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To keep all those people successfully housed, the county is next looking to create a stronger retention system by hiring workers who will help people navigate life when newly housed and beyond.

“We are looking at creating a pool of retention workers, but the point is we started from scratch, we needed everything, and we had to start somewhere,” Larson said.

The funding was also used to create four daytime access centers throughout the county where people can access meals, showers, laundry services and housing support. But county leaders still have a long list of support services they hope to tackle. They say they believe their full support system can be fully operational within two years.

Next, Rogers and Larson plan to diversify housing options in the county to include transitional housing, addiction recovery housing and housing for people with long-term disabling conditions.

“We want to have purpose-built housing where we partner with our healthcare system,” Larson said. “When thinking about higher acuity needs, we want residences with specialized care attached, where there is a provider that can help people with laundry, teach people how to cook and remind them to pay their bills.”

Valladares said more general housing units need to be identified as well.

“We have enough shelters now, but we also need more housing,” Valladares said. “We need some place for people to exit to once they are in shelter.”

Rogers believes a few factors allowed the county to quickly see impact. The large influx of new money helped, but so did the county’s relatively streamlined governance structure and bureaucracy, she said.

If changes to homeless services need to be approved, she and her team only need to go before the Washington County Commission as opposed to multiple boards and councils that her counterparts must navigate in Multnomah County and the city of Portland, she said.

Unlike in larger county governments, Washington County’s housing services department, housing authority, homeless services and the coordinated care department are all under one roof, not spread among different agencies.

“We don’t have to answer to three boards and we can just pivot when we need to because our single board respects us as experts,” Rogers said. “We really just need two more years until our whole system is built out.”

Nicole Hayden reports on homelessness for The Oregonian/OregonLive. She can be reached at [email protected].