The primaries are just around the corner, and Multnomah County residents will see a few names on the ballot for the District 2 county commissioner seat. We’ll hear from the top three contenders: Sam Adams is a former mayor of the city of Portland and previously held a position within Mayor Wheeler’s office. Jessie Burke is the owner of the Society Hotel and board chair of the Old Town Community Association. Shannon Singleton is the former interim director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services and is a trained social worker. They join us to share why they’re running and what they want to accomplish if elected.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start
today with the first debate of this 2024 Oregon primary season on Think Out Loud. It is for the election to fill the District 2 seat on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners that encompasses most of North and Northeast Portland. The seat was vacated when Susheela Jayapal stepped down to run for Congress. Whoever wins this election will serve for the remainder of that term. Meaning through the end of 2026.
I’m joined today by the three most prominent candidates. Sam Adams is a former Portland mayor and a former advisor to the current mayor Ted Wheeler. Jessie Burke is the owner of the Society Hotel and the board chair of the Old Town Community Association. And Shannon Singleton served as the executive director of homeless services nonprofit JOIN, a street outreach and housing services organization. She also spent three years advising former Oregon Governor Kate Brown on housing and equity issues.
Just to remind our listeners and our candidates, we don’t use timers or buzzers for these debates, but I’m going to do my best to guarantee equal time as we go. Welcome to all three of you.
Jessie Burke: Thank you.
Shannon Singleton: Thank you.
Sam Adams: Thanks.
Miller: My high tech way of randomizing the start is to write all your names on a piece of paper, crumple them up and then put them in my hand and shake them around and then take them. Jessie Burke, you won that. There are a lot of elected positions in the Portland area at the city level, the county level, regional levels. Not everybody has that. We do with Metro. With the change in city governance, there’s going to be many more positions soon on the city council. Why this particular office? Why a seat on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners?
Burke: Yeah, it’s a good question. I like to distill down for people the difference between the roles of city and county. The city is responsible for the health of the infrastructure, so roads, water permits and first responders. And the county is responsible for the health of its citizens, so addiction services, mental health services, shelters, things like that. So I think you’ll see a lot of testimony at the city council about these issues. And I’ve actually told a lot of the commissioners, you should maybe let people know they’re at the wrong meeting.
Miller: Meaning, city commissioners?
Burke: Correct, correct. So people come to testify to the city council about issues that are not necessarily the jurisdiction of the city. And I think knowing the health of its citizens, a lot of people would say these are the areas that we’re struggling with the most here. So I think first and foremost, it seems like this is an area that I could be the most helpful. And secondarily, I know how high profile the city is and those races. And one other motivating factor is I have children and I didn’t want to put them in a fight they didn’t ask for. And this is a little lower profile.
Miller: Shannon Singleton, why focus on the county commission?
Singleton: Thank you for the question, Dave. I’m focusing on the county because it’s the largest social service provider in the state and that’s what I’m trained to do and what my experience has been in over the past 30 years, not only as a therapist in doing mental health treatment, but also in ending homelessness work and supporting folks and getting back into housing and staying in housing once they get there. I think additionally, over the past year, I’ve spent my time in transportation work. And so there is a lot of opportunity at the county for workforce investments in not only the Earthquake Ready Burnside Bridge Project that is coming but also in the regular maintenance of the bridges and other types of infrastructure that the county does oversee.
Miller: And Sam Adams, what about you? You’re most well known for your city-specific work. Why the county? Why this particular job?
Adams: Because it is holding back progress overall. And I’ve worked with probably eight chairs and dozens of county commissioners over the years. And Multnomah County has found itself to be deeply undemocratic, dysfunctional, remote from its constituents. And its decision making
too often lacks focus, urgency, lacks good partnershipping and accountability…
Miller: When you’re saying all this, are you talking about the county chair or the county commission?
Adams: County, but especially at the top, especially at the top. Some great talent, good people, hard working, but the leadership of the county is exhibiting these traits. I’m not the only one to say this and it is a stall on everybody else’s work on the issues, especially those that are shared. And as cities–plural as Jessie was pointing out and Shannon as well–the shared services of community safety and human wellness, the county has really been a drag on what could have been more and better progress on the key issues of homelessness, on the key issues of affordable housing, on the key issues of safety. It’s a serious issue and given not only the need to improve the county but also for cities and county working better together, my time in city government in Portland, I think, can be a benefit.
