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Over the weekend, WW reported that the city of Portland signed an agreement Jan. 8 with Multnomah County that placed strict conditions on the city’s participation in standing up and running severe weather shelters.
Most importantly, the city stipulated that it would only provide city employees to staff severe weather shelters if the county hired security guards. The same applied for shelter facilities: No security guards meant no city buildings used for shelter. The city also suspended its assistance in transporting homeless people to warming shelters.
Now WW has learned that the negotiations between the city and county—which according to Mayor Ted Wheeler’s staff have been ongoing for a year now—were triggered in part by an outside analysis commissioned by the two governments in the wake of temperature extremes (hot and cold) that descended on Portland in bursts during 2022.
The consulting firm iParametrics, based in Alpharetta, Ga., conducted the analysis and delivered it to the city in April 2023. The analysis, a copy of which WW has obtained, found the county and city’s emergency weather shelter response to be disjointed, inefficient and a communications black hole.
The report signals yet another way in which the county and city have failed to work together to remedy the area’s biggest crises.
“There currently exist a myriad of overlapping department and bureau objectives and missions that partially relate to emergency sheltering,” the consultant wrote. “The lack of clear statutory definition, executive directive, or strategic definition prevent establishing a foundation from which to build the rest of the response roles and responsibilities.”
The consultant added that, where systems were in place, “there was a constant battle ensuring those with a need to know were given and maintained access to the necessary documents.”
The consultants wrote that a small group of government higher-ups made decisions in a silo about weather shelters, and that there was “not much clarity around what data informed these decisions.”
Volunteers need to be identified well before weather shelters open, the consultants recommended, not at the last minute—and whoever is leading the shelters must have “an up-to-date contact list with specific safety- and security-related subject matter experts prior to shelter activation.”
In short, the consultant concluded in so many words, the response was chaotic. So was the commissioning of the report.
Mayoral spokesman Cody Bowman says the county and city “agreed to each pay half for the analysis.” But that, according to Bowman, fell through: “The county eventually stopped responding and engaging the contractor.” The county to date has paid $9,000 of its share of the cost for the analysis, Bowman says—only a small part of the total.
County officials tell the story slightly differently. Spokeswoman Julia Comnes agrees the county agreed to pay for half of the report—estimated to cost $83,600—but says the country was never invoiced for its half by the city. Comnes said that the city then “subsequently wanted to expand the scope of work for the contractor that prepared the report, including facilitation duties and other work, and the county declined to provide funding that expanded work outside of the report.”
The county, Comnes says, wrote its own analysis of its emergency weather shelter operations. The county did not immediately provide its review to WW.
So the city went forward alone. “Because of their nonresponsiveness,” Bowman says, “we moved the process forward. The city finds value in having the analysis completed.”
At the height of the winter storm that left the city coated in a layer of ice inches thick last week, the county stood up and operated warming shelters for homeless Portlanders. On the night of Jan. 16, the county offered emergency shelter to 1,269 people across a dozen facilities. County officials said it was a record high. It then closed the shelters Jan. 17, with ice still on the ground, drawing intense criticism.
The city gave the county permission to use one of its buildings during the winter spell—a community center in North Portland—as a warming shelter. As part of its recently inked agreement with county officials, the city did not aid in ground transportation to shelters.
Sixty-nine percent of volunteer shifts across the shelters were filled by county employees. City employees covered less than 7% of the shifts.