Oregon Governor Tina Kotek is expected to sign three bills that would contribute nearly $400 million towards infrastructure, home building and homeless shelters. Lawmakers hope these bills will help the state make progress on its decades-long housing shortage. Meanwhile, the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that almost 18,000 Oregonians are homeless on any given night.
Julie Akins is the senior housing director for the health care organization AllCare Health and the former mayor of Ashland. She spoke with homeless people across Southwestern Oregon for a project to document their stories. JPR’s Jane Vaughan recently spoke with Akins about what she’s learned in our region.
Jane Vaughan: You've conducted a couple of surveys of people who are experiencing homelessness in Josephine, Jackson and Curry Counties. What was the goal of those projects?
Julie Akins: The goal of those projects was to provide living examples of what people who are experiencing homelessness actually go through on a day-in, day-out basis. And the reason a health care company cares about that is because we are the ones tasked with taking care of the health of these people. And what we find in the field is that these health care consequences become very dire strictly as a result of being homeless.
JV: Yeah, that's really interesting. I think people might not always see the connection between health care and homelessness. What we call the social determinants of health obviously have a huge impact on people who are experiencing homelessness. Can you give me a little bit more detail about what exactly the work entailed? How many people did you talk to, where did you go, things like that?
JA: My goal was to talk to 100 people in each of the survey areas, Jackson, Josephine and Curry Counties. And I probably talked to more than that. The goal was to just understand what they're going through. And the methodology was really simple. I approached it as a journalist, which I have been all my life. And I sat down with people and took down their stories. But I asked some certain commonalities: how long have you been homeless? Do you identify as homeless? How long have you been in that condition? What perpetuated it? And what would be your answer, if you could find an answer to your situation? And there were intense commonalities. One thing was people leaving relationships. Either someone died, or their partnership broke apart, and they couldn't make it on their own. An illness that caused them to miss too much work. And also, people just discovering that in their low-income jobs, unless they have five or six roommates, they can't rent a flat. And as a result of that, they found themselves unhoused. There were all sorts of conditions like that, things that you might think of as, for most of us, maybe a small blip. But if you're already on a thin line, which, frankly, most Americans are, that lands you into homelessness through no fault of your own. You are an economic refugee. And make no mistake, these folks are living like refugees.
JV: I'm sure you gathered a lot of really interesting stories and useful information. What were some of the most interesting things or informative things that you learned through your interviews?
JA: I think the most heartbreaking and interesting was how many unaccompanied youth are living outside. I talked to a young man who said that he had to leave his home because his parents had to downsize and they couldn't afford to keep him. 16-year-old boy. Devastating. My job was empirical evidence, getting the stories, the boots on the ground, but when you overlay the actual data on top of it, it all makes sense as to who's winding up unhoused, which is really simply people without money to have a house. Right? If you're hungry, what's the solution? Food. If you're homeless, what's the solution? Housing. Homelessness is a housing problem. More and more people are finally identifying it that way as opposed to saying it's a moral failing. You know what's a moral failing? Leaving children outside in the cold. That's a moral failing, not just for today, but for the future of this country. And I'm deeply moved and concerned about it.
