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Home Forward CEO Ivory Mathews is resigning this week as the leader of the city of Portland’s housing authority, following WW reporting that she spent more than $100,000 on agency-funded travel in recent years even as the agency struggled to fill apartments and saw its finances deteriorate.
Now that Mathews is on her way out, the public pressure has shifted to the agency’s board of commissioners. The nine-person board is responsible for hiring and firing the CEO, approving the agency’s $300 million annual operating budget, and making sure the agency is fulfilling its mission of housing low-income county residents.
Yet as Mathews traversed the country attending dozens of housing conferences and networking events between 2023 and 2025, the board, at least publicly, remained quiet on the subject. Board notes reviewed by WW since 2020 show the board has held its monthly meetings remotely since the pandemic and minutes show the board rarely asked detailed, probing questions as the agency’s finances and performance slipped.
While the board avoided digging into the agency’s performance, the agency slipped. As of November, it sat on 955 vacant units, with a 6-month average time to fill empty apartments. The agency’s housing portfolio of 7,000 units inched closer to financial distress, and tenants in agency buildings across the city complained of active drug dealing, squatting and serious security concerns.
The Home Forward board is chosen by a matrix of local governments. It works like this: local governments—the city of Portland, the city of Gresham and Multnomah County—make board appointment recommendations to the mayor of Portland. The mayor then selects board members, and each one is subject to final confirmation by the Portland City Council. One person on the board must be a client of Home Forward’s. They, too, are subject to City Council confirmation.
Now, two local elected officials are calling on the board to step down—or at least to come back in for interviews to keep their appointments.
Multnomah County Commissioner Shannon Singleton says the entire Home Forward Board should step down, immediately.
“I am calling for the immediate dismissal of their board of directors to be replaced with elected officials from the cities of Portland and Gresham and Multnomah County,” Singleton said in a statement to WW. “Home Forward residents, staff, and the public deserve better from this vital resource in our community. We need to right the ship and ensure the future of our largest affordable housing landlord who is critical in our work to move people from homelessness to housing.”
Portland City Councilor Eric Zimmerman in remarks during a joint county-city work session on homelessness earlier this week called Home Forward’s vacancy rate—and the board’s response in recent months to WW’s reporting on the high vacancy rate, turnover time and Mathews’ travel—“criminal”.
Zimmerman said the governments that recommend appointments to Mayor Keith Wilson for the Home Forward board—four are recommendations of the City of Portland, two are recommendations of the city of Gresham, two are recommendations from Multnomah County—should demand that the entire board be brought in to be re-interviewed to see if they are up to the task.
“I have seen zero leadership form the Home Forward executive team or the board on this, and I’m very dismayed by that,” Zimmerman said. “So at this point not only do I have no faith in the leadership, but I really think it’s time for all of our bodies to re-interview our board nominees to this organization.”
He added that all he’s seen from the board so far is “defense of operations and defense of the executive.”
Multnomah County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards at that same meeting said that Mathews’ travel expenditures and the agency’s vacancy rates were “really straining public trust.”
The Home Forward board did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Indeed, the board has consistently defended Mathews. Board Chair Matthew Gebhardt said earlier this month that the board has “full confidence in CEO Ivory Mathews and her leadership of Home Forward.”
At the first board meeting following WW’s April 14 article about Mathews’ travel, board members took turns at the top of the meeting largely defending Mathews’ travel, while also praising agency staff for their resiliency and hard work. Gebhardt apologized to dozens of agency employees that had joined the call—the same employees who later on in the meeting would lambast Mathews’ travel—about the “narrative” built around the agency in recent months.
“There’s been a narrative that’s been constructed around the organization that’s incredibly difficult and stressful, and I want to start by saying I am sorry to all of you that you are going through this situation,” Gebhardt said.
Gebhardt did acknowledge that vacancy rates and safety were a problem, and said that the board “has work to do to strengthen public trust through clear communication, greater transparency and more visible oversight as well as accountability,” but maintained his support of Mathews.
Board member Jessy Ledesma said the board “really supports the work of Ivory, of the leadership team, of all the staff at Home Forward during what’s a really challenging time.”
Another board member, Jenny Kim, said the agency was lucky to have Mathews as its CEO. “Like Ivory has done for us, it’s really important as a region to try and work with our congressional representatives and federal government agencies to make sure that [our region’s] interests are being elevated.”
Even behind closed doors, pressure mounted on the City Council after WW’s April 14 story to take some kind of action in response to the issues plaguing Home Forward. Margaret Van Vliet, who served as deputy executive director at the agency from 2000 to 2008, wrote in an April 16 email to Wilson and a handful of city councilors that they should replace the entire board.
“I write today to request your urgent action to install new members to the Home Forward Board of Commissioners,” Van Vliet wrote. “Even if only part of recent media reports are accurate, governance and oversight have clearly failed. The status quo is unacceptable - most specifically for low-income residents of Multnomah County whom you all claim to have top of mind.”
She added: “It’s your job to appoint and hold to account a board of commissioners qualified to oversee the agency’s operations and stewardship.”
The president of the local AFSCME union that represents 205 of the agency’s employees, Jen McMillan, wrote in an April 29 to her members that Mathews’ resignation wasn’t enough; last week, McMillan said that union members had lost all confidence and trust in the agency’s leadership.
“One resignation does not erase the larger issues that brought us here. I believe Ivory is intelligent and capable, but I do not believe one person alone created or enabled this budget mess,” McMillan wrote. “Decisions of this scale involve multiple people, and accountability cannot stop with a single individual.”
