Oregon’s Project Turnkey shows early successes, could serve as a model for national emergency housing investments

A local hospital discharged a man fighting stage three cancer after a surgery. Planning to recover in his vehicle, he left carrying a bag of ravioli cans and a can opener. He had no other place to go.

He was on a waitlist for months prior to his surgery, hoping for a temporary place to live. After a series of phone calls, he finally found a hotel room to recover in through Family Promise of Tualatin Valley and checked in on his 65th birthday. One of the volunteers at the motel shelter brought him a birthday cake to celebrate. From there, he ultimately moved into permanent housing.

This is one of the many stories told by homeless Oregonians who found some refuge through Project Turnkey, a $125 million statewide investment turning vacant and underutilized buildings into emergency shelters. The program offered a small boon to the state’s total shelter, specifically supporting a less common and more desired type of shelter space — individual living spaces with private bathrooms, locking doors and a guest’s right to come and go as they please. It also prioritized medically vulnerable people, seniors, survivors of domestic violence and families who often cannot live in congregate shelters. Citing the program’s successes, a new proposal wants to create a federal program helping other communities do similar work.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon), Congressional Caucus on Homelessness co-chair, introduced House Bill 8297, titled the Turnkey Act, on May 15. If passed, the bill will dedicate $1 billion in federal spending for rapid rehousing projects across the country.

Bonamici and advocates say the program’s flexibility is a major factor in its success across the state, thanks in large part to the political will to quickly address compounding crises in 2020.

Oregon Democratic representatives Andrea Salinas and Earl Blumenauer — also a member of the Congressional Caucus on Homelessness — joined 17 other House Democrats in co-sponsoring the Turnkey Act.

Bonamici said she hopes the program’s success in Oregon will attract bipartisan support and ultimately offer a scalable solution for the nationwide homelessness crisis.

“It's a very smart way to quickly and economically increase access to housing and emergency shelter, get people into housing and shelter, and importantly, it includes those support programs that are so important for long-term success,” Bonamici said.

The Turnkey Act seeks to amend the HOME Investment Partnerships Act, a Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, program providing grants to local governments to fund affordable rental production, maintenance and rental assistance for low-income households. The Turnkey Act will add $1 billion in annual HUD grants for communities to purchase and convert vacant hotels, offices or hospitals into affordable housing and emergency shelters.

If passed, the program will also provide direct rent, moving cost and utility assistance to those at risk of losing housing, while adding support for homeless people through child care programs, transportation access, employment assistance and mental health counseling.

Oregon’s Project Turnkey began in 2020 amid the COVID-19 lockdown and unprecedented wildfires across the state. The project funded 32 shelters in 27 cities across Oregon, each owned and operated by local community organizations to address its specific needs.

The state invested a total of $125 million in grants for organizations to acquire the sites, creating 1,382 new shelter units, according to an Oregon Community Foundation, or OCF, report submitted to the state Legislature. That represents a 30% increase in shelter supply and 121,000 nights of refuge for homeless Oregonians.

Early evaluations show the program is fiscally responsible as well. For sites paid for in the second round of funding, the average cost per unit was under $100,000, compared to a $226,000 statewide average per unit before the pandemic began, according to the OCF report. OCF administered the state-allocated $75 million in the first round of grant funding, with an additional $50 million approved in 2022.

The expedited timeline helped stave off the worst impacts of the housing crisis during a chaotic period. Oregon saw a 22.5% uptick in homelessness between 2020 and 2022 and another 8.5% in 2023, according to the 2023 Oregon Point-in-Time, or PIT, count. However, much of the effort focused on providing emergency housing for those affected by Oregon’s historic wildfires, which burned more than a million acres and 4,000 homes in September 2020. Over 40,000 people temporarily evacuated their homes.

“These facilities can make possible a kind of community among both the residents and between the residents and the staff that you can't do at a congregate shelter.”
— Anna Rockhill, HRAC senior research associate

Efforts to provide housing ramped up when officials estimated the state was short 10,000 shelter beds, and the Oregon Legislature approved Project Turnkey to alleviate the shortage.

Portland State University’s Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative, or HRAC, is currently evaluating the first round of Project Turnkey funding. The first round doled out the initial $75 million in grants to 19 grantees in 13 counties, creating 865 new shelter units — a 20% increase in socially distanced shelter supply. HRAC is expected to issue its full report on the first round later this summer.

Anna Rockhill, HRAC senior research associate, said the early results showcase some lessons learned for quickly providing emergency shelter at a reasonable cost, particularly with its focus on private living quarters with on-site services.

“These facilities can make possible a kind of community among both the residents and between the residents and the staff that you can't do at a congregate shelter,” Rockhill said.

She said when people have to go to other locations for services, they often miss opportunities to build connections with one another as well as the support systems that might help them move on to permanent housing.

While preventing a COVID surge was the impetus for quickly providing non-congregate shelter space — meaning guests had access to separate living quarters, private bathrooms and other amenities — the resulting shelters demonstrated how trauma-informed spaces with on-site services can lead to more desirable outcomes.

“How do you help people who have been living outside, who have significant trauma histories, who have all these disparate needs?” Rockhill said. “A hotel room is not always a gift to somebody who's lived outside for five years. You need to be in a setting with people that understand that you really want to close your door, and it also scares the shit out of you to close your door.”

The OCF report noted the attention to creating separate living quarters for people prevented the spread of COVID while providing people with the privacy they needed to stabilize before moving into permanent housing.

Bonamici held a meeting with elected officials, real estate experts and service providers at the OCF building June 6. She asked service providers from across the state to share their experiences with the program and highlight personal stories to demonstrate its effectiveness to her congressional colleagues.

Eboni Brown, Greater Good Northwest executive director, said the organization quickly adapted to challenges to offer on-site services that meet their community's specific needs. Washington County purchased an Econo Lodge Motel in Hillsboro and converted the space into the Bridge Shelter Program using Project Turnkey grants, and Greater Good Northwest took over management of the program in July 2021.

The flexibility to provide an array of services in a supportive housing environment means staff can help stabilize people as they transition into permanent housing, according to Brown.

“We actually were catering in three meals a day, and we still continue to do that,” Brown said in the meeting. “But now we've started our own program where we're farming our own food, where we're making our own food. We have our own kitchen now, and we're able to make sure that people have the diets that they need.”

Brown said the model helped provide Greater Good Northwest with resources it needed to partner with other organizations supporting people from diverse communities. The funding helped fill gaps and coordinate care, including helping people recover from hospital stays, offer case management, and meet dietary and other health needs.

Statistics show Oregon is not alone in worsening homelessness trends, highlighting the importance of a federal policy like the Turnkey Act in helping to address the crisis. From 2022 to 2023, homelessness rose 12% in the United States — roughly 70,650 people — and the total number of people experiencing homelessness increased in 41 states. Alaska, Nevada, and all three West Coast states reported the highest rates of homelessness in the United States in 2023, with the exception of New York, according to the national PIT count from that year.

While the Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Oregon case on whether cities can level penalties against homeless people who have no other place to go, supporters of the Turnkey Act say it is increasingly important that local governments continue to invest in tools to materially address the nationwide homelessness crisis.

Eric Tars, National Homelessness Law Center’s senior policy director, said the Turnkey Act gives communities flexible funding to turn vacant properties into shelters.

“Let’s pass Project Turnkey quickly and then use that momentum to make the even bigger investments we need to end encampments and ensure that every American can enjoy their basic human right to housing,” Tars said.

The bill is currently waiting in the House Committee on Financial Services.

Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.