Join us for a fun evening of celebrating the accomplishments of CDN's first 10 Years, honoring the achievements of community developers in 2005, and connecting with your friends and co-workers in the CDC community. CDN Annual Awards Banquet will be held on Wednesday, September 28 from 5:30-9:00 pm at the Oregon Zoo.

For the featured event of the evening, Oregon Representative Earl Blumenauer and CPAH Director Sheila Greenlaw Fink will be the co-Anchors of a CDN Broadcasting Affiliate production of the live news magazine 'The Affordable Housing Factor.'  The Factor will trace the significant events of CDN's first decade in trying to create Fair and Balanced communities in Multnomah County and the region.

Do not miss what will be an evening to be remembered.  To reserve your ticket today, contact Karen Walker at karen@cdnportland.org or call Karen at (503) 335-9884.

Need more information on the Annual Awards Banquet?  Go to: http://www.cdnportland.org/events.html

Affordable Housing NOW! General Meeting Sept 21 at CAT

Affordable Housing NOW! is holding a general meeting to provide updates on AHN funding initiatives and to outline strategy for the next 18 months.  In the past 18 months, AHN has successfully advocated for $13 million in new housing funds that benefit Portland’s lowest income residents and achieved significant policy victories involving System Development Charges exemptions for affordable housing providers.  AHN grown our advocacy base in Multnomah County and across the region. Come to the general meeting and find out how you can help channel this momentum into more significant victories for housing.

The General Meeting takes place on Wednesday, September 21 at the CAT offices (Augustana Lutheran Church) located at 2710 NE 14^th Ave, in Portland.  AHN convenes general meetings as needed in order to share strategic information and to help form AHN policy directives. People interested in joining AHN or just finding out more about AHN are welcome.

The meeting will run from 6:30-8:00 pm.  Light refreshments will be provided.  Childcare available upon request.  Augustana Lutheran Church is accessible to people with disabilties.

Come discuss AHN advocacy targets for the next 18 months, and find out ways that you can get involved with our growing movement.

Questions? Please contact Michael Anderson at (503) 335-9984 or mike@cdnportland.org

Affordable Housing NOW! is a movement of affordable housing advocates and tenants whose goals are to secure new resources for affordable housing for the Portland Metro area by building a movement large enough to make funding for affordable housing for low income people a political priority in the Metro area.

Right now in Portland neighborhoods, hardworking people are not able to afford housing and still have enough money for groceries and other basic necessities.  Seniors and people with disabilities are being left out in the cold by the escalating cost of housing.  Affordable Housing NOW! believes that housing gives people an opportunity to build better lives. For our communities to be successful, community members need a place to call home.

To learn more about Affordable Housing NOW!, go to: http://www.cdnportland.org/ahn.html

Catholic Charities to Celebrate Opening of Kateri Park October 7

Kateri Park is Catholic Charities’ newest affordable housing development. Kateri Park will be the new home for 50 households, offering apartments affordable to families, seniors and people with disabilities with very low incomes. 

Kateri Park features environmentally green-building elements in its design and construction. Kateri Park is aptly named in honor of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, daughter of a Mohawk chief and a Christian Algonquin mother, who devoted her life to prayer, penitence and care for the sick and aged.  She is the patroness of the environment and ecology.

Please join us in celebrating the completion of Kateri Park on Friday, October 7, 2005.  Kateri Park is located at 3600 SE 28th Avenue (one block south of Powell Boulevard).

10:00 - 11:00 am Open Tours

11:00 - 11:30 am  Presentation

11:30 am - 1:00 pm Refreshments, Open Tours

Guest Speakers

Bob Repine, Director, Oregon Housing and Community  Services

Eric Sten, Commissioner, City of Portland

Bishop Kenneth Steiner, Archdiocese of Portland

Host

Dennis B. Keenan, MSW, Catholic Charities Executive Director

Our appreciation is extended to National Equity Fund, Wells Fargo and Madison’s Grill & Catering for their generosity in supporting this event!

For further information, please contact Terri Silvis, 503-231-4866, ext. 153

Seeking a Home Remedy: Funders, Federal Agencies Focus on 'Chronic Homelessness'

By Brennen Jensen, Chronicle of Philanthropy

Charities, foundations, and government agencies are pouring money into efforts to help people who have been homeless for years and years. Nobody questions the need to help such people, but some housing advocates fear the intense focus on "chronic homelessness" has left out families and people who live outside big cities.

