Latest news with #ECOnorthwest
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Multnomah County launches by-name database for tracking homeless population
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Multnomah County has launched its long-awaited count of the region's homeless population — with each person tracked by name. The county's — formerly known as the — is now able track those who have stayed in a shelter, met with a street outreach worker, signed up for housing services or visited local day centers. 'Ticking time bomb': Oregon lawmakers consider funds for Cascadia-ready Columbia Boulevard bridge This information will be posted to the county's every month in order to provide the most up-to-date record of how many people have entered and exited homelessness, according to county leaders. 'This accurate and timely data is a major milestone that provides increased transparency and accountability while helping frontline workers, decision-makers, and the whole community make progress that we can more easily track and therefore achieve,' Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said in a statement. The dashboard shares how many people are currently receiving rent assistance on a monthly basis, whereas that data used to be shared every three months. It also tracks whether people were able to leave homelessness for housing. John Tapogna, the senior policy advisor for ECOnorthwest said housing data — including how much housing is currently available — is crucial to ending homelessness. 'The root of our homelessness crisis is housing affordability,' he said. 'Local governments have sheltered and housed more people than ever — outperforming the goals set under the ambitious Supportive Housing Services measure — but the need continues to outpace the available resources.' Pickup plows through Vancouver brewery; driver hurt This data, combined with Multnomah County's real-time shelter availability, will make it easier for the county to ensure those experiencing homelessness are receiving the care they need. Prior to the by-name list, county leaders used to rely on the Point in Time Count to record how many people were experiencing homelessness, as determined by the federally-required Homeless Management Information System. However, officials said this data county meant the same unnamed person could be counted more than once. Multnomah County took over the information system in March 2024, allowing them to gather fresh data with people listed by name to improve tracking. 'This is an important milestone and provides a path for actionable, data-informed decisions aimed at making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring,' Meghan Arsenault, the county's senior strategy lead for community solutions. The dashboard also reveals that the number of people experiencing homelessness has increased over the past year due to several factors, including housing shortages, evictions, expanded services, and better data collection. Oregon bill aiming to crack down on costly concert tickets gets 'do-pass' recommendation However, leaders say this increase is a sign that the county's data has improved by reflecting the number of people who have been 'experiencing homelessness all along, but had not previously been counted.' 'Our region has a new baseline from which to anchor strategy and performance,' Central City Concern CEO Andrew B. Mendenhall said. 'We are saddened, but not surprised by this data.' It also comes as the Homeless Services Department faces criticism for its projected in the next fiscal year. Stay with KOIN 6 News as we continue to cover the homeless crisis. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
County approves funding for incorporation feasibility study
Residents from a small community in south Clatsop County are taking a first step toward exploring incorporation. On Wednesday, Clatsop County commissioners approved a memorandum of understanding with the Arch Cape Falcon Cove Beach Community Club to partially fund the development of an incorporation feasibility study. The group initially approached the county about incorporation late last year, and has since retained Portland-based consulting firm ECOnorthwest to carry out the project. The club's 173-person membership includes homeowners in unincorporated areas between Hug Point and Oswald West State Park — a region known for its high concentration of short-term vacation rentals. For years, residents in the area have been vocal about topics like land-use policy and vacation rental caps. Bob Boehmer, the community club's president, said incorporation could provide citizens with more direct control over local issues. The point of a feasibility study is to engage with residents to understand whether they want local control enough to take on the responsibility of self-governance. The study will also help determine whether the community could generate the revenues necessary to sustain itself as a city. 'We need to find out from the residents, you know, exactly what services do you want, and then will these revenues pay for that?' Boehmer said. This first step, he said, is getting more information. 'A feasibility study is exactly what it says,' Boehmer said. 'It's not a decision to incorporate. It's a decision to do a data-based comprehensive analysis of whether incorporation is feasible.' Establishing a baseline The agreement could also provide a helpful baseline for the county. County Manager Don Bohn said he's seen the community request city-level services like community planning, design review and road and drainage maintenance on noncounty designated roads. Given the county's financial constraints, he said it will be important for the county to focus on providing county-level services moving forward. 'Since I've been here, this has been a constant topic of conversation about whether and how the county provides city-level services to this community,' Bohn told commissioners on Wednesday. 