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A total of 12,034 people were homeless in Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties in January, when outreach workers and volunteers spent a week asking people two dozen questions, including where they slept on the night of Jan. 22.
The so-called Point-in-Time Count remained high despite a supportive housing services tax that has raised $1.3 billion since wealthy metro-area residents began paying it in 2021. The money is distributed to the counties to spend as they see fit.
It’s tempting to compare the 2025 figure to one from 2023, the last time the three counties conducted a PIT count, but doing that is fraught because much of the increase—61%—is likely due to better counting by Multnomah County, which has the vast majority of people experiencing homelessness: 10,526, or 87% of the tri-county total.
“We urge caution when offering interpretation about the meaning and magnitude of year-to-year changes reflected in this report,” authors at Portland State University Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative wrote about the count.
What’s almost certain is that, even adjusted for better counting, the 2025 number likely didn’t go down from 2023’s figure. Multnomah County’s preferred tally is its relatively new by-name list, which includes everyone believed to be homeless in the county.
That list drives a data dashboard of monthly figures. It shows a steady increase since January 2024, the first month listed. The dashboard says there were 16,089 people experiencing homelessness—sheltered and unsheltered—as of August.
So why do a PIT count? For one thing, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires it (for now). For another, the combined PIT count provides data with which to measure the impact of the supportive housing services tax, administered by Metro, the regional government that comprises all three counties.
To that end, the PIT count shows that, so far, people are becoming homeless faster than SHS money can be used to get them into housing.
“The regional supportive housing services fund has helped place more than 8,700 people into housing and created or sustained funding for more than 2,600 shelter beds,” Metro spokesman Nick Christensen says. “But for every 10 people that we move into permanent housing, 14 are becoming homeless in greater Portland.”
Multnomah County data confirms that trend. The number of people becoming homeless has exceeded the number being housed every month but one since January 2024. In August, the last month available, the so-called inflow of homeless people totaled 1,275, exceeding outflow by 60 people, a better showing than in most months.
Evictions have risen since the last PIT count. Washington County saw a 63% increase in eviction filings from 2023 to 2024, and Multnomah experienced a 33% increase, PSU researchers said. Clackamas County filed 2,038 eviction cases in 2024.
Though dated compared with Multnomah County’s monthly tallies, the PIT count reveals some contours of the region’s homeless crisis.
For one, it undercuts the persistent notion that people move from other parts of the country to avail themselves of generous homeless benefits.
About 83% of people who were counted, and who answered a question about where they lived before they became homeless, said they last had housing in the three counties, Clark County, Wash., or the broader state of Oregon, and 74% of those said they had lived in the tri-county area before losing their housing.
People identifying as BIPOC became homeless at a faster rate than white people. The number of BIPOC people experiencing homelessness almost doubled from 2023 to 2025, while the number of of white people rose by two-thirds.
Eviction data meshes with those figures, PSU researchers wrote. They cited Evicted in Oregon, which found that between April 2023 and March 2024, 1 in 11 Black households and 1 in 19 Hispanic households in Oregon received an eviction filing, compared with only 1 in 26 white households.
Some 59% of PIT respondents identified as men or boys in 2025, while 37% identified at women or girls. People who identified as “gender expansive” made up just over 4% of the population experiencing homelessness in 2025. Most people experiencing homelessness in January were between the ages of 35 and 44.
PIT counters asked people where they had slept on the night of Jan. 22. The highest number, 267, slept in the downtown Portland-Old Town-Pearl District area. Southeast Portland accounted for 238. Two locations had zero: Lake Oswego and West Linn.