Ending Chronic Homeless: Daston’s Story

The one-bedroom apartment in an unassuming housing complex outside Columbus, Ohio, is modest, but to its 43-year-old occupant, the space marks his entry into a brave new world.

"I've never lived on my own before," says Daston, who asked to be identified by his first name only. "This is all new to me."

Before moving in a year ago, Daston's address has often been a state prison, where drug charges have sent him several times. Other times he had no address at all.

"I was what you call a front-porch homeless person," says Daston, who has a mental disability that brings on depression and paranoia -- both made worse by drug and alcohol abuse. "I would sleep on my family's front porch, or in a car, coming and going before they'd wake up."

Years of Drifting

Housing advocates and the federal government have another name for Daston's way of life: chronic homelessness. At any given time, 150,000 people nationwide are on the streets after years of drifting from shelters to hospitals and sometimes, like Daston, to prison.

The chronically homeless are a tough group to help, and an expensive group to ignore. Research shows that they use a disproportionate amount of social services, such as beds at shelters and soup-kitchen meals, and heavily burden public health-care systems. Such studies, combined with promising results from some innovative programs, have prompted many advocates for the homeless to zero in on this population.

Last fall, nine foundations -- including the Rockefeller and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations --contributed $37-million toward ending long-term homelessness by 2014. The Bush administration has also been steering a growing share of housing dollars to help such people and has pledged to end chronic homelessness as well. It created the Collaborative Initiative on Chronic Homelessness in 2003, which has distributed $35-million pooled from three agencies (Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, and the Veterans Administration).

Supporters of the focus on the chronically homeless say that unless such people get help, homelessness will never disappear. They say that while people have always been homeless, it has only been in the last 20 years or so that it has become a burgeoning social problem.

Some housing advocates, however, worry that the move dangerously divides the homeless population, as by design it only focuses on adult singles and ignores the swelling ranks of homeless families and children. Social-service organizations in rural and suburban areas say it also puts too much emphasis on urban problems. The endgame, they say, should be ending homelessness for everyone.

Services on the Side

Most of the efforts to help the chronically homeless center on so-called supportive housing, which gives the homeless not just low-cost apartments, but also health care and social services.

Daston's rent, for example, is paid largely by the Community Shelter Board, a Columbus nonprofit organization that coordinates the city's homelessness programs. The charity received a $3.3-million federal grant last year. In addition to getting a roof over his head, Daston receives medication and weekly therapy. And he is now taking computer classes, reconnecting with his children, and looking for a job.

"I'm rebuilding my life," Daston says. "My five-year plan now is go to school so I can learn to help others."

While recovery from extended homelessness makes for heartwarming stories, housing advocates say that cost savings, not just concern for the welfare of others, is behind the push to end chronic homelessness.

"What is being discovered across the country is that the costs associated with a homeless population randomly ricocheting across systems may be more expensive than providing them with housing and all the support services that they need to end their homelessness," says Philip Mangano, executive director of the Interagency Council on Homelessness, in Washington, which coordinates homelessness efforts of 20 federal agencies. "The cost-benefit analysis is driving political will in our country now."

Pivotal to this conclusion is a 1998 study by a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice. Dennis Culhane analyzed shelter usage over two years by adults in New York and Philadelphia. The data showed that while the bulk of the shelter residents came and went rather quickly, about 10 percent of them -- which Mr. Culhane called the "chronic homeless" -- made extended use of shelter space, to the point of using 50 percent of the shelter's resources over time.

"Half of the shelter system was inappropriately functioning as permanent housing," Mr. Culhane says.

Mr. Culhane and other researchers next studied the expenses that governments incur when helping 10,000 mentally ill New Yorkers, half of whom where in supportive housing programs that cost, on average, slightly more than $17,000 a year. The other half were homeless and on their own.

After tallying costs for such things as shelters, hospitals, jails, inpatient psychiatric services, and Medicaid assistance, the researchers found that those in supportive housing required an average of $16,282 a year less in other charity and government services than did the homeless group. The savings were all but enough to offset the cost of the supportive housing.

Lobbying Efforts

Armed with such research, housing advocates have been lobbying for increased spending on supportive housing. Mr. Mangano, for example, spends much of his time traveling the country encouraging states, counties, and cities to develop their own 10-year plans to end chronic homelessness. The U.S. Conference of Mayors endorsed the idea in 2003, and nearly 200 local plans have been created.

"The chronic-homeless initiative refocuses us on that original population that we were responding to at the beginning of the contemporary response to homelessness," Mr. Mangano says, noting that some of the first homeless people to emerge in numbers were mentally ill people who had been ejected from psychiatric hospitals in the 1960s and '70s. When homelessness swelled in the 1980s, he says, those "hardest to serve got passed over by the homelessness bureaucracy."

