A new poll of Portland-area voters found that 33 percent of them consider homelessness the biggest issue facing the city and region -- a sharp increase from past years.

Polling company DHM Research has found that sentiment is true of the state’s voters as a whole as well.

The annual telephone poll is commissioned by the Portland Business Alliance. The latest was conducted in December 2018 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percent. This year, the poll showed that homelessness far outstripped other priorities, but affordable housing and traffic congestion were also top concerns.

In the poll, 33 percent of 510 demographically representative voters in the Portland area named something specifically related to homelessness when asked their greatest point of concern. The complaints tended to include people yelling at passersby on the street, trash and other visible symptoms of homelessness.

In 2011, only 1 percent of people polled said homelessness was the city’s biggest problem. Concerns took off after 2014 and have climbed steadily since. From December 2017 to December 2018, that number jumped nearly 10 percentage points.

Concern about lack of affordable housing, one of the main drivers of homelessness in Portland and the West Coast, came in at 11 percent. That is about the same as last year’s poll.

When asked to rank a menu of issues, the gap between homelessness and affordable housing narrowed and both rose to the top.

Voters said they are largely satisfied with the economy and jobs outlook this year, which could indicate that some people are less concerned with making rent payments and the risk of homelessness themselves.

Michelle Neiss, CEO of DHM, said that could be part of why polled participants pinpointed mental health and addiction treatment as the ideal solution, not affordable housing. The participants likely have only interacted with homeless people in public and see more social services as the answer to helping people who seem erratic or make them uncomfortable – rather than experienced it firsthand, which might make them more focused on adequate low-income housing supply.

Few people polled said they think more shelters are the best solution for homelessness. In fact, the strategies that have dominated local political discourse in the past few years -- supportive housing, housing supply, or mass shelters such as a proposed conversion of the Wapato Jail -- ranked at the bottom.

A poll last year by DHM, commissioned by TV station KGW, reflected similar results in how participants view homelessness and the best way to help people on the street

The number of people forced onto the streets has continued to grow throughout Oregon. Even in more rural counties, most rental housing is no longer in reach for poor families.

DHM researchers have found similar results to the Portland chamber of commerce poll in nearly every region in the state.

“It’s not an issue that’s isolated just to Portland, it’s not just Portland metro area,” said DHM researcher John Horvick. “It’s an issue important across the state as well.”

That frustration from the people who were polled, who largely have housing, colored their view of their local leaders’ effectiveness.

Half of all people polled said they felt the Portland area is headed in the right direction. That is a 5 percentage-point decrease from last year. And people who said they think the region is headed in the wrong direction ticked up by 6 percentage points.

The main reason is homelessness. More than 30 percent of the people polled said that they see quality of life in the city decreasing due to the Portland City Council’s efforts to reduce homelessness and its impact.

“That has to be our first, second and third priority, just as citizens, as well as the business community,” said Portland Business Alliance CEO Andrew Hoan.

The Portland Business Alliance has had a sometimes fraught relationship with the city and Multnomah County over strategies to address homelessness.

Recent years have found more collaboration, however, as developers have volunteered to let buildings slated for renovation be used as temporary shelters. However, business community leaders have also called for more enforcement to move homeless people out of downtown.

The alliance has also tried in the past to lobby the city and state around road infrastructure. Hoan said he found the results of this year’s poll to show that voters are divided on how to deal with longer commute times.

Poll participants complained about traffic congestion. About 15 percent said they were most concerned about roads and infrastructure or traffic. They were split on how to address it, indicating that voters want both better infrastructure for cars and options for public transit, bicyclists and other alternative forms of transportation.

“Across the region there’s an appetite for different types of solutions, and I think it speaks to the political challenges on either side as well,” Hoan said.