Community Engagement Strategy
Community engagement is a critical component of an effective homelessness response. Portland's city shelter services are developed in partnership with the communities they serve. As such, we resolve to be responsive and better aligned with neighborhood needs. Our focus on community engagement allows us to be more successful in supporting individuals experiencing homelessness. Engaging residents, local organizations, and people with lived experience fosters trust, increases transparency, and strengthens the community’s shared commitment to creating safe, inclusive, and compassionate shelter options.
City shelter services play a vital role in meeting the urgent needs of people experiencing homelessness, especially during times of crisis. Emergency shelters offer immediate, life-saving refuge from the elements, while alternative shelter models provide a wider range of options that can better accommodate individual needs and circumstances. Together, these services form a critical safety net and serve as entry points into longer-term housing and support systems.
The following sections outline the City’s approach to emergency overnight shelters and alternative shelter models. These services are shaped by community input and guided by a shared goal: to ensure all Portlanders have access to safe, dignified shelter and a path toward permanent housing.
Emergency Overnight Shelter Community Engagement
The City of Portland continues to establish shelters and services to address the current homelessness crisis, providing a humane option for those who are living unhoused on our streets to access safe shelter. To augment its current portfolio of shelters, the City will add overnight shelter locations to increase the number of beds available each night. The City is standardizing commitments made to communities where shelters are placed and operated. The engagement strategy presented in this document details a set of commitments around City resources to address potential impacts that overnight shelters can have on the surrounding area, as well as to support participants at shelters.
Alternative Shelter Community Engagement
The City Shelter Services engagement approach has always primarily focused on one thing: information sharing. Especially as Villages were being built, making sure communities were aware of what was coming, and what that program would look like, was of major concern. We worked with neighborhood associations, business associations, and community leaders to address concerns and answer questions as best we could. We also attended Q & A sessions and held shelter openings to make sure the community had an idea of what sort of shelter was coming in.
Our engagement priorities are shifting into a few different categories.
- Community meetings and problem solving
- Attending local events to represent the Village within the community
- Building and supporting relationships with all of our shelter operators.
Our Community Engagement Plan shares the phases of our efforts: pre-planning efforts, site selection, identifying and contracting with shelter operators, and developing relationships with the communities where these innovative outdoor shelters will be placed. The Community Engagement Plan also includes links to Safe Rest Villages media coverage.