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines chronic homelessness as a single adult with a disabling condition who has either been continuously homeless for a year or more or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years. (A "disabling condition" can be a substance-use disorder, a mental illness, or a physical illness or disability.)

Through its Collaborative Initiative on Chronic Homelessness, the federal government is paying for supportive housing for 544 chronically homeless men and women in 11 cities. Mr. Mangano says this group cumulatively represents some 3,500 years of homelessness.

Divisions

Opponents of the federal efforts to end chronic homelessness don't complain about who is being helped. The problem, they say, is who is not: families and children, excluded by definition from being considered chronically homeless. Families represent as much as 40 percent of the homeless population, and some do struggle with disability and experience long periods of homelessness.

"We don't support the chronic-homelessness initiatives mainly because we don't support placing certain individuals over others," says Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington group that represents 200 advocacy groups nationwide. "We want to end homelessness for all people, not just a targeted group."

Adds Brad Paul, executive director of the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness, in Washington: "It pits desperate populations against each other in that some groups have been deemed more worthy of needing resources than others."

Advocates have had trouble getting policy makers to focus on families, in part because little comprehensive data are available to show what they need. Mr. Culhane and others are currently studying homeless families, but it will take time until their conclusions are ready.

"Perhaps we haven't articulated the solutions for other homeless people as clearly and consistently as we have for chronically homeless people," says Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, in Washington, which is one of the beneficiaries of the grants made by the nine foundations last year. "We don't yet have a cost study on homeless families, we don't have a topology of how homeless families use the system."

Another concern is that the main studies used to justify the focus on chronic homelessness have been conducted in big cities. They say the experiences of suburban, rural, and smaller metropolitan areas have not been as widely considered.

Since chronic homelessness does appear to be more prevalent in large cities, some advocates for the homeless worry that social-services groups that work outside metropolitan areas are forced to ignore local needs to fall in line with the national agenda.

"As a system we need to be focusing on a broad range of populations and approaches and can't rely on one approach as a silver bullet," says John Parvensky, president of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, a nonprofit group that coordinates the state's homelessness services.

Mr. Parvensky's group sees both sides of the issue. His organization was awarded a $3.4-million grant through the federal Collaborative Initiative to provide housing for 100 chronically homeless people in Denver, an effort now 80 percent complete. On the other hand, the coalition also oversees grants for Colorado social-service groups in rural areas that don't have sizable chronic populations.

"There are homeless people in need in these areas and the providers fear they will not be able to respond under the current rules," Mr. Parvensky says. "They are doing tremendous work and risk being defunded for this new shift to the chronic population."

Proposed Changes

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is considering policy changes that could make things even harder on groups that work in small cities and towns. The agency wants to give higher priority to efforts to help the chronically homeless as part of the Samaritan Housing Initiative, formerly called the Permanent Housing Bonus program, which provides supplemental grants specifically for the development of new housing. And the agency recently changed the maximum amounts of Samaritan Housing Initiative funds that social-service groups can seek by instituting a new supplemental-grant calculation process that favors providers in large urban areas.

Such changes could mean the potential loss of hundreds of thousands of grant dollars, says Susan Johnson, housing coordinator at Clackamas County, Oregon's Division of Mental Health, which serves a largely suburban and rural county south of Portland. Of the 2,320 homeless people counted there earlier this year during a countywide census, only 32 -- or 1.4 percent of the total -- fit the federal definition of chronic homelessness. The count did find 988 homeless children under 18, some who are on their own, and others who are seeking housing along with the rest of their family.

The proposed changes in federal guidelines presents a major problem, says Ms. Johnson. "It puts us at a tremendous funding disadvantage when we don't have an urban core that attracts chronic homeless," she says.

Mr. Mangano, however, says some homeless groups are overreacting to the attention now given to the chronically homeless. He notes that half of homelessness dollars awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development already go toward helping homeless families. And he believes the new strategies will carry broad benefits.

"Ending chronic homelessness is the portal through which we must pass to end all homelessness," he says. "It's the most visible expression of the problem, and a disproportionate amount of resources are being consumed there. It's a strategy. It's not pitting anyone against each other."

Even though the economy is growing, earnings and health coverage are down for most Oregon workers, while hunger and bankruptcies are up, according to a Labor Day report by the Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP). The report, Losing Ground, analyzes the latest economic data to conclude that growth is bypassing a large share of Oregon’s workers this Labor Day, producing substantial distress for Oregon’s families despite the economy’s general gains.

