Multnomah County’s Homelessness Surges 26% as New Data Reveals Crisis Outpacing Solutions

People are becoming homeless faster than Multnomah County’s homeless services can provide a solution.

New Public Homelessness Data Dashboard

This information is contained in a new Homeless Services Department public dashboard that tracks homelessness and will be updated monthly.

The dashboard carries data collected by homeless services that work with the county and is the result of several years of collaboration between national experts in the field of homelessness.

From January 2024 to the beginning of 2025, there has been an increase of 26% in the number of homeless people, rocketing from 11,430 to 14,361 individuals. This situation highlights why the millions of tax dollars pumped into homelessness do not seem able to put a brake on the crisis.

However, only 48% of people listed as homeless in January 2024 were still on the list in January 2025. This could indicate that nearly 6,000 homeless Oregonians were housed in the 12-month period.

Portland Mayor Says Increase in Homelessness is Sobering

Nevertheless, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson has described the increase in homelessness as sobering in reaction to assessing the information contained on the dashboard before it was released for public consumption.

The information was bleak news for city and county officials struggling to balance growing budget deficits.

In February, 1,203 people were entered into the database as newly homeless. Of those, 1,032 were newcomers to the system.

Another sobering aspect of the crisis is the undeniable fact that some people appear to choose to be homeless. This is illustrated by the information that 171 people returned to homelessness after they were given housing.

Takeaway

The Homeless Services Department data dashboard will track the homelessness situation every month.

It depicts the number of people who are homeless and provides information on the number of people cared for with the provision of housing, support services, shelter, and eviction prevention.