Murmurs: Mayor’s Shelter Beds Often Lie Empty

MAYOR’S SHELTER BEDS OFTEN LIE EMPTY: Mayor Keith Wilson told the Metro Council on Tuesday that his ambitious plan to set up 1,500 emergency shelter beds by Dec. 1 is working. “I’m a dog with a bone,” Wilson said, ever positive. “I’m not a quitter.” One important nugget revealed during Wilson’s presentation: Between 50% and 60% of the 810 emergency beds opened since the beginning of the year are occupied on a nightly basis. That’s low compared to utilization rates at county shelters, which hover around 92% on a nightly basis. Portland Solutions director Skye Brocker-Knapp offered that statistic during questioning of shelter occupancy rates by Metro Councilor Ashton Simpson. Brocker-Knapp said that utilization rates are expected to increase as the weather turns, and said that as more data emerges, the city can “surge” the system up and down to adapt to seasons and upticks in demand. “My team looks at those percentages every single night,” Brocker-Knapp said. “That will help us toggle the system.” Wilson said he’d announce later this week the opening of an additional 280 shelter beds, bringing the total opened under his plan to 1,090.

LAWSUIT CHALLENGES PPS FOR RACE DISCRIMINATION: A Glencoe Elementary School parent filed a lawsuit against Portland Public Schools on Oct. 20, alleging the district had engaged in “race discrimination” when it adopted two separate policies. The first is an “equity funding formula” PPS uses to determine staffing across schools. That formula prioritizes 2% of all K–8 staffing to schools where more than 40% of students fall into a “combined historically underserved” designation. That designation includes students who are eligible for special education services or have limited English proficiency, but the lawsuit specifically takes issue with including students in the designation who are Black, Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander. Those students have long underperformed their white counterparts in statewide assessments, and the district committed in 2011 to a more equitable allocation of resources to help them catch up. Second, the lawsuit alleges the Portland School Board’s May 2024 change to the district’s fundraising policy, which banned local school foundations from raising money to fund individual staffing positions, is unconstitutional. It argues that’s so because in making that decision, the board in part considered that schools benefiting from the old policy were often wealthier and whiter. The parent, Richard Raseley, is represented by attorney Julie Parrish, a former Republican lawmaker in the Oregon Legislature, and the Center for Individual Rights, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that has long challenged affirmative action and what it sees as racial discrimination. The lawsuit asks PPS to declare its policies violate the U.S. Constitution, and for the court to order the district to end both. “Portland has put up two barriers: one based expressly on race, and another that blocks parents from supporting their own kids’ schools,” Raseley wrote in a statement to WW. “Both need to come down.” Spokespeople for PPS did not respond to a request for comment. Jackie Wirz, board chair of The Fund for PPS, the district’s chief fundraising arm, declined to comment.

BOYS VOLLEYBALL FACES OBSTACLES IN INAUGURAL YEAR: The Oregon School Activities Association made state history after sanctioning boys volleyball as an official sport on Oct. 6, with its first season to start in spring 2026. But in its inaugural year, some of the state’s largest school districts don’t appear poised to play. Both Portland Public Schools (under the Portland Interscholastic League) and the Beaverton School District have communicated their intentions not to run teams. The decision is causing uproar among students, parents and community members, especially since those districts are home to some existing teams that helped make boys volleyball official. Seven high schools in PPS and three in BSD have had boys volleyball teams, according to the Oregon Boys Volleyball Action Committee, a group formed to protest the decision. Spokespeople with PPS did not respond to WW’s request for comment, but Shellie Bailey-Shah, a spokeswoman for BSD, passed on a district message that noted a number of challenges. Beaverton had not set aside funding for boys volleyball since it was approved midyear and could face Title IX challenges because “adding a boys sport without adding a comparable opportunity for girls could create an imbalance in participation.” Parents across both districts have expressed interest in self-funding the programs. “This is a failure of leadership and a failure to plan,” says Micah Wilson, spokeswoman for OBVAC. “They left these boys hanging. This is a gut punch and a shock.”

COUNTY’S TOP HR OFFICER RESIGNS: Multnomah County is losing another high-level employee. Chief human resources officer Travis Brown resigned Oct. 19 to deal with family health issues and to “dedicate time to other professional endeavors,” according to an email Brown sent to staff that WW obtained. Brown said he was on medical leave last week and would likely remain so until Jan. 16, his last day as a county employee. Brown didn’t return an email seeking comment. A county spokesman said he could not comment on personnel matters. Brown became the county’s head HR officer in 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is the latest in a line of county employees who have departed in the past year. Chief diversity and equity officer Joy Fowler left for a job in Vancouver, Wash., in May. Dan Field, head of the Homeless Services Department, retired in June. Leslee Barnes, director of preschool and early learning, resigned in July after WW reported that she owned a preschool that collected more than $800,000 from the state in two recent fiscal years to enroll only nine children in the same period. “It is with gratitude and a mix of emotions that I inform you of my decision to resign,” Brown said in his email. “I extend my sincere gratitude to Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, the Board of County Commissioners, COO Chris Neal, and deputy COO Travis Graves for their leadership, trust and support.” Prior to joining Multnomah County, Brown spent less than a year as associate vice president of employee and labor relations at Oregon Health & Science University, according to his LinkedIn profile. From 2017 to 2022, he was chief human resources officer at Mt. Hood Community College.