Starting a new program is prettn and exciting, especially when it promises to make a direct impac. But keeping that program running and making it a success? Well, that is entirely
a different
ball game. Our investigative reporter
Kyla Boshi is going back to look at governt programs that start out with lof celebration to see how it works. It's a big deal. Taxpayers in Multnomah
County are going to spend more than 1/4
billion dollars on homeless services
this year alone, so accountability is
pretty important. And Kyle discovered there is lie of that with a program that offd to put homeless people into tiny homes in people's backyards. It was quite an offer so unusuat made headlines around the count. Wouldn't you let a homeless person live in your backyard? Portland, OR wants to know. In 2017, Multnomah County offero build tiny houses in
people's backyards for free if they agreed
to let a homeless family live there for
the next five years. Could your backyard
be the solution to getting a homeless family
off the street? The project, called A Place for, aimed to build a Du's, or accessory dwelling units in backyards across the Portland a. So whatever happened, let's do the tour. In April of 2018, the county placed one of its fit tiny homes in Martha Chambers, North Portland backyard. There's a house in your backyar. It's very small. Yeah, it's it's not even 300 square f. The 288 square foot cottage came fully furnished. They put the bed in. Yeah, they brought in the furniture. Theres a tidy kitchen. It's
cute living space. We do. Dinner and a movie night, small bedroom and private bathr. They did a really great job. Nearly 1000 homeowners applied r the program. Four were selected and I thought, wow, this
is a great idea and I get to keep the
house at the end. The four tiny homes cost the coy between 80,000 and $133,000 eac, depending on which company
built them. By the summer of 2018, the units were complete. And four families had a place to call their own. The woman that was living
here and her niece were living in
her truck prior. Initially, Martha says
things went well, but then relationships soured. There were challenging
circumstances causing stress among neighbors,
and COVID hit. I mean, we all anticipated
it wouldn't be necessarily a smooth ride. Within two years, the once homeless family had moved out. And the backyard unit sat vacan. Would you call it a success
or a failure? I'd have to say a failure. Martha felt abandoned after
early enthusiasm. There was little support or folw through by program organizers. I think it was all set
up to be successful. And then the ball got dropped. Similar experiments to
house the homeless in backyards have been
tried elsewhere, such as Los Angeles and Seattle. In Seattle, How's it going? We're feeling pretty good about what we've accomplished. The Block Project in Seattle has built 15 energy efficient, tiny homes since 2017. Unlike Portland, homeowners in Seattle
have no financial incentive to put a unit
in their backyard. And importantly, there's strong support
structure
for both the homeowner and their
backyard neighbor, the nonprofit Facing Homelessne, which runs the Seattle
program, says. It has a 95% success rate in maintaining stable housing. And so for us, we really want to foster
community by making sure people know that
we care about them, we see them, we want to
know what's working, we want to know what's not. The creator of the Multnomah
County program, Mary Lee, told reporters in 2017
that if all
went well, she hoped we do 300 of these units in the next 12 months. Instead, there were four when
asked what happened. Lee, director of Multnomah Idea, a county policy center, wrote in an e-mail. Unfortunately, I don't have any information to share about the work, explaining the program
was transferred from one county office to the n. It's since been handed
off to a nonprofit. I think it could have been much more successful if there was better follow through. Martha recently bought the tiny house after coming to an agreed upon price with a nonprofit join which inherited the program. She's disappointed it didn't go better for everyone. I really wish there'd been more support for both sides. After so much early attention,
this five year pilot program has quietly dwind, seemingly due to a lack
of follow through and coordination by
those who promised big new ideas to help the homel. Kyle joins me now, and you tolde earlier this program cost abouta half million dollars, and I'm jt stunned by the lack
of accountability. No one's going to take
accountability. Yeah, we've been reaching out to the county since April, actually, through emails, trying to get some more informan about the program itself. Was it successful? Why? It wasn't. And maybe they could explain a little bit more. In fact, at one point we gave them a full list of questions hoping to get some answers, and they haven't provided
that information. Wow. OK And what about those tiy homes? What happens to them? Good question. So initially, as you heard in the story, they were supposed to be free te homeowners after five years, ri? That was the initial pitch. Well, at some point that kind of changed in 2018, roughly the county started sayi, well, listen, after five years, those homeowners have the option to buy them at market price. Well, we're at about
five years
now and talking to some of these homeow. There's a bit of confusion here about what's next and also what fair market price is for sure. We tried to reach out once again to the county and also join, which is now inherited this prom to find out what's going on and they have not responded to us, started with a lot of pomp and circumstance and a lot of flash kind of fizzled after that. Yeah, All right. Thanks, Kyle. Great stuff as always.
