered homelessness.
Staff interviewed by researchers pointed to a lack of available, affordable housing, as well as different needs for different people. Some need the structure and support of managed shelters or nursing facilities. Others, particularly older adults, might move in with family members.
“The Turnkey model is the idea that you’re helping people find where they need to be next,” one site director quoted in the report said. “It’s not always directly into housing.” From left, Astoria Mayor Sean Fitzpatrick, Clatsop County Commission Chair Mark Kujala and Gov. Tina Kotek talk about coastal needs at the Columbia Inn, a shelter in Astoria. (Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
The study found that Project Turnkey sites helped residents meet basic needs. Only 40% of guests said they often had access to showers before entering the shelter, while 49% said the same about restrooms and 58% said the same about laundry facilities. After the shelter, more than 90% of interviewees said they could access showers, restrooms and laundry.
The rate of people who said they had enough privacy nearly tripled, from 27% pre-shelter to 78% after. And worries about missing sleep or food plummeted.
Staff and residents at other Project Turnkey sites have described the privacy that comes with individual rooms as an advantage over more traditional congregate shelters. Ashley Hamilton, chief program officer for the ARCHES Lodge project in northeast Salem, told the Capital Chronicle last year that the locking doors on that converted hotel were “one of the more humanistic aspects of a Project Turnkey is that door.
“When you live a life of homelessness, it’s incredibly traumatic,” she said. “The bulk of individuals who go into a homeless experience will be victimized on some level within the first 48 hours. You just have this heightened state of fear and anxiety and lack of safety.”
Parents interviewed by Portland State researchers said staying at shelter sites allowed their children to perform better at school because they could focus on classwork instead of worrying about where they would sleep or shower. Others had freedom to play that they didn’t in previous living situations.
“(The children) feel like they don’t have to be quiet and everything,” one mother of four said. “They feel like they have their own space without other people and being able to eat when they want.” Toys sit outside at the Columbia Inn, a Project Turnkey shelter in Astoria. (Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Tents across street
At the Columbia Inn in Astoria, bike helmets, kneepads and a hula hoop hang from a rack over a collection of scooters, skateboards, sidewalk chalk and a foot-powered car for toddlers with a classic red frame and yellow roof. There are some balls, but because the mostly-empty parking lot that doubles as a play area abuts a busy road, staff encourage kids to use a tetherball pole instead of playing catch.
But the shelter isn’t able to help everyone. Across the street, tents and tarps lined a short road leading to the Columbia River.
Some of the people staying outside aren’t ready for shelter, local police and community service providers told Kotek, but staff work to build trust and relationships.
“Anyone living outside is not OK,” Kotek said. “We’re making progress, and there’s a structure now in place here, where people know where to go, they know how to do the outreach, they know who’s doing the work. That is a big change, and that provides at least an opportunity for someone to go out off the street.”
Eventually, Kotek hopes to see everyone now living on the streets or in shelters like the Columbia Inn find their own permanent homes.
As she and local politicians stood with hard hats and construction vests on the small parking lot where the future Owens Adair II will open its doors to residents in 2026, a rainbow emerged from the clouds over the river. Kotek took it as a sign.
“See?” she said. “More housing is coming!”
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