City and county shelters underserve homeless Portlanders of color, a Multnomah County report shows.
Last month’s Homeless Services Division Adult Shelter Review surveyed 31 shelters and found 59% of all shelter residents were white, despite making up 49% of the local homeless population as captured in the county’s “By-Name List.” Black and Latine Portlanders experiencing homelessness faced the greatest disparities.
“All racial/ethnic groups except white and Asian/Asian American were underserved by all shelter types,” the report found.
The problem is magnified in six city shelters, where white people were at least 20% overrepresented. While acknowledging the shelter system’s longstanding racial disparities, the city argued that examining individual shelters fails to account for culturally specific shelters seeking to narrow the gap. The city pointed to its efforts at Weidler Village, also known as BIPOC Village, where it focuses on providing services to people of color. There, the city served 82 people in 2025, 81% of whom were Black or Latine. Just 7% of the people who stayed at Weidler Village last year were white.
The report excludes Mayor Keith Wilson’s new overnight-only congregate shelters, as they did not exist for a portion of the review and are not “housing-focused,” like other shelter models.
Responses from Mayor Keith Wilson’s office voiced concern, but took issue with some of the county’s data points.
“Those numbers reflect a comparison between shelter residents and the By‑Name List, which is not a full census of everyone experiencing homelessness,” Cody Bowman, city press officer, told Street Roots.
City Councilor Candace Avalos, who chairs City Council’s Homelessness and Housing Committee, however, sees a clear problem.
“It is incredibly concerning that the recent HSD report found that racial disparities persist in our shelter system and that some of the City’s shelter sites have the largest gaps in service,” Avalos told Street Roots. “Given that Portlanders of color are overrepresented in our unhoused community, their underrepresentation in our shelter system points to a major breakdown that must be corrected in future reforms.
“Without further data — ideally through a City-conducted inquiry — I can’t say for certain why Portlanders of color are being underserved by our shelter system.”
The report also indicated further study was needed to explain why shelter demographics don’t align with the demographics of the overall homeless population. Factors like the city’s unique referral practices are among those that need additional inquiry, according to the study.
“We agree the disparity is important to understand, but we don’t yet have evidence pointing to a single cause,” Bowman said.
Despite that agreement, the mayor’s office didn’t signal readiness to greenlight such an inquiry anytime soon.
CANDACE AVALOS,
Portlanders of color are the most impacted by the current lack of affordable housing and the long legacy of systemic racism that deemed their neighborhoods as ‘blighted’ and denied communities of color opportunities for homeownership and generational wealth building.
PORTLAND CITY COUNCILOR
“Although the City does not have a specific study planned, we continue to work alongside jurisdictional and non-profit partners to increase understanding of the intersection between racial and ethnicity, gender, disability, age, and other identities and the experience of homelessness,” Bowman said.
The county contacted its partners at the city about the trend, but doesn’t have a definitive explanation for the racial disparities, according to Julia Comnes, Homeless Services Department communications coordinator.
“One possible explanation has to do with those shelters having a different process for how people get referred into them,” Comnes said.
Street Roots has reported numerous times on the city’s opaque process for landing a bed in one of its “alternative shelter” sites, commonly referred to as “tiny home villages” or “pod villages.”
There is a key difference in how people are referred to city and county shelters. Aside from its two culturally specific villages, city pod shelters differ from county shelters in having exclusively “closed referrals” available via city staff.
That means a homeless Portlander can’t independently choose to go to one of the shelters. They can’t get a referral from a nonprofit case manager or non-city congregate shelter. They must be selected by staff from the city’s Street Services Coordination Center.
County shelters, on the other hand, offer more options.
“Referral processes for County-contracted shelters vary by provider and program,” Comnes said. “Some shelters accept self-referrals, and other shelters might take referrals from other providers.”
Disagreement on data
Bowman’s answers still indicated the city isn’t sure how much of a disparity actually exists without incorporating different data points, calling the county’s methodology into question multiple times.
“In addition, the report does not take into consideration culturally specific shelters within the larger metropolitan shelter system that attempts to create over-representation of certain demographics to foster inclusion and community,” Bowman said. “We caution looking at shelters in isolation rather than looking at the portfolio.”
To be clear, the report does take into account culturally specific shelters, including the city’s Weidler Village and the county’s Avalon Village and Parkrose Community Village. The city argued that not considering the demographics in these shelters misses important context when looking at the six city shelters ranging from 69% to 81% white.
Wilson’s office also questioned the county’s use of the By-Name List as a comparison, despite it being considered the most comprehensive source of information about the local homeless population.
“The BNL is shaped by who engages with outreach teams, shelter services, day centers, as well as coordinated entry,” Bowman said. “The BNL doesn’t always mirror the full unsheltered population.”
