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Portland Mayor Keith Wilson is on the cusp of achieving one of his primary campaign promises: Setting up 1,500 new shelter beds by Dec. 1.
As of Sunday, Portland has 890 city-funded shelter beds – most of them overnight-only – that did not exist before Wilson took office. Another 200-bed overnight-only shelter is set to open in eight days. And locations and supplies have been secured for more than 500 additional “flex beds” that can be made available within 24 hours, according to city officials.
“We set an unrealistic goal and then we worked relentlessly to make sure that we were going to achieve it,” Wilson told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an interview Wednesday, crediting his staff for their sustained effort to hit the ambitious target.
Creating upwards of 1,000 new shelter beds and having 500 more on standby in less than a year will be a major political victory for Wilson, one many political watchers doubted he’d achieve.
Dan Lavey, a partner at Gallatin Public Affairs and founder of People for Portland, which pushed for a 2022 ballot measure that would have directed more funding to emergency shelters and required cities to enforce camping bans, said the mayor’s success at challenging the status quo by setting up so many new shelter beds so fast is “remarkable.”
“I didn’t expect him to be able to accomplish it and I think it’s great that he has,” Lavey said. “Portland and Multnomah County could use something where you could point to an elected official actually accomplishing a goal they set out for themselves.”
Despite that success, the mayor has not achieved his larger campaign promise of ending unsheltered homelessness in Portland. In fact, the problem is worse.
Nearly 7,500 people are living outside or in their vehicle in Multnomah County, the vast majority of them in Portland, according to the county’s latest data. There are about 1,000 more people living unsheltered now than when Wilson took office in January, though the total has remained fairly steady since April.
And even if the city meets its shelter bed target and fills every bed, there will still be about 6,000 more people living outside or in their vehicle than there are sleeping in new, overnight-only shelter beds.
“We try not to get hung up on numbers,” Wilson said Wednesday when asked about that gap. “Really, the goal is to always have enough beds to provide care when somebody’s ready to come inside. That’s what ending unsheltered homelessness is … and we’re going to achieve that.”
It’s not entirely clear how many beds will be “enough” so long as that number remains smaller than the number of people living outside. The mayor’s supporters say his plan to open new shelters and day centers, ramp up the city’s camping ban enforcement and ultimately increase affordable housing availability can work if he stays the course. Meanwhile, Wilson’s laser-like focus this year on shelter beds has eroded some of his support with homeless services providers and his recent push to enforce the city’s camping ban has weakened his backing on City Council.
Kristle Delihanty, executive director of PDX Saints Love, a day center and housing navigation nonprofit, was one of Wilson’s advisors when he ran for mayor last year. She said she initially appreciated his earnestness and willingness to listen. But Delihanty has since become disillusioned with a man she now sees as a smooth operator who cares more about hiding homeless people from housed Portlanders than about helping them.
“He’s been successful doing what he set out to do and also it was a marketing gimmick,” Delihanty said. “He didn’t solve and nor will he solve homelessness or poverty or the systemic issues that cause homelessness.”
Still, the mayor’s practical approach to doing something, even if it’s not perfect, has won him plaudits from other providers. Scott Kerman, executive director of privately-funded Blanchet House, a soup kitchen and residential recovery program based in Old Town, said he doesn’t agree with everything the mayor has done, but he’s been largely impressed.
“We’ve not really seen that kind of quick responsive action in our community in the last five years,” Kerman said. “He has opened these shelters and gotten them going with a success that has surprised me because I’m not used to seeing that kind of follow through.”
Tackling a complex problem
Portland’s ballooning homelessness problem can hardly be blamed on Wilson, who has been mayor for less than a year and controls only a fraction of the region’s homeless services budget.
The steady uptick in people experiencing homelessness in the city is part of a years-long, national trend driven by a mix of overlapping crises, including growing wage inequity, a dearth of affordable housing, rising evictions, cheap and readily available hard drugs and a lack of sufficient mental health care. It’s also likely to get a whole lot worse in the coming months, given the potentially drastic federal cuts to funding streams that support things like rent assistance, medical care and food aid for people living in or near poverty.
