A surge of homeless shelter closures has been one of the most talked about fallouts from the huge budget shortfalls Portland and Multnomah County are facing this coming year.
Next month, city and county leaders are set to finalize their budgets for the coming fiscal year. Despite that, local leaders haven’t publicly shared materials showing the full extent of recently finalized, planned and proposed cuts and closures, or the actual impact that will have on people living outside.
Street Roots set out to figure out the extent of cuts, exactly which shelters are set to close and why.
Neither the city nor the county were able to provide a complete list that contained all of the following information:
- Facilities open in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, which ends June 30.
- Facilities that have already closed this fiscal year.
- Facilities that are proposed to close in the 2026-2027 fiscal year.
Instead, spokespeople for the two governments sent Street Roots troves of documents, each providing part of the full picture. They included detailed statements, reports, memos, budgets, budget documents and budget presentations relating to the proposed closures and cuts. Street Roots also reviewed news reports for confirmed closures from the current fiscal year.
The resulting analysis paints the most complete picture to date of the extent of proposed and final shelter closures and cuts in the Portland area. City and county spokespeople said the numbers will likely change as the governments work to finalize their budgets next month.
The bottom line
Documents from the county’s budget process show a proposed decrease of 265 shelter units for a 28% decline from this fiscal year to next. Documents from the city show 511 fewer shelter units, or a decline of about 20%.
Meanwhile, homelessness rose by 21% over the last year, the county’s most recent homelessness data shows.
Street Roots looked at those proposed cuts and closures of shelters, but also at proposed cuts and closures to other types of shelter units like motel vouchers. We also identified shelter closures this year associated with the last budget cycle.
The resulting analysis found the city and county stand to offer 1,566 fewer shelter units next fiscal year. That’s compared to a baseline scenario where services from this fiscal year were able to be maintained and previously planned increases that are slated to be cut were instead funded. The city accounts for 626 fewer units, and the county makes up the other 940.
This map shows shelters funded by Multnomah County and the City of Portland that are proposed to be cut by the governments’ proposed budgets for the 2026-2027 fiscal year. It also includes shelters that have recently closed. But it does not include cuts to scattered site programs and canceled expansions that reduce capacity by about 200 units.
Both governments face significant budget shortfalls caused by a mixture of falling revenues, growing costs, rising need, paying for programs with temporary funding and the impacts of federal policies created by the Trump administration.
Multnomah County faces an $11 million general fund spending gap along with a $67 million gap for homeless services this year. The city’s shortfall is $160 million.
The shelter closures also come as the city and county wage an increasingly public battle over the best way to fight homelessness, with shelters at the center of that fight.
The city has worked to expand the number of overnight shelters in an effort it has said will end unsheltered homelessness. Critics say the move just hides people experiencing homelessness. The county has focused on eviction prevention and shelters that offer more support — a move supported by its own research and studies by Portland State University.
“People don’t love shelter,” said Kathleen Conte, a senior research fellow at PSU’s Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative.
“That said,” she added, “shelter still provides respite from the elements, it still plays an important role in the system, and then people’s journeys through homelessness.”
That system has failed to house more people than economic conditions made homeless in recent years. For example, county numbers show 1,687 people became homeless in March, while 1,468 were housed. Overall, 18,479 people were experiencing homelessness in March.
A complete list of currently operational shelters can be found below.
Extent of city cuts
Between Jan. 1, 2026 and Dec. 31, 2026, the city’s budget proposes closing 951 shelter units and gaining 440 to arrive at a total of 2,019 units, breakdowns of the proposed budget show. That’s a 20% decrease.
(Street Roots is using “shelter unit” because each shelter defines “beds” differently, and some house multiple people like in a tiny home village.)
Those numbers don’t include some recent closures, and don’t classify one shelter as a closure that is transitioning from year-round congregate to only seasonal.
That means the city stands to lose 663 alternative and overnight shelter units, and gain 37 flex/seasonal units by next year between the finalized and proposed cuts detailed below.
The city has already closed three shelters in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, losing 211 units between them.