“Many Oregon families are seeing their real incomes go down as health care, housing, and other costs rise,” said Michael Leachman, policy analyst with OCPP. “That’s a recipe for hunger and financial disaster in families without substantial resources, savings, or other supports.”

“Nearly all the earnings gains that happened as the economy has recovered went to the highest paid workers,” said Leachman. He said that among workers employed for substantial numbers of hours, low-pay workers lost $93 in real earnings last year, compared to the previous year. Mid-pay workers lost $79. High-pay workers, by contrast, gained $1,261. This high-pay group collected average earnings of $97,529 in 2004.

“Oregon has not yet added enough jobs to tighten the labor market sufficiently for employers to raise wages for most workers,” said Leachman. “However, demand for highly skilled workers in certain industries such as health services and construction is pushing up wages at the high end.”

The report found that jobs have still not caught up with population growth over the last five years. “Now there are just 74 jobs for every 100 working-age Oregonians,” said Leachman. “That’s down from 79 jobs per every 100 in November 2000, when jobs peaked before the recession hit.”

The report also found that one in five part-time workers in Oregon want full-time work but can’t find it. This is the highest rate of any state in the country, according to the OCPP. “Oregon is creating too many part-time jobs,” said Leachman.

The report uncovered significant fallout from the economy’s failure to reach a large share of Oregon workers. The share of Oregon adults living in a home where someone went hungry at times climbed last year, and near-record levels of Oregonians filed for bankruptcy. The report indicated that the typical Oregon household actually lost $1,362 in income last year as the economy improved. Since the end of the boom years in 1999-00, the typical household has lost $4,365.

“In contrast with many Oregon families, the richest of wealthy Oregonians have fared particularly well coming out of the recession, continuing a trend over the last generation,” said Leachman. The top one percent of Oregon households saw their real incomes increase by $32,500 in 2003, while the real income of the typical household slipped back.

“It appears that the current period of economic growth will be similar to growth periods in the eighties and nineties, when the richest of the rich fared the best,” said Leachman. “These lucky Oregonians have seen extraordinary income gains, while incomes for the typical Oregon household have been stagnant.”

Gains in inequality over the last generation are evident in counties across Oregon, the report found. In every Oregon county but two - Morrow and Lake – the incomes of the richest one percent of households at least doubled between 1980 and 2003, even after adjusting for inflation. In 14 Oregon counties the richest Oregonians saw their real average income more than triple.

To read the full report, click here.

The Oregon Center for Public Policy uses research and analysis to advance policies and practices that improve the economic and social opportunities of all Oregonians. (http://www.ocpp.org/)

As of September 9, updates to the OHCS Poverty Report-2004 are complete and the new PDF files are online. Changes made include formatting and other touch-ups as well as updates and corrections to errors made after the original printing. The original list of corrections and the new files are online as well at <http://www.ohcs.oregon.gov/OHCS/DO_PovertyReport.shtml>.

Crisis Verified: Priced Out in 2004 Documents Housing Crisis for People with Disabilities

The Technical Assistance Collaborative (TAC) Has just released its biennial study, Priced Out in 2004, which verifies that low-income people with disabilities are experiencing a national housing affordability crisis. On average, people with disabilities are paying 109 percent of their monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) income to rent a modest one-bedroom apartment and 96 percent to rent an efficiency at fair market value. The study was published by TAC in collaboration with the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) Housing Task Force, with funding from the Melville Charitable Trust.

“In this booming housing market, people with disabilities who rely on SSI payments are left further and further behind. Every year, rents for efficiencies and one-bedroom apartments far exceed the incomes for low-income individuals with disabilities,” said Ann O’Hara, TAC Associate Director and study co-author.

The Priced Out in 2004 study compares the monthly SSI income of more than 4 million Americans with disabilities to the fair market rental rates for efficiencies and modest one-bedroom apartments in every housing market in the country. For example, Metropolitan Washington, DC is the country’s most expensive housing market area for people with disabilities with one-bedroom units priced at 185 percent of SSI – almost twice the monthly income. People with disabilities in New York City needed 166 percent of monthly SSI to cover the cost of a one-bedroom apartment. Other metropolitan areas with rents well over 100 percent of monthly SSI income in 2004 included Boston at 158 percent, San Francisco at 155 percent, Fort Lauderdale at 147 percent and Chicago at 142 percent.