Still, the nature of local leaders’ response to homelessness in the community matters and voters have indicated a deep dissatisfaction with past leaders’ attempts to make a difference.
Former Mayor Ted Wheeler also promised to end unsheltered homelessness – by 2018 – without success. In 2023, Wheeler got the city into the sheltering game and oversaw the construction of 10 new 24-hour alternative shelters with nearly 600 sleeping pods, 90 dorm-style beds and more than 100 RV safe parking spots. While many people moved through these shelters to housing, homelessness writ large persisted and even increased.
Some smaller cities, like Bakersfield and San Diego in California, have reduced homelessness in the past year, according to federal data. And a national effort begun in 2009 to reduce veteran homelessness by offering housing first has also been broadly successful. These positive stories show that success is possible, according to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, a national advocacy organization.
Some advocates for homeless people in Portland have expressed disappointment that Wilson has focused on shelter ahead of housing. Critics have also raised concerns about the new shelters’ effectiveness, safety and impact on the neighborhoods in which they are located.
Reporting by The Oregonian/OregonLive found that the city’s Moore Street Shelter, which opened in January and is run by The Salvation Army, spent half of the year out of compliance with a state law requiring basic health and safety training for staff. An analysis of public records also showed that calls for police, fire and ambulance responses in the neighborhood tripled in 2025 over the same time period in 2024.
And the latest phase of the mayor’s plan, which calls for Portland police to proactively enforce the city’s camping ban, has angered advocates and several of the more progressive City Council members, who have called camp removals of any kind cruel and ineffective.
“I can’t in good conscience continue to vote to fund this approach,” Councilor Angelita Morillo said from the dais at an explosive City Council meeting earlier this month where councilors rejected her amendment that would have gutted the city’s camp removal program and reallocated funding to services like rent assistance.
Morillo added that the overnight-only shelter beds were “very welcome,” but not a complete solution. She said they also could be used as a cover to force homeless people out of public view through stricter camping ban enforcement.
“Let’s be honest, a mat on the floor doesn’t move anyone closer to housing,” Morillo said at the meeting. “It is a temporary respite at best and a cruel excuse to displace and dispossess at worst. And I’m afraid that’s what we’re starting to see as we approach Dec. 1.”
Wilson said that is a misunderstanding of his priorities. Stricter enforcement of the camping ban is meant to keep people safe, he said.
“We’re not abandoning people to the streets anymore as we wait to build housing,” he said. “Whatever that person’s need is, we’re going to find that need and we’re going to fill that need.”
A major element in the new enforcement is to serve warrants to people facing criminal charges and “hiding in plain sight” on Portland’s streets, according to Wilson. In the first three weeks of the city’s ramped up enforcement efforts, police arrested at least 66 people and more than 65 people accepted an offer of shelter. Police also served nearly 100 warrants and issued dozens of camping warnings. So far, police have issued fewer than 20 camping citations, which come with a $100 fine.
To make the new enforcement efforts successful and humane, Wilson believes it is critical to have hundreds of available beds of many types open each night.
Using money from Metro and the state, the city has budgeted $20.8 million in this fiscal year for several types of shelter, including family beds, sober beds, treatment beds and overnight-only beds at both women-only and all-gender shelters. Most of the beds are in new, overnight-only shelters, but 130 are in existing shelters or treatment programs now paid for by city funding.
As of Nov. 18, 3,174 people had slept in the overnight-only shelters for at least one night. Many returned night after night, according to county records, with stay lengths ranging from one night to 119 nights.
City data shows the new shelters are rarely full. Two shelters that opened in August have yet to fill more than half of their beds on average each night. The Moore Street Shelter in North Portland has had the highest usage, with nightly rates between 70% and 91% since Feb. 1.
City officials said they expected more people to stay at the shelters as the temperature drops in the coming months. Wilson’s plan has always called for reducing the number of beds in the summer and scaling back further as other parts of his strategy bring unsheltered homelessness under control.
