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Multnomah County says it housed 1,318 people experiencing homelessness in the past year with dollars generated by the supportive housing services tax that’s been under scrutiny for its slow rollout and unclear outcomes.
The newest numbers are part of the regional government Metro’s latest report on the outcomes of the SHS tax, which is now in its third year of infusing cash for homeless services into the three counties that make up the metro area: Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas.
That figure—1,318 people housed in the past year—is clouded by an audit released just yesterday by Multnomah County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk, which calls into question the reliability of data from the Joint Office of Homeless Services, through which the SHS dollars flow. The auditor wrote in the report that the Joint Office gave her the run-around on basic data, like how many people it had housed. McGuirk will release a second audit examining the reliability and validity of that office’s data in the coming months.
The county reported last year that it housed 1,129 people in the first fiscal year of the tax.
As previously reported by WW, Multnomah County has struggled since the tax’s inception to use the money in a timely fashion. Last year, the Joint Office used only about 70% of its available homeless tax dollars. That percentage drops when you take into account the higher-than-expected tax returns, which bumps the money used down to 30% of what was available.
Fast forward to this year, and in July the county was on track to underspend its 2023 allocation by $69 million—over half of its overall budget this year. Because of the chronic underspending, Metro recently put the county on a corrective plan, which the county resisted for a time.