A new 24-hour shelter for sober homeless veterans will open this fall in the old Kenton Hotel on North Interstate Avenue, according to a joint announcement Friday from homeless services nonprofit Do Good Multnomah and Multnomah County.
Do Good Multnomah, which is run by and focuses on serving veterans, purchased the old motel with the help of a $500,000 forgivable loan from Multnomah County and a gift from the Portland-based Thayer Family Foundation, according to their spokesperson. Do Good also took out a commercial loan.
The nonprofit runs six low-barrier shelters in Multnomah County that are open to anyone in need of a safe place to sleep. But the new shelter will specifically house 17 guests, all of whom must stay sober to keep their housing and have a record of past military experience, which can include National Guard service.
“There isn’t anything like this out there right now,” said Matthew Harvey, a Do Good Multnomah case manager and veteran who has been homeless, in a statement. “Having a recovery community, especially one that’s veteran-centered, is something that would have changed everything for me when I was going through my struggles.”
Like other homeless service providers, Do Good Multnomah had to make cuts this summer to account for reduced funding from the county. Do Good spokesperson Chris Gardner said they were attempting to maintain the same number of shelter beds while dealing with a 17% reduction in funds coming in from the county. They’d had to cut some contracted services and lay off some staff.
Given all this, Gardner said the purchase of the motel was “a big, scary financial risk for us” but that it was “the right thing to do” for the veteran community.
Nicole Jackson, the nonprofit’s director of housing, said there was clear demand from participants in their other shelter programs and from the mental health providers they partner with for sober shelter and housing for homeless people in recovery who are trying to get their lives back together.
“I could fill the motel tomorrow, probably,” she said. People will often go to detox “but then they come to shelter or are houseless and can’t go right into housing. Or there’s pressure to immediately start treatment and looking for a job and that’s a lot to be doing in a short period of time.”
Jackson said it can be very hard to get and stay sober while those around you are still actively using your drug of choice. Sober settings make that transition easier, she said.
The new Kenton neighborhood shelter is meant to provide a place for veterans to live for about three months while they work to become stable, pursue addiction recovery treatment and work on finding permanent housing and a job, according to Jackson. The plan is to have a certified drug and alcohol addiction counselor onsite and provide free transportation to any other needed medical or mental health services.
In what is becoming a common occurrence as the city rapidly expands the number of homeless shelters within its borders, neighbors who caught wind of the new shelter last week and chatted about it on Reddit had lots of thoughts about the pluses and minuses of a shelter in Kenton.
An early July post noted that Do Good had bought the motel and worried the addition of a homeless shelter was a sign of the neighborhood going downhill. People posting responses were mostly dismissive of those concerns. The details about the shelter being for 17 sober veterans were not yet announced at the time of the first post.
“If the Kenton Hotel was a thriving business, it wouldn’t have been sold,” wrote one commenter, who said they lived close enough to the soon-to-be shelter to hit it with a thrown rock. Online Yelp! reviews dating back to 2019 describe a questionably run hotel with no staff on site.
“I would much rather it be a homeless shelter than an empty building, which would probably have squatters living in it anyway,” the commenter continued. “I guess I fail to see a problem with people living in a shelter having local access to a farmers market or mass transportation.”
Another noted that the farmers market, which pops up on Wednesdays all summer from 3 to 9 p.m., accepts food stamps. Others argued changes in Kenton in recent years have been for the good and a shelter won’t change that.
“I think most of the people commenting here would be shocked if they had any idea what Kenton used to be like,” one commenter wrote. “Kenton is thriving! And doing their part to help the houseless.”
The planned shelter is meant to have multiple services onsite, including a food pantry and a clothing closet. The joint statement issued Friday also said it marks the latest in a series of Multnomah County investments in recovery, stabilization and transitional housing beds. However, with the exception of Bybee Lakes recovery beds in North Portland, the majority of county-supported shelter beds do not require sobriety.
Lillian Mongeau Hughes covers homelessness and mental health for The Oregonian. Email her with tips or questions at lmhughes@oregonian.com. Or follow her on Bluesky @lmonghughes.bsky.social or X at @lrmongeau.
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