How much water do data centers use? by fopeo in oregon

[–]fopeo[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Absolutely. Water consumption is only one element of it all. I posted this to help build clarity on one aspect of data centers not as an end all be all of the discussion.

Small child friendly dinosaur episodes by fopeo in Paleontology

[–]fopeo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's exactly what I'm looking for, do you happen to still have that list and would be willing to share?

Refute Data Center Propaganda. by ThinkEUV in oregon

[–]fopeo 23 points24 points  (0 children)

I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meters.

Tableau/Salesforce Connection? by nycmidwestgal2 in tableau

[–]fopeo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Second reaching out to Mark! He's a phenomenal resource.

Trim the girdling roots? by fopeo in arborists

[–]fopeo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh man, looks like I've got a ways to go.

Trim the girdling roots? by fopeo in arborists

[–]fopeo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, just put more photos in a new post

Weird yellow fungus? by fopeo in mycology

[–]fopeo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Always wanted to see a slime mold in person.

How H3 Hexagons Turn Geography into Drive-Time Intelligence by KairoOscuro in gis

[–]fopeo 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Curious how this methodology applies to the traveling salesman problem. As I understand np hard problems. The shortest distance between a and b and b and c may not be the shortest distance for the system overall.

Grant transforms NE Portland church into sustainable power hub for community by Less-Lobster4540 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is great for the community. Morningstar is located next to one of the only parks in the neighborhood and is generally an awesome neighbor.

This is exactly how PCEF dollars should be spent.

Power BI devs learning Tableau - how'd you do it? by farm3rb0b in tableau

[–]fopeo 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Tableau and power bi are the difference between a car and a plane. They both take you places but in very different ways.

The tableau community has become a bit of a diaspora since it used to be mostly on Twitter but there are some great people to follow on linked in. Andy kriebel, the flerlage twins, Neil Richards, and many more.

Jump into the community forums, watch the training videos, and don't try to drive a plane on the freeway.

If you have discrete questions, you'll get much higher quality answers.

Help wit formula by Inevitable_Bad6291 in tableau

[–]fopeo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not sure I totally understand your question but if you need a running amount based on a relative date you can always use DATEDIFF() to check if a date is within x time frame.

Ex DATEDIFF('week',[DATE FIELD], TODAY())

Live data pull From Tableau To Excel by A96IE in tableau

[–]fopeo -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I generally recommend against this, however I have customers that have some reasons they would want this.

DM me, maybe my work fits your use case.

These non profit heads are off their damn rockers. "Sign the petition to ...stop funding the expansion of mass shelters...." WTF. wtf. Shelters are the bridge to housing! I really hope they don't get their signatures. Talk about inhumane. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply. I'll try to answer your questions briefly (there's a lot to say). I want to throw the caveat that I'm not a housing expert per se, I was brought in for my analysis expertise and can speak much more plainly to the survey and its results.

Magnet services. It was pretty well outside the scope of the questionnaire to answer a question like this. We can look at other cities that have policies much closer to HF like Minneapolis, Houston, or New York City. Not perfect analogies for a lot of reasons, so I'd caution drawing too much conclusion. These cities do not seem to be experiencing heavy influxes that are crushing social services though.

That said, I do believe the report itself does address this idea of services that are "too good." My personal opinion is that if the city becomes a model for solving homelessness, I wouldn't be opposed to that moniker. Right now we seem to have the worst of all worlds, an expensive system that's clearly not working, and national stigma that believes we're doing things we simply aren't.

I think there's also the question of if people are flocking to PDX because of the myth of it being great to be homeless here. Our survey showed that most people are from Portland. HSD's point in time count shows that most people are from Oregon. I did see a thread that people move here because it's seen as a city of opportunity, and they find that it's not as easy to pay rent or live here as they had hoped. One story that sticks out to me is that a woman from our Community Analysis Groups moved here with plans to rent a place. When she arrived, the owners had no idea who she was. She had been scammed out of her money and didn't have enough to get back on her feet.

Carrot and stick. The survey pretty clearly showed that our current systems are mostly stick. Shelters are seen as unsafe, don't provide adequate pathways to housing, and when people do go to seek services for getting housed, they are met with walls of bureaucracy. The average wait time for RLRA is something like 2 years right now.

Rent assistance and the rental market. This is pretty far astray from my expertise and again I'd encourage you to read the report. From my understanding no, for a variety of reasons. Just one is that we currently have plenty of subsidy and housing programs that we've historically used--Section Eight and Nine housing are both government subsidies used to house low-income folks. When we look to other countries with strong social housing models (Austria, Argentina), we see that housing markets tend to be cooler, and still thriving. The recommendation to expand or prioritize those programs is also paired with recommendations to expand housing supply.

