All housing issues can be divided into the following three distinct and meaningful MFI, i.e. Median Family Income, categories.
1. 0-80% MFI, aka Public Housing. This includes all homeless housing at the bottom end. Government is entirely responsible for this category.
2. 81-120% MFI, Middle range housing. Government and private businesses need to work together to improve this category.
3. >=121% MFI, Upper range housing. Governments should not waste any time or taxpayer resources on this category.
On June 28, 2018 Metro Ordinance No. 18-1423 was passed. It established that affordable housing is a "matter of metropolitan concern" and allowed Metro to exercise its jurisdiction over a REGIONAL HOUSING POLICY. However, "affordable housing" was NOT defined in the ordinance. Which means that the Metro council voted to establish a new Regional Law WITHOUT defining what it was about. Without this language foundation the entire Ordinance falls apart and everything that followed.
AFFORDABLE housing is a MATHEMATICAL TERM meaning the cost of rent/mortgage + insurance + utilities + taxes are <=30% of household income.
PUBLIC Housing is a HOUSING CATEGORY that requires: means test (household income is between 0 to 80% median family income) + government subsidy (any kind any amount) + rental agreement.
Most PUBLIC housing is NOT AFFORDABLE housing.
When Metro issued its 2018 Affordable Housing BOND it defined Affordable Housing as land and improvements for residential units occupied by low-income households making 80% or less of the area median income. See definition of PUBLIC Housing above.
When Metro issued its 2020 Supportive Housing Services TAX it defined its goal as funding wraparound services, rent assistance, and homelessness prevention across the tri-county region. See definition of PUBLIC Housing above.
Oregon's Metro Regional Government deliberately and repeatedly misused language to misdirect and confuse voters into thinking that it, Metro, was going to execute an Equitable Regional Housing Plan entirely focused on households with between 0 to 80% median family income, i.e. Public Housing. Instead, Metro merely funneled taxpayers' hopeful dollars back to the three jurisdictions, Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties which the voters had already recognized as failures. Voters wanted to believe that Metro would succeed where the others had failed.
In Addition*
The city and Multnomah County will decommission more than 1,000 adult shelter beds between them by the end of the year. That's about a third of the beds that existed in January. There will also be fewer day centers, fewer street outreach teams and less eviction prevention funding, among other cuts.
How the Portland area got to this point just six years after voters approved a tax that has generated $1.6 billion for homeless services across the metro region is a convoluted story of rash promises, unexpected catastrophe, floods of money, contested spending priorities and several factors outside local control.
Many of the people who voted for the Metro Supportive Housing tax were looking for an end to homelessness and have watched the ensuing rise in people living outside as a sure sign of government ineptitude.
In an April poll commissioned by The Oregonian/OregonLive, 83% of Multnomah County voters said the government was doing a poor job spending tax dollars to address homelessness.
This perception began almost immediately after the tax passed and colored the debate over how to spend the money, which a large swath of the public and many in the business community expected to be enough to address homelessness once and for all.
Most voters hadn't seen a 2019 Portland State University study laying out the estimated cost of ending homelessness in the region. That report said it would cost between $2.6 billion and $4.1 billion over 10 years just to house and care for all the people who were homeless at some point in 2017. To also help everyone at risk of homelessness at the time, the report estimated it would cost an additional $8.7 billion to $21 billion over 10 years.
Those larger figures soar far above what the current tax will ever bring in, a fact also established in a separate February 2020 report by ECONorthwest, an economic analysis firm.
"Importantly, the initiative should not be expected to end homelessness," the ECONorthwest report states. "The resources would be insufficient to reach additional tens of thousands of low-income, non-disabled people who are severely rent burdened."
[Keep in mind that the PSU analysis was published in 2019. It is now seven years later. There is now a dramatically increased need for Public Housing and a significant decrease in government funding to address the problem.]
As of 2026, Multnomah County alone counted more than 18,000 people living without stable housing. That's more than four times the number of homeless residents it was aware of in 2019. The huge jump is due partly to more accurate data collection, paid for by the new tax. But it also marks an actual increase.
The locations available to place or build new shelters were almost universally controversial among neighbors.
A vanishingly small percentage of people moved through shelter into housing. A report from January showed that in fiscal year 2025, just 16% of people exiting shelters funded by the city or the county were leaving for permanent housing.
