Portland Mayor Keith Wilson campaigned to end unsheltered homelessness in the city, and he recently released his plan for achieving that goal: a proposal to spend an estimated $28 million in the coming year to add thousands of new emergency shelter beds. Meanwhile, the city is facing a $100 million shortfall for the coming fiscal year.
Wilson joined “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller for an interview.
Then-Mayor-Elect Keith Wilson inside the overnight shelter room in Portland Central Church of the Nazarene in southeast Portland, Ore., Nov. 19, 2024. Addressing homelessness by increasing the number of overnight shelters like this one was a central focus of Wilson's mayoral campaign.
Anna Lueck for OPB
Here are some of the top takeaways, edited for clarity and length.
In addition to 1,500 shelter beds already planned from the county, and some nonprofits, Wilson plans to open another 1,500 beds.
“Two weeks ago [we opened] two facilities, and that was 200 people. So just using that math, that’s 15 units or 15 facilities. Now, that’ll give or take based on size. We’re certainly going to look at 50-person shelters or 150-person shelters. It really is dependent on the facility and the operator. But … it’s not just nighttime shelters … it’s four distinct day centers in each district. It’s also storage units, because you want to make sure that anybody unsheltered is connected with their belongings because that’s their past, that you want to make sure it’s connected so they can move into their future once we focus on that housing.”
Why open separate day and nighttime shelters, rather than 24/7 shelters?
“In a normal functioning society … 53% of the people who are homeless are going to go to work the next day. So when you think about that, why do we need 14 hours of a place not being used when somebody’s pouring your coffee or making your sandwich? It’s a misnomer to think that everybody that is homeless is high-acute, addicted or suffering from behavioral health. There are people that are just simply down on their luck that need a place to sleep at night, that don’t want to sleep in their car, and that’s what we provide, and that’s what’s being used mostly throughout the United States.
In Portland, we de-emphasized our nighttime shelters. We’ve actually actively closed or defunded them. And if you look at the period of time when we made that move, that’s when unsheltered homelessness started to skyrocket … We, we’ve created a homeless service system that’s open between 8 and 5, that’s convenient for those that are housed in the working force. But we don’t have enough capacity for those that are suffering at night, and in turn, for providing tents and saying, ‘Go sleep outside,’ as opposed to a safe, dry place at night.”
Wilson’s plan calls for emergency shelter bed numbers to drop again by next year. How will the need decline that quickly?
“When I worked with the Boise mayor, he was very clear. He said, ‘By allowing those encampments and not enforcing your community safety laws, you actually created people coming from the housed community. You actually had people coming from outside the regions of the community.’ It wasn’t until he ended unsheltered homelessness by surging up and providing nighttime care for his community, [that he saw] the numbers rapidly fall …
We [will] help people get back home through reunification … we feel pretty confident that with our research, there are a certain number of individuals that come from other communities. We’re just gonna help them get home … the assumption is that if you have an apartment or you have a shelter bed that you’re going to take that over living on the street. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case in some circumstances.”
Once there are enough shelter beds opened up, what will enforcement look like?
“Enforcement is simply allowing our outreach workers, our community members to go out and say, ‘I want to help you. What does it look like? But you can’t stay here.’ … We do not need to put people in jail, but we cannot allow people to be in tents and makeshift shelters and RVs in our community, which is against our community safety laws … The good thing about this next step is, when we remove that encampment, because we have a shelter available, we explain to the person, you cannot move 500 feet away now and re-establish a new encampment because we have shelter for you.”
Where will the money to fund this come from?
“I’ve had a conversation with the governor, the state legislature. We have a presentation to Metro tomorrow. This is a regional approach to caring for Portland because we’re the community and jurisdiction that’s suffering and everybody is focused on assisting us.”
How will the city address the $100 million budget shortfall?
“I’m not ready to really talk about the budget … We’re in scenario planning right now, and we’re looking at a host of different options to pursue. But one of the things I just want to be clear is that the budget must prioritize public well-being and solving the unsheltered homelessness crisis and, we’re going out in March and April to provide district-by-district listening sessions to the public, but I think some of the polls last week, they were crystal clear: People want to have our homelessness crisis addressed, and we are focused on doing that through the budget.”
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation:
