Where Does the Money Come From?
This blog is organized around the jurisdictions that provide money for shelter, housing and health services in Multnomah County. Often a source of funding moves through several governmental jurisdictions, but the implementation, in the end, is carried out by nonprofit service providers.
This makes it hard to determine how much money is actually spent because, for instance, Joint Office of Homeless Services (JOHS) money might come from Metro, through Multnomah County or through the City. Federal and state funds will also go through several layers to reach the actual nonprofits providing the services.
This situation leads to an issue we will explore in a future Report: how much is actually spent on overhead when each governmental level touching the money has an overhead as well as the costs of actually providing services incurred by the nonprofits.
Federal Government
In 2024, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded Oregon state and local governments $65,469,261 through the Continuum of Care (CoC) Program to support efforts across the state to address homelessness.
In addition, almost $1 billion became available under a new federal medicaid initiative that started November 1,2024, available to assist people In Oregon at risk of losing their home due to a chronic medical condition or serious medical event.
Of course, it is clear that the current administration intends to reduce social spending funds by clawing back or not disbursing funds making it hard to predict what will actually be available.
State of Oregon
Governor Kotek’s proposed 2025-2027 budget allocates $700 million to address homelessness (including $218 million for shelters; $188 million to transition people from homelessness into housing; and $173 million to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place).
Oregon allocated $350 million in 2024 for “housing production, to create a new housing division to help navigate housing bureaucracies, help fund existing homeless shelters and give cities a one-time chance to bypass state land-use laws to build housing.”
Metro
Metro is a regional government that serves Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties and administers two major pots of money for housing and homelessness.
In 2018, the $652.8 million Affordable Housing Bond measure passed was designed to create 3,900 affordable rental units over five to seven years and was targeted to households making less than 60% of the 2020 area median income.
In May 2020, voters in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties approved the new Supportive Housing Tax (SHS) tax designed to fund supportive housing, eviction prevention and mental health and addiction treatment funded by a tax on the highest Oregon tax brackets for individuals and businesses. This tax was supposed to raise nearly $2.5 billion during its ten year span (2021-2030), but by 2923, an additional $900 million was projected.
Metro administers the money for three counties, each of which gets an equitable share proportional to the SHS tax revenue estimated to be collected from each county and thus Multnomah County receives the largest share. However, although Multnomah County received 45% of the 2024 fiscal year SHS funds from Metro, 84% of the three county homeless population was in Multnomah in 2023.
Portland
In a 2016 Housing Bond, Portland voters approved a $258 million bond to invest in affordable housing. The goal of the bond was to build or buy 1,300 housing units over a five- to eight-year period. A January 2024 Progress Report stated “we will have opened 1,490 units, with three more projects still to come online. And when all is said and done, the Bond will have produced 1,859 affordable homes for the most vulnerable among us — a whopping 43% more than our original promise. All of these homes will be guaranteed affordable for 99 years.”
Home Forward
The mission of Home Forward, previously called Housing Authority of Portland is “affordable housing development, housing choice expansion, services that support quality of life, and advocacy to improve local and national housing systems.” They are a public corporation with their own independent Board of Commissioners like the Port of Portland, and they have 300+ employees. Home Forward is “primarily funded through a combination of rental income from (their) housing communities and grants by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)” and they have an extensive list of Portland area Homes. They work on homeless issues with JOHS, State of Oregon, Multnomah County and numerous other partners. Home Forward’s 2025 Operating Budget is $298 million in Annual Revenue and $295 Million in Expenses.
Conclusion
Where the money comes from to fund housing and services for the homeless in the Portland/ Multnomah County area is opaque. There is no common plan for unifying all the different organizational efforts to deal with homelessness on a County or City-wide level; no single leadership body responsible for the development of a unified plan; poor coordination and inadequate data on the number, situation and needs of the homeless; and no effective qualitative measurement of results achieved by the many providers. As should be no surprise, progress has been disappointingly slow.
Work Cited
1. https://www.hud.gov/sites/default/files/CPD/documents/CoC/CoC-2024-Awards-by-State.pdf
7.https://www.portland.gov/phb/news/2024/1/30/portlands-housing-bond-january-2024-newsletter
8. https://www.homeforward.org/
9.https://www.homeforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Home-Forward-FY25-Budget-Approved.pdf