Editorial | ‘Domicile Unknown’ documents a tragic past and hints at a disturbing future

In 2019, 113 people died homeless in Multnomah County. Now is the time for bold measures.

by SR editorial board | 22 Dec 2020

Last year, 113 people died homeless on the streets of Multnomah County. For some who lived so isolated — despite being so exposed — this grim statistic is the only register of their passing.

But every one of them had a name, a life, a loved one. Among them Michelle Wheeler, Tisha Moss and Terry Riha. You can read their stories in Street Roots' Dec. 23-29 edition and in the county’s latest Domicile Unknown report, published annually by Multnomah County and Street Roots.

Each one of those 113 died too young and too soon. And most tragically, they didn’t have to.


        Street Roots editorials represent the opinion of the Street Roots organization and editorial board.

After nearly a decade of these reports, the connection between housing and health has never been more clear. Without a stable place to call home, entirely manageable human conditions can become terminal. The people who perished last year died of substance abuse, physical trauma and homicide, among other causes. Fifteen died of suicide; four died of hypothermia.

While these numbers document the past, they have a lot to inform us about our future. Upstream are thousands of people still struggling to survive homelessness, and despite the tremendous work toward restoring stable of housing for people in our community, the machinery pushing families through the cracks continues to churn.

Right now, there are an estimated 100,000 low-income Oregonians who have lost work because of the pandemic and are left with little to no reserves.

Tens of thousands of families are living in fear of becoming homeless tomorrow. Right now, in Portland alone, about 16,000 renters have been unable to pay rent because of loss of income due to the pandemic. That equals about $24 million a month, and between $160 million and $200 million owed since May 2020. Moratoriums provide temporary relief, and the bill will come due, but that lost income is lost for good, and the threat of wave upon wave of evictions in 2021 is deadly serious.

In it’s special session this week, the Oregon State Legislature bought these families more time with a six-month extension of the eviction moratorium, passed just 10 days before it was set to expire. That’s a short window of respite for an estimated 56,000 households that are at risk of eviction when the moratorium ends.

Many of these families were in unstable housing situations before the pandemic, paying half or more of their income on rent, well above the federal guidelines for affordability. With our high rents and housing costs, we’ve grown accustomed to numbers of people unable to afford a stable home. But how high a death toll are we willing to accept?

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the Domicile Unknown report is that, for the most part, we know how to end homelessness.

FINDING HOME: An in-depth look at America’s growing housing and homeless crisis

We know that substance misuse is a disease, caused by far-reaching mental and physical conditions, and can be treated with supportive, adequate health care.

We know our market-rate rents are beyond the reach of most middle- and low-income families, including people on disability assistance and the elderly, and the public sector is needed to create affordable housing and a regulated market.

We know that statewide, we aren’t even close to taking care of the scores of people who suffer from mental health conditions who need assistance.

We know that as long as we treat jails as de facto shelters we push people further into legal entanglements and trauma.

We know that housing is key to our health, but each year more and more people are dying homeless on our streets. Enough.

2020 has left its scars on all of us, but we have it within us to take that energy to the other end of the spectrum.

Now is the time for bold measures — in Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C. We need total rent relief and landlord support. We need to stop accepting change in increments and push for immediate and long-term protections for renters to create a new kind of equity in our housing structure, one that works hardest for those most in need.

This is especially true for Black, Indigenous and other communities of color, which are hardest hit by this pandemic, the economic fallout and homelessness. In Portland, these communities are much more likely to be renters than white families and disproportionately earn below $60,000, the annual income needed for the average rent to be affordable in the city. We must continually push to break down those structural, systemic barriers that put communities of color at a disadvantage to recovery.

Nearly 650 people have died homeless on our streets in the past decade. Many more we know were never counted but lost just the same. We must never get comfortable with these numbers. We mustn’t grow complacent that what we have done is all we can do. This year, unlike any other, has taught us that housing is a matter of life or death. That is the banner we must carry forward.

Street Roots editorials represent the opinion of the Street Roots organization and editorial board.

Street Roots is an award-winning, weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.