Miller: Let’s zero in on homelessness right now, something all of you have talked about. Shannon Singleton first, last month, the city and county unveiled a big plan to cut the region’s unsheltered homeless population in half. It had some familiar ideas on how to get there–new oversight boards, data collection. What do you think the region really needs to invest in to meet that goal?
SIngleton: Absolutely. I would say I feel frustrated like other folks do on the lack of progress around unsheltered homelessness. I’m exceptionally frustrated that some of the buildings and properties that I purchased while I was the interim director at the Joint Office are still vacant, like Cook Plaza in East County. After a lot of work with the city managers in those East County cities to really find a location that would be the best for them and could offer the widest range of services. It remains vacant as does a site in Portland where we bought a site for RV camping or car camping. That still is not open. So I think the urgency to actually open up those buildings or those properties that we purchased while I was there is something that we need to do and that should have happened years ago.
Miller: Well, how would you, as a member of the county commission, change that? How do you, as one vote among five and not the executive, bring urgency that actually matters, as opposed to so say a loud passionate voice?
Singleton: Absolutely. I think it’s the time I’ve spent in direct service and on the front lines and actually knowing what it’s like for the people who are outside. Part of what I’d like to bring is those specific solutions. I want to understand why Cook Plaza isn’t open. There was a lot of support for that shelter site. There were funds in the budget when I left to open it. I’m not sure what happened to that and I would want to understand why and how we fix that problem in the bureaucracy.
Miller: Jessie Burke, what about you? In the big picture and policy-wise, what would you push for to address homelessness and how is it different from your two opponents here?
Burke: Well, I’m not exactly sure what everyone else’s proposals are. The items that I’ve focused on the most are what are the near-term solutions that we can address right now. One of my biggest concerns in seeing this 90-day emergency is we’re always trying to solve for a percentage of the population in several years. If we’re not attempting to resolve for 110% of the population because it will increase, we’ve already failed. So I would hope that our targets are closer to 110% of the population in the next 12 to 18 months, not 50% in the next two years.
Miller: But isn’t that because there have been those efforts announced, these very impressive efforts that have never been anywhere close to being met. And so at a certain point, it seems like an acknowledgment of reality that…I mean, there have been efforts to eliminate homelessness for more than a decade now and we’ve gone in the opposite direction.
Burke: One of the things I see because I work in Old Town, I work with first responders like all day, every day. We have eliminated every single tool that exists to actually go from someone living on the sidewalk to getting either supportive housing, addiction services. Every process has ceased to exist.
Some of the things that I think are important – four years ago, I started asking the county for a central database of available shelter beds and I said, “I can help you. It’s hotel software.” And they were like, “Well, what about everyone’s medical information?” I said, “Do you think I have all of my hotel guests’ medical information?” In that central database, you require all shelters to participate in it. It feeds into a central API like a booking.com and you can see it in real time. Portland Street Response has started saying, “Yeah, we need a central database. We don’t know where to take anybody. We need sobering centers.” It is wholly unacceptable.
I work with tourists every single day who are from the most progressive countries in the world. They find it appalling that we just let people wander around, maybe high on meth, carrying machetes or passed out from fentanyl just outside. This isn’t normal. People need help. If they’re high and at risk for the rest of the population, we need to be able to take them somewhere that’s not jail. They have an opportunity to sober up and get rehab assistance.
Miller: What is your pitch for – let’s say it’s the version of hotel software that you’re saying that the county should use, how do you actually make that a reality as one person on a county commission, not an executive, but a lawmaker who has one vote among five?
Burke: Sure. So actually, if you just have three votes among five, which a lot of us are in alignment, especially people that are running right now. But even the current commission. I already worked with Sharon Meieran who asked me to run for the seat that Julia Brim Edwards and I already worked together on. If you have three of five, you can actually vote down the budget that the chair creates, write your own budget and codify that. You can hold a special meeting with three of five votes and just codify it in the next meeting.
