Neighborhood Partnerships

On Thursday, June 24, Neighborhood Partnerships staff attended the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon‘s Interfaith Summit on Homeless Children, Youth, and Families. Over 200 people from across Oregon also attended, including many from the faith community, non-profits, and government.

After an opening interfaith devotional the first panel on Childhood, Youth, and Family Homelessness in Oregon began. Members of this panel gave participants background on the current state of homelessness in Oregon and some of the efforts underway to help those in need. After a short break, the group moved right into an overview of the four small group topics for the afternoon. They included: Shelter and Services; Preventing, Reducing, and Ending Family Homelessness; Education of Homeless Children; and Homeless and Runaway Youth.

The group moved outside to enjoy the sunny weather and hold a walking vigil late morning. We heard a bit about the history of churches marching for social justice. Over lunch keynote speaker Barbara Duffield of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth spoke about why it’s so critical to ensure homeless children have access to education.

Afternoon breakout groups filled the afternoon, with Neighborhood Partnership’s Executive Director Janet Byrd helping to lead the panel on Preventing, Reducing, and Ending Family Homelessness. We talked in our session about the various responses to homelessness, how to contact the folks in your community working on 10 Year Plans, and how churches can and are playing important roles in this effort.

The day ended with a call to action and a discussion about next steps. Neighborhood Partnerships is excited to meet so many folks from across the state who are interested in and committed to ending homelessness in Oregon. We’re looking forward to taking the next steps with our faith-based partners!

If you’re interested in hearing more about the day, or want to get involved moving forward, contact us or Kevin Finney from Ecumenical Ministries.

On June 16, a rainy Wednesday in Salem Oregon, 50 people from across the state joined Neighborhood Partnerships, Oregon Housing and Community Services, JP Morgan Chase, and others in a thoughtful and provocative conversation about minority homeownership.  Victor Merced began the day by calling on all of us to look carefully at what we are doing now that works, and to think about how to do more to close the minority homeownership gap.

A review of available data shows us that we need to create 30,000 or more new homeowners from communities of color to close Oregon’s homeownership gap.  This task will require the hard work of all existing partners, and some creative work to improve our impact, increase the tools we have at our disposal, and increase the resources available to us.

The good news, though, is that partners now hard at work in Oregon know how to accomplish this.  We heard from several speakers about the barriers that we need to overcome in various communities across the state, and reviewed materials gathered from the City of Portland’s Operation Home efforts.  Then, we heard from a diverse panel about a sampling of the successful efforts now underway.  Strategies shared included a tribal-sponsored down payment initiative, maintaining a multi-cultural staff, focus groups and homebuyer clubs, and land trusts to increase affordability.  Creative partnerships, efficient use of resources, and genuine commitment to reaching people in their communities were evident in all the examples shared by the panel and participants.  And we know we just scratched the surface and did not have time to acknowledge all of the expertise in the room.

Regrettably we couldn’t hear from everyone, and we only touched on key strategies. But our goal was to highlight possibility and commit to taking the next steps together to increase resources and political will to close the gap.

Several next steps were identified.

Best practices sharing through practitioner networks. Oregon Opportunity Network will discuss possible next steps for peer learning and sharing.

State funding decisions for use of the document recording fee. Roberto Franco shared timelines for the five program areas to be funded through the document recording fee. Neighborhood Partnerships will track these timelines and processes and facilitate comments on priorities and processes.

Our Oregon plans to continue discussing legislation that would tie financial education to some loan products. Neighborhood Partnerships will track development and facilitate Housing Alliance consideration of proposals.

There was lots of interest in improving our data—on historical trends in homeownership rates, on the impacts of foreclosures, and on lending practices. Neighborhood Partnerships will follow up on these ideas in the coming months.

Email Janet with your thoughts, or let us know what you’d like to be part of in the comments section of the blog!

Neighborhood Partnerships has added two new Board members as part of a planned Board expansion.  Bill Hall and Jesse Beason have just signed on for three year terms.

“We’re thrilled to have Bill and Jesse join the Board,” said Janet Byrd, Executive Director of Neighborhood Partnerships.  “They both bring such deep experience working on behalf of Oregon’s communities, particularly in the policy arena.  They have a lot to offer the Board and staff as we work to create opportunities across Oregon for low income individuals and families.”

