Works Cited

Portland Voice Report #2 - June 8, 2025

(Reader feedback welcome)

• Spending by Portland Solutions (the City of Portland’s homeless services agency) is from the published FY 2024 budget.

• Spending by Multnomah County’s Joint Office of Homeless Services is from their published FY 2024 budget.

• Police and Fire homeless spending is one third of the city's Public Safety Budget (includes 911).  Anecdotally, somewhat more than that, about 35% to 40% of their time, is spent responding to homeless calls and issues.

• Behavioral Health, Addiction treatment: the total is from the form 990’s of the major providers.  We adjusted the totals based on estimates of how much of the total is spent in Multnomah County (vs surrounding counties), and how much (typically 50% to 67%) of their clients are homeless versus housed patients.  These estimates are based on interviews with the providers.

• For some clinics (Unity, SARA) for which 990’s are not available, we used the number of beds times $75K/year/bed.  

• Most of this money comes from Medicaid, some from private charity, some from the county health department. 

• ER and Hospital Costs:  Oregon Health Authority collects data on homeless ER and hospital discharges and average costs.  The provided us with a spreadsheet showing that data for Multnomah County, that is available on request.

• Key data for 2024:  

• Homeless ER discharges, MultCo, 5,382, Avg cost $1,911

• Homeless in patient days, MultCo, 46,733, Avg cost/inpatient day $3,080

• These numbers are based on codes entered during treatment and are likely an undercount, especially for ER usage

• Some of these costs are covered by Medicaid, a lot is absorbed by the hospitals and built into the rates charged to paying patients. i.e. to you and me.

• 11% of the people HRAP placed into housing come from shelters

• HRAP Q1, 2025 report says that they placed 10,681 people into housing between April 2024 and March 2025.

• The report further says that they placed 1,190 (11% of the total) people from shelters into housing.  These are the actual homeless people placed into housing.

• The other 89% of the people placed into housing were from the “at-risk” population, i.e. people that, by government judgement, might become homeless, but were actually housed at the time.  While this may or may not significantly reduce the number of people becoming homeless (there is no data to support or not support that), it does not help those who are actually on the street.

• Data available in the HRAP Dashboard | Tableau Public