If you actually look on the county’s website and look up executive powers, because I’ve been trying to get in the weeds of like, how do you actually implement any of these changes. If you google executive powers–because you can’t find it on the county website–there’s a link and it actually goes to a blank page. So currently unknown, at least to the public what the executive powers are, but there is a process for the board and how the board can supersede the powers of the chair.
Miller: Sam Adams, how would you describe your priorities in terms of addressing homelessness and where you see differences between yourself and the two people who are here with you.
Adams: So, change is going to require taking on this very large government inherently as bureaucracy and getting changes from it. And you’re asking, how do you do that? How do you make that happen?
Miller: I’m asking two things. I’m asking first, what are the policies you want to implement?
Adams: Yep.
Miller: And then the second part is how do you plan to do it?
Adams: First, what was it, two weeks ago after looking at, what are the reasons why more doesn’t happen better, faster? Why isn’t it more responsive? And it’s a very undemocratic form of local government. Basically, the democracy in the county is deeply broken and this is why board rules say any county commissioner can introduce an agenda item. Very clear in the board rules. In the charter it says that the chair executes the policies in the budget that are approved by the board, but some along the line, and this chair is holding to it, wrote an administrative rule that says she has to approve everything before it goes on the board. Now that seems kind of picky union until you realize…
Miller: It goes on the agenda for the board to take up.
Adams: On the board’s agenda. And so you realize just how much is not coming to the board for discussion. And it isn’t just not going to the board for discussion. It means that the public doesn’t have an opportunity to testify. You and the news media don’t have an opportunity to report on it. Deeply undemocratic and it stifles oversight, which means this particular iteration of Multnomah County is deeply unaccountable, remote from its citizens. Poor Commissioner Meieran…
Miller: I want to get back to the question I asked which is…
Adams: And when you do this…
Miller: Which is what is your…let’s say that you could introduce an idea and get a vote on it.
Adams: This is what I would do…
Miller: How do you want to actually address homelessness in a different way?
Adams: Yeah. Well, you asked me how would I go about it? You gotta change that inside rule. As Jessie also mentioned, that’s how you go about it and you clarify it and it is a vote of three. You can overturn it.
What I would do. It was about a month ago that the draft response to homelessness plan was announced. The work of my former team in Mayor Wheeler’s office, other people in the city and the county. It gives itself 20 months to accomplish some, I think, appropriately ambitious things. The only way that is going to happen on that timeline is to jointly rebudget what everybody has right now in these individual patchwork budgets. And that adds up to when you take behavioral health, you take the budget of the city, the homeless budget of the county and home for it. That’s about $650 million. It needs to be jointly budgeted and to implement this plan and also continue the baseline work that’s already happening. And it should be done in a manner that treats this issue like the humanitarian emergency that it is, which means I would give…
Miller: Are you saying putting money that’s currently budgeted for something to something else? When you say jointly rebudget?
Adams: Yes.
Miller: But so in what ways? What is getting money now that shouldn’t? What should get more money?
Adams: All around the table, there is a federally mandated definition of continuum of care and I think we can even do better than that. But you gotta make sure that you have the right amount balanced for prevention, people getting houseless to recovery, getting people off the street and dealing with those issues. You can only do that well, not on a patchwork basis as it’s now happening, which is inherently wasteful looking for things that are not as important above the baseline work, not as important than what is in that draft plan. Twenty months to do that.
My suggestion is the master of the obvious proposal because the budgets for the next fiscal year where most of this work has to happen are about to be approved. If you’re not going to rebudget it, that plan won’t be implemented. And if you don’t do it together and stop this patchwork, you won’t find the opportunities for synergies. You won’t find the opportunity for savings. You won’t make that necessary, important decision that some things that, in the status quo, aren’t as important as what we need to do to make this intervention and move forward.
Miller: Shannon Singleton, I want to turn to substance use disorder. Governor Kotek recently signed the bill to recriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs. The governor and Portland area leaders, including the county chair, they’ve announced a fentanyl emergency. We’re I guess in the third month of three months, I think. I lose track of emergencies sometimes. What do you think should happen at the county level going forward in terms of addressing the drug crisis?
