When Brenda Gail Hudson’s father died in her arms at 15, her family unraveled. Her mother and older siblings scattered. She dropped out of school, ended up living on the streets, and became addicted to meth and alcohol. “Homelessness creeps up on you,” she reflects today.
Now 55 years old and 12 years clean, Hudson never imagined she’d one day be contributing to policy ideas to combat youth homelessness. But that chance came as part of a citizens’ assembly in Bend, Oregon, where she worked alongside two dozen other Deschutes County residents.
“I’m not educated,” said Hudson, who runs her own housekeeping business. “But people are listening to me. It’s the first time in my life that I ever felt my voice mattered.”
Brenda Gail Hudson, who lived on the streets herself as a teenager, was among the Citizens’ Assembly participants. (Photo Credit Masha Hamilton)
The Central Oregon Civic Action Project organized the citizen’s assembly in partnership with DemocracyNext, launched in Paris in 2022, Healthy Democracy, based in Portland, Oregon, and the Laboratory for the American Conversation at Oregon State University-Cascades. The Rockefeller Foundation supported the gathering as part of its work to foster democratic innovations to bridge differences and unlock consensus.
“Democracy is about solving our common problems together in a way that everyone can trust. Citizens’ assemblies show that the toolbox for doing this isn’t limited to elections, political parties, and elected representatives,” said Kevin O’Neil, Managing Director, Innovation, The Rockefeller Foundation. “When you set up regular people with the right support and ask them to deliberate among themselves about a problem they care about, they’ll find a way forward.”
Assembly delegates were chosen through a public lottery, balanced along demographic lines and party affiliation to reflect the makeup of their county. They met for five days over two weekends at Oregon State University-Cascades, earning $15 per hour. Initial outreach included 12,500 households and 250 hand-delivered invitations to homeless citizens.
Deschutes County, with about 200,000 residents, is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans with a majority of non-affiliated and independent registered voters.
Gathering Diverse Voices
Max Chang, the youngest assembly member, marked his 17th birthday on the final day of this democratic exercise.
“I’ve heard a whole bunch of perspectives I would never have come in contact with otherwise,” Chang said.
“I can see how people came to their points of view now that I’m in a room with them and we can talk. Maybe if we can accomplish this as a community, we can do it as a country.”
Max Chang spends his 17th birthday as a participant in the Citizens’ Assembly. (Photo Credit Masha Hamilton)
Scott, a semi-retired 65-year-old traffic engineer who wanted to be identified only by his first name, said he would have liked to have spent the weekend building raised beds for his raspberries, but was glad he’d attended. “It has given me more faith in democracy,” he said. “I like that the demographics were statistically selected so you don’t have one dominant viewpoint.”
To learn about youth homelessness, the assembly heard from 17 expert presenters, including several they specifically requested. To nurture dialogue, organizers used breakout groups, rotated seating, and prompted daily conversations.
“The process was designed to elicit an empathy that is natural to us as humans, but that we often lose in virtual interactions,” said Josh Burgess, DemocracyNext’s Oregon program lead and co-founder of the Central Oregon Civic Action Project. “People are sharing very personal things during this assembly, and staying after the day ends to chat. All this increases the chances of successful collaboration.”
Finding Common Ground
Delegates to a citizens’ assembly in Bend, Oregon, focused on alleviating youth homelessness while demonstraing how to overcome bridges, build consensus, and strengthen democracy. Hear from DemocracyNext’s Josh Burgess.
Solving Challenges While Building Trust
Citizens’ assemblies, in fact, are increasingly seen as a valuable tool for strengthening democratic processes and outcomes. They involve people more directly in local decision-making, potentially leading to more representative, informed, and widely accepted policy decisions.
“This is about trust,” said Matt Abrams, a DemocracyNext board member. “We want a strong and vibrant democracy. At the end of the day, if we don’t have dialogue, and we aren’t educated beyond the headlines, then democracy frays.”