Most of the new shelters offer a mat on the ground or on a bed, a blanket, a pillow, an evening snack and coffee in the morning. They tend to be open from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and people who spoke to The Oregonian/OregonLive while waiting to enter or just after leaving the shelters at various points in the last 11 months were generally positive about their experiences.
In contrast, a majority of the 24-hour shelters offer two meals a day, case management and housing placement services. Those shelters – there are nearly 40 of them, including 10 run by the city – tend to have average daily usage rates above 90%. To offer similar services at the overnight shelters, the city would need to work with the county, which commands nearly all of the available funding for wrap-around services.
At 5:30 a.m. on a drizzly Monday morning in November, a dozen people were making their way out of the 100-bed Moore Street Shelter. At least half lined up to board the 72 bus running west down North Killingsworth Street. Several more gathered in doorways, leaning over lighters and pipes. Smoke trailed out above their heads, lit by outdoor lights in the gradually receding dark.
A man who had come out of the shelter waited for close to 15 minutes to speak to a reporter from The Oregonian/OregonLive only to discover she was not there to offer housing help as he had assumed. The 38-year-old Portlander said the shelter had been “somewhere to sleep,” but he had hoped to meet someone who could help him increase his income and find an apartment he could afford.
Molly Hogan, executive director of Welcome Home, a coalition of homeless service providers, said that shelter should absolutely be a part of a holistic approach to addressing homelessness, but it should also include greater investment in housing and services.
A system predicated on building more and more shelter beds “pays to continue people’s homelessness without investing in the rent assistance and peer support and supportive services needed to end people’s homelessness,” Hogan said.
She said she’s heard from people who stay in the overnight shelters that they “got a bottle of water and are told to call 211,” referencing the county’s homeless services hotline.
“And that’s what (city officials) mean by services,” she added. “And then that’s not sufficient.”
Hogan also said few people who were homeless wanted to stay in shelters because the sites are often difficult to get to and occasionally unsafe.
Wilson said Wednesday that it was appropriate for city officials to shelter as many people as they could with what they had rather than waiting to line up every possible service someone might require.
“That’s how you address an emergency,” Wilson said. “You don’t make excuses. You don’t blame others. We have only one crisis right now and that’s to provide life-saving care for all those individuals that are ready to come inside for help.”
In addition to the new shelters, Wilson and his team have opened a new Old Town day center and provided funding for extended hours at a second.
And, as of Nov. 18, the city’s street outreach team had helped 165 people return to homes outside of Portland. Twenty-one of those people went to other cities in Oregon or Washington. The remainder returned to towns and cities as far away as Alaska, Kentucky and Mexico.
Housing people
Andy Goebel, who runs shelter provider Sunstone Way, said he applauds the mayor’s dogged pursuit of his sheltering goal and hopes it is followed by an equally dogged pursuit of long-term housing strategies.
“As one who works in sheltering, I’m not interested in warehousing people,” said Goebel, who was on the mayor’s advisory committee last fall. “I’m interested in housing people.”
Goebel said he told Wilson that he would help with the effort to provide overnight sheltering with the understanding that the mayor would continue to focus on a longer-term plan to increase the affordable housing supply.
Wilson said that remains a priority and the city is taking “big swings” on housing. He now holds weekly meetings about increasing the affordable housing supply.
“We’re really trying to add inventory as fast as we possibly can, because homelessness is a housing problem, full stop,” Wilson said. “And so therefore, we must, with equal effort, not only focus on shelter, we must focus on housing.”
County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards said she’s attended the mayor’s housing meetings and was impressed by the level of concrete detail discussed.
“It’s literally an Excel spreadsheet where they were just going cell by cell, talking about the data and who’s being served,” she said. “It was down to a granular level, but that’s what you have to do.’”
In July, Wilson and City Council also waived fees on new construction for three years to encourage developers to invest in Portland.
Goebel said that whether the mayor’s plan to end unsheltered homelessness will be a success remains “an open question,” but he still thinks it could work if Wilson is as relentless about housing as he has been about shelter.
“I’m still keeping my fingers crossed,” he said. “I really am.”
Shane Dixon Kavanaugh contributed reporting to this story.
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