'I just think that in the long term, having a feasibility question asked and answered is very important for the community to have a choice on how they want to move forward.' The cost associated with the study is roughly $110,000. Under the memorandum of understanding, the community club will dedicate a year's worth of membership dues, around $3,500, to the project. The county will contribute $106,500 from the discretionary portion of its 2.5% unincorporated transient lodging tax implemented in 2015 — a revenue source that has traditionally been used to support road and drainage projects in the area. 'It's not general fund,' Bohn said. 'It's money that was already being collected through the transient lodging tax, primarily from that area, that will continue to be spent in that area.' Bohn added that contributions to the feasibility study will not disrupt or postpone road and drainage work in the area. According to the scope of work outlined by ECOnorthwest, the feasibility study will include community engagement and education to discuss topics like governance, service providers and land use. ECOnorthwest will also work with an advisory committee to decide a study area and gather data to determine what public facilities and services a new city could provide. Bohn said the county will provide technical assistance as requested, but the study will be directed by the club. Given the project's funding source, Commissioner Courtney Bangs said she was comfortable approving the agreement. 'I do feel satisfied that the money was going to be going to this community for other projects, and so it will therefore still be going to this community; it is just being reallocated in a different direction,' Bangs said. Commissioner Lianne Thompson, whose district spans the southern half of the county, including Arch Cape, added that she sees the work as a necessary step toward addressing the longstanding question of incorporation. 'I think this is an essential step to reconcile perceptions of need with reality testing, and that it's a way for the community to have, I would say, a maturation of its capacity and interest in self-governance that really matches reality with responsibility, authority and money,' Thompson said. If the community determines it wants to put incorporation on the ballot, either in fall 2025 or spring 2026, ECOnorthwest will also draft an economic feasibility statement. In the meantime, Boehmer hopes the initial process will help spur dialogue between residents. In that regard, he sees the study as a positive step for the community. 'If you have a really robust community discussion, and you have it in a real collegial manner, you know, based on data, then you come out a better community regardless of whether you choose to go ahead with incorporation or not,' Boehmer said.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Study: Portland metro area generates more than half of Oregon's economic output
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – A new report shows how important Portland is to the rest of the state's economy. The economic research firm — in partnership with Portland Metro Chamber, the City of Portland, and Multnomah County — found that the Portland metro area generates more than half of Oregon's total economic output. Winter Weather Timeline: Snow, ice on the way, start preparing now The Portland metro area, which also includes parts of Washington and Clackamas Counties, is home to nearly 43% of the state's residents. However, it also accounts for more than 57% of the state's economic output, or GDP, nearly half the state's employment, and more than half of state tax revenue. Multnomah County in particular — with 19% of Oregon's population — contributes nearly 24% of the state's tax revenue. On the flip side, the Portland metro area has also been slower to recover from the effects of the pandemic — and job losses — than the rest of the state. 'If the state is trying to understand from an economic development strategy, what does growth look like in different ways, we can talk about the Portland economy and understand that growing in the county and in the tri-county disproportionately benefits the rest of the state,' Mike Wilkerson of ECOnorthwest said. Frankie MacDonald, YouTube weather whiz, warns Portland of 'major winter storm' This report also comes amid an ongoing urban and rural divide in Oregon — as is the case in most states. But Andrew Hoan said rural Oregon communities already concerned about the outsize influence of Portland also benefit from the tax revenues the tri-county region generates. 'This isn't an 'us versus them,' this is not 'we win, you lose' scenario,' Hoan said. 'This is, 'Everybody wins when Multnomah County and Portland is winning.'' He hopes to take that message to the Oregon legislature as they make decisions about where to invest in 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Report: Connecticut has tightest housing market in the U.S. with 7% vacancy rate
Connecticut has the most constrained housing supply in the nation, with only about a 7% vacancy rate despite a demand for more, and the state needs at least 110,000 more units to meet the need, researchers told lawmakers on Thursday. Researchers from consulting firm ECOnorthwest presented an early draft of their findings about Connecticut's housing need to key lawmakers on the Housing and Planning and Development committees on Thursday. The presentation was done in response to a law passed in 2023 that mandated a statewide study on a fair share zoning policy. Fair share is a method of encouraging more affordable housing by assessing the housing need regionally, then dividing that need up among municipalities. Under the approach, towns would be required to plan and zone for a set number of units. The information's release marks the next step for lawmakers in gathering the information they need to detail and debate a plan to push towns to reform their zoning policies and allow more multi-family housing. The policy has been proposed in Connecticut a few times, but hasn't passed. While advocates say it's a good way to increase housing and cut down on segregation, opponents argue that it would dilute local control and impose housing increases that towns aren't equipped to handle. Last year, a Department of Housing official sent scathing emails criticizing the fair share policy to other state government workers, The Connecticut Mirror found. Nonprofit and housing advocacy group Open Communities Alliance is pushing a bill this year that would require towns to outline how they would plan and zone for a set number of units in their affordable housing plans every five years. It's likely those numbers would be based on the fair share study results. The alliance has advocated for fair share policies in the past. Democrats said Thursday that the report highlighted how many people need help and the urgency of that need. 