The MIT Center for Construction Communication records as three presenters discuss their experiences as homeless youth. (Photo Credit Masha Hamilton)
Building credibility is a daunting, if important, task. Only 23 percent of Americans trust the federal government, down from 35 percent in 2022, according to a recent survey from the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 2001 to inspire public service.
While citizens’ assemblies don’t yet have a track record in the U.S., jury trials provide some evidence that Americans are willing to trust regular people with weighty decisions. A recent survey found that 58 percent of adults had at least a fair amount of trust in citizens serving on juries, compared to only 44 percent saying the same about federal judges. Among those who recently served on a jury, the trust level in citizen jurors rose to 76 percent.
To increase transparency in Bend, the assembly’s full proceedings, including small-group meetings, were recorded by the MIT Center for Constructive Communication using the non-profit Cortico’s AI-enhanced platform to synthesize deliberative discussions. The recordings also will be used for research by MIT and The Laboratory for the American Conversation.
“We want to look at how the delegates articulate their values, and how that changes as they progress toward compromise solutions,” said Elizabeth Marino, co-director of the lab. Their hypothesis, Marino noted, is that citizens’ assemblies will not only generate new solutions to difficult issues, but also inspire fresh rhetorical approaches in the process.
Democracy’s Impacts
- Democratization increases GDP per capita by 20-25 percent over time, studies show.
- Democracies often have stronger trade and economic interdependence, which can discourage conflict, and systems in place that make it harder for leaders to unilaterally declare war.
- Democracies are more active in international climate change cooperation negotiations, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
- And as democratic societies allow for public participation, free flow of information, and civil society engagement, this can create pressure for stronger climate policies. “Public engagement is a critical component in building a collective public mandate for climate policy,” notes the Centre for Public Impact.
- But global freedom has declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023, according to Freedom House, a nonprofit funded primarily by the U.S. government which has published reports on the annual state of global democracy since 1973. Forty-two countries became more autocratic in 2023, and political rights and civil liberties diminished in 52 countries in 2023.
Deschutes County is grappling with a homelessness crisis worsened by rapid population growth and a severe affordable housing shortage.
This year the city’s Point-in-Time count, taken on a single night in January, found 959 people homeless in Bend and 1,432 across Deschutes County.
Because homeless may seek shelter on cold nights or be hidden away in places counters can’t find, the true numbers are 2.5 to 10.2 times higher than Point-in-Time counts reveal, according to the national nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection.
In Bend, Oregon, citizen delegates convene on the final day of a five-day assembly aimed at tackling youth homelessness.
Addressing this issue is both urgent and challenging. Beginning with 55 ideas, the assembly emerged with 22 core recommendations. They included improving support for youth leaving foster care, creating a resource hub for homeless youth, and holding another assembly to address housing affordability.
Hoping For More
A one-off assembly is not what anyone wants. Participants, organizers, and observers alike expressed a strong desire for two outcomes: action on their recommendations, and more assemblies, both in Oregon and globally.
To address the first concern, Burgess engaged city and county officials early, securing written commitments to consider all recommendations and report back on actions taken. Public deliberations will occur in November, with a vote in December. Assembly delegates are forming a volunteer committee to attend these sessions.
A citizen’s assembly participant takes notes during a session. (Photo Credit Masha Hamilton)
“Without action resulting from this, it is a lot of sound and fury that ultimately signifies nothing,” said delegate Benjamin Loukoumidis, 34, a systems administrator for a local finance company.
As for the second concern, more citizens’ assemblies are already in the planning stages. DemocracyNext is collaborating with officials to hold three next year in Vilnius, Lithuania, Esh-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, and Kerewan, The Gambia. In the U.S., a small but growing number of localities are preparing for assemblies on issues like county charter reform and urban planning.
In Central Oregon, Burgess anticipates one or two assemblies in 2025, though details are still taking shape. “We are very deliberately building a model that can be replicated, as well as a strategic plan with the local Council of Governments and Oregon State University-Cascades to establish a permanent civic engagement hub for the region,” he said.
Before delegates filed out at the end of Day Five, many expressed satisfaction with the experience.
