Welcome Home Coalition responds to Mayor Wilson’s proposed budget:

PORTLAND — Portland Mayor Keith Wilson on Monday released his proposed 2025-2026 city budget, which includes a $25 million plan to rapidly expand the city’s shelter system by Dec. 1 — on top of the $70 million already being spent on city-run shelters.

Portland’s housing advocates are raising serious concerns. In 2024, only one in five people exiting Portland’s shelter system moved into permanent housing. Outcomes from alternative shelter models like pods and safe villages were even worse, with just 14% transitioning to stable homes. Advocates say these numbers reflect a system that’s failing to deliver what is promised — moving people into permanent homes.

The Welcome Home Coalition — an alliance of over 80 homeless service providers, affordable housing providers and people with lived experience of homelessness and housing instability — is calling on city leaders to prioritize what works: eviction prevention, rental assistance, on-site support services, better case management and affordable housing.

“A shelter bed is not a home — and it’s not a long-term solution,” said Molly Hogan, executive director at Welcome Home Coalition. “Shelters should be part of a broader strategy, but Portland continues to fall short when it comes to helping people move into stable housing. We need leaders to invest in what actually ends someone’s homelessness: affordable housing, eviction prevention, rental assistance, case management, and accessible mental health and addiction services. We can’t afford to keep cycling people through crisis. It’s time to build a system that reduces homelessness for good.”

The City of Portland isn’t alone in prioritizing shelter over permanent housing. Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson’s proposed budget allocates roughly $170 million to shelters, compared to just $92 million for housing placements and eviction prevention. Both her proposal and Mayor Wilson’s mirror a troubling trend seen in the Trump Administration’s proposed budget: expanding shelter funding while cutting or neglecting rent assistance.
“Despite outspending other similarly sized cities, our solutions are backward and ineffective,” said coalition steering committee member Sandra Comstock, executive director at Hygiene 4 All. “At a time when the federal government is rolling back rent assistance, people will lose their homes at a quicker rate, if the city doesn’t fill the gap.”

Welcome Home recently released a policy brief that shares research and case studies on effective strategies to end homelessness. The policy recommendations include:
The City of Portland and its neighboring jurisdictions must commit to investing more in permanent housing, eviction prevention and support services proportionally to shelter.

Leaders must center the people who experience homelessness and housing instability to design effective solutions.
Rather than expanding the current supply of congregate shelters, leaders should invest in moving people off the streets and temporary shelters into permanent housing. This will free up shelters for transitional use as intended, and actually reduce overall homelessness.

“Mayor Wilson and our coalition have a shared goal: reducing homelessness as quickly as possible,” said coalition member Desiree Eden Ocampo, executive director at Rahab’s Sisters. “Our strong hope is that Mayor Wilson will continue to be open-minded and listen to researchers, frontline providers and people with lived experience to craft effective, lasting solutions.”

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About Welcome Home Coalition:
Welcome Home is a multicultural and intersectional alliance in the Portland metropolitan region that uses its collective resources to build a movement for housing justice.

#Housing #PortlandOr #HousingFirst #PDX

https://welcomehomecoalition.org/

The policy brief mentioned above:
https://welcomehomecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WHC_Policy-Brief_April2025_final.pdf