The Oregon Housing Conference is, along with the Law & Mental Health Conference, a program of the Mental Health Association of Portland.
For information about the Oregon Housing Conference, contact the conference coordinator Jason Renaud.
Planning Committee for the Oregon Housing Conference
Andy Miller is Executive Director of Our Just Future, a leader in poverty prevention, homelessness services, and affordable housing in Multnomah County. Human Solutions has an annual operating budget of over $10 million, and owns over 700 units of affordable housing.
Andy is a former board member for Family Forward Oregon and Community Partners for Affordable Housing.
Prior to coming to Our Just Future, Andy served as Chief Operating Officer and Director of Housing and Enterprise Operations with Volunteers of America Oregon. He spent thirteen years with the City of Portland’s Housing Bureau, including Executive Leadership positions as the Bureau Operations Manager and Deputy Director. During Andy’s time with the City of Portland, Miller had a successful track record of developing, preserving and advocating for resources to fund effective community-based solutions for homelessness and the development of hundreds of units of affordable housing.
Jim Hlava is the Vice-President of Housing for Cascadia Behavioral HealthCare as well as the President of Cascadia Housing, Inc. Jim graduated from Portland State University in 1985 with a Masters Degree in Social Work and is a licensed clinical social worker in Oregon. He has worked for the past 31 years at Cascadia, with the first 20 years focused on delivering, developing and managing case management, employment and housing programs.
For the past 10 years, Jim’s focus has been on the property side of Cascadia’s housing portfolio, specifically related to managing existing properties, developing new properties and connecting our clients, our programs and our properties in ways to support people and to improve the health and lives of those who live in our housing.
Rachael Duke started as the executive director at Community Partners for Affordable Housing in 2015 with a long history working in the affordable housing sector, including 15 years at Home Forward and seven years at the City of Portland’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development. At Home Forward Rachael spent the last few years of her tenure focused on housing people with multiple housing barriers while collaborating with health care agencies and service agencies to address those barriers.
Rachael has served on numerous boards including Jewish Family Child Services and Peninsula Children’s Center. She is currently on the board of Housing Oregon. She is a trained mediator and facilitator and holds a Masters of Urban Studies from Portland State University and a BA from Oberlin College (Ohio).
Jamie Spinelli is the Homelessness Coordinator for the City of Vancouver Washington.
She is an experienced outreach worker for people with mental illness, addiction, alcoholism, trauma, and who are experiencing homelessness. She’s an acknowledged leader in the communities of Vancouver and Clark County Washington, speaking up and speaking out on behalf of people who are vulnerable and under-served.
Spinelli is a member of the Clark County Community Action Advisory Board and CAAB Advisory Task Force, and is an active member of the Severe Weather Shelter Task Force that created Clark County’s first local Severe Weather Shelter Plan.
Jason Renaud is coordinator of the Public Housing Conference and the Law & Mental Health Conference. He’s been an advocate for people in recovery from addiction and mental illness and worked for nonprofit organizations in Oregon and Washington State wearing executive, communications, development and clinical hats for over 30 years.
Jason produced, along with filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, the award-winning documentary, Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse, the catalyst to Portland’s police accountability reforms and the Federal lawsuit US DOJ v. City of Portland. He is a frequent speaker to legal and public health agencies on criminal justice reform and its relation to recovery from addiction and mental illness.