In this screenshot from video, PDX Saints Love Executive Director Kristle Delihanty speaks with a visitor at the nonprofit's day center on SE 82nd Ave.
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Just over a year ago, then-mayoral candidate Keith Wilson held a ribbon-cutting ceremony outside a former church in Southeast Portland that had been converted into a day center for homeless residents. The center, run by small nonprofit PDX Saints Love, was pitched by Wilson as a “critical bridge” between homelessness and permanent housing, offering employment assistance, showers, warm meals, connections to health programs, housing referrals, and community events.
For candidate Wilson, PDX Saints Love was a model for how he hoped to address the city’s homelessness crisis if elected.
Now, four months into Wilson’s mayoral term, the day center — which an estimated 1,800 people currently rely on — is set to close. Kristle Delihanty, director of PDX Saints Love, said without city funding she has no other choice.
“Our work was leveraged as part of [Wilson’s] campaign platform, and our budget was solicited under the assumption that this work would continue,” wrote Delihanty in a May 14 letter to the Portland City Council and Wilson expressing her frustration.
In this screenshot from video, workers at PDX Saints Love Day Center serve a warm meal to visitors.
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She feels taken advantage of. Delihanty told OPB she worries this could be indicative of how Wilson intends to work with small homeless service nonprofits.
“I want to make sure that in this city, we never treat homelessness or housing like a 3-D chess game, where real people’s lives are used as pawns,” she said.
Wilson’s proposal to end unsheltered homelessness by December relies on opening a series of overnight shelters and day centers. Wilson began the work before entering office. Through his nonprofit Shelter Portland, Wilson helped bankroll an overnight shelter at a Southeast Portland church and the PDX Saints Love center last year.
Delihanty appreciated Wilson’s support at the time, and didn’t mind that he “continued to use our, my name” at campaign events. She said that Wilson repeatedly told her and her staff that he was going to help them expand once he was elected. Again, in January, she said Wilson’s team reached out to her requesting information on how much it would cost to run the weekday program to expand to weekend services.
“I was expecting them to let me know what I needed to do next,” said Delihanty.
Meanwhile, the city opened up a formal application window for any homeless service provider to apply to run the new city shelters and day centers. Delihanty didn’t hear about this until the window had closed.
Not only did she feel like Wilson had personally let her program down, but she worried about other scrappy nonprofits like hers. She said she heard from a few other small service providers who were never alerted to the application kick-off, who would have submitted proposals if they knew.
“That tells me there are likely many smaller community-based organizations that are very deeply embedded into their local neighborhoods that were not considered as part of this process,” she said.
She puts it more bluntly in her letter to the Portland City Council and Wilson.
“This is not just a bureaucratic oversight. It is systemic exclusion,” she writes.
She said that PDX Saints Love, led by women and people who’ve experienced homelessness, “without proximity to institutional power, was left out of a process that directly determines the future of our work and the survival of our participants.”
Sylvester Donelson, the city’s chief procurement officer, responded to Delihanty’s letter on Thursday. He wrote that the city shared news of the application process opening across several platforms, including a city newsletter and social media pages.
He also noted that Delihanty did attend an information session about the application process in January.
“We acknowledge how difficult this situation is,” Donelson said of PDX Saint Love’s position.
(An earlier draft of this email shared with OPB by Wilson’s office, Donelson wrote that “we fully acknowledge.” Donelson removed “fully” in a later copy of the letter.)
In a statement emailed to OPB, Wilson said he stands by the city’s “transparent and equitable” procurement process.
“I continue to believe that PDX Saints Love has an important role in helping our most vulnerable, a belief I‘ve shared and discussed with Ms. Delihanty after this missed opportunity came to light,” Wilson wrote.
Since she didn’t apply to run the Portland program, Delihanty said she doesn’t have the money to keep the center open. She said nearly 2,000 people currently rely on the center for job training assistance, housing support and other social services.
Delihanty said she wrote a letter to city officials expressing her frustration as a last resort.
“I had reached out to the city in every other way, and everyone kept pushing me off to someone else,” she said. “I didn’t have much of a choice.”
Delihanty said she ran into Wilson at an event last weekend, where she raised the same concerns.
“I was brushed off,” she said.
PDX Saints Love’s day center is located on Southeast 82nd Avenue, just north of Southeast Pine Street, in Portland’s District 3. District 3 Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane said she’s heartbroken that the space may shutter.
“PDX Saints Love is so important to the community and my constituents,” said Koyama Lane. “But, at the same time, I know procurement laws are really tricky. I hope the mayor’s office and PDX Saints Love can figure this out.”
