Right now the city of Portland is going through its annual budget process and it's a big undertaking this year the city transition from uh the current form of government to a new one so one thing that could be on the chopping block at least in part is the Portland Street response team that's the program that reaches out to people who may be in.
Crisis or who may be homeless and hanging out in a place where they're not welcome the team responds to non-violent calls as an alternative to police but they're under the control of the City's Fire Bureau led by commissioner Renee Gonzalez who's running for mayor Gonzalez is now proposing cutting $3 million from the program that's about a.
Third of the budget for Street response at the mayor's request uh our Public Safety burea has put together sort of uh couple different scenarios depending on what's available uh in the budget for them this coming cycle and uh it's partially in response to address a lot of the one-time money that underlies Portland Street response and chat uh.
It's also partially uh to address some of what we' call structural deficits inside Portland fire literally to continue operating as they are right now they need more continuous authorization so those two buckets we got to deal with the onetime money problems and we've got to deal with the structural deficit problems uh hopefully we can find.
Long-term uh revenues for Portland Street response and for Portland fires core operations uh that won't necessitate these Cuts uh Portland Street response for going to the Joint office on homelessness in the county we're going to continue to fight that fight to find stabilized funding for them in indefinitely but unfortunately.
They were built with a lot of onetime dollars and in response to the mayor's Direction uh for Budget prep we had to play through scenarios scenarios where there isn't new uh ongoing money to replace that onetime money so that's what he's thinking now we wanted to hear from some people who've had Direct interaction with Portland Street.
Response we talked with a couple of homeless people they kind of had mixed reviews Street response is one of the most important resources out here for people on the streets I know I personally don't use it near as much anymore now that I've gotten into a shelter but back when me and my wife were sleeping in tense we would see.
Street response all the time and they would definitely be someone that we would not not always look forward to seeing as since they're usually part of the people involved in the sweeps but if not part of that that was usually a very helpful resource stuff that I do see going on now like through the other companies.
That have resources and been providing to us homeless like the Blane house they they feed us three meals a day um give us clothes on some days I don't get me wrong I forget my days but yeah yeah so in other terms and other aspects I would personally say for us homeless how here there is better resources than the Portland stre.
Response all right at the same time there are folks fighting hard to keep the program fully funded and to expand it so that they can respond to people 24 hours a day a group called friends of Portland Street response started a petition that now has about 12,000 signatures let's take a look at some of the calls Portland Street response goes.
On since they were formed they've been called out more than 19,000 times according to their data in 2023 that's the red line they responded to about a thousand calls a month most of those calls are in downtown Portland you can see the brighter area in the map here but they do go all over the city about 65% of the people they encounter are.
Homeless they're called out to help with all kinds of things medical concerns Falls Mental Health crisis overdoses and assaults at this week's budget work session Portland City Commissioner Carmen rubo who's also running from Air said she wants to fund the Portland Street response with money from the Portland clean energy.
Fund I'm re very interested in working with our city budget office um on this um and specifically to look at the earned interest on the collected and confirmed PF sech charge Revenue specifically um for for this time while we're looking for more funding uh to stabilize it for the long term um and I want to be clear it's entirely.
Independent from the resource funds of of PF um this is very discret funding um and I'm proposing uh a minimum of maybe 3 million as a one-time allocation uh for Portland Street response to make sure that it has the runway that we need together to kind of figure out what happens and how to stabilize it for the long term for the mayor Ted wheeler says.
He's quote happy to have that conversation and today The Oregonian is reporting that Gonzalez wants to use $12 million of that same fund to pay for Street response and other fire Bureau needs he did tell us that cutting money from the program is only one proposed scenario and that different things can happen as the City Works through this.
Budget process so again we want to know what you think what should the future of Portland Street response look like we want to hear from you here's our contact info again the email isth story at kgw.com or you can call and leave a voicemail the phone number 503 22659
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From observations, Portland Avenue Response affords fish to feed a individual for a day, no longer forcing instructing systems to fish for a lifetime. Hence, endured end result.