Last week, the city of Portland told a longtime shelter operator it had not been awarded a contract to continue managing one of the city’s tiny pod villages in Southwest Portland.
Leaders of that nonprofit, Sunstone Way, say they were surprised. Since 2022, they’d run the tiny pod village in Multnomah Village—as well as two other villages—without ever having to reapply. And the contract had been with Multnomah County, not the city.
A city employee wrote in an April 4 email to Sunstone’s CEO that the city was in negotiations with Urban Alchemy to take over the site, which expanded last fall from 28 pods to 100 pods. San Francisco-based Urban Alchemy has been the city’s chosen shelter operator since 2023, when the city signed a five-year, $50 million contract with the nonprofit to run its larger pod villages, called temporary alternative shelter sites, or TASS. Urban Alchemy’s entrance into Portland dismayed some local nonprofits that had historically managed homeless shelters through contracts with Multnomah County…