'Shocking' amount spent on Portland metro homeless interventions

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) -- Have you ever wondered how much the Portland metro area spends on homeless interventions? John Tapogna's team at ECOnorthwest crunched the numbers.

Local governments and nonprofits in the Tri-County area (Multnomah-Washington-Clackamas counties) spent $531 million in fiscal year 2023 on homelessness interventions, a 70% increase from the previous year.

"The number itself was shocking," said Tapogna, a senior policy advisor.

The spending increase came from Metro's Supportive Housing Services Measure and one-time federal pandemic relief funding. But there are many, many different streams of revenue at play.

"It's a terribly complex puzzle piece," Tapogna said.

The federal government was the largest funder at $198 million between its traditional appropriations—mostly issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development—and one-time monies from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Spending from the regional SHS reached $144 million—up from $52 million in FY 2022.

At face value, the numbers are huge. But the ECOnorthwest privately-funded study found that more than 100,000 Tri-County residents were literally homeless or at a high risk of becoming homeless in 2023.

"So when you put (the expenditures) in the context of 100,000 people who this is serving, it doesn't seem like that much money," he told KOIN 6 News.

The report’s careful tracking is rare.

"That's kind of shocking, given that this is, the public's top concern. It is a humanitarian crisis," Tapogna said.

Most states and cites don't monitor their homeless spending. For example, in California, the state’s auditor recently rebuked an interagency council for its failure to track statewide expenditures on homelessness.

ECOnorthwest’s search for comparable data in academic and professional literature turned up few examples.

However, New York City is an exception given the region’s multi-decade challenge with the issue and unique right-to-shelter law. The city’s spending on homelessness reached $3.5 billion in FY 2023—or $429 per resident population. By comparison, tri-county Portland’s FY 2023 spending equates to $295 per capita.

Funding for this project came from Homeless Strategic Initiatives, which received an anonymous donation.

Homeless Strategic Initiatives (HSI) director Stephanie Wieber sees the analysis as a critical input to help local agencies understand the funding landscape, align their strategies, and accelerate relief for the region’s unhoused.

“With so many funders and implementers, improved coordination is an imperative,” Wieber said.

The report details spending across key uses: temporary shelter and services for the homeless were the largest expenditure at $225 million, about 42% of the total spending. That was followed by $137 million for housing placement and another $118 million for supportive housing.

"So this is a system that is getting mature and sizable in fast order," Tapogna said.

The bigger the budget gets, he said, the more critical it is to rigorously track spending.

"It is thinking about how do we put each one of these dollars that we have to its highest and best use so that we can bring some long overdue relief to the people who really need it," he said.

This 3-year tracking project will continue for another year, when it winds up with the conclusion of the 2024-25 fiscal year.

Homeless strategy advocates urge the Tri-County governments to keep tracking their spending, believing it's essential for an effective response to homelessness.

“With this project, Tri-County Portland has important information that most other regions don’t," Wieber said. "You can’t marshal an effective response to homelessness without knowing what you’re spending. This work needs to continue.”