Singleton: So I really think that, one, the county and the work to open a sobering center are absolutely vital, but it needs to look different than it did in the past. And I’d like to share a quick story about a client that I worked with when I was at JOIN. She wanted to go into detox and the process was, you have to show up early in the morning and stand in line. So I went to her camp, I picked her up at 4 a.m. We went to detox. She stood in line. She did not get in. We did the same thing the next day and she didn’t get in. And the third day, she decided she just couldn’t do it anymore and didn’t want to be disappointed, and she ended up dying on the streets. And that’s an example of why we can’t keep just doing the same thing over and over again. There has to be better access points to those sobering centers.
Miller: What is the county policy change that would change the story you just told? What are the specific levers that you could pull that would change that?
Singleton: It’s absolutely the number of beds and the ability for folks who are ready and trying to enter treatment to not have to stand in line to do so. I think if you show up maybe one day and don’t get one, it should be a guarantee you can get a bed the next day if you’re able to show up. But preferably, we’d like to see folks get a bed immediately.
Additionally, I think there’s a need to move, talking about where funds are. We don’t have a lot of trained behavioral health folks on the streets doing outreach work. And that’s something that I think is another gap where people could actually engage folks in services, whether they’re ready to get into treatment or not. And that opens up some additional opportunity for treatment.
Miller: But is your argument that we should shift money that’s currently being spent on something else and open more beds? I mean to say we need more treatment, I don’t think anybody would disagree with that. But I’m still trying to just zero in on what that means you would do as a member of council, of the commission.
Singleton: Yeah. So I do think we need to utilize the data to help us know which things are effective. So, while I was at the joint office, we started looking at the data on placement outcomes based on types of shelters. And we saw that there were better outcomes from non-congregate shelters. So hotel, motel, alternative shelter sites. I would like us to have a conversation of, should we continue to invest significant resources into congregate shelters if we’re not seeing the outcomes we need or should that money be repurposed for something that has better outcomes?
Miller: You asked that as an open question. Have you answered it? I mean, are you prepared to say we actually should stop investing in congregate shelters, we should do other things, or are you saying we should study this more?
Singleton: I only got to see one quarter’s worth of data. The joint office stopped reporting that after I left. So I would like to see the actual data and what that looks like to know, was that only a moment in time or is that the actual trend that we’re seeing?
Miller: Jessie Burke, how would you want the county to approach substance use disorder differently or not? Is everything good?
Burke: No, it is not good. I mean, I watch two to three overdose deaths a week in Old Town. I think the most important thing, a sort of like a guiding light, is that we have to stop normalizing this. I get the sense that people don’t leave Portland or Multnomah County enough to remember that it is not normal to have this level of addiction just roaming outside. And so I want, first and foremost, to say to anyone listening, it isn’t normal and we need to treat this like an emergency to get to a different normal.
The things that I think need to happen immediately – I talked to some state representatives about how we make it easier to get access to addiction services, rehab. They said we just don’t have enough facilities. And I said, well, what’s the possibility of working with the city and the permitting process to have expedited and emergency facilities created and then locum doctors and nurses, which are traveling doctors and nurses, that could come in droves to this area? The state said that they would consider something like that. The city, the mayor’s office was like, “we can get the permitting done quickly.” So I think that’s an easier first step.
Some others are, and this isn’t people on the street going to jail, but if you are arrested for something else, we used to have a dorm block that was rehab ready. So people would be ready for rehab while they’re in jail and they can go right in the jail facility. It was incredibly successful. A lot of the deputy officers at the jail have been asking why it’s not funded anymore. And they said it seems like it’s because it wasn’t a popular news story, but are we really here to serve the public? So I feel like those are the two lowest hanging fruits that we could do fairly immediately.
Miller: Sam Adams, your approach to drugs in Multnomah County, what would you do? And if you can all start to answer your questions faster, we can get to a few more things before we’re out of time.
Adams: It’s not all about money, but it’s a lot about money. And $650 million a year should be enough money to make a real dent or real progress in this. And yes, it does mean that no one silo should do that alone because as you’re hearing in these good answers, it’s all interconnected. You need to go back through all the money that goes on the table. You prioritize creating a system out of this patch work.
And what is absolutely key that I’ll add is that we have to have a client intake and tracking system that is smarter than the addiction and smarter than the illness. And efforts have been made on this for a very long time. And I know how difficult this is, but to underline its importance so that the county can do with its partners, because in reality this is a shared responsibility. First responders, EMS, police, fire, probably have more interactions by volume than all the civilian outreach workers combined in a month.
