As far as the benefits of temporary shelter, a little less might be a lot more.
The city of Portland’s focus on new shelters may be eroding existing shelters’ ability to transition homeless Portlanders into housing. Despite the city of Portland spending hundreds of millions on homelessness and affordable housing, there’s a missing rung on the ladder between the streets and housing in Portland, a January Multnomah County report shows.
The data shows more shelter doesn’t necessarily mean fewer Portlanders experiencing homelessness. In fact, the area may already have too many shelters to support housing efforts effectively — particularly as a drastic shift in the city’s priorities all but eliminated funding for housing homeless Portlanders since 2021, and pandemic-era state and federal funding dried up.
The county’s Homeless Services Department compiled and analyzed fiscal year 2025 data from 31 “housing-focused” shelters operating 24/7 in Multnomah County and found “limited and unequal access” to housing resources. The disparities in available services resulted in vastly different success rates, as measured by the percentage of shelter residents who exited to permanent housing.
With homelessness funding constrained for the foreseeable future, and the HSD already facing a $68 million deficit, the county recommends a potential path forward to increase housing placements: fewer shelter beds.
The report noted the recommendation may seem counterintuitive, but found redirecting some resources from shelter to housing would make shelters more effective and reduce homelessness.
“Theoretically, increasing the amount of housing placement resources available to a limited number of shelter programs could lead to an increase in the total number of people placed into housing out of shelters in a fiscal year,” the report found. “This would lead to a decrease in the average length of stay for those exiting the shelter, and therefore allow for a greater total number of people being served in (fully resourced) shelters each year.”
The county is contemplating significant changes based on this new understanding of the effectiveness of joint city and county efforts to address homelessness. Anna Plumb, HSD interim director, recommended closing 675 county shelter beds in a separate Feb. 6 letter to county commissioners, first reported by The Oregonian.
The city, meanwhile, isn’t considering adjusting its approach — even though the report found city shelters consistently performed worse than county shelters at transitioning people to housing. Essentially, Mayor Keith Wilson’s office says it’s the county’s job to actually reduce homelessness.
“The City of Portland and Multnomah County operate under (the Homelessness Response System) that clearly defines which government is responsible for which parts of the homelessness response,” Cody Bowman, city press officer, told Street Roots in an email on Wilson’s behalf. “Our budget decisions reflect the responsibilities assigned to the city within that framework. As roles have evolved, so have the corresponding investments.”
The agreement between the city and the county named a goal to exit 41% of sheltered people into housing in 2025, with a 26% baseline. Last year, shelters actually decreased in effectiveness, only managing to exit 17% of people into housing. That agreement is detailed in the Homelessness Response Action Plan created as part of the Homelessness Response System.
Overall, the idea that closing some shelters and redirecting resources clashes with Wilson’s top priority in his homelessness response: increasing the number of congregate overnight-only shelters. Since taking office, Wilson added over 1,500 new overnight-only congregate shelter beds.
The county didn’t receive a city response to the report, according to Julia Comnes, Homeless Services Department communications coordinator.
“We haven’t received any official response or correspondence from the City on the final report,” Comnes said. “Before the report was finalized, the City reviewed and provided feedback on multiple elements of the project and reviewed a draft of the report.”
While a December review said “the HRAP was designed to be a living document that can shift and adapt as required,” the mayor’s office appears to be quietly drawing a line in the sand on assisting in shifting the approach.
“The city’s affordable housing strategy is designed to complement—not duplicate—the county’s supportive housing system and the federal resources targeted to extremely low‑income households,” Bowman said.
The county, which is also the lead administrative body for the vast majority of shelter-related goals in the action plan, including data monitoring, says the data shows the relative glut of shelters is unsustainable. Essentially, while the city doesn’t want to “duplicate” the county’s housing programs, the respective governments are duplicating shelter efforts.
“In past years, as unsheltered homelessness grew in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, City and County leadership focused on expanding shelter to provide immediate respite for those who had been living on our streets,” Comnes said. “With increasingly limited resources available and temporary federal funding dissipating over time, funding for more shelter resources has not kept up.”
Who’s at the wheel?
There’s a strong correlation between which government is responsible for a given shelter and how many people it exits to housing.
The city is responsible for eight of the 10 worst-performing shelters in terms of exits to housing per bed. Urban Alchemy, the controversial California-based shelter and security provider with a history of legal troubles, manages five of them, including the three worst-performing shelters included in the report. Conversely, the county is responsible for all 10 of the best-performing shelters.
The 10 worst-performing shelters have “little to no access to additional housing placement funds,” according to the report. That’s not including the city’s new overnight-only shelters, which also offer scant access to housing placement. The report did not include those shelters because they were not active for the entire reporting period and were not considered “housing-focused.”
