She Thought She Would Die Homeless, in a Tent...

But now she's housed, so she offers a lesson of hope: Homelessness is knotty but not insolvable.

EUGENE, Ore. – Alice Gentry thought her life’s final chapter would unfold in a tent.

She was homeless and surviving only by camping. Her Social Security stipend couldn’t cover even rent, let alone food, so she camped out – and for about six months she didn’t have regular access to a shower or toilet.

But Gentry, 70, now has found shelter in a tiny home through an innovative project in Eugene called SquareOne Villages — and maybe there’s a lesson here for all of us. Homelessness is a difficult and complicated, but it’s not hopeless for Gentry or for the state of Oregon. Her story illustrates that there are ways to support our neighbors to secure the housing and safety everyone deserves.

“I’m feeling great!” Gentry told me as she showed me her brand-new home and marveled at the idea of a door that locked and gave her privacy. “Just look at this!” Her home had its own bathroom and kitchenette, and she paid about $350 a month for it, utilities included.

I visited SquareOne Villages because I wanted to understand how we can do a better job helping unhoused neighbors — and to remind me and everyone else that there are paths forward. We have resources, we have tools, but we do need to summon ingenuity, determination and political will.

Alice Gentry in her new home, talking to me and my wife, Sheryl WuDunn.

I’m running for governor of Oregon because I’m fed up with a failed approach to a range of problems, from homelessness to addiction, and because I’m confident we can do better. For decades I’ve written about solutions to social problems, and SquareOne Villages reaffirmed my confidence that there are paths forward. Progressivism should be about progress, and that means actually getting people housed.

Oregon has the second worst rate of unsheltered homeless people in the country, according to a federal review, behind only California. It’s not just a Portland problem, either; it’s an issue across the state. Oregon also has some 23,000 children who are homeless, and that’s a stain on our state and on all of us.

It could get worse. Some 60,000 households were behind on their rent in Oregon as of October 2021, according to the National Equity Atlas.  There’s a real risk of more evictions in this state and around the country.

But as Gentry shows, it’s not hopeless. Tiny homes alone are not the solution, and indeed there is no one solution to housing needs: We need everything thrown at this issue. But we shouldn’t surrender.

When the United States became embarrassed about veteran homelessness, the Obama administration mounted a major effort and reduced it by half. Other cities and states have figured out how to do better. We could use similar approaches to reduce child homelessness by half or more as well, if we had the determination and creativity.

One basic step is to address the supply imbalance: Oregon is short 135,000 housing units. Just to meet demand, Oregon needs to generate 25,000 new housing units a year.

The housing shortage in turn drives up housing costs and rents. Oregon has the 11th highest housing costs in the country by one reckoning. A minimum wage worker would have to toil 79 hours each week just to afford a two-bedroom rental home in Oregon.

Instead of helping address the problem, policy and bureaucracy have stifled production of new housing units. Meanwhile, there are 1.5 million unused spare bedrooms in Oregon, and some fraction of them could be leveraged to help people through homeshare models of various kinds, such as creation of a for-rent basement flat.

This approach worked in San Mateo, California, to provide housing for tens of thousands of people, but the version adopted by the Legislature in Oregon in 2019 has failed, with counties refusing to step up to create incentives. One path forward for homeshare might be to provide interest-free $15,000 loans to homeowners seeking to wall off a basement and add a kitchenette to create separate granny flats.

We also need to do more to address substance abuse, which affects perhaps a quarter million Oregonians; my friends who became homeless have struggled with alcohol and drugs. Oregon spends $6.7 billion a year on the consequences of substance abuse, but less than 1 percent of that on prevention or treatment (and treatment pays for itself many times over), according to the Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission.

When policy makers do their job, success is possible. Bakersfield and Kern County, California, managed to reduce chronic homelessness effectively to zero. That required a unified team focused on the problem, careful data collection and assembly of information about the needs of each individual, but it showed what’s possible. If Bakersfield can do it, so can Portland.

None of this will be easy. But my heart aches because I’ve had too many friends lose housing, and because far too many kids are homeless across the state. My old friend Mike died unsheltered on the streets of McMinnville last year. Another old friend, Stacy, froze to death while homeless.

That’s what might have happened to Alice if she had continued to camp out in a tent, without a toilet or shower. Watching her show off her new house is a reminder that homelessness is a knotty problem, but not an unsolvable one. We can do better.