In the pursuit of intentional dialogue, the WAIC team developed, discussed, debated, and approved a questionnaire for Wilsonville’s Mayoral and City Council candidates. Our goal is to raise awareness of Wilsonville’s greatest diversity, equity, and inclusion gaps, and how we together might solve them.
After reading this, check out their responses on transportation, homeownership, police oversight, and universal broadband.
Major needs in Wilsonville exist for people who are looking for shelter immediately. As of last spring, there were 44 students in the school district experiencing homelessness and only 8 beds to immediately serve people -- of any age -- in all of Clackamas County (none of which exist in Wilsonville). COVID-19’s impact on this existing need could be catastrophic.
2. Do you support establishing a space in Wilsonville to meet the immediate need for shelter with people experiencing homelessness? Please explain.
Mayor candidates:
Julie Fitzgerald
To best meet the overall needs with the resources available, I recommend partnering with Clackamas County and City staff to research funding and implementation options, so the population in need is best served. While groups offer a host of resources for people experiencing poverty in Wilsonville, including Wilsonville Community Sharing, West-Linn Wilsonville Schools, City of Wilsonville, local non-profits, and church groups, transitional housing is not available.
In my experience fundraising for such problems, wrap-around services offer comprehensive, lasting solutions for people experiencing homelessness than an alternative of multiple, often low-budget start-up efforts. Our entire region is so seriously under-resourced concerning the adequate provision of services for people experiencing homelessness that I am wary of further diluting available resources without a full feasibility analysis conducted with Clackamas County.
Ben West
Yes, this is a huge need and we must have more housing for those disparately impacted by homelessness. I am partially concerned by children in our schools that no longer have the same support or interface with teachers and social workers. Our schools are more than places of learning; they are public health entities. I have publically supported Measure 3-546, which provides funding to assist young victims of abuse, as well as to help children that are homeless or in the county’s foster care system.
City Council candidates:
Imran Haider
I support establishing an organized game plan to help these homeless children have a safe and warm place to live and sleep. As a part of our community development, we can attempt to find a way to help those in need. However, we would need to research where the options are available for public shelter and which funds would be used or proposed to help create the solution.
Kristen Akervall
Wilsonville needs to better understand the homelessness found directly in our city and work through existing and available avenues to best support, whether through shelter or other assistance, those who need help. I think our recently passed Equitable Housing Strategic Plan that calls out the need for “reduced risk of housing displacement” as a defined objective is a start. Some of the immediate steps this plan calls for is facilitating connections to partners and housing resources through a city liaison. The plan also suggests we monitor the needs specific to Wilsonville by looking at the share of rent-burdened residents in our city and the number of requests the County receives for tenant assistance from the Wilsonville zip code. We need to keep on top of this data, as well as data supplied by the school district, and continually look where funding is available to us and our broader region to better serve the current needs.
Currently, the City has also provided support to Wilsonville Community Sharing and has increased that level of support during the COVID-19 pandemic. WCS does provide some housing support as well as assistance with other costs such as utilities, food, and medications. The City’s contributions to these types of supports needs to continue and we need to continually assess how the resources available are best spent to serve the most vulnerable populations.
New funding on the County level will be coming through the Supportive Housing Services measure—of which Clackamas County will receive a portion of the total revenues generated. The County Steering Committee will work to develop a Local Implementation Plan for Supportive Housing Services and community members will be able to contribute feedback for this plan. I would like to see Wilsonville represented in those discussions so the needs of individuals within our City are included. I foresee that this discussion will further develop as we are able to draw closer to work being done within the County and leverage those partnerships to work in collaboration in serving our most vulnerable populations.
At this time I do not feel we have enough data on the population of people experiencing homelessness in Wilsonville, nor a full grasp on what existing programs and resources we can leverage to address the issue to make a decision. I will look for ways to invite community members, including WAIC, into the research, feedback and discussion about housing needs in Wilsonville. I do believe if we want to live into our values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, we must provide housing to meet the diverse needs of our population.
Joann Linville
I do support establishment of a transitional/shelter housing space for families in Wilsonville as is the model in many of our neighboring communities. I prioritize families because I believe our youth need the greatest protection from homelessness and efforts to provide families assistance to transition to permanent housing and employment hold promise for addressing generational homelessness. A homeless family is a population in crisis. If we are to keep our children in school, where they can get free and reduced meals, social support and life continuity, we must have transitional and shelter housing.
Currently across the nation, most family transitional housing programs are small serving between 3 and 15 families short term or extended basis in either a centralized (single or multiple centrally located facility) or distributed (individual placements throughout the community). Unfortunately, this model of serving a small number of families will not meet the needs of all homeless persons in our community and will still require cold weather-related temporary shelters to be facilitated by the City.
As with many programs for homeless populations, funding is the critical factor. Federal, state and grant programs and public-private partnership are key to establishment and continuity of programs.
John Budiao
No response provided.
All of the candidates were provided the same timeline to respond. After multiple attempts to reach out to candidate John Budiao, we were still unable to receive any responses. We will update our website with his response should it become available.