Opinion: I chair the advisory committee for Multnomah County’s homeless services office. I can’t vouch for its effectiveness.
www.oregonlive.com
The Joint Office of Homeless Services has failed to provide data and refused to answer questions posed by members of the community budget advisory committee, writes Daniel DeMelo, who chairs the committee. As a result, it is unclear how effective its efforts have been, despite its soaring budget.

The Joint Office of Homeless Services has failed to provide data and refused to answer questions posed by members of the community budget advisory committee, writes Daniel DeMelo, who chairs the committee. It is unclear how effective its efforts have been, despite its soaring budget

  • @pdxfed
    2•1 year ago

    It comes down to what normally happens when something outgrows someone, and what were in right now is still denial stage–bureau leaders, city council, the mayor and employees all just wishing they could close Pandora’s box and go back 20 years.

    City employees are humans like anyone else, but their jobs are different from most in that nearly everyone is there until retirement. This has benefits, and in the case when surrounded by a rapidly changing environment, disasterous consequences.

    Think about workplaces you’ve worked, if you made it 5 years somewhere, you saw good and bad bosses come and go probably, same for co-workers. This change and refresh is healthy when it comes to disrupting past practices and bringing in new perspectives. This happens much less, it at all in the public sector. Same bosses, same co-workers, same ideas, or lack thereof.

    So back to our city; you have the large organizations that are structured so you have people that are mostly used to doing the same thing with the same people. Public sector employees, because they are often organized, can’t just be fired on a whim like private sector is so thrilled about, which means you actually have to get buy in from employees to make change happen.

    So you have pattern-based work, high threshold to enact change with employees and managers…neither of these is an environment where change will come naturally or easily. Between “who moved my cheese” and “make me” types, your work is cut out.

    ALL of the above, come under the umbrella of Portland having been one of the fastest changing cities relative to its size in the country(demographics, industry) IN ADDITION to some of the macro changes our country is currently passing as kidney stones that all cities are dealing with (homelessness as a fallout of opioid epidemic, structurally broken housing development systems that can only build huge and expemsive housing, collapsing medical service capability, etc.). For city bureaus staffed by humans who are trained to color within narrow lines, who have little chance for fresh ideas or leadership within operative bureaus, who were already ovematched with Portland’s change to a mid-sized city in the first decade of the millenia, it is incredibly unsurprising that the city has continued to sink deeper and deeper under water.