“Homelessness is one inevitable outcome of this problem. Today, hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities are homeless and living in emergency shelters or on the streets because they cannot afford a decent place to live,” Andrew Sperling, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and CCD Housing Task Force co-chair. “Others are living at home with aging parents in their 70s and 80s who are desperately seeking housing for their adult child while they still can.”

In 2004, the monthly income of a person with a disability on federal SSI benefits was $564 while the national average monthly rent for efficiencies or one-bedroom apartments rose to their highest level ever – an average $676 for a one-bedroom rental. Federal housing affordability guidelines say that low-income households should pay no more than 30 percent of monthly income towards housing costs.

“People with disabilities want to live in their own communities, not institutions or nursing homes. Unfortunately, they are being priced out of their housing markets without much assistance from the federal government,” said Kathy McGinley, National Disability Rights Network Deputy Executive Director for Public Policy and CCD Housing Task Force co-chair. “The Bush Administration needs to ensure that people with disabilities have the same housing opportunities as other Americans.”

In its Fiscal Year 2006 budget proposal to Congress, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sought policy changes that would have reduced rather than expanded affordable and accessible housing opportunities for people with disabilities receiving SSI.

“This report makes a clear and compelling case that only an ongoing monthly housing subsidy is sufficient to close the extreme affordability gap between SSI income and rental housing costs,” said Liz Savage, The Arc and United Cerebral Palsy Disability Policy Collaboration and CCD Housing Task Force co-chair. “Programs such as HUD’s Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program and the Section 811 Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities program are vital to people with disabilities.”

“The housing problems confronting people with disabilities are pervasive and extend to the lowest cost market areas in the country. It is impossible for people who receive SSI to pay these rents unless they continue to have a Section 8 voucher or some other type of rent subsidy,” said O’Hara.

The study is available online at:

http://www.tacinc.org/index/admin/index/_uploads/docs/Priced_Out_in_2004.pdf

About the Technical Assistance Collaborative

The Technical Assistance Collaborative is a national non-profit organization that works to achieve positive outcomes on behalf of people with disabilities, people who are homeless, and people with other special needs by providing state-of-the-art information, capacity building, and technical expertise to organizations and policymakers in the areas of mental health, substance abuse, human services, and affordable housing.

About the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities

The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) is a c006Falition of national consumer, advocacy, provider and professional organizations headquartered in Washington, DC. Since 1973, the CCD has advocated on behalf of people of all ages with physical and mental disabilities and their families. CCD has worked to achieve federal legislation and regulations that assure that the 54 million children and adults with disabilities are fully integrated into the mainstream of society.

Legislation introduced by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rep. Nydia Velázquez would expand opportunities for working families to have safe, decent and affordable housing. This legislation would encourage employers and local governments to invest in employer-assisted housing programs. The Housing America's Workforce Act (S. 1330, H.R. 3194) provides a tax credit to employers equaling 50 percent of the cost of housing assistance offered to eligible low- and moderate-income employees. Employees could use employer-provided rental assistance toward security deposits and rental payments.  Homeownership assistance could be used for contributions to a homeownership savings account or to subsidize down payments or closing costs. Employees would be able to exclude program benefits from their taxable income. Finally, the bill establishes a competitive grant program for nonprofit housing organizations or local governments that provide assistance for the operation of employer-assisted housing programs.

Fundraising Readiness is a new full day workshop designed specifically to help small and mid-sized nonprofits learn how to increase the effectiveness of their fundraising efforts.

Learn how you can build organizational readiness, improve board and staff working relationships, align your organizational structures, and obtain technology and systems needed for sustained fundraising success.

Workshop Leader Guadalupe Guajardo has been helping community-based nonprofit organizations increase their fundraising success for more than 25 years. She knows from experience that nonprofits in every community can translate their passion for their cause into sustained financial support. Fundraising Readiness will provide the tools your nonprofit needs to raise more money.

Learn how to mobilize your board, staff, and volunteers for more effective fundraising by:

* Translating passion for your mission into being comfortable when asking for money

* Identifying the technology and organizational skills you'll need to sustain your fundraising efforts

* Understanding how to find new supporters and how to increase giving from those who already give

Presenter: Guadalupe Guajardo PhD, TACS Senior Associate

Date: September 29, 2005, 8:30am - 4:00pm

Location:Mary L. Collins Conference Center at the YWCA, 1111 SW 10th Ave, Portland, OR

Price:$125

Register: http://www.tacs.org/training/event.asp?evID=277 

About TACS: http://www.tacs.org/about/dirtemplate.asp?pID=46