A notice of an illegal campsite, posted along the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade in Portland, March 26, 2024.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
Oregon’s homelessness crisis is still a problem of emergency proportions, Gov. Tina Kotek said Thursday.
Two years after formally announcing a homelessness state of emergency, Kotek extended the declaration for a second time, issuing an executive order that will remain in effect until early 2026.
With the move, Kotek said the state will stay the course on policies that have sent money and other assistance to areas of the state with the largest increases in homeless residents in recent years.
The governor’s office has repeatedly touted the results of that work alongside other investments. Last October, Kotek announced the state was on pace to add or maintain 4,100 shelter beds, rehouse 2,700 households that had become homeless and prevent another 24,000 households from sliding into homelessness by July of this year.
In a release Thursday, it appeared to have upped some of those numbers, predicting 5,500 shelter beds would be funded by the state by July, and 3,300 people would have been rehoused.
Despite those efforts — and billions in public dollars spent to support them — Oregon’s homeless numbers continue to swell. Housing and homelessness are likely to be key priorities in the legislative session that begins Jan. 21.
According to numbers released last month by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Oregon’s overall homeless population — counted on a single night in January 2024 — had risen by 13.6%, or about 2,700 people, compared to 2023. That’s less than the 18% increase nationwide but a larger increase than either Washington or California.
The number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Oregon, a designation that can include sleeping in cars, tents or abandoned buildings, had risen by 32% in the 2024 count, or about 3,400 people.
“Since declaring the homelessness emergency response two years ago, we exceeded the targets we set through a statewide homelessness infrastructure we never had before,” Kotek said in a statement Thursday. “But the urgency remains as homelessness continues to increase and we need to see this strategy through.”
Under Kotek’s initial state of emergency declaration, announced right after her 2023 inauguration, areas of the state that have seen homelessness rise the fastest created “multi-agency coordination” groups.
The bodies are made up of shelter operators, behavioral health officials, treatment providers, landlords and more and were tasked with coming up with concrete actions to address the crisis and were able to apply for emergency funding passed by lawmakers in the 2023 session.
Kotek said Thursday that extending the emergency order gives the state better flexibility to “sustain the system needed to reduce homelessness.”
And while the most recent available data shows Oregon heading in the wrong direction, the governor insists progress is being made. Her office has repeatedly touted estimates that, by June 30, the state will be able to house the equivalent of one in three people who were homeless at the time she took office.
“We must stay the course on what we see working,” Kotek said.