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Portland mayor tells House committee emergency nighttime shelters are the missing link in city’s homelessness response
Summary
Mayor Keith Wilson told the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness on Feb. 24 that Portland needs scalable, low‑cost emergency nighttime shelter beds as part of an immediate crisis response and thanked state leaders for proposed funding to sustain shelter capacity.
Mayor Keith Wilson told the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness on Feb. 24 that Portland needs a rapid expansion of scalable, low‑barrier emergency nighttime shelter beds to address an unprecedented rise in unsheltered homelessness.
Wilson said the city urgently needs what he called the “missing link” — surge capacity emergency nighttime shelters — and thanked the committee for considering roughly $217 million to support 24/7 beds. “We must change the way we think about this crisis and immediately and decisively respond,” Wilson said.
Wilson framed the request as a crisis response aimed at reducing deaths and visible suffering on city streets and restoring public safety and livability. He said Portland recorded 456 deaths of people living outside in 2023 and described…
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