Catholic Charities, Inc. in Oregon this week dedicated a brand-new 60,000 square foot headquarters in Portland. The building, designed by Lundin Cole Architects, includes a homeless shelter with computers, laundry and shower facilities, an administrative floor with 14 conference rooms, and an oratory with beautiful sculptures of the Holy Family and the risen Christ. A significant part of the complex is an empty second floor that will allow for future growth.

…Catholic Charities will dedicate its new building, the Clark Family Center.

…In less than 18 months, 145 individuals, corporations and foundations, along with funding from investors from a special federal tax credit program brought the project funding to completion…Major gifts came not only from individuals such as Robert Franz and the Clark family including, Maybelle Clark Macdonald, Mary Clark and Mike and Tracey Clark, but also from many of the major foundations in the area including the Joseph Weston Public Foundation, the Collins Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Regence BlueCross BlueShield and Providence Health and Services. The response was an affirmation of the positive impact of Catholic Charities in our community. Community Funding Group also helped Catholic Charities get a large tax credit for the new building.

In June 2010, the staff and clients of Catholic Charities began to occupy their new home and the activity in the building is teeming.

On the basement level, chronically homeless women, who are assisted by the Housing Transitions program, now have space for meeting with caseworkers, access to computers, and laundry and shower facilities to assist them in preparing for job interviews.

A storage facility exists on the basement level to hold the many donations Catholic Charities needs. Along with helping homeless women furnish an apartment, Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement services furnishes apartments with household items and furniture when the agency moves a refugee family from war-torn parts of the world to the Portland area.

…For the first time, Catholic Charities will have storage space on site for easy access.

Most program staff will work in open spaces on the third floor and fourth floors. The vital work of the agency is done, however, in the 14 conference rooms located in this space.

…In addition to some program staff, the top floor of the center houses Catholic Charities administration. …with more than 180 employees the need for accounting, human resources, technology services, development and executive management is important.

…A unique feature of the top floor is the Regence Life Learning Center. Internally, the large room will be used for board of directors meetings and employee gatherings.

…Within an intimate area of the Regence Life Learning Center is a unique space – an oratory dedicated to the Holy Family donated by Mark and Leslie Ganz.  This chapel-like space, with beautiful sculptures of the Holy Family and the risen Christ, offers the opportunity for quiet reflection for the staff during what can be challenging and stressful daily work.

A significant component of the complex is an empty second floor. This space allows for the development of new programs in the future.

…The Clark Family Center was designed by Lundin Cole Architects and incorporates many green features including sun shades to sunlight, electric car charging stations and permeable pavement. here

The question that comes to my mind, however, is how Catholic Charities is able to raise such sizable funding for this type of complex while seemingly not being able to pay for minimum, basic services for their refugee clients.

The State Department’s most recent inspection report of Catholic Charities, from October 2006, indicates that the resettlement agency placed a Somali refugee family of nine into a three-bedroom apartment. Yet, according to Portland’s occupancy codes a dwelling unit is deemed overcrowded (29.30.220) “if there are more residents than one plus one additional resident for every 100 square feet of floor area of the habitable rooms in the dwelling unit”. The family had arrived 7 weeks earlier and the head of the household said that Catholic Charities had not given them winter coats, hats, or mittens, and that no one from catholic Charities had advised the family about immigration issues or advised them about repaying their IOM refugee travel loans. The family also had no personal hygiene items in the bathroom, and there were no towels anywhere in the apartment even though Catholic Charities represented in the case files that they had given the family towels.

An Ethiopian refugee family of four also indicated that no one from Catholic Charities had provided them with information about their immigration status or about repaying their IOM travel loans.

An elderly husband and wife refugee couple from Cuba that arrived five months earlier was found living in a three-bedroom home crowded with eleven people, all relatives (his son and family had been resettled just 11 months earlier and appeared to be struggling with their own resettlement). The elderly refugee man was suffering from epilepsy, diabetes, and chronic depression, and was hospitalized twice since arriving. His doctor advised him to find a separate apartment due to high activity and noise levels in the house. The couple told the State Department monitors that they wished that Catholic Charities had offered them more support.

The monitors also found that Catholic Charities’ case files were haphazard and disorganized. Of particular concern was lack of compliance regarding services to refugee minors, including lack of post-arrival assessment, home visits, and regular in-person contact with the minor for 90 days after arrival.

I know that refugee resettlement agencies always claim that they don’t have enough public funding for minimum-required services for their refugee clients, but then how are agencies such as Catholic Charities at the same time able to afford multi-million dollar new headquarters?

 It would be nice if mainstream journalists would ask some of these tough questions.