Portland IS the Homeless Epidemic

  Portland is a Homeless Hotspot: 

A view through statistics

    Through research for this as well as other classes, I have developed a story based on data and graphs to help illustrate the homeless epidemic in Portland as the worst city in terms of homeless population.

                                                                                                                                    Figure 1.

    It is no surprise to any American when it is said that Portland is going through a homelessness crisis harder than most cities across the country, but through a deeper look into Portland, the stats show a dark story. What is not seen in the mainstream media is a comparison between Portland and other states, as homelessness is usually debated at the state level and not by city. By state, Oregon is not an outlier in terms of the overall number of homeless individuals (see Fig. 1). As to be assumed, California and New York are leaders in number of homeless individuals, along with leaders in terms of cost of living, but what actually might be surprising to Oregon residents is that Oregon is one of the lower states for it's physical size. However, when dissecting Oregon as a whole, we see a different story in comparison to other states. 

                                                                                                                                              Figure 2.

    The dissection of Portland actually begins at the state level, and the number of homeless people per 10,000 people. The story that Figure 1 does not tell is the comparison between these two stats, but by looking at Figure 2, a different story is told. By excluding DC as a state, it can be seen that Oregon is almost tied for 1st in the country for states with the most homeless people per 10,000 people at 42. But how can these graphs show two completely different stories about Oregon? California has a population of about 40 Million people, but Oregon only holds about 4 million, these numbers make Figure 1 look inflated, but when on the same scale (10,000) it is glaringly obvious how bad Oregon's problem actually is, and the next step in this process is to dissect where the problem lies within Oregon.

                                                                                                                                               Figure 3. 

    Figure 3 is where we see exactly where the problem lies within the state of Oregon, Multnomah County. This graph is based on the amount of homeless people in each major county in Oregon. While Multnomah county makes up for more than one third of Oregon's homeless population, what is harder to see is that the immediate surrounding counties of Multnomah make up for less than 10% of Oregon's homeless population. This shows that there is a major saturation of homelessness in Portland alone that make Oregon a leading state in homelessness. Think about that in terms of California or New York, states that have multiple major cities, each of them with higher populations than Portland, and all of those cities added up only just equal the rates of Portland. So on a country wide scale, Portland leads above most states as a whole, a massive concentration of homelessness. To help change the direction that Portland is going in, sign this petition to the Mayor of Portland and the Multnomah County Chair and Commissioners: https://www.change.org/p/mayor-of-portland-oregon-stop-portland-oregon-homelessness#decision-makers-heading. This petition strives to inform the government of the general issues surrounding Portlander's and the homeless together. 

    

                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                                   Figure 4. 

    So where do these stats lead us to in the end of it? Well, there are so many more aspects to this issue, and how up until the Covid-19 pandemic, the US actually had been solving this issue slowly (Figure 4). This grueling dissection of Portland should go to show the rest of the US how not to tackle the homeless issue, as there is clearly something going on in the city, but that issue specifically is a topic for another day. This is all about awareness of the issue, the city that is being impacted the most, and most importantly to spark a dialogue about Portland as a whole. 

All of the Figures in this blog were made by myself, but check out these links for more detail: 

“Hud Releases January 2023 Point-in-Time Count Report.” HUD.Gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 15 Dec. 2023, www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/hud_no_23_278.

Oregonian/OregonLive, Nicole Hayden | The, and Jamie Goldberg | The Oregonian/OregonLive. “Oregon’s Recent Growth in Homelessness among Largest in Nation.” Oregonlive, 5 Apr. 2023, www.oregonlive.com/politics/2023/04/oregons-recent-growth-in-homelessness-among-largest-in-nation.html.

“State of Homelessness: 2023 Edition.” National Alliance to End Homelessness, 6 Jan. 2024, endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/.