'My default position is really thinking about the most vulnerable among us,' said House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford. 'But certainly this is a middle class issue as well.' Rojas was a major proponent of the bill that passed in the 2023 session. The first phase of the study examined housing need in the state. According to 2023 data, Connecticut has a ratio of 1.07 housing units per household, or about a 7% vacancy rate. This is compared to a national average vacancy rate of 11%, said Michael Wilkerson, director of economic research at ECOnorthwest. 'When we look at housing policy in its most simple terms, in economics, you're going to look at supply as the number of housing units, and demand or the number of households,' Wilkerson said. During the pandemic, there was an uptick in household creation in Connecticut as people stopped living with roommates and moved to the state from New York and Boston. As the number of households grows, there is more need for housing, Wilkerson said. More households does not necessarily mean population growth. Household growth can also occur when couples divorce, kids become adults and move out, or when people decide to live alone rather than with roommates. Aspects of the study also aimed to account for housing that's aged to the point that it's no longer habitable, the elimination of second homes or vacation homes from the equation and ensuring there's housing for people experiencing homelessness or living with relatives, Wilkerson said. The firm took three approaches to estimating Connecticut's housing need, all with focuses on different income levels. Lawmakers will debate which method is best for the state. The 'baseline approach,' focuses on lower-income households, earning less than 30% of the area median income who spend more than half of their income on housing costs. Under that approach, the state lacks about 136,000 units of housing. Another method focuses on the underproduction of housing and the needs for households earning less than 80% of the area median income. It takes into account the idea that building a unit of housing at any income level improves housing availability and makes it more affordable. Under this approach, the state would need about 110,000 units of housing. The third approach looks at housing underproduction and the need across all income levels. Under this approach, Connecticut would need nearly 359,000 units of housing. Over the past few years, Connecticut has typically permitted between 5,000 and 6,000 units of housing. Rojas said he's not inclined to use the third approach and referred to it as 'boiling the ocean.' Regardless of the chosen approach, the Capitol and Metropolitan and Western regions needed the highest number of units. The Metropolitan and Western regions, which are connected by transportation hubs, include the southeastern region of Connecticut from Bridgeport to Greenwich and north to New Milford. Fair share policies have been implemented in New Jersey, California, Oregon and Washington with varying success. New Jersey's policy was created through a state Supreme Court decision in the 1970s, and has been changed several times over the years. Washington's is more recent and since it began the state went from the second-most constrained housing market in the country to the 11th. Lawmakers discussed the outcomes in Washington as well as California, which has remained one of the most constrained markets in the nation. 'These results confirm what we have long known,' said Erin Boggs, executive director of the Open Communities Alliance, in an emailed statement. 'Connecticut cannot continue the same policies that have left so many people in need of a decent and affordable place to live.' Housing Committee co-chair Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, said that the ideas weren't new to him, but it was helpful to have strong data behind the idea of a housing crisis. Rojas said a fair share policy would be about providing people choices — choices about where they want to live, work and where their children attend school. Rep. Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin, argued that there isn't demand from people who want to live in small towns. Arguments about market demand in small towns are a common criticism of zoning reform. 'It's hard to live there when there's actually no housing options to afford,' Rojas responded. 'So why not allow the marketplace to respond to that potential demand? Instead, we put all these constraints in place that don't even allow us to provide an option for people to live.' Housing Committee ranking member Rep. Tony Scott, R-Monroe, said he thought the information was helpful, but he wanted to hold off on making further judgment until he sees the final draft of the policy. He said he worries that small towns like his don't have the infrastructure to handle large numbers of new housing units. 'We'll see what the real numbers are, and see how realistic those numbers are,' Scott said in an interview. The consulting firm is expected to release the allocations of housing units by town in the spring. Ginny Monk is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror ( Copyright 2025 © The Connecticut Mirror. This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Conn. housing market tight, especially from Bridgeport to Greenwich