Bill Hall is a County Commissioner in Lincoln County, who just won re-election to a second term.  Bill helped write the Lincoln County Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness and serves as co-chair of the Oregon Ending Homelessness Advisory Committee.  He has been active in the Housing Alliance, as well as in the Association of Oregon Counties.  He is a history buff and lives in Newport with his family.

Jesse Beason is Executive Director of Proud Ground, a Portland based community land trust which provides affordable homeownership opportunities to low income families.  Jesse previously worked as policy advisor for then-Commissioner Sam Adams and at Metro.  He lives in Portland, and when he isn’t managing his organization, he manages his two hives of bees.

The Housing Alliance is in the process of setting its 2011 legislative priorities.  While the budget picture for both the remainder of this biennium and next biennium is bleak, the continuing recession and high unemployment mean the need for affordable housing and other safety net services remains critical.

In 2011, we’re considering the following priorities:

Maintain Document Recording Fee Resources for Affordable Housing—Use proceeds of the fee to support development, preservation, homeownership, ending and preventing homelessness, and building capacity of non-profit partners.

Increase the Emergency Housing Account—This is our most flexible resource to end and prevent homelessness. This resource has not been increased since it was created, while the need is growing at an alarming pace.

Preserve Existing Affordable Housing—Existing housing with federal rent subsidies are at risk of loss to market rate, as is housing built and owned by non-profit partners statewide. We cannot afford to lose this precious resource.

Maintain current tools to keep affordable housing affordable—among others, we need to re-structure the Oregon Affordable Housing Tax Credit so that it works in the current financial climate, and maintain state enabling legislation for local property tax abatement programs.

Increase resources to end homelessness through permanent supportive housing construction.

Improve the financial stability and resiliency of Oregon’s minority communities by increasing resources to support minority homeownership.

Continue and expand protections for tenants in foreclosed properties.

Support resident purchases of manufactured home parks.

Support land trusts as an option for affordable home ownership.

The Housing Alliance may also vote to support other proposals that improve the financial well-being of low income Oregonians, who are the residents of affordable housing.  Stay tuned this summer and in early fall as we finalize our agenda.

In mid-May, staff from Neighborhood Partnerships attended the Northwest Area Foundation conference, Grassroots & Groundwork, here in Portland, OR.  The conference was focused on strategies to end poverty and featured sessions around asset building strategies, improving state policies, partnering with employment systems, green jobs, increasing access to healthy food, and other great sessions!

All of the presentations were recorded, and are now available for downloading on the NWAF website.

NP staff attended several sessions, including:

• Innovations in Job Training & Workforce Development Programs.  Presenters from New York City talked about their effort to create job training programs that really worked for their communities.  There were several models discussed, including a Jobs-Plus Model that targeted public housing residents, and brought job training and intensive services on-site for residents.  The New York City Housing Authority also participated in this pilot, removing disincentives to work through their rent policies for tenants participating in the program.   Another model discussed was a prisoner re-entry program for youth coming from the criminal justice program.  This six month program included job training, skill building, community service projects, internships, and job or education placement.
• Your Public Policy Toolkit to Reduce Poverty. This workshop presented by STEP, or Strategies to Eliminate Poverty, talked about the importance of well designed state policy as a way to create significant change.  The workshop discussed federal anti-poverty efforts, including efforts to reform poverty measures; asset cliffs and barriers; coalition efforts to end poverty and increase economic security. This session highlighted several efforts around the country, including South Dakota Voices for Children, a coalition focused on child poverty.  This group also participates in a multi-state Bridge to Benefits program—a  benefits calculator for families.
• Effective Advocacy Campaigns through Cross-Cultural Collaboration. Portland-based leaders from three culturally distinct nonprofit community development organizations established the Housing Organizations of Color Coalition to develop joint action plans related to the housing needs, aspirations, and challenges faced by African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Historically, these groups have approached their issues in isolation. Their outstanding presentation focused on finding strength through collaboration and the benefits of approaching policy challenges with a strong, united voice.

Grassroots & Groundwork was a great conference—thank you so much to Northwest Area Foundation for their work and thanks also for bringing it to Portland!