Portland Mayor Keith Wilson is a systems improvement expert. If you ask the former CEO of Titan Freight Systems about the local homelessness response system, he’ll say it has fallen short for years, mainly due to a missing link in the shelter continuum: emergency nighttime shelters.
Through baseball metaphors and a contemplative demeanor, Wilson speaks with a sincere concern for homeless Portlanders, often referencing his neighbor, Elizabeth, as an example of someone who needs better care from her government to improve her position in life.
“We have a system that’s not really operating as it should,” Wilson told Street Roots. “It’s a massive, expensive resource that — we’re not really caring for people.”
Wilson officially unveiled his plan to end unsheltered homelessness during a Jan. 22 City Council work session — a “first inning” approach to a long season of addressing the local affordable housing crisis. Days prior, Wilson visited Street Roots to discuss what Portland needs to solve what many perceive as its most significant challenge.
As Wilson makes the rounds pitching his plan to the local, state and federal leaders holding the purse strings, some critics are taking a “wait and see” approach, hoping the evident gaps in the plan will resolve in time. Wilson is meeting with service providers across the city and has a track record of volunteering in the community. His rhetoric around homelessness is deeply compassionate — a far cry from his law-and-order rivals in the election he ultimately won.
Local service providers say Wilson’s plan must take into account the material realities of homeless residents to create supportive spaces where people will choose to go rather than compelling them with the threat of sweeps or arrests. Violation of the city’s current ordinance addressing “conduct prohibited on public property” is punishable by a $100 fine or up to seven days in jail. As the city faces a $100 million budget gap, other elected officials want to focus on long-term affordable housing, including social housing with supportive services, rather than temporary solutions.
Wilson said it is essential for the city to see his plan not just as a campaign slogan but as a proven method used in cities across the U.S. to achieve better results than Portland has in recent years.
“On December 1, we’re going to end unsheltered homelessness,” Wilson said.
City Hall is an optimistic place to be at this moment, according to Wilson. He’s excited about the possibilities ahead. To reach his Dec. 1 goal, Wilson is hyperfocused on building what he sees as the missing piece of Portland’s shelter options.
“We’re missing certain components in the continuum,” Wilson said. “You have to have all of them, or else you have what’s going on in Portland. We have the highest unsheltered homeless rate in the nation, except for a few cities in California. That’s unimaginable a decade ago.”
Wilson’s pitch partly revolves around Multnomah County’s most recent Domicile Unknown report, which found 456 homeless residents died in the county in 2023 — up nearly 45% compared to 2022. While not all of those deaths were in Portland city limits, they were highly concentrated in the city, particularly in the downtown core.
Wilson wants to treat unsheltered homelessness as an emergency, investing significant resources to rapidly create a network of nighttime shelters, which will open in the evening and require people to leave in the morning.
Portland is missing the ability to provide “surge capacity,” which is best practice in cities with more effective responses to homelessness, he said.
“We’re not going to have people living and dying on our streets if we have a say in this,” Wilson said.
Building a ladder
If the first rung on the ladder to housing is living on the street, the second is emergency shelter, according to Wilson. Once people become established in emergency shelters, they can move through the other steps toward housing stability.
Wilson and his nonprofit Shelter Portland say an effective response revolves around what they call the “Five Ss”: Safety, Security, Shelter, Sleep and Services. Overnight and day shelters address the first S — safety.
“It’s making sure I’m not in a tent so I don’t get harmed at night so I can show up at my job the next day,” Wilson said. “That’s basic.”
Wilson maintains a goal of opening an additional 3,000 beds to account for Multnomah County’s estimated 5,398 people experiencing homelessness in the 2024 Point in Time, or PIT Count. The number of homeless individuals in Oregon rose 13.6% to 22,875 from 2023 to 2024 — 62% of them are unsheltered. The annual PIT Count is widely understood to be a substantial undercount but provides a baseline for homelessness statistics year-to-year.
On the campaign trail, Wilson often heard that at least 60% of homeless Portlanders refuse shelter when offered. Wilson believes this represents an opportunity, saying the other 40% of people need help and that it is his responsibility to offer it.
“If that 40% now is going to be 2,000 people, I need 2,000 shelter beds immediately,” he said. “So, let’s start with the known.”
In part, the numbers game is due to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 2018 decision in Martin v. Boise, which determined cities cannot punish homeless residents for sleeping in public when they do not have sufficient shelter capacity. The Supreme Court overturned Martin v. Boise on June 28, 2024, but Oregon House Bill 3115, or ORS 195.530, offers similar protections for homeless residents — legislation modeled after the Martin decision.
By providing sufficient beds relative to the homeless population, regardless of the rate at which people use them, cities can enforce time, place and manner restrictions under threat of civil and criminal penalties.
(Wilson told Street Roots he pulled the city’s Office of Government Relations from a group lobbying to overturn the law and committed to not using city resources to lobby the legislature. “It’s a waste of time,” he said.)
