Hello! I'm Lillian Mongeau Hughes, the homelessness and mental health reporter for The Oregonian. I cover everything from how much we spend on homelessness, to where homeless people in the area are originally from, to why our region doesn't seem to be able to dig itself out of this problem. Most recently, I completed a project on why Multnomah County and Portland officials are closing about a third of the shelter system they just finished building.
My guiding principles as a reporter are to shed light, elevate voice and not be a jerk*. That means I work hard to share facts in a clear and easily digestible way, platform voices from across the Portland area spectrum and to treat everyone I report on with dignity and respect, whether they are a local politician, a medical expert or a person experiencing homelessness.
My reporting jam is connecting policy and systems level reporting to the actual people those policies and systems affect. I did this for over a decade as an education reporter and it has been my honor to do it for the past two years as a reporter for The Oregonian.
Before this role, I was an editor at OPB and a reporter-editor at the national education publication The Hechinger Report. I have also worked as a freelance writer and editor for parts of my career. My work has appeared in The Atlantic online, The New York Times, KFF Health News and on several public radio stations, among other publications.
I live in Portland with the requisite cute dog, two kids, electric car and garage full of outdoor gear we don't use as much as we like to think we do.
I look forward to answering your questions and hope we can have a helpful and facts-based conversation about the topic Portlanders consider the biggest problem in their city.
*Re: jerk - I usually use a ruder word, but am trying to be extra polite in public ;)
Proof: https://imgur.com/a/N72g0pe
