When Numbers Become Neighbors: Rethinking Portland’s Homelessness Crisis

 By Arella D Ram

 

 

James Earley, “Violet and Blue Silence,”

 

The new “by-name list” unveiled in Multnomah County’s recent data release is not only far superior to the outdated point-in-time count—it exposes, almost uncomfortably, the government’s earlier posture toward Portland’s homelessness crisis. As OPB reported, the old model relied on a single night’s tally in select areas, producing numbers that vastly underestimated the scale of need. Meanwhile, this new system—tracking individuals across programs—immediately revealed more than 14,400 people experiencing homelessness, compared to the 11,000 previously cited. That jump did not reflect an overnight surge in human suffering, but the simple truth that our former method was never designed to see the whole picture.

This forces a painful question: were leaders truly trying to understand the depth of the crisis, or simply meeting the minimum federal requirement to secure funding? When policymakers depend on a one-night snapshot, how could they ever allocate resources accurately? How many thousands slipped through the cracks while reports publicly suggested the situation was “stable”?

These questions matter because they point to something deeper than bureaucratic oversight. Portland’s homelessness crisis has continued to grow in the shadow of these insufficient tools, revealing a civic culture often content with the appearance of care—annual counts, familiar language, ritualized concern—without the infrastructure capable of honest measurement. When a crisis worsens alongside these rituals, the disconnect is telling.

The shift to a by-name list marks a turning point. It acknowledges what the point-in-time count obscured: that homelessness is not an abstract category but a ledger of human lives. OPB’s reporting shows that people are entering homelessness faster (1,277 newly homeless) than they are exiting it (865 people housed). It shows that shelter outcomes vary dramatically—county-run alternative shelters transition 43% of residents into permanent housing, while large congregate shelters manage only 12%. These disparities prove not only that the crisis is personal, but that its solutions must be as well.

The by-name list forces this specificity. It demands that we see the crisis not as a sweeping blur of tents, headlines, and political arguments, but as thousands of neighbors with different needs and different paths home. It is harder to ignore a crisis when every number has a name attached to it.

If anything, this system reveals a deeper truth: the moment we begin to identify people, we become responsible for them. Data becomes accountability. Numbers become neighbors. Policy becomes personal.

We should care deeply about this because a society that cannot name its most vulnerable residents cannot claim to be just—and cannot hope to heal. If we care about accuracy, accountability, or simple human dignity, then we must support systems that tell the truth, even when the truth is uncomfortable. Portland’s by-name list is one such system.

The next step is ours: to ask harder questions of our leaders, demand transparent data, and support approaches that treat homelessness not as a distant civic failure but as a shared obligation—one name at a time.

To understand how this shift works in practice and how you can donate to the cause of solving the homeless crisis visit: https://community.solutions/take-action/