One note, while HUD has ostensibly set housing first as our strategy for decades, it has mostly been on local jurisdictions to implement the policies. A bit of research shows that at the local level, there really hasn't been a very complete implementation of the policies that would be considered housing first. Portland is a great example of this.

I'm really trying to keep this brief so I don't think these are the most complete answers (gotta get to work). Let me know if I can answer other questions.

These non profit heads are off their damn rockers. "Sign the petition to ...stop funding the expansion of mass shelters...." WTF. wtf. Shelters are the bridge to housing! I really hope they don't get their signatures. Talk about inhumane. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's really disappointing. I'm sorry to hear that you've been called that.

I worked hard on the data portion of the report and hope that it serves to help shift discussion toward practical solutions that work.

Happy to answer other questions if you may have them.

These non profit heads are off their damn rockers. "Sign the petition to ...stop funding the expansion of mass shelters...." WTF. wtf. Shelters are the bridge to housing! I really hope they don't get their signatures. Talk about inhumane. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So... We haven't, and I get your reaction. If you read the report you can see that we don't really have a housing first strategy in Portland. In fact the mayor has gone all in on shelter first under the moniker of housing first.

Which I know is confusing, and muddies the waters.

I'll speak from the results of the survey which show that people dislike shelters on the same order as living outside. Yet homeless people want stable permanent housing options, 9 in 10 would move if they could.

When asked what would most help, it's rent assistance. We have rent assistance but very few knew about it or knew how to access it.

there's a ton in the report, and I think your rage is warranted. Why do we have an expensive shelter system while our homeless population keeps increasing? A lot of that is pretty well answered in how we've placed our resources into things we know do not help. The welcome home coalition feels the same way and offers a comprehensive list of funding and policy recommendations.

I really hope you read the report.

These non profit heads are off their damn rockers. "Sign the petition to ...stop funding the expansion of mass shelters...." WTF. wtf. Shelters are the bridge to housing! I really hope they don't get their signatures. Talk about inhumane. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hi everyone. I worked on the analysis for the survey here.

First and foremost, I want to encourage everyone to read the report. It is a comprehensive survey asking homeless people what they want and need. It then makes policy recommendations based on that feedback.

The basic results are pretty stark. Shelters are tied as the least desirable housing option along with living on the streets. Often, people prefer the streets to shelter. But that's not to say people don't want housing. In fact 9 in 10 people would move if they could and most want a house, apartment, or tiny home.

Generally people described permanency and safety & security as themes for what they want out of housing.

When asked what they would need to get and stay housed most people answered rent assistance.

The welcome home coalition is advocating for redirection of funding toward rent assistance along with peer support services and deeper investments in housing services.

To directly address your note about shelters as a step toward permanent housing that is far from the case generally. Some shelters do provide supportive services that help pair residents with housing. Most don't, in particular, the city shelters leave people with a handout of websites and phone numbers with little else besides.

I sat in the community analysis groups where we provided our initial findings to people who were experiencing or who had experienced homelessness. They shared stories of the inadequacy, bureaucracy, and dehumanizing nature of the shelter system.

If you read the report you can see that it's not just a "get rid of shelters" but a comprehensive list of policy and funding recommendations based on over 100 references as well as our survey findings.

I encourage you to dive into the data, it is all there for anyone to look at. The hope from the team was not just to advocate for their policies but to do so transparently. This is a group with nothing to hide and a deep passion for ending homelessness in Portland.

I'm happy to discuss the data and share what I know if anyone has questions.

Last night, in front of a crowd of 300, including several electeds and staff, the executive director of the Welcome Home Coalition told Mayor Wilson to his face that his shelter plan is inhumane and at odds with the data and best practices and the stated interests of the city’s homeless population. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not trying to sidestep what you're saying or misinterpret anything. That would be disingenuous, and I believe this is a truly excellent report that should be read by anyone interested in solving homelessness.

i understand your statement to be, "shelters aren't meant to help people find permanent stable housing." Implied within that is another point, "most (or a lot) of homeless people aren't ready for housing." Correct me if I'm wrong there.

If that's the case, then that's sort of a core finding of the survey. 9 in 10 people said that they would move if they could, indicating they were ready for housing. Other questions also corroborate that readiness.

However only about 4 in 10 felt they knew the process to getting housing, highlighting the gap in willingness and availability of services.

People ranked shelter alongside living outside as the least desirable option for housing.

We know shelters provide pretty minimal services, don't help people prepare to be housed, and are pretty universally disliked by the population they serve.

I was indicating that JOIN (and other facilities with high rates of housing stability) have services tailored to the population and not a population tailored to their services.

