Jan 22, 2025, by Rolando Hernandez | OPB
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Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Last summer, more than 12,000 Deschutes County residents received a letter inviting them to participate in a civic assembly, convened by nonprofit groups and with support from the city of Bend and the county. Only 30 were selected in a lottery system, all coming from various ages and backgrounds. They met in the fall to brainstorm ideas to address youth homelessness. Their ideas ranged from changes in the foster care system to financial literacy classes in schools. Katy Kundmueller and Alex Lehman both recently participated in the assembly and join us to share more about the ideas that came out of the meetings and their hopes for the future.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. What should our priorities be for building community solutions to prevent and end youth homelessness? That was a question that a group of Central Oregonians took up recently. Normally, when groups work on this kind of issue, they are elected officials, city council members, county commissioners, state lawmakers. But this group was not an example of representative democracy. It was closer to direct democracy. Thirty Deschutes County residents were chosen through a lottery system to take part in what was called a citizen assembly. These people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives spent five days, over the course of two weekends, learning about youth homelessness and then coming up with suggestions for how to address it.
I’m joined now by two people who took part. Katy Kundmueller owns a house cleaning business in Deschutes County. Alex Lehman works for a bullet manufacturer in Bend. Welcome to you both.
Alex Lehman: Thank you.
Katy Kundmueller: Thanks for having me.
Miller: Katy, first – do you remember your first thought when you got the invitation to participate, or to apply to participate?
Kundmueller: I do, and it was similar to what several other delegates had mentioned, including I remember Alex’s recap comments. Everything is very heated politically, there’s a lot of despair, hopelessness, on what you can actually do to change something. And this letter arrived. It felt like an opportunity to try and direct your energy on changing the things that matter, that maybe you can.
Miller: Alex, what about you? Katy gave us a little bit of a preview, but what went through your mind when you got this letter saying you were randomly selected, one of a 100-something people to apply if you want to? What did you think?
Lehman: I was very intrigued by it. For a while now, I was thinking about ways to try to get more involved with the community, try to affect little changes around you. I think that’s the biggest way to feel like you’ve made an impact in your life and the places that you’ve lived in. The biggest thing that I felt when I saw it was curiosity. Obviously, there’s a little bit of information on what it was about. I was just intrigued how it would all go down, and what the process was going to be like, and kind of excited to be a part of it.
Miller: We’ll get to that process in just a second, but obviously in the end, you were both selected – Katy, as I understand it, as a kind of alternate who then, halfway through day one, was just fully in the mix when somebody else didn’t show up. But Alex, how much knowledge of this topic of youth homelessness did you bring to this, did you have prior to taking part?
Lehman: I had some personal experiences with it. But with those came some pretty strong biases that I realized pretty early on. But coming to the table, I definitely have some personal experience with youth homelessness, with family members, friends that I have had from my childhood who’ve struggled with finding affordable housing and getting into housing. So I had a fair amount of personal experience, which I found was a good thing and a bad thing. It also meant that there was a lot of biases that I had that I had to kind of overcome to see more of the big picture.
Miller: What’s an example of what you’re talking about, of a bias that you feel like you had that became apparent as you learned more?
Lehman: In my mind, because of what I saw and what I experienced personally, most of it was drug use. Going into it, I was like, drugs are gonna be the main problem, that’s gonna be the main focus of this. And once some of the people who are presenting information to us started laying out all of the facts, the things that they’ve experienced and the information they had, it became very apparent that drug use, yes, is a problem. But it’s not the main problem. And it was actually a much smaller core of the issue. That was a big eye opener for me.
Miller: Katy, what about you? How much knowledge with or experience of youth homelessness did you bring to this, before you started getting presentations from various experts?
