'Confusing and chaotic': Joint Office of Homeless Services found lacking in new audit

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) -- At a critical time in working to remedy homelessness, a new audit of the Joint Office of Homeless Services found the office to be lacking in several areas.

The audit, released on Wednesday, used interviews with staff as well as a survey to analyze the state of the office.

According to the audit, staff shared the troubles of dealing with public criticism, including one employee who said they didn't tell people where they worked because of the criticism.

Troubles also came from outside the office, with the audit highlighting that homeless service providers viewed the Joint Office of Homeless Services as a "confusing and chaotic organization."

The major troubles came down to a lack of communication and timeliness when working with the Joint Office, which included not paying providers on time, not completing contracts on time and the fact that less than half of homeless service providers thought the Joint Office was doing a good job communicating policies and goals.

In response to the audit's findings, a number of recommendations were made in hopes of improving the Joint Office:

• Joint Office management should schedule regular communication among homeless service systems.
• To improve timely payments to providers, staff should adjust their process so that they review payments in question, but do not prevent the rest of the invoice from being - processed.
• Joint Office management should hire a contract management specialist to oversee the process.
• Joint Office management should modify the Program Specialist role so that this conflict of interest is eliminated.
• To ensure fairness among providers, Joint Office management should create criteria that must be met in order to change performance measures.
• Joint Office executive management needs to communicate their strategic vision.
• Joint Office management should ensure they send regular communications to service providers to address policies and goals.
• Joint Office management should ensure that Joint Office staff are trained on how to review equity plans and should review equity plans submitted by providers.

The recommendations are set to be completed in 2024.

Stay with KOIN 6 News as this story develops.