Vulnerable People and Places Blog

Photo by Sean Foster on Unsplash Drive through Northeast Portland after dark and you will pass them. Old motorhomes pulled up against the curb. Minivans with the back windows covered in cardboard. Sedans with a sleeping bag bunched against the rear window. They look abandoned. They are not. Someone lives there. Vehicle residency is the fastest-growing form of homelessness in Oregon. The state's 2025 Point-in-Time count found 4,850 people living in cars, RVs, and trucks , a 15.3 percent jump in a single year. National researchers have called it the fastest-growing homeless subpopulation in the country. And the stereotype most people carry about who those residents are turns out to be wrong. Many vehicle residents are working. Some are seniors. A surprising number have been doing this for years, holding down jobs while waiting on a housing market that will not take them back. Last September, OPB profiled Rachelle Lacy-Powell, a 59-year-old who had spent five years living ...

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash When Portland's 2021 heat dome killed 69 people in a single week, most of us pictured the same thing: someone unhoused, caught outside with nowhere to go. It's a reasonable assumption. People sleeping on pavement during a 116-degree afternoon should be in the most danger, and they are at risk. But the medical examiner's data tells a different story, and it's one worth sitting with. Of those 69 deaths during the heat dome, four were homeless . The other 65 were people who lived in houses and apartments. The 2022 heat wave was similar: of five confirmed heat deaths, only one person was unhoused. In summer 2024, Multnomah County recorded 14 heat-associated deaths, and again, just one of those people was without a home. Two out of every three people who have died from extreme heat in Multnomah County since 2021 were men over 50. Most lived alone. Most did not have working air conditioning, or did not turn it on. That desc...

The city of Portland has a reputation for being a city full of bridges, the city of roses, and tent encampments around every corner. One of these doesn’t belong with the others, but if you’re a local, this is just another day of dodging tents.  “Since last July, more than 6,500 tents and more than 24,000 tarps have been handed out to people living on the streets in Multnomah County. ” The pandemic brought to the surface a whole new level of issues to one of the smallest cities in the United States and the solutions we are throwing at it don’t seem to be combatting the issues.  While looking for cost-effective solutions to house the most vulnerable in Portland, the blocking of ADA-accessible sidewalks and the revamp of downtown is taking longer than most Portlanders expected. The Multnomah County commissioner is making significant strides by approving a $3.96 billion budget to help increase services for homeless people and behavioral mental health. The budget also includes $23...