I live and work in Portland Oregon. I do work for the local United Way in this area. I am sad to report that things are really starting to look real bad here. Oregon has the second highest unemployment rate in the country now and the Portland-Vancouver Metro area that we serve has a higher unemployment rate than the state average of 12%. It was just 5.6% as late as September of last year, so it has more than doubled in a little over six months. For detailed statistics in the Portland metro area follow this link
In an effort to support the basic needs we knew individuals and families would be challenged to provide for themselves as a result of this skyrocketing unemployment, the United Way of the Columbia-Willamette brought together the Oregon Food Bank, Community Action Agencies and a variety of other service agencies focusing under-served or immigrant populations to address the crisis. For a full list of the partners engaged click here. Learn more and about how you can help below the fold. To Donate now click here.
These, agencies, in partnership have formed the Community Relief Fund with the objective of raising money to help families in crisis with rent, food and utility assistance. If you would like to support this effort donate here.
To give just one example of the nature of the challenges faced in this area, the Hillsboro Community Action program requests for rent assistance have jumped from 400 or so a month as of last November to a current rate of 1200 a month. These requests are all from people who come in with a 72 hour eviction notice in their hands. If those numbers were not bad enough Community Action was only able to help about 40 - 50 families a month when they were getting 400 requests a month.
Our Give $10 Tell 10 Friends campaign in support of the Community Relief Fund has enabled the Hillsboro Community Action to now help 100 - 110 families with these 72 hour eviction notices. Unfortunately that is only meeting 10% of the ever rising need. That means each month up to 1000 families a month are now facing the potential of homelessness. And these are only the people that know Community Action may be able to help them in the first place.
I could go on and on about the nature of the crisis, but rest assured the problem will only grow. Community Action and other organizations have found that most service requests for rent assistance come about 6 months after a layoff and most of the layoffs in the area hit from between January and March.
The news is not all bad, many of our large businesses have either made generous contributions to this effort or have underwritten the expenses for administering the Community Relief Fund. That means that every cent an individual gives goes directly to help with a utility bill, pay someone's rent or put together a food box for a hungry family.
I know it is probably not terribly appropriate to post this kind of request on this site, I do beg forgiveness, but the situation is really hitting critical levels and while we have seen some success in raising dollars locally the need is fast outpacing the resources available.
Finally, while our United Way's work typically focuses on under-served populations like the homeless or other disadvantaged groups, this Community Relief Fund effort is designed to stop more people from sliding into these disadvantaged groups in the first place.
So if you could please help by Giving $10 and asking 10 of your friends at www.give10tell10.org, the Portland Vancouver area would be forever grateful to you. You can also join the cause on Facebook.
To learn more about some of the challenges we are facing in our community and what some of the organizations that are part of the Community Relief Fund do with the funds raised I have provided some videos below (these are several months old, so the numbers have only grown since):
Neighborhood House
East Multnomah County
Clark County, WA (this is a raw feed including the questions asked by the producer of the video, an opportunity to see how the sausage is made so to speak)
Washington County