- Centennial Neighborhood overnight shelter – 96 units
- Peninsula Crossing alternative shelter – 60 units
- Sunderland RV Safe Park alternative shelter – 55 units
If changes proposed by the mayor earlier this month are finalized, an additional 629 units stand to be lost through five shelter closures/changes.
- Northrup overnight shelter – 200 units
- Reedway Safe Rest Village – 156 units
- Church of the Nazarene overnight shelter – 100 units
- North Portland Road Safe Rest Village – 91 units
- City Team Grand overnight shelter – 80 units
- Weidler Safe Rest Village – 38 units
The proposed budget also includes a 40-bed funding reduction at the SE Grand Recovery overnight shelter, which could expand to include more units during severe weather.
Not all the reductions were so straightforward. While the city cut funding for 250 flex shelter/severe weather units, it added 187 and made the 100-bed Nazarene a seasonal shelter, netting 37 total.
All of Reedway Safe Rest Village’s pods and “up to 15” pods from Weidler Safe Rest Village would be relocated to the North Portland Road RV safe park and safe rest village, said Skyler Brocker-Knapp in a May 12 budget presentation. She runs the city’s homelessness agency, which is called Portland Solutions.
Those changes would happen after the North Portland Road shelter gets rid of its RV parking component. It would gain about 158 units, said Laura Rude, Portland Solutions’ communications and data coordinator.
The city would also be taking over the 90-bed River District Navigation Center, which the county used to operate, and using it as an overnight shelter, Brocker-Knapp said. Other facilities also added capacity for flex units. Finally, the SW Naito Village pod shelter would be gaining five units.
Back in December, Mayor Wilson claimed victory in his plan to open 1,500 new overnight-only units in a year. If the proposed cuts are finalized, Street Roots found he may be left 276 units short of his goal with just 500 emergency overnight units and 724 flex/severe weather units.
That’s on top of 795 alternative shelter units.
Extent of county cuts
A Multnomah County presentation on its approved (but not adopted) budget for the 2026-2027 fiscal year shows it may reduce shelter units by 28%, from 960 to 695.
That decline would come from closing six shelters.
- Laurelwood Center overnight shelter – 120 units
- Roseway Inn Motel Shelter – 120 units
- River District Navigation Center overnight shelter – 100 units
- Walnut Park overnight shelter – 72 units
- Chestnut Tree Inn Motel Shelter – 55 units
- 82nd Avenue Motel Shelter Voluntary Isolation Motel – 38 units
The proposed closures are accompanied by a handful of less simple cuts.
- The Bybee Lakes Hope Center shelter would lose 100 units.
- The 40-unit Bridging Connections behavioral health motel program stands to be shuttered.
- Funding for the proposed and previously funded 20-unit Workforce Village tiny home project would be cut.
- The 10-unit Beacon Village tiny home project would have its funding cut. But it’s fighting that.
- The Family Emergency Motel Voucher, which had 90 units budgeted for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, but zero in this year’s approved budget.
- The Adult Emergency Motel Voucher, which similarly had 50 units budgeted for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, but zero in this year’s approved budget.
And those add on top of two big recent shelter closures stemming from last year’s budget cuts.
- Market Street overnight shelter, which offered 120 shelter units.
- Wy’east overnight shelter, which had capacity for 110 veterans.
On the other hand, the county plans to soon open three new shelters.
- The 50-unit East County Family Shelter.
- The 38-unit Harrison Community Village.
- The 17-unit Thayer Family Foundation Veterans Motel Shelter.
With the losses and additions all factored in, the county’s shelter unit losses add up to 940 fewer units than it would have offered if all units from last year remained and if planned units came online.
Street Roots sent spreadsheets mapping the closures to the county and city ahead of publication. County spokesperson Julia Comnes rejected the broad approach of adding closures, proposed closures and reductions to scattered-site programs in an email statement to Street Roots.
“For the beds that were budgeted and never opened,” she added, “distinguishing these from currently operating shelters is important, because there aren’t people currently staying in those shelters who would have to move to a new location. While it’s still a loss to the system for those units not to be budgeted, it’s not the same as a currently operating shelter closing its doors.”
