Homelessness is still increasing in the Portland area despite much more government spending to reduce it.

Members of the Portland City Council and Multnomah County Commission admitted more people are becoming homeless than are being moved into housing during a joint meeting on Friday, May 23. The meeting was held as both governments are finalizing their next budgets for the fiscal year that begins on July 1, with significant support from the Supportive Housing Services measure previously approved by votes of Metro, the elected regional government.

“I think I’m having an existential moment. Just the astounding amount of money being spent here, with the trend line going down. It’s astounding, and I don’t think that in the long run we’re going to be able to afford this. It means that we’re going to start eating programs,” KOIN 6 News reported Portland District 4 City Councilor Olivia Clark as saying.

According to the story, Multnomah County is spending $354 million to reduce homelessness in the current fiscal year, including $30 million from the Metro program. But the most recent quarterly joint report for the Homelessness Response Action Plan reveals that while 14,000 people were sheltered in the past year, only 1,200 adults leaving those shelters found permanent housing.

“Right now, there’s more people going into homelessness than exiting, so we absolutely, between the city and county, have to align, in my view, align against a plan that we’re going to be getting the number of people who are unsheltered on a downward trend and the people who are on a path to housing on an upward trend,” Multnomah County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards said.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said, counting the Metro funding, the city and county are spending about 10 times more to address homelessness than they were in 2017. And yet, “all we’ve seen is additional suffering and dying on our streets.”

All three governments must soon adopt balanced budgets for the next fiscal year.

The meeting coincided with the publication of an analysis by The Oregonian/Oregonlive that confirms homelessness in the Portland area has soared, even though spending to reduce homelessness has increased significantly. The story by reporter Lillian Mongeau Hughes tracked homeless counts in Multnomah County through changes in collection methods in recent years. According to the story, until 2019, homeless people in the county were counted by a federal-required Point in Time count largely taken by volunteers every two years on a single day. They found the number of homeless people in the county staying under about 5,000 between 2009 and 2019.

But, according to the story, the county began blending the names of everyone applying for homeless assistance into the count in 2022, after the start of the pandemic. After that, the numbers surged to 12,034 in early 2025. About 7,159 of them were living outside or in a space considered unfit for human habitation, like a car.

It is impossible to know how much of the increase was caused by additional homeless people or the new data.

“Understanding how much of a change this is from recent years is tricky. The longest term figures on record come from a biannual census called the point-in-time count that has been required as a prerequisite to receive federal homeless services funding since 2007. That count is conducted by taking a snapshot of how many people are in homeless shelters on one night in January and combining it with the results of a survey of people living outside. It has always been understood to be an undercount,” the story said.

Whatever the case, Portland and Multnomah County have invested significantly more money into reducing homelessness during those years.

“Both Portland and Multnomah County have spent millions of dollars – some federal, some local, including a lot of revenue from a relatively new regional homeless services tax – on providing better services for homeless people. The city and county now offer more than 3,000 shelter beds, about double the 2022 count. And thousands of people have been housed – 5,477 in the last fiscal year alone,” the story said.

Homeless advocates say there are many reasons for the increase in homelessness, including inflation, underfunded addiction and mental health services, a need for more eviction prevention services, and a lack of affordable housing caused in part by a slowdown in the production of new homes.

Metro is considering whether to refer a measure to voters later this year to extend its 10-year Supportive Housing Services measure approved by voters in 2020 and allow some of the funds to be spent to create housing.

KOIN 6 News is a news partner of the Portland Tribune and contributed to this story. Their full story can be found at koin.com.