Board adopts ordinance renaming Joint Office of Homeless Services; department gives budget and shelter update

Multnomah County commissioners adopted an ordinance renaming the Joint Office of Homeless Services the Homeless Services Department and heard an update on shelter, housing placements and fiscal pressures facing the homeless response system.

"This change is a really small but important symbol of the way our system has evolved," Dan Field, director of the Homeless Services Department, told the board during the second reading of the ordinance. The name change will take effect July 1, officials said.

Field presented high-level performance and budget information as the department heads into the FY 2026 budget process. He said the department and its partners placed hundreds more people into housing in 2024 and early 2025 and opened new shelter capacity: "Multnomah County has opened 17 new shelters, all with services, of some sort or another connected to them since 2020," he said. Field added that the county and city were supporting roughly 3,000 shelter beds across the system, with additional beds coming online.

But Field warned of significant fiscal headwinds. He told the commissioners that the department is building a FY 2026 budget that could be more than $100 million lower than the current year, citing a required 12% reduction in county general funds, the loss of ARPA dollars, uncertainty in state funding and a potential decline in regional supportive housing services (SHS) revenue. "Metro's official forecast for Multnomah County SHS ... has dropped by $22,000,000 for this fiscal year and then they're predicting a similar drop for next year," Field said, and added that year-to-date collections are trending below Metro's forecast.

Commissioners pressed for more granular and publicly accessible metrics. Commissioner Brim Edwards asked the department to report net changes in the number of unsheltered people — inflow versus outflow — so the public can reconcile expanded shelter and housing activity with the visible street conditions. Several commissioners asked for dashboards disaggregated by population subgroups (families, youth, people with behavioral health or substance use disorders), bed counts and length-of-stay metrics to better evaluate flow through shelter and into permanent housing.

Commissioner Brim Edwards and others also emphasized that while shelter is costly, it provides safety and improves community livability. Field said the department is developing a population dashboard and expects to launch additional metrics within months, and that staff will return with midyear financials and proposals for the FY 2026 budget process.

The ordinance amending Multnomah County Code chapter 22 to change the office's name passed on a roll-call vote: Commissioners Moyer, Singleton, Brim Edwards, Jones Dixon and Chair Vega Peterson voted yes. The board and department members discussed next steps for updating contracts, documents and communications ahead of the July 1 effective date.