Bowman is correct that the By-Name List, which the county compiles based on who accesses homeless services, may not capture the entire unsheltered population. As a result, the county still adds the street count and other data sources to the BNL count when estimating the population. However, the disparity between BNL demographics and shelter demographics indicates that Portlanders of color have less access to shelter even when engaging with services. The city did not respond to a follow-up question asking for clarification.
The county, for its part, conducts data tracking well beyond last month’s report, and the breadth of data leaves no question that the local shelter system is underserving people of color. It also shares that data with city staff.
“The Homelessness Response System reports quarterly on the demographics of those served in shelter, and this information is also available on a monthly basis on the Homeless Services Departments Data Dashboard,” Comnes said. “Those reports are shared with city staff and with the HRS Steering and Oversight Committee.”
The county’s latest report didn’t reveal that racial disparities existed in shelters. That’s a well-known problem. The city even participated in a joint city-county effort to learn more about the issue last year, according to a May 2025 memo.
The effort focused on having “conversations with culturally specific and culturally responsive service providers along the homeless services to housing continuum” to “surface drivers of the disparity in shelter utilization among Black, African American and African community members.”
Those conversations revealed themes of a lack of culturally competent services, people experiencing racism and discrimination in shelters, and the city and county failing to involve culturally specific organizations in planning. It led to recommendations for funding rent assistance, housing placements, more motel shelters and the city and county involving culturally specific organizations.
Comnes said the county took the recommendations to heart.
“For example, through shelters that prioritize BIPOC populations and through programming designed with culturally and community-specific approaches,” Comnes said. “We worked in partnership with the Urban League of Portland when they decided to close the Jamii Center Motel and shift the funds to support a scattered site motel model.”
The county also requires all HSD contractors to have an equity plan to ensure someone’s race isn’t a barrier to programming.
“The barriers to accessing shelter for Black, African American and African community members are systemic issues that require stronger contract management and accountability among our providers,” Comnes said.
Enforcement and evasion
Questions about the racial equity of city homelessness policies run deeper than just asking why so many of its shelters are so disproportionately white.
In an expansion of approaches instituted under former Mayor Ted Wheeler, Wilson focused various arms of the city’s “centralized program hub,” dubbed “Portland Solutions,” on intensifying policing and displacing unsheltered Portlanders. With Portlanders of color being vastly overrepresented in the homeless and unsheltered populations, this approach could disproportionately impact Portlanders of color.
Wilson’s office, however, didn’t directly answer if it is “concerned the city’s use of sweeps and policing is also disproportionately impacting Portlanders of color.”
“Enforcement actions are based on location and safety conditions, not on individual characteristics of camp residents,” Bowman said in response to the question.
Wilson’s office also did not provide a direct answer when asked if there was “any concern that the intensified use of sweeps and policing is eroding trust and discouraging people from seeking out services,” a consequence repeatedly reaffirmed in academic studies of enforcement-based homelessness responses. For instance, a 2022 study conducted by Santa Clara University researchers found “distrust of authorities and law enforcement” resulting from sweeps and increased police interactions, “led to people’s reluctance to seek or accept formal forms of support and protection.”
“City of Portland frontline workers frequently engaging with people experiencing homelessness are equipped with the tools and resources needed to make every interaction an opportunity to connect people to services,” Bowman said.
In each case, Street Roots followed up and asked Bowman to answer the questions directly. He did not.
A current history
To Avalos, there’s no question that increased sweeps and policing are not only a misplaced focus, but also hindering evidence-based approaches.
“Our focus must continue to be on increasing exits to permanent housing,” Avalos said. “Increased police contact with people experiencing homelessness and sweeps are counterproductive to that goal.”
Avalos doesn’t see it as just a numbers game or acknowledging what existing research shows; Avalos said her constituents see it in their daily lives.
“Many of my East Portland constituents, both housed and unhoused, tell me that sweeps just displace and destabilize people who are already struggling,” Avalos said. “I’m also concerned that increased policing will only add strain to a public defense system that is already past capacity and leaving defendants waiting for their cases to be dismissed.”
Portland has a history of racist exclusionary housing practices, and those policies reverberate today. According to the latest tri-county Point-in-Time Count, the percentage increase of people of color experiencing homelessness outpaced that of white people, meaning racial disparities in housing access are worsening in the area.
“Portlanders of color are the most impacted by the current lack of affordable housing and the long legacy of systemic racism that deemed their neighborhoods as ‘blighted’ and denied communities of color opportunities for homeownership and generational wealth building,” Avalos said. “If you ask around East Portland, many of my neighbors can tell you about their own personal experiences with the disparities in our housing system — the family home in Albina that got razed for the highway or how they were outbid for every inner Portland home they looked at by buyers with cash on hand.
“Closing the gaps in our shelter system is just one step in the work to build a housing system that works for all Portlanders — not just those who have historically been served by our institutions.”
This article appears in February 25, 2026.