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Amanda’s day starts at Project Homeless Connect’s Access Center, located in an old house a few blocks from downtown Hillsboro. As Outreach Manager for the organization, she spends most of her time in the community, connecting with people who are living outside.
As Amanda and her new teammate Andrea prepare the car for the day's rounds, loading the trunk with snacks and hygiene supplies, a man and woman approach them. Amanda pauses her work to listen. The night before, the man was hospitalized with severe back pain, and the couple is looking for a motel voucher or private shelter room where he can rest for a few days. Amanda explains that shelter has a waitlist but tries to brainstorm some options so he can sleep comfortably.
At Project Homeless Connect, people experiencing homelessness are “friends” instead of “clients” — a common term in social services. Amanda and Andrea bring this spirit to their work throughout the day as they encounter individuals who are living outside. The team offers snacks, water, hygiene supplies and whatever support they can in trying to connect folks with resources. Sometimes their job is just to listen compassionately.
Later that day at a park, Amanda sees someone she knows sitting at a picnic table with his dog. He’s having a difficult day, and Amanda and Andrea sit with him for a while. Tears fill his eyes as he tells them how things have piled up, one thing after another. He’s out of his medication and doesn’t know if he has a primary care provider. He's on the waiting list for shelter, and all he can do is find somewhere to spend his time until then.
Project Homeless Connect
Washington County resident Kim Marshall founded Project Homeless Connect in 2006. The original concept was based on the "one day event" model, where people can access resources like haircuts, vaccinations and connections with healthcare and other resources in a single day.
Over the years, the Hillsboro organization has stepped up to provide a range of services for people experiencing homelessness or housing instability in the area. In 2018, they started their first shelter program, and they opened the Access Center the following year.
In addition to offering a place to spend the day, the center offers meals, showers, connection to community resources, and essentials like clothing and hygiene items. Amanda estimates the center has about 15 guests at a time and 60 over the course of a typical day, with sometimes as many as 100.
Amanda, Outreach Manager for Project Homeless Connect, in the office of the Access Center in Downtown Hillsboro.
The opening of the Access Center coincided with the launch of the organization’s outreach team. In 2025 alone, the outreach program offered resources and assistance to over 450 people. Project Homeless Connect is also managing the brand-new Hillsboro shelter, and will soon be breaking ground on a new access center on a site adjacent to the current center (demolition on the existing structure began late January 2026). Metro’s supportive housing services fund pays for the organization’s outreach program, housing navigation and placement programs, and shelter program. It will also contribute about $6 million for the construction of the new access center.
Reflecting on what it was like doing this work before Metro area voters passed the measure that created the SHS fund, Amanda described conditions where staff had few resources. “It was really hard to work with individuals and feel like they were just ‘stuck,’” she said, “so we spent a lot of time just pouring into them and doing what we could.”
The growth since SHS funding started “has been really amazing to watch, especially the different programs building [countywide],” she explained. “Without SHS I don’t even know if I’d be in this work anymore because it was really a struggle back then.”
The power of relationship
The foundation of the outreach team’s approach is building authentic relationships and trust. When Amanda is doing her daily rounds out in the community and sees someone who looks like they might be experiencing homelessness, the first thing she does is introduce herself and tell them what she does for Project Homeless Connect. She tries to get a sense of their situation, without asking them to do an assessment or give information in a formal way. Then she asks if it’s okay for her to check back on them later.
With some folks, there may be an initial reluctance to accept help, but they’re still open to interacting with outreach workers. Amanda recalled a person she met a few years ago who was living in an encampment at an abandoned car wash. At first, he declined snacks and other resources, but eventually he accepted Amanda’s offer to connect him with medical care for a serious medical issue.
“It just was me pouring into him and really encouraging him to seek medical care,” she said. Though he didn't feel comfortable sleeping in a group shelter space with other people, he was willing to sleep in a motel room for a few nights when it was freezing outside. From there, Project Homeless Connect set him up with a case manager and a Metro regional long-term rent assistance voucher. He is now living in housing.
