Recommendations
The Task Force outlined 35 recommendations across four goals.
These recommendations prioritize the voices of people of color with lived experience of homelessness as well as the guidance and leadership of communities of color and culturally specific organizations in guiding system-level change across the state’s homeless service system.
Goal 1: Decrease Disparate Impact of Homelessness on Communities of Color
- Align criteria/model for demographically robust practices across state agencies and funding.
- Require that agencies take measurable steps towards prioritizing racial equity and inclusion in hiring and employee retention practices.
- Require changes to funding structure and modifications to contracting, as well as specified goals for decreases in racial disparities in homelessness.
- Align systems that feed into homelessness in a common strategy, solutions, collaboration, and resource sharing (i.e., criminal justice, healthcare, long term care, child welfare, and others) with key performance indicators related to inflow.
- Recommend a statewide interagency council on homelessness.
- Work with Governor’s Racial Justice Council in shaping equitable outcomes.
- Provide support (rental assistance, public housing, other housing resources) in child welfare and criminal justice systems.
- Intentionally include and compensate people with lived experiences of homelessness in decision-making.
- Incorporate learnings from the Ecosystem Power Map generated through the Task Force’s work when working to shape equitable outcomes and changes to decision-making structures. Incorporate learning from the Ecosystem Power Map, system changes and new policies should take measurable steps towards promoting self-determination and power-sharing to benefit “below radar” groups (i.e., Culturally Specific Organizations [CSOs], tribal communities, historically underfunded communities, people experiencing homelessness, seasonal Latinx migrant farmworkers, and frontline provider staff).
- Begin changing funding structure in 2023-25 biennium with the goal of addressing power imbalances between Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and Community Action Agencies (CAAs), especially CSOs.
- Create an independent entity to develop a praxis of assessment for use by agencies and/or partner organizations for ascertaining their cultural competency and develop specific action items to take to reduce disparities with findings.
- Conduct an audit of OHCS’ policies and practices that may influence racial disparities.
- Review historic legislation that mandates current models in use at OHCS and determine appropriate updates to those pieces of legislation.
Goal 2: Identify Needs
- Set aside state resources to fund a multidisciplinary Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) audit examining efforts to actively reduce racial disparities to level set work across state, local, CSOs, and various partners, and identify what resources are needed to get everyone aligned/level.
- Compensate people with lived experience of homelessness to identify needs with the state, with attention to what people need to meaningfully engage (e.g., childcare access, transportation, shower access, and other needs).
- Build mechanisms for consumers to give input and inform decision-makers about their experiences, and make sure the input is used to make improvements.
- Require the state to receive input from CSOs and participants.
- Assess how/if current services are meeting needs, identify redundancies. Phase out what’s not working and grow/continue what is.
Goal 3: Change Funding Structure
- More transparency and accountability from OHCS and service providers
- Investment in a data system that provides a snapshot but also robust details beyond that which accurately reflects the stories of the work being done on the ground.
- OHCS must provide direct funding from the state to CBOs, CSOs, and CAAs beginning in the 2023-2025 biennium.
- Within a framework of accountability to meet outcomes related to reducing disparities in homelessness, state provides flexible funds to CBOs.
- In order to reimagine funding protocols, the surrounding infrastructure must include specific capacity building, funding for culturally specific entities, public transparency, evolving best practices.
- Provide ongoing culturally appropriate technical assistance and support (funding) for all CBOs/providers as well as state
- Provide ongoing culturally appropriate technical assistance and support (funding) for CAAs who need help improving outcomes
- Clearly identify the barriers to access in statute, rule, what’s state and federal, what can we change sooner than later upon identifying the barriers to access (to resources for CSOs, CBOs, and participants) in statute and rule
- Utilize theHousing Subcommittee of the Racial Justice Council to establish a rubric of Racial Impact and inform policy, guide continuous improvement, and to ensure Oregon’s stated commitment to racial justice.
Goal 4: Modify Contracting
- Align contracting timelines and processes across state agencies.
- Articulate how equity goals will be measured and made transparent to the public in contracts. Consider use of dashboards for greater transparency.
- Include the Racial Justice Council to build in clear expectations around reducing racial disparities in contracts, with consequences or corrective actions when expectations are not met.
- Contracts require all agencies to engage in and complete training in best practices on equitable and just homeless service delivery; contracts include funding for agencies to meet this requirement.
- Review current systems to ensure that diverse populations have prioritized access to processes such as language-friendly applications and culturally inclusive and low barrier methods of engagement.
- Contracts require meaningful, rich local collaborations to include historically minoritized and excluded populations.
- OHCS contracts establish a definition of and standard for cultural competence and require organizations receiving funding to meet the standard.
- Build on outcomes-based contracting efforts, examining its internal policies and systems, as well as including transparent local reporting on outcomes, and strengthens focus on reducing racial disparities/increase access for CSOs.
- As part of these efforts, agencies review policies with an eye toward removing policies that result in greater proportions of homelessness among communities of color and remove disparities.