Wilson and Skyler Brocker-Knapp, director of Portland Solutions, acknowledged the city’s shelters are becoming less effective at placing homeless Portlanders into housing just days after the county published its report. Wilson and Brocker-Knapp said at a City Council meeting that the county failed to provide money for housing placements from city shelters.
“The city continues to fund and manage the portions of the system within our portfolio, including shelter and public safety responsibilities,” Bowman said. “When we raised concerns, we were speaking specifically to the areas where the county holds primary responsibility and where additional investment is needed to ensure the entire system functions as intended. That’s not assigning blame—it’s acknowledging how the system is structured and where gaps in one part of the system affect the whole.”
Comnes acknowledged the lack of housing funding received by some shelters, including both city and county shelters.
“Over the past couple years, the County has worked to make placement resources more balanced across different shelters across the system, but because of funding changes, some shelters that did get housing placement funds one year might not have gotten similar funds the following year,” Comnes said.
However, the largest gaps in such funding for the city are self-inflicted, according to city budget data. The city funded its rapid expansion of shelter and encampment sweeps over the last six years while gutting budgets for programs helping house homeless Portlanders.
Those are the exact types of programs the county identified as the missing ingredient in the local homelessness response, but Wilson’s office again argued the county is responsible.
“The county is the lead agency for supportive housing, rapid rehousing, and service‑rich housing programs,” Bowman said.
The county is the lead administrative agency for these programs, which has long been the case. However, the city isn’t without its housing responsibilities under the action plan, including assisting with housing referral systems, exploring more services for existing affordable housing and increasing permanent supportive housing.
“How we collectively allocate and balance funds for housing placements out of shelters is a question for our entire system of care, bigger than any one set of sites,” Comnes said. “Having adequate housing placement resources is what determines how well a shelter places people into housing. As shown in the Adult Shelter Review, if a shelter had access to those resources, it had better housing placement outcomes; if it did not, housing placements dropped.
“Making adjustments based on the latest data available is the evidence-based approach Multnomah County continues to take.”
The gap between available housing resources and shelter also wasn’t a surprise for the city when the county released the shelter review report.
“The Homelessness Response System team has been flagging the imbalance between the number of shelter beds and available housing resources since May 2025,” Comnes said. “Further analysis on the resources needed to improve housing placement out of shelter was presented to a joint work session of the City Council, Board of Commissioners and the Mayor in that same month (May), and the findings were included in the HRS August 2025 quarterly report.
“Both the City and the County are well aware of what it takes to adequately fund placement out of shelter.”
The action plan doesn’t preclude the city from investing in evidence-based housing programs. Bowman said due to restricted funding sources for shelter and sweeps programs, the city can’t shift the money to housing. How much funding the city can’t shift remains unclear because the city hasn’t tried to do so. Funds for the programs include city funding from various bureaus and its general budget, as well as intergovernmental funding from the county, state and metro governments.
The city lobbied the state for alternative shelter funding, which the state began granting after the city abandoned its initial plan to build massive tent camps in favor of more pod villages. The city also uses Supportive Housing Services funds for shelters, when those funds could be used to provide supportive services in housing.
Cutting through the noise
Regardless, city budget documents show a seismic shift in priorities beginning in fiscal year 2022, when it reduced spending for housing-focused programs by more than $15 million. Further illustrating the shift, the city nearly doubled spending on encampment sweep and shelter programs to $51.6 million that year.
Overall, the city slashed spending on rapid rehousing, supportive housing and permanent supportive housing by 86% since 2021, when it spent $37.7 million on these programs, though a portion of that funding came from one-time federal funding.
In the two fiscal years before pandemic-era federal spending, the city spent about $20 million on the programs.
The city’s current budget allocates just $5.5 million to those categories. For comparison, the city allocated $116 million to sweep and shelter programs in the current budget — a 316% increase since 2021.
Wilson’s office disagreed with Street Roots’ analysis, saying they didn’t feel money the city gives to county shelter programs and some city programs should be included.
“(Portland Environmental Management Office, Street Services Coordination Center), and the Portland Solutions budget are also not shelter or camp‑removal programs,” Bowman argued. “PEMO focuses on public space activation and community problem‑solving, SSCC is City outreach, and the Portland Solutions budget is administrative and supports enhanced services districts.”
However, each of the three city offices are involved with the city’s sweeps and shelter programs. PEMO conducts research and outreach regarding new shelters, as well as cleaning around shelters. Then-Mayor Ted Wheeler founded SSCC to offer shelter referrals to homeless Portlanders during a prior push to criminalize sleeping in public. Portland Solutions was founded “to centralize the management of public space, respond to the homelessness crisis, and work collaboratively to build better solutions to end homelessness,” according to the city budget.