Kundmueller: Well, it was also a topic I was passionate about, because I also had personal experience. Going to the biases, it was really surprising to see how many other delegates also had personal experiences. There have been points throughout life where, as a child, I briefly did just because of a family dispute. But I thankfully had a great support system through my friends, family and sports coaches, that I was able to not have it negatively impact me long-term, and reconnect. But the experts really helped us see some of the diversity of situations.
Again, I think a lot of people have the assumption that drugs are the first hand cause. And I think that’s more of an effect of the homelessness, because that sort of instability, the hierarchy of needs when you’re constantly looking for those cornerstones of stability, it’s really difficult.
Miller: Can you describe what these days were actually like? What did you do?
Kundmueller: It was great because we’d start with a summary … “this is what to expect.” So that helped us prepare because we all had a lot of curiosity. We don’t really know what’s gonna happen. So those first few days, we would have a lot of presenters. We were just really absorbing as much information as we could with experts that were willing to come in and share their experiences with us.
Then as we moved through, we had a little break after the first two days. It was about three weeks. And then we came back for Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And they were full day sessions. You’d leave shockingly, really exhausted mentally, go to bed and sleep like a baby. The last two days, that’s when we were really digging into our subgroups, these core four to five people with a moderator, really diving into what we thought we could recommend to the Deschutes officials that were inviting our feedback.
Then those last two days were honing in, how we could tweak these recommendations, how they were something that could be implemented.
Miller: We can get those recommendations that you voted on in just a second. But I’m curious, Alex, you’d both mentioned that one of the reasons you were interested in doing this is because it felt more productive than the regular divisiveness of society. How much did you think that this assembly itself would be divisive? Before you started, I’m just curious what you thought the political debates would be like.
Lehman: Yeah, I think going into it, I kind of armored up, so to say. I had this kind of preconception that it was gonna be pretty divided – we were gonna get in there, it would get political and everybody would argue. And what was nice was none of that even kind of happened. It was refreshing for a group of complete strangers to come together for a common cause, and I don’t even think anyone even mentioned politics at one time in any of the conversations that I was involved in. It was nice.
Kundmueller: Likewise.
Miller: It’s interesting because when you say politics, meaning labels like Republican, Democrat, or leaders like Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? Because everything in its own way can become political, but you’re saying that when you’re actually there, it was more about policies? I’m trying to disentangle those things.
Lehman: It was 100% just about policies. What can we do to help these people that are in need? We weren’t identified to each other by our political orientation. It’s not like anybody was labeled a Democrat or Republican. In the beginning of the session, they did say that they tried to do an even split from the community from political parties, but it’s not like they pointed us out.
So when we were talking in our personal conversations, when we were talking in our group settings, all of our conversations were based on “hey, what have you learned, what are your ideas, what do you think will work, what do you think won’t work?” None of it ever really had any Republican tone or Democratic tone. We’re talking about local communities, so presidential candidates don’t really have any effect on that, you know what I mean?
Miller: I do know what you mean, but this was in October, right? So it’s a time where it was inescapable. Not that it’s less inescapable now, but that was obviously before the election.
So let’s get to some of those solutions. Alex, sticking with you, my understanding is you could all put them forward and then you would all vote, and if something got more than 75% in the vote, then it would be put forward as one of the official recommendations of this assembly. What are some of the ideas that you were most excited to put forward?
Lehman: There were a lot of really good ideas. And I think the best ones made it into the top. It was like 22 recommendations, I think, made it into the final list. But one of the ones that I was most passionate about is one that I put forward. A lot of the people that we’re talking to – people who ran the programs or were involved in these programs – said one of the biggest things that was missing was a centralized hub where one person could go in and get all the information they needed. As they said a lot of times, they’re so spread out, somebody will go to one program across town, and they’ll be like, “well, we can’t help you, but this other place has a lot of really good resources and you’d be a perfect fit.” Well, when you’re a youth and you’re homeless, transportation isn’t the easiest thing to come by. Maybe you can’t make it to the other side of town then, and then go home and then you forget about it, and then you lose that information.