The Supportive Housing Services tax accounts for 61% of this year's Multnomah County Homeless Services Department budget, compared to 42% in 2023. That means that pretty much every homeless service provided by the county is now at least partially dependent on the local tax.
"We have failed to be honest with the public about the scale of the problem," Angela Martin, the former director of Here Together, a coalition of local businesses and service providers that helped write and promote the tax, said. "They hear we want to solve homelessness and not if we have the resources to do it."
To get the public on side again, Martin said the time for stark honesty has arrived. In recent months, the county seems to have started to take this advice to heart. This coming year, they've said to expect homelessness to increase.
Metro Maps Expose Inequitable Distribution Of Public Housing Units
The Metro/Oregon Public Housing Location Maps, https://www.goodgrowthnw.org/maps, generously developed by Portland State University students and faculty, reveals inequitable percentages of Public Housing units within Metro's authority and declaration of a "matter of metropolitan concern" including Clackamas county at 3%, Washington county at 5% and Multnomah county at 11%. This inequity can also be found by the dramatic and indefensible differences among all Oregon counties ranging from Wheeler county with 0.11% Public Housing Units to Multnomah county with 11.44% Public Housing Units. More than 9,000 individual users have accessed these maps more the 36,000 times between July 21, 2022 and September 12, 2026. These maps are a vital component of any housing conversation in Oregon.
Equitable Distribution of Public Housing Units is the only legitimate and defensible housing policy Metro can and must support.
Most voters and taxpayers do not care about these policy choices. Their goal is to get homeless persons removed from illegally camping on public property.
Resolving our region's Public Housing challenges BEGINS with a majority of the elected players agreeing on the necessity of a REGIONAL HOUSING POLICY and then actively making public efforts to achieve the goals of that policy which must be Equitable Distribution of Public Housing AND holding Metro accountable for development, oversight and execution of that Regional Policy.
Voters and taxpayers within Metro's catchment deserve to know the truth and accountability transparency of the views of every elected official's understanding of Regional Housing policy under Metro's authority and control.
What Do YOU Think?
Do you accept Metro's performance as honestly establishing a successful, sustainable and equitable REGIONAL Housing Policy?
Do you know how many of those who represent you in various government jurisdictions accept Metro's performance as honestly establishing a successful, sustainable and equitable REGIONAL Housing Policy?
Dear Fellow Oregonian:
You now have as much, and probably more, relevant and useful information about Public Housing policy and politics as any elected official in our state. You are well armed to make credible, defensible and data based arguments. Your votes and your actions will determine the viability of an honest, successful, sustainable and equitable REGIONAL Housing Policy. Don't rely on your current elected officials. Use your VOTE and VOICE.
Richard Ellmyer
Portland resident since 1975.
Oregon Voter since 1971. NAV, Non Affiliated Voter. Citizen Activist.
Campaign manager and legislative assistant to state senator Bill McCoy 1980-1981.
Campaign manager and senior staff to Multnomah county commissioner Gladys McCoy 1981-1984.
Celebrate North Portland award 2016 for Volunteer Work and Service with Political and Social Issues Impacting North Portland.
Certified Oregon Change Agent by Governor John Kitzhaber 2011.
PSU Senior Adult Learner, Spring 2021 - Public Participation GiS, 500 level class
PSU Senior Adult Learner, Spring 2024 - Planning and Housing Markets, 500 level class
Author of more stories on the politics, players and policies of Public Housing in Oregon over the last twenty-five years than all other journalists and elected officials combined.
Project Champion and Data Wrangler - Metro/Oregon Public Housing Location Maps https://www.goodgrowthnw.org/maps
GIS for Activism conference, May 23, 2022, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon
Richard Ellmyer - How I, A Citizen Activist, Used GIS To Effectively Tell A Necessary Yet Unavailable Truth About Public Housing
30 minute Video https://media.pdx.edu/media/t/1_2vrzokta
Lifelong Learning at PSU by Jennifer Jordan-Wong.
LET KNOWLEDGE SERVE THE CITY [Section] "Richard used a course he audited at PSU to create a citizen activist mapping tool to benefit Oregon residents, stakeholders, and policy makers…His interest in mapping as a tool for change began when he noticed that public housing was not being distributed equitably"
Author of The Ellmyer Report, a newsletter that informs, educates and influences on public policy. Its target audiences are elected officials, journalists and civically engaged citizens. Facebook, Portland Politics Plus. Contributor: Patch news.
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Portland area leaders are dismantling a third of the homeless shelter system they just built
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