Homelessness

Illustration of a residential street in the Hollywood neighborhood of Northeast Portland — Hollywood, Northeast Portland

The county spends $310 million a year on homelessness, and people are becoming homeless faster than they're being housed. I've spent over 32 years inside county government, and for more than two decades I've run housing stabilization, eviction prevention, and rehousing programs. I know what works, what doesn't, and what the staff on the ground need to deliver results.

What the county is responsible for

That $310 million flows through the county's Homeless Services Department, which coordinates shelters, housing placement, outreach, and case management. The county also funds dozens of nonprofit organizations to deliver these services on contract.

With the Department of County Human Services, where I work, I oversee five of these programs directly: eviction prevention, housing support services, emergency housing, the Oregon Rehousing Initiative, and the Economic Justice and Recovery Program, which I created during the pandemic. They're funded separately and intervene at different points; they all address housing instability, from keeping families in their homes before they lose them to rehousing the homeless.

The money comes from multiple sources: the county general fund, Metro's Supportive Housing Services tax, state funding through programs like the Oregon Diversion and Prevention Program, and federal dollars. All of these sources are under pressure. State funding came in $28 million below what was expected this fiscal year. Federal dollars are being pulled back. The county's general fund is constrained by a downtown real estate market that continues to underperform on property tax revenue.

Unsheltered homelessness in Multnomah County increased 75% between 2023 and 2025. Over 10,500 people experienced homelessness in the county in 2025. At the same time, shelter vacancy rates remain high. City-run shelters average 50 to 60% occupancy. The county is cutting 600 beds this budget cycle, but many of those beds were already empty.

What I've seen

I've volunteered many times in the county's shelters, especially during COVID. The shelters are modest: mattresses on the floor in large open rooms, first come first served, open in the evening and closed by morning. The people inside are overwhelmingly grateful for a place to sleep. The shelter population is a mix of people with addiction or mental health issues and people who simply lost their housing. That distinction isn't tracked. The unsheltered population in encampments skews more heavily toward addiction and mental illness. Many unsheltered refuse shelters because drug use is prohibited inside and only enter shelters during extreme weather. For this population, the answer is sustained behavioral health and addiction treatment, not more shelters.

Through a rehousing program I manage, we transition individuals and families from shelters into permanent housing. Last year we housed 75 families on a $900,000 budget, roughly $8,000 to $12,000 per family. All 75 remained housed. That success depends on the same landlord partnerships that make the rehousing and eviction prevention work possible.

Most of the homelessness conversation focuses on people already on the streets. An equally important piece of the work is keeping people from getting there.

I've seen a father trying to support his wife and three daughters on minimum wage; every dollar goes to rent, with next to nothing left for utilities, insurance, or school expenses. We brought the family into our program and worked with his wife to get licensed as a childcare provider. With a second income, they were able to stabilize the household and are no longer at risk of losing their home.

I've seen a single mother without a job and mounting debts. We brought her into our program and supported her through career training, financial literacy workshops, and skill-building programs. She was, believe it or not, hired by the county and has continued to serve our community for the last several years. Not only that, her son graduates from university this year.

These outcomes are unlikely to happen with a one-time rent check. When we invest in, and work with a family for 6 to 12 months, sometimes longer, we can fix what's actually driving the instability and change their trajectory.

In the programs I manage, we evaluate at three, six, nine, and twelve months to measure whether the assistance worked. Both families came through the Economic Justice and Recovery Program, which I created during the pandemic. In its first year, it had a budget of $7.5 million drawn from general, state, and federal funds and served 2,800 households. The Program's retention rate, the percentage of families still in their homes after we help them, is above 90%. The majority of the funding was one-time COVID funds, and now the Program's formal funding is effectively $0. I've kept it running at a greatly reduced $350,000 budget by redirecting money from my existing programs.

This year, my programs ran out of money almost three months before the end of the fiscal year. We have over a thousand people on the waitlist, and we stopped accepting new applications three months ago because there was no point. Eviction filings in the court system are surging. The demand has quadrupled compared to the pandemic years.

Opportunities

First, programs receiving county funding should be able to demonstrate measurable outcomes. Programs that show strong retention rates and real progress toward housing stability should be prioritized, and when the budget permits, expanded. When funding is tied to outcomes, it protects the case managers, housing specialists, and staff who are in the trenches fighting to keep families housed.

Most contracts with nonprofits measure how many households were served, not whether those households stayed housed. The county should be tracking, and publicly reporting, housing retention rates at three, six, nine, and twelve months after assistance. Every nonprofit contract should require quarterly reporting on those metrics.

Second, the county needs to expand the Supportive Housing Alliance, formerly the master lease initiative. In this context, the county signs a master lease with a property owner for a block of units, e.g., 300 units of a 1,000-unit building. The county becomes the sub-leaseholder and decides who moves in, managing tenant responsibilities and any issues that arise. The landlord gets paid rent monthly without absorbing the risk that comes with tenants who may not have income or credit history. For the county, it's more efficient than placing families one unit at a time and it removes the biggest barrier that keeps landlords from participating in solving homelessness.

Third, prevention needs to be treated as a frontline strategy, not as an afterthought. When a family gets evicted and enters the shelter system, the cost to rehouse them is roughly double what it would have cost to keep them housed: first month, last month, deposit, plus legal fees that pile up once the case hits court.