Portland and Multnomah County leaders say they can essentially cut the number of people living on the streets and in shelters in half by 2017, but they need $33 million more.

A committee of activists, bureaucrats and elected officials, known as A Home for Everyone, spent a year studying homelessness in Multnomah County. Their goal was to come up with concrete, short-term answers that might present quick results -- and pave a path for more permanent, long-term solutions.

Their recommendation for making an immediate dent in the city's homeless population is to spend almost $15 million in 2015-16 and $18 million in 2016-17. More than half of the new money -- $20 million -- would help develop 250 new units of affordable housing.

The rest would pay for shorter-term help, such as more rent assistance for poorer Portlanders and support for landlords who might be reluctant to rent to extremely poor tenants. Home for Everyone committee members also recommend expanding the winter shelters for women and families with children to year-round operation.

"Our task so far has been to answer the question, 'What would it take to show results quickly? What financial investments and policy changes are needed right now?'" said Marc Jolin, a long-time advocate for the homeless who left the outreach group JOIN last year to coordinate A Home for Everyone's work. "This is about choices we can make as a community in the short term."

On the bright side, the new investments pushed by A Home for Everyone would, assuming the economy stays strong, noticeably reduce the number of people sleeping on Portland-area sidewalks and vacant lots. An analysis by Multnomah County and the Portland Housing Bureau suggests that targeted investments in emergency shelter coupled with steps that make it easier for people to stay inside to begin with will halve street homelessness -- or, to get technical about it, the unmet housing need -- by 2017.

The approach is more purposely multi-pronged than previous efforts. It's prompted civic leaders to talk about homelessness as an overflowing bathtub. To stop the flooding, they must unplug the drain -- backlogs in emergency shelter and permanent housing supplies -- and turn off the tap -- help people on the verge of homelessness find apartments and pay rent.

They also need to bail: Committee members also suggest allowing or at the very least considering additional temporary homeless camps or rest areas to help alleviate the shelter backlog that has forced hundreds of homeless men and women outdoors. Right now, Portland has two: Dignity Village in outer North Portland and Old Town/Chinatown's Right 2 Dream Too community. City leaders are working on a deal to move Right 2 Dream Too out of downtown to the Central Eastside Industrial District.

The timing of all these recommendations is good: After years of cuts, budget analysts project surpluses in 2015-16 for both the City of Portland and Multnomah County.

Between them, Mayor Charlie Hales and Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury proposed $12 million in new homeless spending in their suggested budgets for next year, both unveiled last week. The private sector could also help pay for expanded services: Meyer Memorial Trust, Oregon's third-largest charitable foundation, has a representative on the A Home for Everyone executive committee.

But there's a not-so-bright side: That $33 million or so over the next two years is just the start of what the region must spend to truly eliminate homelessness, experts say. A coalition of nonprofits and advocacy groups says the real price tag for ending homelessness in the region -- mostly by building more affordable housing -- may be closer to $50 million a year for the next two decades. (For comparison's sake, the Portland Housing Bureau's total 2014-15 budget was $103 million, including $14.5 million devoted to "housing access and stabilization.")

Rental vacancy rates across Portland and its suburbs hover around 2 percent, which allows landlords to be choosier than ever about rental applications. Anti-poverty advocates estimate that Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties need between 20,000 and 40,000 more affordable apartments.

"This is a beginning," said Jes Larson, director of the Welcome Home Coalition, a group of nonprofits, service providers and public agencies pushing government leaders to find new money for affordable housing.

The A Home for Everyone committee was created by the city, county, Gresham and Home Forward, the county's public housing agency, more than a year ago to update and expand on Portland's 10-year plan to end homelessness, which began in 2004. The 10-year plan did some good -- more than 13,000 households got indoors for good -- but homelessness spiked again during and after the recession.

This time around, county and city leaders have tried to give themselves shorter-term goals -- focusing, for example, on two years rather than 10 -- and a more permanent governing structure that will ensure political momentum to solve homelessness doesn't ebb. A Home for Everyone's executive committee, which includes elected leaders from Portland, Multnomah County and Gresham, must meet quarterly.

"The way this is structured helps ensure that there continues to be a high level of political buy-in," Jolin said. "Our elected officials have a lot of competing issues to deal with. This makes sure we bring the focus back to the issue of homelessness at least once a quarter."

That's important, anti-poverty activists note, because politicians and civic leaders still have big questions to answer. A Home for Everyone's work has, so far, focused on immediate solutions. But that broader question -- how to ensure enough affordable housing to avoid a similar jump in homelessness the next time the economy crashes -- remains unanswered.

-- Anna Griffin

(503) 412-7053; @annargriff