The Portland City Council is taking public comment about the FY26 Budget at the Finance Committee meeting on Thursday, May 1, 2025 and at the full Council meeting on Monday, May 5, 2025. Please attend and make your voices heard, OR email them before May 5 at noon to ensure your comments are included in their packets!

The proposed FY26 budget for the City of Portland would close the City of Portland’s Family Shelter, located on the peninsula. Families would be relocated to the shelter at 166 Riverside Street, eliminating 179 beds from the shelter system. The people staying at 166 Riverside, single people seeking asylum, would be displaced and enter a shelter system already at capacity.

More than 100 people are already sleeping outside in Portland every night. The loss of 179 emergency shelter beds would have catastrophic impacts across the entire City of Portland. More people would be living outside – in encampments, in doorways, and on our streets.

With the opening of the City of Portland’s Homeless Services Center (HSC) and 166 Riverside Street Shelter two years ago, the City of Portland and social service providers worked together to move people from encampments into shelter. We made considerable progress and the HSC is full nearly every night (e.g. in March 2025, the HSC utilization rate was 96.74%). Shelters across the state are also full nearly every night.

If we as a community do not want to see encampments or people sleeping in doorways throughout the peninsula, shelters must be supported, remain open, and be accessible.

Please TAKE ACTION TODAY to ensure that there is no loss of shelter beds in the City of Portland. Shelters must be sustainably funded, so that they can remain open and provide vital, life-saving services that benefit our entire community.

Thanks for all you do to support our neighbors experiencing homelessness!