A new trove of data on Multnomah County’s homeless population dropped this week, offering the public an updated and more accurate understanding of the region’s homelessness crisis. The results will undoubtedly shape the future of the region’s homeless response.

“This just reinforces our call to action,” said Portland Mayor Keith Wilson at a Wednesday meeting with city and county officials, where county staff presented some of the new data.

The data comes from two reports.

The first report focuses on numbers shared by all publicly funded shelters on how long people are staying in shelter, how swiftly people are leaving shelter to enter permanent housing, and other metrics. This report was overseen and presented by Multnomah County Commissioner Shannon Singleton at a county meeting Tuesday.

“We know that we’re facing significant budget deficits,” said Singleton. “I have requested these assessments so we can really examine the shelter investments and understand the types, the costs, and the outcomes.”

The second report comes from the county’s new process for tracking people experiencing homelessness in the region. Called a “by-name list,” this system released Wednesday collects information on anyone who touches the county or city’s homeless services, whether that’s staying in a shelter, interacting with an outreach worker, or moving into permanent housing. As the name suggests, the county is able to track people by their name and location — whether that be a tent or a shelter bed.

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For years, local government has collected population data on its homeless residents through the biennial “point-in-time count,” where volunteers collect data on where people experiencing homelessness slept on one single January evening. It’s a form of data collection that the federal government requires jurisdictions collect to receive funding. But local public officials have long considered that number unreliable, and called for more precise data.

Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said the new system creates the “most accurate” list of people experiencing homelessness that the county has ever had.

“So starting today, we had a new baseline of information available to help us measure our work,” she said at a Wednesday presentation of this data before county and city leaders. “That is a very important milestone.”

There’s a lot of information packed into these new reports. Here are the top findings from the new data:

More people are homeless in Multnomah County than was reported in 2024.

In January 2024, the county estimated its homeless population was around 11,400. A year later, and that number has grown 26%, to 14,400.

“This is of course not what anyone wanted to see,” said Anna Plumb, deputy director of the county’s Homeless Service Department. Yet, Plumb explained, that it doesn’t come as a huge surprise. It may not necessarily mean the region’s homeless population is growing swiftly, but that the county and its service providers are better equipped to collect and report data on everyone experiencing homelessness.

“Part of the increase is that we are finding more people in our community and serving them with our services,” Plumb added.

People in Multnomah County are entering homelessness at a pace far higher than people leaving homelessness.

Between January 2024 and January 2025, 1,277 new people were identified as homeless in Multnomah County. Meanwhile, only 865 people are categorized as leaving homelessness in that period — either because they moved into housing or they weren’t in contact with any social services or outreach workers within the past 90 days.

Plumb noted that city and county tax dollars currently cover housing for 7,600 people who were previously homeless or at risk of homelessness.

“And yet people are entering homelessness at a faster rate,” she said. She pointed to the region’s affordable housing shortage, high rate of evictions, inflation, and shortage of addiction and behavioral health resources as an explanation.

“A lot of those elements are outside of the control of the homeless services department.”

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Mayor Wilson’s goal to build enough shelter to accommodate the region’s unsheltered population may fall short of the actual need.

Wilson’s ambitious $28 million shelter plan is focused on adding enough shelter beds to accommodate about 5,400 unsheltered people by the end of 2025. The latest data shows that there are around 6,300 people living unsheltered in Multnomah County — surpassing his earlier estimate.

At a meeting Wednesday, Wilson said this news didn’t deter him.

“These numbers are sobering because it means that the goal post just got moved further away from us,” Wilson said. “But we’re just simply going to adjust to it, because these are our neighbors.”

Wilson still has not announced how he plans to fund his shelter plan. He has requested support from the Metro regional government, the state Legislature, and private donors.

Homeless shelters in Multnomah County are nearly at capacity most nights.

According to the county’s most recent data from February, about 92% of all 2,500 or so shelter beds in the county are occupied on a given night. The county has more shelter beds available than it ever has. In 2021, the county had around 1,100 beds.

In all, about 3,600 people reportedly used a shelter in Multnomah County in February. (In 2021, that number was closer to 1,600).

County-run alternative shelters are the most effective type of shelter at moving people into permanent housing.

Multnomah County runs seven alternative shelters, which is a term for village-style outdoor pod shelters. Since July 2024, about 43% of people who stayed at these shelters moved into permanent housing when they left.

In comparison, only 14% of people who lived in city-run alternative shelters (also known as Safe Rest Villages and Temporary Alternative Shelter Sites) landed in permanent housing during this time period. The majority of people who left the city’s alternative shelters returned to homelessness.

Congregate shelters, where people are usually sleeping in the same large room, proved to be the least effective: Only 12% of all congregate shelter users moved into housing after they left.

The county’s motel shelters are nearly as effective as their alternative shelters. About 42% of people who stayed at a motel shelter left to move into permanent housing.

In all, 16% of people in Multnomah County who’ve used a shelter since July 2024 have moved into permanent housing when they left. More than 35% of people returned to homelessness.

Congregate shelters are the cheapest to operate.

According to the county’s data, the mass indoor shelters cost the government about $60 per bed per night to run. Motel shelters prove to be the most costly, at $141 per bed per night.

People on average stay about 73 days at a shelter in Multnomah County before leaving.

There are various reasons why people leave shelters. But their length of stay is of particular interest.

Under Wilson’s plan to end unsheltered homelessness, he proposes a maximum of 90-day stay at any shelter, a number that shelter providers say may be too short. Individuals stayed an average of 73 days in shelters between June 2023 and July 2024, according to the county’s data.

But it differs widely by shelter type. The average stay in an alternative, village-style shelter was 267 days, while the average stay at a large congregate shelter was closer to 50 days.

What’s next?

County and city officials plan to use this new data to adjust their budgets and joint programs to address homelessness. These changes may be reflected in both county- and city-proposed budgets, which will be released in the next few weeks. Public officials also want to zero in on a missing piece of the equation: housing.

Michael Wilkerson, the director of economic research at ECOnorthwest, gave a presentation before city and county leaders Wednesday showing that, due to the slow pace of new housing construction in Portland, it appears that the homeless crisis is directly tied to the city’s housing crisis.

“The principal driver of the region’s homelessness crisis is housing scarcity and high rents,” he said.

In Portland, public housing development is the city’s responsibility, not the county’s. The new city council has already signaled interest in developing more public housing in the coming years, and Mayor Wilson has recently partnered with Gov. Tina Kotek to discuss ways to boost market-rate rental construction. On Wednesday, Wilson pledged that building housing was his ultimate mission.

“The goal is to take the pressure off of our system so our outreach workers and our housing teams can focus on the long-term solution, that’s adding housing,” he said. “It’s a housing problem, so let’s address it.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/04/16/multco-data-homelessness-crisis/