Portland homeless epidemic increased in 2024 after officials spent $700 MILLION to fight it: study

More than $700 million was spent last fiscal year to address homelessness in the Portland region, according to a recent report from the research group ECOnorthwest.

The report, titled 'Sources and Uses of Resources to Address Homelessness in the Portland Region,' examined how federal, state, local, and private dollars were used across the tri-county area. This includes funding sent to Multnomah and Washington counties, the city of Portland, Metro, and dozens of nonprofit organizations. Per Oregon Public Broadcasting, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Multnomah County, in which the city of Portland lies, between January 2024 and the beginning of 2025 increased by 26 percent. 

Researchers identified 522 distinct uses for the funds, ranging from outreach and shelter to housing placement and administrative overhead. Nearly half of the total funding came from the Metro regional government through the Supportive Housing Services tax. Additional contributions included $100 million from the federal government, $70 million from Multnomah County, $66 million from the city of Portland, $39 million from the state of Oregon, and an even larger share from private philanthropy.

"It's a complex landscape,” said ECOnorthwest senior policy advisor John Tapongna, according to KGW8. “There are many different funding streams coming in and there's a variety of different government entities that are touching this and lots of different nonprofits that are providing it, so it's (an) especially sort of complex fiscal landscape.”

ECOnorthwest found that over $250 million was spent on “safety on and off the streets,” a broad label that largely refers to shelter services, homeless outreach, and camp cleanups. About $219 million went toward supportive housing programs, $141 million on housing placement efforts, $64 million on system access, assessment, and navigation, and $46 million on administrative costs.

The report also raised concerns about future funding. Tapongna warned that federal funding could be at risk under the Trump administration. 

"As you sort of look through and understand the composition of the money that you have, you can start to look at where you have risk," said Tapongna. "And I would say we have an awful lot of risk in that federal space — and by extension of the 'Big Beautiful Bill,' I would say the state appropriations are also at risk."

"This work should be considered a launching pad, not an end point. This is, I would still consider to be, a fairly crude assessment," Tapongna argued. "Just an awful lot more is needed to be able to manage this system well and to be able to build trust, public trust in how these dollars are being managed and spent.”

Tapongna added, "At some point, you've got to take these dollars that we're talking about and getting better at counting, and take all that much richer information we have about the people we are serving, and start to put dollars to people and really understand, OK, as we are doing sort of long-term, permanent solutions for individuals, how much are we spending per year on individuals? What is the distribution of that?"