GOVERNOR KOTEK’S BUDGET
SPENDING PRIORITIES
Excerpts from article By Lauren Dake (OPB) and Dirk VanderHart (OPB) https://www.opb.org/article/2023/01/31/tina-kotek
New Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has set course to spend $1 billion in the next two years to preserve and build more affordable housing, funnel more than $9 billion to public schools and devote millions to increase staffing at the Oregon State Hospital, under a $116.5 billion proposed spending plan.
A governor’s proposed budget is a moral document — a signal to the legislators actually responsible for balancing the state’s books of what the state’s chief executive considers most important. So it’s no surprise that Kotek’s proposed 2023-25 budget focuses on the central issues she talked about on the campaign trail: Oregon’s housing crisis, improving access to mental health and addiction services, and improving outcomes for Oregon students.
“The housing crisis is one of the largest emergencies we have ever faced in Oregon and the human suffering it causes to individuals, families and communities is unacceptable,” Kotek wrote in the budget document. “We can and must rise to meet the moment.”
About 18,000 Oregonians are experiencing homelessness now, according to state estimates, and about 11,000 of those have no shelter whatsoever. Oregon has one of the highest homeless student rates in the country, according to Kotek’s budget, and Native Americans are four times more likely to be represented in the homeless population; other communities of color are also overrepresented.
In addition to the $130 million in immediate money Kotek has requested, here are some of the other housing highlights:
$172.2 million to help people connect to long-term rental assistance
$73 million to create long-lasting homelessness prevention programs in Oregon
$24.1 million to maintain shelter operations, including the 600 new shelter beds and those created through the Project Turnkey projects
$4.5 million to help people who provide housing support pay for affordable insurance
$5.3 continued emergency response coordinated by the Oregon Department of Emergency Management and Oregon Housing Community Services
$130 million to build new permanent supportive housing
$770 million in bonding to help build new affordable homes for renters and new homeowners
$118 million to preserve existing affordable homes, including manufactured homes and another $4 million to support replacing old and inefficient manufactured homes
$13.6 million for down payment assistance
$5 million for community land trusts
$9.4 million to improve community access to housing by helping with language translation, technical assistance to Oregon Housing Community Services
$5 million to Oregon’s nine sovereign tribal nations
During the 2022 campaign for governor, Kotek was the only leading candidate who said she would not try to repeal Measure 110, the pioneering drug decriminalization measure voters passed in 2020. The idea behind the measure was to focus fewer resources on penalizing drug users and more on treating them, but the rollout was slow. Now, Kotek said, hundreds of new supportive housing and residential placements are in the pipeline, and she believes combined with her budget proposal the state could finally move away from being “in constant crisis” and move toward “proactive interventions.”
Kotek said she wants to invest state taxpayer dollars to reduce hospitalizations and overdoses, provide timely access to behavioral health and offer the least restrictive environment for people to meet their needs. She is also proposing staff increases and facility upgrades to the state hospital. Here are some of the other behavioral health funding highlights: $195.7 million continued funding for aid and assist services, peer respite centers, housing for transition-age youth and more
$40 million to increase additional mental health residential capacity
$14.9 million to fund civil commitment services, expand jail diversion services to all counties, intervention and outreach to patients before people are civilly committed
$12.3 million for expanding rehabilitation services
$8.7 million for substance use disorder for treatments at Oregon State Penitentiary and Snake River Correctional Institution
$18.4 million to fund 988 suicide and crisis lifelines
$47.6 million for programs like CAHOOTS to divert people from hospital and jail
$278.9 million in addiction treatment, overdose prevention, peer support services, funded partly by Measure 110 grants
$15 million for inpatient treatment and recovery community centers