Portland Wants State to Help Fund Its Homeless Pod Villages

The city of Portland’s top three leaders—Mayor Keith Wilson, city administrator Michael Jordan, and Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney— presented the city’s 2025 legislative agenda late last week to Portland-area lawmakers during a Zoom call.

It comes as no surprise, given Wilson’s ambitious goal of ending unsheltered homelessness by establishing 2,000 shelter beds in the coming years, that among the top three goals listed was securing ongoing funding from the state for the city’s array of existing tiny pod shelters and temporary alternative shelter sites. The agenda does not mention a goal of securing state funding for Wilson’s extensive shelter plan, but does note a desire for dollars to help support a “continuum” of shelters.

The other top three goals listed are: securing funding for increased production of affordable housing across the city, securing funding to “operate and maintain the city’s transportation network,” and receiving state funding for economic recovery projects, including funding for a large performance arts center to replace the aging Keller Auditorium.

The leaders of the city’s two branches of government—Pirtle-Guiney is the president of the legislative body, Jordan is the top boss for the administration, and Wilson oversees Jordan—also listed their two top policy items for the upcoming year: to “protect local authority” and ensure that land use appeals do not hold up federally mandated projects like the Bull Run Filtration Project.

Wilson, Pirtle-Guiney and Jordan expanded on the local authority piece, writing that the city would seek to “actively oppose restrictions of local authority including efforts to limit city authority to develop and enforce local ordinances and voter-approved measures, to manage bureaus or their functions, or to raise local revenue.”

Pirtle-Guiney’s top aide, Natalie Sept, says protecting local authority is “an important part of our agenda.

“As cities faces unprecedented challenges, it is important that they have as many tools at their disposal as possible,” Pirtle-Guiney says. “As we work in collaboration with our allies in the Legislature, we want to make sure they are informed about unintended impacts decision-making may have on the city’s ability to deliver services.”

It’s not entirely clear what Pirtle-Guiney was referring to, and city leaders did not immediately clarify.

As WW reported Tuesday afternoon, the city’s stream of federal grant funding that provides critical support for various bureaus and projects is under threat, thanks to a slew of executive orders President Trump recently announced. The directives—most of which are sweeping and at the same time vague—threw state and local leaders into a panic over their potential trickle-down effects.

In a Tuesday morning email, the city’s federal relations manager, Jack Araggia, wrote that the possible effects of Trump’s orders on city funding were “still very unclear,” but he said the City Attorney’s Office and the city’s Grants Management Office were making quick work of trying to understand their implications.