Portland Mayor Keith Wilson made ending unsheltered homelessness central to his policy agenda. He’s leaned into one kind of shelter to do that, overnight-only shelters. And he’s successfully opened five of these this year, as part of his plan to provide an additional 1,500 beds by Dec. 1. But Multnomah County estimates the number of people who are unsheltered in the county - most of them in Portland - to be more than 7,500.

This week, the mayor sent out a plea to an email list of approximately 17,000 people, urging them to donate to or volunteer their time at one of the city’s shelters - and seemed to warn that the Trump administration might choose to send in National Guard Troops as it did in Washington D.C. if Portland did not “address the humanitarian crisis on our streets.”

Reporter Lillian Mongeau Hughes covers homelessness and mental health for The Oregonian/OregonLive. She joins us to share more about the recent opening of another overnight-only shelter and the progress the city has made toward the goal of ending unsheltered homelessness.

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News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/09/05/think-out-loud-portland-homeless-shelters/