Talking about the Adult Emergency Motel Voucher, she also explained that “no one is using these vouchers.”
Similarly, very few people were using the 82nd Avenue Motel Shelter Voluntary Isolation Motel, which would close under the current proposed budget.
The budget shortfalls driving it all
Behind these cuts are the numbers local government policy makers are stuck facing.
The county’s $3.9 billion approved budget for next fiscal year faces an $11 million general fund spending gap along with a $67 million gap for homeless services this year. (The two numbers have some overlap and therefore cannot be added, a county spokesperson said.)
The Homeless Services Department wasn’t spared, budget documents show. Next year it will have a budget of $239 million — a 23% drop from this fiscal year. That drop is mostly because of a dramatic reduction in federal and state dollars.
The shortfalls are caused by slowed growth in tax revenues combined with rising costs to provide services, said Denis Theriault, a county spokesperson. County documents detailing the economic outlook show personnel costs, inflation and “geopolitical strife” have added to uncertainty.
Those political and economic realities are testing the city and county on their commitment to their philosophies of how to solve homelessness.
Charts the county provided show it’s reducing congregate shelter units more than other offerings. The move follows the findings of a report it published earlier this year that found government dollars house more people when they go to housing supports than to temporary shelter units.
Comnes, the county spokesperson, said that’s no accident.
“This requested budget attempts to rebalance our core programs of shelter and housing in a way that allows for immediate safety off the streets and as many housing placements as possible within our new ongoing funding amount,” Comnes wrote in an email.
She also emphasized the importance of shelters in providing safety and stability for people.
An April memo the county shared with Street Roots laid out its choices in more detail. Beacon Village, for example, was expensive and redundant because other shelters provide similar services in the area. Chestnut Tree Inn was expensive because of growing rents and maintenance costs.
The city also faced a budget crisis: a $160 million shortfall on an $8.5 billion budget for fiscal year 2026-2027.
The cliff led to a proposed budget of $39.9 million for City Shelter Services. That’s 31% less than this fiscal year, the document shows. Other parts of Portland Solutions fared similarly.
“This reduction is a result of reliance on one-time funding,” Brocker-Knapp said at the city’s May 12 budget hearing. “We are just simply not going to receive the level of federal, Metro, state and county funding next year.”
The city’s budget crisis is also driven by increasing demand for services and the rising costs of providing those services, the budget said. Declining revenues were a part of the situation, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.
Like the county, the city laid out the logic behind their shelter closures facility by facility. One example came in closing the RV parking spaces at the North Portland Road Safe Rest Village to make room for tiny home-style pods.
The city’s final budget for the coming fiscal year is due to be approved by June 17 so it can be implemented at the start of the new fiscal year on July 1. Numbers may change as the budget works through City Council. However, OPB reported many proposed changes stalled and the budget is still largely as the mayor proposed.
And the county’s current approved budget may also change before it is adopted on June 4, and implemented July 1.
In a budget hearing earlier this month, Ryan Deibert, deputy director for the county’s homelessness response system, laid out what different potential budget choices from the city and county might mean for the projected number of people experiencing homelessness here.
Deibert shared a projection for how the number of homeless people would change — even if no cuts were made.
“We estimate that under this scenario,” he said, “at the close of the next fiscal year, we would still see roughly a 25% increase in the total population of people experiencing homelessness.”
Deibert said that the county’s homelessness prevention spending strategy stands to reduce those increases — even with less money and shelters. But ultimately, every scenario featured in the presentation projected an increase in homelessness, no matter what the local governments do.
Editor’s Note: The print version of this story (“A thousand cuts” on page 4 of the May 27, 2026 issue) misstated the number of city-funded shelter units set to be cut by omitting proposed shelter unit increases at three city-funded shelters from the final totals. In fact, if proposed changes are finalized, the city will have 626 fewer shelter units next fiscal year than in the current one. That means a total of 1,566 fewer units between the city and county.
This article appears in May 27, 2026.
