All 60 units in North Portland’s Hattie Redmond Apartments are affordable to folks making less than 30% of the area median income. Intended for people exiting homelessness, services such as clothing drives, hot dinners, food pantries and paint therapy are regular occurrences.
Hattie Redmond received $4.4 million from the Metro Housing Bond. The project houses disabled, low-income residents. It’s just one of the 62 affordable housing projects the Metro Housing Bond helped fund.
“It’s a blessing to have a place to live,” said Hattie Redmond resident Nathan Geigle, 52. “You just have a place.”
But the fund is drying up. The Metro Housing Bond is now 87% allocated, with the final project breaking ground in 2026. The money may be ending, but the need is not. Average rent in Portland is rising across the board, and home ownership is out of reach for most — making affordable housing a significant, ongoing need.
The bond worked in conjunction with Supportive Housing Services, or SHS, a regional fund voters approved in 2020 to provide a housing-first solution to the growing homelessness crisis in the Portland metro area. The bond was funded by an annual 20 cent tax for each $1,000 of property value. Without it, efforts are dwindling to build the kind of deeply affordable housing experts say is needed to sustainably combat the homelessness crisis.
At the city, county and state level, current funding focuses more on temporary shelters, rather than long-term, affordable housing. The funding that remains for affordable housing is generally single allocations for smaller scale projects or one-time use.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson campaigned on a promise to end unsheltered homelessness by Dec. 1, 2025. And last November, Metro pledged $15 million toward Wilson’s $28 million plan to create 1,500 new shelter beds, with the idea that the shelter beds are one step in the journey to permanent housing.
But that equation doesn’t add up without the Metro bond, according to housing advocates like Laura Golino de Lovato, executive director of Northwest Pilot Project. She worries about what housing will look like in the Portland metro area without that permanent affordable housing.
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“You’re essentially building a lot of shelters without providing a pathway to housing,” Golino de Lovato said. “So your shelters become your housing.”
Metro pledged to make one-third of all the constructed homes “deeply affordable,” which means they’re reserved for people making under 30% of the area median income, or AMI.
For example, if someone’s only income is $900 per month from Supplemental Security, the maximum amount of money they can spend on housing for it to be considered affordable is $300, or 30% of their monthly income. Subsidies come from rent assistance and vouchers funded by Supportive Housing Services. Funds from the Metro Housing Bond helped property owners create more affordable housing, which is then subsidized through SHS or other rent assistance.
The importance of those funds can’t be overestimated, according to Golino de Lovato.
“The number of units that were brought on board by the Metro Housing Bond was kind of a game changer,” Golino de Lovato said.
The passage of SHS acknowledged that a combination of services and housing is essential to create a sustainable solution to homelessness. With the end of the bond looming, Metro proposed two possibilities: extending the tax to 2050, or using funds from SHS to continue funding affordable housing projects. But those possibilities polled disfavorably, and neither made it to the ballot. As of last week, Metro announced personal income SHS tax will be adjusted with inflation yearly.
The Metro Housing Bond was not intended to end homelessness, according to Metro spokesperson Emily Green.
But it did help.
“Over the next 20 years, we need to build at least 150,000 more homes, and that’s for all income levels, including deeply affordable homes,” Green said.
The Metro Housing Bond contributed $16 million to Las Flores, an apartment complex in Oregon City. Nasha Blair lives there with her three kids. She said living in Las Flores allows her to “keep my bills paid up and keep a roof over my kids’ head and to have a little bit more fun.”
Blair worked with case managers at Northwest Clackamas Housing Authorities for five years, moving from a previous apartment building to the one where she is today.
“It means a lot to me to have housing,” Blair said. “Without this, I’d be living with family or in a hotel room.”
City, county, Metro
Operating a single bed in a temporary shelter costs about $52,000 per year, according to the City of Portland and Multnomah County Nighttime Emergency and Day Center Budget Estimate.
Temporary congregate shelters are not a successful method to get people into permanent housing, a Portland State University study showed, even though they might be the cheapest way to get someone off the streets in the short term.
According to Multnomah County’s March 2025 data, 15,541 people are experiencing homelessness with 7,414 people unsheltered.
Due to a shortfall of revenue generated by the SHS in the 2025 fiscal year, Multnomah County dipped into its reserve and contingency budget. According to Multnomah County Commissioner Shannon Singleton, it’s unclear whether they’ll have to tap into that reserve next year. The county also agreed to contribute $10 million to Wilson’s shelter plan. Singleton said she moved to pass that money “to be good partners. It was important to just honor commitments that were made.”
The bond ending coincides with other challenges to getting people into affordable housing, according to a spokesperson for the Urban League of Portland. They said they’re concerned about how the end of the bond will work with other services. For example, those who need to prove disability may have to go through a Medicare or Medicaid provider. As it stands, the U.S. Congress approved President Donald Trump’s “megabill,” which includes a potential $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade.
“Our priority is maintaining our services in the highest capacity,” a spokesperson for the Urban League said.
Longer term, the city of Portland moved to acquire existing properties to convert to affordable housing — some of which was paid for by the Metro Housing Bond. This “innovative new acquisition strategy” takes advantage of the fluctuations in the housing market to expand public housing. Molly Hogan, executive director of Welcome Home Coalition, sees this as a viable future of affordable housing. She spoke to the public market of housing eventually becoming strong enough to compete with the private market.
It also pledged to research social housing — a model where housing is co-owned by public and private entities and run with significant tenant input — and began the Affordable Housing Opportunities project, which will rezone properties owned by nonprofits and public agencies to build housing. This plan is currently in a discussion and community engagement phase, and the city says it plans to act on the project later this year. Street Roots recently reported on the steps Portland is taking towards a social housing model.
“We’re in a housing crisis, so we need everything,” Golino de Lovato said. “We need shelters. We need tiny home villages. We need little pods. We need a whole thing, but we also need to ensure that at every shelter, at every village, at every pod thing, that there is a way to permanent housing.”
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This article appears in July 9, 2025.