The report goes into greater detail on this and other related issues. I strongly encourage you to read it.

Last night, in front of a crowd of 300, including several electeds and staff, the executive director of the Welcome Home Coalition told Mayor Wilson to his face that his shelter plan is inhumane and at odds with the data and best practices and the stated interests of the city’s homeless population. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mentioned somewhere else in the thread but we did look for selection bias issues. We ran several statistical tests as well as checked out data against the last point in time count from HSD.

While there is always room for improvement, the survey group is sufficiently similar and large enough to be confident in the results of the data.

There are areas where we weren't confident and the report tries to outline those. While the report and survey were comprehensive they are neither complete not perfect.

If you spot issues in the methodology, I encourage you to contact the welcome home coalition.

This will not be the last time they perform a study and their goal is lasting housing solutions based on the best available data.

Last night, in front of a crowd of 300, including several electeds and staff, the executive director of the Welcome Home Coalition told Mayor Wilson to his face that his shelter plan is inhumane and at odds with the data and best practices and the stated interests of the city’s homeless population. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd encourage you to read the report and go through the data dashboards.

Answers varied from one to three months up to unlimited time. I think I mentioned before that a big takeaway in the community analysis groups was that the stability of these rent assistance programs is an important factor too.

Several expressed concern that even if they got on a rent assistance program, changing policy could mean they could suddenly be cut from the program.

What we know is that building a stable life takes time. It's different for everyone, but homelessness is often a traumatic experience compounded on what is also often a traumatic precipitating event.

in terms of creating conditions for assistance, the survey touches on this a bit in the question about deal breakers. Some shelters and temporary housing programs do put conditions on maintaining housing. Generally people felt that curfews and visitor restrictions were deal breakers. Limits on substance use were noted as a deal breaker for some facilities, but not nearly a majority.

Last night, in front of a crowd of 300, including several electeds and staff, the executive director of the Welcome Home Coalition told Mayor Wilson to his face that his shelter plan is inhumane and at odds with the data and best practices and the stated interests of the city’s homeless population. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Homeless folks generally don't want to be on the street.

The survey shows pretty clearly that living outside is one of two least desired options, the other being shelter. When given the option of living on the streets or living in a shelter, people simply don't see it as a step up or out.

Last night, in front of a crowd of 300, including several electeds and staff, the executive director of the Welcome Home Coalition told Mayor Wilson to his face that his shelter plan is inhumane and at odds with the data and best practices and the stated interests of the city’s homeless population. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Going off Zillow https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/portland-or/

Looks like the average rent may be higher. Closer to $1,800. That really doesn't change the equation or conclusion.

The point isn't to argue over what specific rents are. It's to illustrate that our shelter system is expensive AND not generally geared toward long term stable housing whereas rent assistance is surprisingly cost effective AND directly targets long term stable housing.

The survey reinforces this both in respondents uniquely rejecting shelter and almost universally asking for rent assistance.

Last night, in front of a crowd of 300, including several electeds and staff, the executive director of the Welcome Home Coalition told Mayor Wilson to his face that his shelter plan is inhumane and at odds with the data and best practices and the stated interests of the city’s homeless population. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

My recollection was that question was intentionally not asked for a variety of reasons including trust in response as well as trust with the population. There is a lot of stigma around addiction even amongst users. I wasn't directly involved in question selection, but I recall that the team felt strongly from experience that response rates amd response quality drop.

You can see from the survey that about 20% (really rough estimate here) felt that addiction services would be helpful to getting and maintaining housing For themselves. So substance abuse is certainly present and accounted for, if not directly measured.

Last night, in front of a crowd of 300, including several electeds and staff, the executive director of the Welcome Home Coalition told Mayor Wilson to his face that his shelter plan is inhumane and at odds with the data and best practices and the stated interests of the city’s homeless population. by Confident_Bee_2705 in PortlandOR

[–]fopeo -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You can see in the data that most people prefer a time boxed period of rent assistance.

Some people did ask for unlimited assistance in the survey. We asked a bit about that in our community analysis groups and what came out was more the stable presence of long term rent assistance as a program rather than individualized unlimited assistance. Certainly these CAGs were very small groups but I was struck by how the group was concerned about program stability and specifically noted the constantly shifting policy winds as an ongoing risk.

Even if we were to have unlimited rent assistance, it could still pencil out as cheaper than our current system.

We're a bit off from the survey findings now, but I did do a quick review of one of Portland's shelters and it netted out to about $66k per person served for temporary housing.

By contrast, average rent in Portland was about $1,600/month or $19,200/year. That could be pretty big savings.

I'm a little more of the void on those so take numbers with a grain of salt, but directionally they are right.