A report released Tuesday on how Multnomah County spent its portion of the Metro homeless services tax in fiscal year 2026 showed that, once again, the county sheltered and housed thousands of people even as thousands more lost their housing.
Annual reports show that in every year since at least 2020, when voters approved the regional tax, more people have become homeless than have become housed. Detractors argue this is proof that the tax is failing to deliver on its promise to voters that it could “end our homelessness crisis.”
Andrew Hoan, president of the Portland Metro Chamber business association and an architect of the original tax, told The Oregonian/OregonLive earlier this year that he sees the measure’s failure to achieve that goal as evidence of its “horrific failures” and “squandered” resources.
“Writ large, the measure had a goal,” Hoan said. “It is not meeting its goal.”
Advocates have countered that the problem is more nuanced. For one thing, the tax dollars do nothing to slow down the rise in the regional cost of living, for example. The money can be used only to directly support people who are currently homeless to head towards housing. And that path is rarely a straight line.
“Don’t tell me the tax dollars don’t work because look at me,” Phillip Pollard, a formerly homeless chef, told The Oregonian/OregonLive this summer on the day he moved into a subsidized apartment he could afford on his social security income. He found the apartment with help of county-funded shelter and housing services.
In the 2026 fiscal year, Multnomah County spent a total of $168.7 million in supportive housing tax dollars, according to this year’s report.
A review of the county’s expenditures in the last fiscal year show that a majority of its Metro tax dollars, 80%, were spent by the Multnomah County Homeless Services Department. Another 14% of the funds went to the county’s behavioral health department for addiction and mental health services, including housing and shelter support.
Of the Metro tax money spent by Multnomah County last fiscal year, a third went to shelter. Nearly another third, 29%, went to supportive housing for people who need ongoing services to live independently.
This fiscal year, facing a 21.7% budget cut in its Homeless Services Department, the county has slashed its shelter budget and closed more than 600 shelter beds. County leaders have said the goal is to use the remaining shelter beds more efficiently and move people more quickly into housing. Done right, they said, the strategy will reduce homelessness in Multnomah County by 5% over the next two years.
Despite those challenges, Metro tax dollars paid to place 1,463 Multnomah County residents in housing in the last fiscal year. The county also used the money to keep an additional 4,592 people in their homes. Those were people who the county had already helped into housing.
The county also used the regional tax dollars to help more than 1,700 people avoid eviction; to shelter more than 4,400 people over the course of the fiscal year, and to move 201 people into permanent housing for people who need continued support to live independently.
The introduction to the county’s report notes that 2026 marks the midway point in the tax’s 10-year lifespan. Metro leaders could seek to renew the measure as early as this year, though timing for that plan is unclear.
Nathanial VerGow, the new director of the Homeless Services Department, opened the report with a pitch to keep that tax going.
“Having worked for many years across all levels of homeless services, from direct frontline care to program administration, I have been deeply impressed by this region’s commitment to solving homelessness,” VerGow wrote. “This dedication is most clearly evidenced by the voters who made this work possible by approving the Supportive Housing Services measure in 2020.”
Polls have shown that the measure is not especially popular with voters and a plan to ask them to approve a new homeless services tax in 2025 was ultimately shelved. Since then, the scale of the federal government’s proposed cuts has made it clear that having a local funding source for homeless services could prove critical, though the Trump administration’s efforts have so far been stymied by ongoing challenges in federal court.
Annual reports on how Clackamas and Washington County officials spent their portions of the regional homeless services tax dollars are expected soon.
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