Still, advocates have long cautioned against allocating significant funding for temporary solutions. While overnight shelters fill a particular gap, they are not for everyone. Angelita Morillo, city councilor and member of the homelessness and housing committee, told Street Roots the city has long focused on the aesthetics of homelessness rather than efficient housing policy, particularly after the economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In light of the upcoming $100 million budget shortfall and President Trump’s cuts to federal grants and other programs, she hopes the city will focus its efforts on building long-term housing.
Social housing
“If we focus everything into these mass shelters, we’re not going to have a lot of money to play with for long-term housing,” Morillo said. “And that concerns me.”
There is an appetite within the City Council to invest in social housing projects owned and operated by the city. At least five councilors — Olivia Clark, Mitch Green, Sameer Kanal, Tiffany Koyama Lane and Morillo — all support the idea, as previously reported by Street Roots.
“That’s the stuff that we need to start thinking about … the city owning land, owning property that gains value in perpetuity rather than investing in gravel lots,” Morillo said.
She raised further concerns about the congregate shelter style, particularly about who can and cannot use them. As an immigrant and the only city councilor with lived experience of homelessness, she said she never considered utilizing food banks or shelters because of her sense of vulnerability. That was largely due to fears about the public charge rule — a decadeslong restriction on poorer immigrants who can be denied visas or green cards due to their need for government assistance.
“I was really discouraged from using government services by my family because we were taught that if you use government services, it’ll impact your immigration status,” Morillo said. “To me, it was better to hide that I was homeless than to let people know and get help because I was afraid of the power dynamic and what they would do to me if they found out.”
Morillo said it is not uncommon to hear from homeless residents who say they do not utilize congregate shelter because their belongings get stolen and illnesses spread. Shelters are often inaccessible for people with disabilities or mental illness and often separate people from pets or family. A variety of power dynamics can increase the threat of physical or sexual violence.
“Unless we address those power dynamics with shelters, that abuse is going to be perpetuated,” Morillo said.
Further, fleeing domestic violence is itself the cause of homelessness for many residents across the U.S.
“We know that women and children who are homeless … the majority of them are there because of domestic violence,” Emmy Ritter, Raphael House executive director, said. “If you ask any woman who is homeless if they’ve experienced domestic violence or sexual abuse, 100% of them will say so.”
For Ritter, who has worked in the field for over 30 years, the homelessness response system needs to navigate safety for people who may enter a shelter with an abusive partner without creating more danger for the family. Raphael House has confidential emergency shelters serving survivors of all genders, children and pets to help them escape dangerous domestic violence situations. Ritter said a trauma-informed approach is essential to addressing homelessness.
“When somebody walks into our shelter, they’re terrified,” Ritter said. “Their children are clinging to them.”
She said shelters must think through how to respond to these types of scenarios in a trauma-informed way and provide the training staff needs to remain aware of a person’s agency and individual needs. People need to know they are safe and that the staff believes them — “which is essential for anybody going through a traumatic situation,” Ritter said.
Still, Wilson’s proposal includes 90-day stay limits in 24-hour shelters “to encourage transition to housing” — something Ritter said may not be sufficient time to resolve after escaping a traumatic scenario.
“When somebody gets into our shelter, we recognize that their first 30 days might be just getting to sleep because they might be coming off the street,” Ritter said. “They might have been sleeping in their car. They had a lot of planning to do to escape abuse.”
Wilson touts reunification with family as a part of his plan — a 14-day program to connect people with friends or family members. He made a distinction between helping a person reunite with family and simply giving someone a “bus pass to nowhere,” as some communities do.
Local nonprofit Rahab’s Sisters focuses on building a safe community, often working with homeless residents impacted by gender-based marginalization.
Desiree Eden Ocampo, Rahab’s Sisters executive director, said people often end up on the streets “because they run out of people they could call on and double up on, or who run out of the network of people who say, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna let you stay on my couch.’”
Ocampo said shelters can also be unsafe for BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+ people and those living at the intersections of incarceration, violence, substance use or sex work. Rahab’s Sisters’ philosophy is to allow people to act with agency, asserting their needs without the expectation that includes moving into housing unless that is what they ask for.
“Some people will want to go into permanent housing after shelter, but that’s the other issue,” Ocampo said. “There’s no place to place them after the shelter if they want to go into housing, first of all, and some people want to but don’t have the support to be able to stay in that housing.”
For Ocampo, the work to resolve homelessness requires a slow, community approach centering on a person’s agency.
“Our guests are the ones who really know the best and the most,” Ocampo said.
Wilson’s plan is bold in terms of numbers, Ocampo said, adding it is an admirable place to start, while myriad other considerations exist.