Andrea, a new member of the outreach team, in front of Project Homeless Connect’s Access Center in Downton Hillsboro.
“It’s just consistency and being kind and showing that you care,” Amanda said. Being patient and building trust over time means that one day, when that person is ready, they can take that next step into shelter or housing. “[It] feels really good once we get them to take the first baby step,” she reflected, “and then eventually they’re all in.”
Amanda has been working in homeless services for over five years. She had been doing outreach as part of her previous roles as a shelter program manager and housing case worker, but a few years ago she had an experience that made her realize that outreach was her calling. When the city had plans to clear a large encampment located in a field around the holidays, Project Homeless Connect made backpacks with supplies and an employee’s husband dressed up as Santa Claus to hand them out.
This is when Amanda decided that “outreach is where the important work is: It’s like the frontlines of homeless services.”
“Sometimes we need a little hand holding to be pulled out of the darkness.”
Like many working in this field in direct service, Amanda has lived experience with homelessness. Originally from Portland, she was born into what she describes as an “addict family.” After her mother died when she was just a teen, Amanda struggled with substance use herself and “spiraled.”
Several years after her mother’s death, Amanda lost her apartment. She started out couchsurfing with friends, then eventually spent days staying awake outside when she had nowhere to sleep. For several years after she was living in unhealthy situations and in and out of jail.
In total, Amanda recalls that she was arrested 36 times (her record is now clean). Eventually, she was incarcerated in Washington County, and during this time, she found out about a mentorship program in the jail. This led to meeting a mentor who helped her turn over a new leaf.
“She did for me what I feel like is one of my missions in life,” Amanda explained. “Sometimes we need a little hand holding to be pulled out of the darkness. Sometimes we need direction on where we can go.”
When she needs to, Amanda draws on this experience to inspire people she’s working with. “Overcoming addiction for me was like a super slim chance in my family and it was really big for me,” she said. After she was released from jail, she initially planned to go into addiction support. In her outreach role, she shares her story when it makes sense, to remind people that “if I can do it, you can do it.”
Chelsea and her partner were living outside for five years in Hillsboro. They are now living in an apartment, with Project Homeless Connect's help.
Amanda met Chelsea in the local recovery community. Chelsea — who grew up in Hillsboro — had been living outdoors with her partner for about five years. After they lost their home, they camped in a parking lot by the Access Center, and then in the wooded areas the outreach team visits on their daily rounds. Eventually, Amanda got the couple into a shelter and they were connected with a regional long-term rent assistance voucher shortly after.
Though it took a year and 30 applications to find housing, Chelsea and her partner have been living in their home for about a year. They’ve also been sober for that time, and Chelsea’s 16 year-old son recently moved in with them.
From homelessness to housing, with a little help from a friend
In recent years, the City of Hillsboro has begun sweeping encampments in the wooded areas of public parks and private land. The team still visits these sites in case anyone has returned. They mostly find the remains of places where people used to live, or that the spaces have been cleared completely. As Amanda and Andrea traverse these places where people have made their outdoor homes, Amanda recalls different people she’s known: a woman who likes to write on her clothes and loves stray cats, the “old timers” who try to keep things clean, a pair of boots abandoned at a campsite that might have belonged to one individual, a drawing signed by the artist. Every field and thicket of brambles holds the story of someone who has made their home in these woods.
Amanda recognizes the artist, Kevin, as someone who used to regularly visit the Access Center.
Amanda’s intimate knowledge of the terrain, and fond memories of the people associated with the objects that remain, reveal the depth of her commitment to the work. What she describes as “pouring into” someone is the fundamental humanity of this work, rooted in compassion and relationship.
“I love my job — I love seeing the success stories,” Amanda reflected. “I’ve gotten to see so many people that were unsheltered, and now they’re housed, doing great, and clean and sober and it’s really rewarding.”