Even without including PEMO, SSCC and Portland Solutions’ budget, the city spent almost $105 million on shelter and sweeps.
Several current city councilors take issue with the city’s current priorities, including City Councilor Candace Avalos, who chairs the city’s Homelessness and Housing Committee. She said the current status quo reflects the old way of doing business.
“The apparent shifts and gaps in our investments reflect the fact that under the old form of government, priorities were dictated by the commissioner in charge — meaning our City hasn’t had a consistent vision for addressing our homelessness and housing affordability crises,” Avalos told Street Roots in an email.
A new path forward
Earlier this month, the city revealed it had $106 million in unbudgeted and previously unknown housing dollars. Raymond Lee, city administrator, told City Council the lack of information was a result of the old city government structure. Previously, City Commissioners acted as bureau leaders and prepared and provided their own budgets. Roughly $91 million of the unspent funding was set aside for affordable housing or keeping renters in their homes.
That money and those services are sorely needed, according to service providers and the county report.
“Some (shelter) programs focused solely on the lack of affordable housing as the primary barrier, often noting that other barriers had already been mitigated: ‘Many participants are document ready at this location and waiting for affordable housing,’” the report found. “Some providers identified that this challenge was, ‘especially acute for households earning at or below 30% AMI, where vacancies remain extremely scarce.’”
Avalos said the revelation about the previously unbudgeted money gives the city an opportunity to get things back on track, but that it still needs to rethink where its housing resources go.
“The significant housing dollars now on the table give us a golden opportunity to act with urgency and deliver for Portlanders who are calling on us to help those who are struggling,” Avalos said. “I am committed to ensuring those funds are deployed strategically, transparently, and in alignment with a comprehensive housing plan.”
Avalos said councilmembers overwhelmingly agree the city needs to serve a unique role in housing construction — one it isn’t currently fulfilling.
“To put a finer point on it, our City has a responsibility to build the kind of deeply affordable housing that the market will never supply on its own,” Avalos said. “I passed the Social Housing resolution because our strategy should center our low-income neighbors who are being hurt the most by our broken housing system.”
Avalos said the immediate focus needs to be housing people, in addition to preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place.
“In the short term, we need to prioritize strategies that move people into stable housing faster and prevent homelessness in the first place, not just triage people in crisis,” Avalos said. “That means funding rent assistance, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and eviction prevention — many priorities included in my Slow the Inflow resolution. Shelter plays a role in crisis response, but shelter alone cannot solve homelessness.
“Our goal must be permanent housing outcomes.”
City Councilor Mitch Green, who co-introduced the social housing resolution Avalos mentioned, noted the city’s sweep-and-shelter approach isn’t supported by evidence.
“Cutting spending on supportive housing while ramping up sweeps and shelter programs is clearly not going to work,” Green told Street Roots in an email. “A mat on a floor doesn’t move anyone closer to housing. It is a temporary respite at best, but it’s not a solution.”
Green also noted sweeps, in particular, are shown to increase health risks for homeless people. A 2025 investigation published by Street Roots and ProPublica found West Coast cities that conduct the most sweeps per homeless person also had the highest homeless mortality rates. Portland had the most sweeps and worst mortality rate of any city in the analysis.
“We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this approach, only to see deaths among our homeless neighbors quadruple between 2019 and 2023, and the number of people sleeping on our streets continue to grow,” Green said.
Wilson’s office defended his approach, again saying the county is responsible for housing, and reframing the city’s focus on sweeps and shelter from their perspective.
“A ‘sweep‑and‑shelter strategy’ is not our approach,” Bowman said. “Our approach is fulfilling the responsibilities assigned to us while relying on the county as the lead agency for housing and services to deliver the downstream housing placements that ultimately reduce homelessness.
“Emergency shelter keeps people alive today, but only sustained housing investments reduce homelessness over time. Both pieces must function for the system to work.”
The problem is likely only getting worse if local leaders don’t act.
“These primary bottlenecks for our shelter system resulted in programs being less effective at housing people out of shelter, despite efforts by program staff, case managers, and community partners,” the report concluded. “While the number of shelter beds and programs has increased over the past year, many housing-focused services and positions across programs were reduced or eliminated for (fiscal year) 2026, due to funding reductions.
“Insufficient funding and staffing transitions were already indicated as major barriers in (fiscal year) 2025, and these additional reductions may create even more barriers that lead to worse outcomes.”
This article appears in March 4, 2026.