So I suggested that we create a community center/hub in Bend. And I thought the best organization to partner with that would be Bend Parks and Rec, because they have a ton of resources and they’re a community-based program already. So I thought that that would be a really good partnership between an already established city program and some of these other programs to kind of bring more resources to at-risk teens. So that was a big one that I supported.
And then another one was just trying to generate sustainable and local funding for mental health and drug therapy. That was a big one for me because that one was one that struck really personally to me.
Miller: Katy, what about you? What do you see as one or two of the other recommendations that you all approved that you think is most important?
Kundmueller: Well, it was difficult because I went in really hoping to advocate for coming out of this with some SMART – specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, timely – goals. That said, it’s a little unrealistic in my mind, I thought, to achieve this in five days as just regular citizens. We absorbed a lot of knowledge, and like some of the people that put the program on said, we left being experts, knowing more about homelessness in this area than the majority of the population. We kind of became fast track experts.
That said, I kept going back to root cause issues. The recommendations that really stuck out to me and I helped draft, which I was excited that other delegates were also on board with, was the foster care system improvements – which is a behemoth task. And there have been some legal issues that were in the news another delegate had brought up. We’d actually tried to get the foster care system to have someone come and speak with us, and unfortunately no one ever came. But a lot of the issues we were hearing go back to the experiences youth were having in the foster care system, as well as transitioning out. Another delegate was a retired attorney, Frank, and he and I drafted the lofty goal of improving the foster care system.
Another one that was really important to me was the educational requirements in the school districts to include financial literacy and critical thinking education courses. Part of a healthy democracy is having people that have the self-esteem, the resources, the intellect, they know where to find the resources and they know what to do with them. So how can we help people thrive by gaining the skills they need so they don’t have to be dependent? And that’s empowering in itself.
Miller: I’m curious, whether we’re talking about at the state level with foster care – which is its own huge issue – or at the city or county levels, how much faith do you have that these local elected leaders will not just listen to you, but follow through on your various recommendations?
Kundmueller: Well, I was rather skeptical, which was part of why I wanted to volunteer because I think the checks and balances of our democracy require us to be involved and hold our leaders accountable. And it was difficult because, unfortunately, the elections were happening, and then the leaders were hearing our findings. We were sort of hoping that the timing would be, we could present these and see what would happen before we voted to reinstate some people.
But I have gained some hope through the process. I’m still a little wary, but I think if we, as delegates, continue to pursue and follow up, we’re giving it a better chance than it had. And that’s all we can ask for, as our role.
Miller: The nonprofit that organized the citizens’ assembly put out a video last week about it. I want to play just part of it before we say goodbye. It’s from the end of the assembly when some of your fellow delegates we’re talking about their experiences. They were identified only by their first names. We’re going to hear Brenda and Colleen.
[Recording playing]
Brenda: I just want to say thank you to everybody. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt that my voice mattered, so thank you all.
Colleen: I just want to say thank you to all of my fellow delegates. I have been so impressed with your intelligence, your compassion, your passion, and just your bravery.
[Recording ends]
Miller: Alex, what did it mean to you overall to take part in this?
Lehman: I think they summed it up pretty good there. It gave you a sense of purpose. It was almost life-changing, in the sense of it kind of jump started my drive to get more involved. And then continuing on, we’re definitely actively pursuing conversations with Bend City Council and the Deschutes County Commissioners. So I think it was a good stepping stone. It was a good stepping stone to get more involved and start holding our local leaders accountable. That is our responsibility. We elected them, and after we elect them, I think it is our responsibility as citizens to hold them all accountable.
Miller: Alex and Katy, thanks very much.
Kundmueller: Thank you so much for having us.
Lehman: Thank you.
Miller: Alex Lehman and Katy Kundmueller were participants in the Deschutes County citizens assembly. Alex works for a bullet manufacturer in Bend. Katy owns a house cleaning business in the region.