“We need gender-specific shelters,” Ocampo said. “Trans, queer-specific or affirming spaces are really important — there’s just not enough. When people talk about — especially in our region — about shelters, transitional housing, it’s not gender specific, and that leaves out so many people.”
Morillo said if the city wants to invest in congregate shelters, autonomous, democratically self-governing shelter models like Right 2 Dream Too can help remove the imbalances that commonly lead to abuse in other shelters.
A Portland State University Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative, or HRAC, study published in 2024 showed village models allow for flexibility as they can utilize a range of sites, typically at a low cost, minimizing capital costs. The study also noted that motel shelters can begin operations quickly while offering the potential for conversion into long-term housing.
“Adult congregate shelters placed a far lower share of clients into any type of housing and exited a far larger share into unsheltered homelessness than any other shelter category,” according to the report.
Homeless court
Homeless Portlanders make up 50% of all arrests, often as an unavoidable consequence of their homelessness. Shelter Portland pioneered a new “Homeless Court Program” to help remove barriers to housing for people with criminal records, warrants or outstanding court fees due to homelessness, something Wilson and Multnomah County continue to work on.
Pat Dooris, Multnomah County District Attorney, or MCDA, director of communications, said MCDA Nathan Vasquez is committed to exploring opportunities to support local homeless residents through the program’s creation.
“While a Homeless Court, per se, does not presently exist, we have a designated (Deputy District Attorney) dedicated to these efforts, and MCDA is actively working on the development of programs in collaboration with Mayor Wilson’s office, including planning around the formation of a Homeless Court,” Dooris said. “We would love to continue this meaningful work and are hopeful for continued funding to bolster our collective efforts.”
The position is funded in the FY 2025 adopted budget.
Wilson insisted that police will not arrest people for being unsheltered. He said sending police to respond detracts from officers’ other duties because it takes hours to process arrestees before releasing them soon after.
“The only thing we’ve guaranteed is that person is going to be homeless the next day and a little bit worse off,” Wilson said. “There is no benefit in the carceral system with arresting a homeless person for being homeless.”
Still, Wilson was unable to directly answer how he would end unsheltered homelessness — including moving RVs or tents off the streets — without sweeps or arrests, instead pivoting to promises to provide care.
For those with behavioral health issues, Wilson recognizes not everyone will be able to go into an overnight shelter. He said outreach teams can help identify the person’s needs.
“It’s not a one solution,” Wilson said. “It’s a complex issue of multiple facets that we meet the person’s need, as opposed to a cookie-cutter approach.”
Asked about advocates’ and legal experts’ fear that having a sufficient number of shelter beds — responsive to needs or not — could be used as a justification for punishing and sweeping homeless Portlanders, Wilson recoiled.
“Goodness gracious, sweeps are the most inhumane thing there ever is,” Wilson said. “But letting people suffer and die on the street is so much worse than what we’re doing.”
The Boise model
Wilson said he hopes city officials and the public will start to believe that his plan is not just a campaign slogan but a method that cities nationwide already use. He regularly cites Boise, Boston and Philadelphia as places with far lower rates of unsheltered homelessness, all with emergency nighttime shelter systems.
The Martin v. Boise framework offers a solution, according to Wilson. He said after former Boise Mayor Dave Bieter — who serves on Shelter Portland’s leadership council — lost the case, the number of encampments in Boise ballooned. Bieter consulted with local police, the fire department and homeless service providers, who attributed the increase to the case’s outcome. Still, Bieter insisted Boise would be a “caring community, not a camping community.”
Rather than interpreting the Ninth Circuit’s injunction as a restriction on punishments, Boise focused on providing sufficient shelter for its homeless residents. Wilson said Boise now has 115 homeless residents — roughly the same percentage of the population it’s had since 2013. Homelessness rose 17.5% in Boise from 2023 to 2024, according to the 2024 PIT Count.
Still, one of the main challenges in Boise is providing sufficient locker storage for homeless residents visiting a day shelter, according to Jessica Abbott, Corpus Commons executive director. Corpus Commons is Boise’s only day shelter.
“People need a place to put their stuff because it gets stolen … or it gets wet, and then I’m having to replace those IDs and birth certificates,” Abbott said. “Then it’s like this vicious cycle that we get into.”
That is another piece of Wilson’s plan. He wants to add 300 new storage units in each of the city’s four districts for a total capacity of 1,200 units — an $864,000 investment per year.
One person familiar with Boise’s homelessness approach, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, said conditions for homeless Boiseans are harsh. They said anyone camping has to stay out of sight entirely, and the police generally know where people are. Ticketing and police sweeps are a widespread occurrence.
“Honestly, I’m shocked that anyone is looking to Boise’s approach as a ‘model’ for homelessness solutions,” they said. “For folks on the street, life is pretty chaotic: there’s not enough beds, we’re 50th in the nation for mental health services, and folks that sleep out are frequently harassed by police.”
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. 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.
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This article appears in February 5, 2025.
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