Homeless Services Reach Out

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Bridges to Housing, a two-state, regional effort that covers the four-county metro region, offers hope for a better future to homeless families by providing permanent housing plus services to provide support and assistance to parents and children. As the Portland-Vancouver metro area continues to see housing prices rise and increasing numbers of school-age children suffer from homelessness, solutions must be found to this devastating problem.

“Homeless Families in the Portland-Vancouver metro area will benefit significantly from the introduction of this model,” states Clackamas County Commissioner Martha Schrader, a member of the Bridges to Housing Regional Steering Committee. “In Oregon alone we know that 13,000 children were homeless during the last school year. Families that are homeless are often invisible to the public, yet nearly 40% of homeless individuals are children. As housing prices in Oregon and Clark County continue to rise, at-risk families are in need of additional supports and resources to build a better future for themselves and their kids.”

Bridges to Housing is a coordinated regional response to the crisis of family homelessness. County and city governments, housing developers, service providers, and housing authorities in the four-county, Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area have joined forces to develop a response to the needs of high resource-using homeless families. Bridges to Housing also supports local and regional efforts to end homelessness by meeting the needs of high resource using families and by working to break the cycle of intergenerational homelessness.

Bridges to Housing was recently granted $1 Million by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This generous Gift by the Foundation joins an earlier grant of $500,000 from the Meyer Memorial Trust. The gifts from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Meyer Memorial Trust join with significant local public investment in capital for family housing, services and rent subsidies. The private funds will be allocated to non-profit partners in the four counties in late summer, 2007. 

The Portland Children’s Investment Fund also is considering a request from Bridges to Housing. If approved at the Fund’s Allocation Committee meeting tomorrow at City Hall, the $500,000 three-year grant would be used for childcare subsidies for Bridges to Housing families in the city. The grant would come from the Children’s Investment Fund “Leverage Fund,” which matches public dollars with private ones to provide more services for Portland’s neediest children.

“Bridges to Housing is a unique model in that it brings together both public and private resources to create an important new support for families. This effort would not be possible without the participation and commitment of the local governments involved,” stated Janet Byrd, Executive Director of the Neighborhood Partnership Fund, the non-profit organization charged with coordinating the effort.

Bridges to Housing was envisioned and is governed by representatives of all four counties, including elected officials Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen, Clackamas County Commissioner Martha Schrader, Washington County Commissioner Dick Schouten, Clark County Commissioner Mark Boldt, City of Portland Commissioner Erik Sten, Washington State Senator Craig Pridemore, and Oregon State Representative Dave Hunt. 

###
The Meyer Memorial Trust
The Meyer Memorial Trust was created by the late Fred G. Meyer, and has a mission to invest in people, ideas and efforts that deliver significant social benefit to Oregon and southwest Washington. Led by Chairman John Emrick, and Executive Director Doug Stamm, the Portland-area Trust has an asset base of $639 million.

###
The Children’s Investment Fund
In 2002 Portland voters passed Measure 26-33 creating the Children’s Investment Fund. The Fund provides more than $10 million a year for five years to support 66 programs in early childhood development, after-school and mentoring and child abuse prevention and intervention.

###
Enterprise Community Partners, Inc provided critical start up support for the Bridges to Housing project.