The Public and Social Services subcommittee examined a wide range of impact areas including health care and public health, education, social services, housing, energy utilities, police, fire, water, sewer and solid waste. In exploring the impacts of peak oil and natural gas on these essential services, the Task Force made several cross-cutting observations that are important to set the context:

• Public, health and social services are already stretched to their limits and are feeling the effects of trying to serve more people than funding allows.  Additional stressors on these systems from peak oil would only worsen a situation in which serving those in need is already difficult.
• Because these systems are so focused on providing services for today and the impacts of peak oil and natural gas are mostly indirect, public and social service agencies are largely unaware of or unable to consider the long-term, potentially severe effects of peak oil.
• In providing social services, there is a complex network of City, County, Metro, and State governments.  The City provides relatively few public health and social services on its own and depends heavily on these other entities for services.  However, when systems fail, the City is forced to attend to the needs of its citizens in other ways (e.g., an inadequacy in mental health care, which is provided by the County or State, may result in Portland Police being forced to intervene on an emergency basis).