When Portland mayor Keith Wilson took office in 2025, he proposed an ambitious plan not only to end unsheltered homelessness but also to change the tone of the conversation around homelessness from one of inconvenience to one of emergency. Wilson claims that Portland’s homelessness problem is “the biggest humanitarian crisis our city has ever faced” and is demanding funding and cooperation that matches the severity and pervasiveness of the issue. “You cannot look at this and think of one-year plans, or three-year plans, or five-or-ten-year plans. We must think about the best we can do right here, right now. We must change the way we think about this crisis and respond immediately and decisively” (1).
Decisive action was indeed necessary when Portland, a city reeling from increased homelessness particularly since the onset of the pandemic, had grappled with this crisis on a number of fronts and was in desperate need of meaningful and momentous direction. Wilson’s key ideas for responding to the problem are as follows:
Treat unsheltered homelessness like an emergency
Prioritize overnight shelters
Scale opening and closing of shelters to meet need
Add day centers with supportive services
“No wrong door,” offering help to anyone who needs help getting off the street
Enforce existing laws
Unfortunately, 100 days into Wilson’s mayoral term, the primary prohibitive factor is still present: the $28 million price tag. So, with funding being the biggest hurdle towards accomplishing these and other goals that Wilson and Portland’s city administration have set out to accomplish, how do we move forward? Even without considering Wilson’s ideas, Portland’s local government is facing $65 million in budget cuts- a massive hole to dig out of and still meaningfully address ongoing issues around the city. Another important point of note is that existing shelters and centers around the city still need their own funding outside of that $28 million to remain open and operational. When asked about the likelihood of Wilson’s program getting off the ground, city council president Elana Pirtle-Guiney was dubious. “That comes at a cost to the other general fund programs and the council will certainly have to debate whether that cost is worth it” (2).
So, while Mayor Wilson pushes to fund his own vision for solving the homelessness crisis, the biggest obstacle isn’t moral or philosophical, but financial. The hope is that at the business end of these discussions there will be enough collaboration between state, county, and city officials so as to mitigate these financial concerns and start making meaningful progress. Given the complication of having to work with these different governments and their often disparate priorities, Pirtle-Guiney was hopeful. “That's not good for folks who are living on the streets and it's not good for our budget and it's not good for the county's budget ... so the closer that we can be in line with the county, the closer they can be in line with us, I think the better we all are" (2).
While these debates go on and these decisions have yet to be finalized, you can make your voice heard directly by contacting the Mayor and/or the City Council here. Let them know your thoughts on the ongoing homelessness crisis and what you think should be the priority in 2025.
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