We’ve got to be able to track the client and make sure that they’re progressing through the system even with setbacks which are normal. It has to come from a re-budgeting of that $650 million. That is enough money to make a much bigger dent. So to answer your question, yes, it is reprioritized.
Miller: I haven’t heard gigantic policy differences so far in the conversation that we’ve had. They may be there, but they’re subtle and there’s a lot of agreement so far from the three of you. And that’s not super helpful for voters who are deciding between the three of you. So I want to go around and I want to hear from each of you why you are the person who has the experience and the skills to actually have a shot of doing what you say needs to be done. Shannon, can you go first?
Singleton: Absolutely. So not only is it, again, my experience both in social services and being on the front lines of the work, I know how the policies impact human beings on the ground. But additionally, I have a track record of getting things done and working with people who maybe I don’t agree with or across the aisle. When I was at the State…
Miller: What’s an example?
Singleton: So an example is the first statewide long term rent assistance program that is for youth exiting foster care and other institutions. And I worked very closely with Representative Zika at the time to help pass that bill. That’s a great example of how we know this is an issue. We have way too many youth exiting these systems and then becoming homeless as adults. So how can we get upstream and start to address that inflow into homelessness?
Miller: Sam Adams, what about you? I mean, you have called yourself brash. You’ve said that if you’re going to get things done, you’re going to maybe rub people the wrong way. What evidence can you point to, to say that I can work well with others and actually get either three votes or get stuff done now?
Adams: Look at my recent time in city government, you know. The city had passed a housing and homeless emergency order in, what was it, 2015 in the middle of a pandemic and the post pandemic and everything going on. My team and I passed five policy changes and commitments by the council within 19 months. That finally put some muscle behind that, including a phased-in ban citywide which is essential to get the upwards of 800 self-cited camps scattered across 146 miles, that is the square miles, that is the city of Portland. We’ll never have the money to get the kind of outreach to develop those kinds of relationships that get people to take the offer into the dozen camps where we can make a real difference.
Miller: Those were all emergency ordinances or emergency orders from the mayor, or the required votes?
Adams: These were all votes. And the first one which my team and I selected when I was there is in the Clinton Triangle. It’s been open for eight months. The front page of the Southeast Examiner, the local neighborhood newspaper, came out three days ago and its front page headline calls it a success. In eight months, 100 people got into permanent housing. All along the way, county representatives, not you. County representatives said this won’t work, don’t do phased-in bands. That’s a tangible example. The other camps are rolling out and it also includes new work programs and it also includes a commitment to build 20,000 units of housing.
Miller: Jessie Burke, final word to you. Why are you the person for this job?
Burke: You know, I think I have a unique background. I was a teacher, I was a social worker. I received my master’s in public administration in strategic planning. And ultimately I went into the private sector, which you don’t have the luxury of not delivering in the private sector a product to your customer or you go out of business. And I tell people, my profession is building healthy teams and running healthy organizations. I joke that I actually sent one of my favorite books “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” to all of the city and county back in 2020. And I said you guys have all five of these. Let me know if you want me to facilitate a training. [Burke laughs]
And in these last four years, in particular, I’ve been working with the city and county almost constantly. I’ve been writing policy with different leaders there – the 90-day reset you and I talked about before, I helped Central Eastside with theirs, with St. John’s, even the most recent case with the 80 asylum seekers. The City Hall called me to ask me to help them find shelter for them. And I know the county has funded some additional nights, but we found shelter for them. And so at present, we are already a resource because no one talks to each other, but everyone talks to us, me or our Old Town community. So we work very well together. And I just see that there’s a need for someone with experience of working and building healthy teams and delivering a product to one’s customer.
Miller: Jessie Burke, Sam Adams and Shannon Singleton, thanks very much.
All: Thank you.
Miller: Those are three of the candidates for a seat on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. Jessie Burke is the board chair of the Old Town Community Association. Shannon Singleton spent three years advising former Oregon Governor Kate Brown on housing and equity issues. Sam Adams is former mayor of Portland.
Contact “Think Out Loud®”
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.