For the third year in a row, Oregon remains under a declared Homeless State of Emergency. Each extension is justified by urgency, compassion, and the promise that staying the course will eventually produce results. In January 2023, Governor Tina Kotek declared the emergency, and it has since been extended multiple times under continued executive authority (see the Governor’s official announcement here: https://apps.oregon.gov/oregon-newsroom/OR/GOV/Posts/Post/governor-kotek-issues-executive-order-to-extend-homelessness-emergency). Yet after years of emergency authority, unprecedented spending, and repeated assurances, the hard truth remains: homelessness in Oregon has not improved. In many places, it has grown worse.
At some point, honesty requires us to ask whether we are responding to homelessness in a way that truly restores lives—or whether we have settled into something else entirely.
I believe Oregon is no longer operating in a state of emergency.
We are operating in a state of dependency.
What Do I Mean by “Dependency”?
By dependency, I do not mean helping people in crisis. Compassion is not the problem. Emergency help is not the problem. Scripture clearly commands us to care for the poor, the hurting, and the vulnerable.
Dependency occurs when emergency responses become permanent; when relief becomes the default posture rather than a temporary bridge; and when systems are designed to manage people indefinitely rather than restore them to wholeness, responsibility, and independence.
Dependency, as I mean it here, is not about individuals. It is about systems.
How We Understand Help at the Mission
At Medford Gospel Mission, our approach has always been rooted in a simple but important truth: different situations require different kinds of help.
There are moments of genuine crisis when people cannot help themselves. In those moments, immediate relief is necessary to stop the bleeding and preserve life and dignity. But relief was never meant to be permanent.
Healthy help moves forward. It walks with people as they regain stability, take responsibility, and grow toward independence and flourishing. True compassion does not trap people in survival mode—it points them toward restoration.
When relief is extended indefinitely, without a clear pathway toward responsibility, healing, and growth, it can unintentionally undermine the very people it aims to serve. What begins as mercy can quietly become a system that fosters dependence rather than freedom.
When Relief Replaces Restoration
Relief is powerful. It can save lives in moments of crisis. But when used beyond its rightful purpose, it quietly distorts the story of what people were made for.
When food, shelter, money, and services are delivered continuously without pathways to growth or restored relationships, they reshape the way people live and see themselves. Over time—often unconsciously—people learn that survival does not require healing, responsibility, or transformation. Flourishing is replaced by maintenance. The system offers stability, not by restoring life, but by sustaining the brokenness.
This is not because people lack dignity, capacity, or motivation. It’s because systems form people, just as people form systems. When a system assumes passivity, it invites dependency. When it focuses on relief alone, it shapes a narrative in which tomorrow will always look like today.
Over time, what emerges is not just reliance on services, but a state of dependency—a condition in which individuals internalize that they are recipients rather than participants, clients rather than contributors, problems to be managed rather than people with purpose. This state of dependency is not just economic; it is relational, psychological, and spiritual. It teaches people to adapt to broken systems rather than seek restoration.
Constant relief teaches that the next meal, the next bed, the next check will arrive regardless of choices, growth, or relationships. What was meant to interrupt crisis becomes the norm, and dependency is quietly normalized—not through personal failure, but through system design.
This is not the fault of those receiving help. It’s a failure in how the help is structured. Misapplied relief is not just ineffective—it is deformative. When there are no bridges to work, community, discipleship, or healing, people are not just stuck materially—they are stuck in a story that offers no exit.
When we lower expectations—of people or programs—we don’t preserve dignity; we erode it. The mission subtly shifts: from walking with people toward flourishing to managing their suffering with greater efficiency.
A system built on relief alone must grow to survive. But a system built on restoration is meant to shrink—because people are moving on.
That is the difference we must be willing to confront. Not only in Oregon, but wherever helping has quietly become hurting. The goal is not better-managed homelessness. The goal is less homelessness—because people are flourishing in renewed relationships with God, themselves, others, and creation.
A Permanent Emergency Produces a Permanent Crisis
Oregon has now spent millions of dollars under emergency authority. We have counted people year after year. We have expanded programs, funded shelters, and reported thousands of “beds created or preserved.” And yet the overall trajectory has not changed.
Why?
Because much of what is celebrated as progress is actually preservation, not transformation. Preserving shelter beds may prevent collapse, but it does not reduce homelessness. Counting people may inform funding formulas, but it does not restore lives. Spending money may stabilize systems, but it does not automatically produce freedom.
An emergency response that never moves beyond relief cannot solve homelessness.
It can only manage it.
When emergency declarations are renewed year after year without measurable improvement, crisis becomes normalized. Emergency becomes governance. And dependency becomes embedded in the system.
Who Pays the Price for a State of Dependency?
The cost of this approach is not abstract.
People experiencing homelessness are asked the same questions year after year, counted again and again, while their lives remain largely unchanged. Frontline organizations are stretched thin, asked to do more with funding that often only allows them to avoid doing less. Communities grow weary and discouraged as promises are repeated without results.
Most tragically, people are subtly taught—by policy and practice alike—that survival within the system is the goal, rather than restoration out of it.
That is not compassion. That is resignation.
A Better Way Forward
At the Mission, we believe people are more than problems to be managed or statistics to be collected. They are men and women created in the image of God, capable—by His grace—of repentance, growth, responsibility, and new life.
That is why we ask a question the system never asks:
What is your relationship with God?
Not because faith is a program requirement, but because lasting change is not merely material. It is spiritual, relational, and moral. Real restoration does not come from permanent relief. It comes from truth, accountability, community, and hope rooted in Christ.
Emergency help has its place. But when relief is extended indefinitely, it ceases to heal. It begins to harm.
Ending the Emergency Starts with Telling the Truth
A real emergency response should aim to make itself unnecessary. It should define success clearly, measure progress honestly, and chart a visible path toward resolution.
Until Oregon is willing to move beyond permanent relief—toward restoration that leads to responsibility and independence—it will remain trapped in a state of dependency, no matter how much money is spent or how many times the emergency is renewed.
We can—and must—do better.
Not by abandoning compassion, but by practicing it wisely.
Not by counting people endlessly, but by restoring them fully.
Not by managing homelessness forever, but by helping people find freedom, purpose, and new life.
A Word to Our Supporters
To those who support the Mission—through prayer, generosity, and faithful partnership—we are deeply grateful. Thank you for standing with us in a season when clarity is costly and conviction is often misunderstood. Your faithfulness allows us to remain anchored to truth rather than trends, restoration rather than relief alone, and faith rather than fear. Because of you, we are able to walk patiently and personally with men and women who are ready for change, offering not only help for today, but hope that endures.
Please continue to pray for us—for wisdom to discern rightly, courage to speak truthfully, and endurance to love well. Pray for our staff, our supporting churches, and the men and women God brings through our doors, that together we would not grow weary in doing good, but remain faithful to the work He has entrusted to us, trusting His promise that “in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).
Partner with us in God’s work of relational restoration.