The homelessness crisis in Oregon continues to worsen, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The state saw a 9.7 percent increase in homelessness since 2018. The increase is 20 percent since 2015. The data indicates that homelessness in Oregon began to significantly accelerate around 2012-13, as the economy was pulling itself out of the Great Recession and real-estate prices leapt up in many places.

The problem has been especially acute in Oregon’s largest city. In February 2016, Charlie Hales, then Portland’s mayor, decided to allow tent camping and issued “safe sleep guidelines.”

“We do not have enough shelter beds,” he said. “Some people are going to sleep outside. Some people are going to put tents up."

Shortly after Hales’ decision, Ted Wheeler was elected mayor with the promise to provide shelter for everyone in the city who needed it.

Three years later, HUD states that important progress on homelessness is being made across much of the U.S. -- but not on the West Coast.

“While the rest of the country experienced a combined decrease in homelessness in 2019, significant increases in unsheltered and chronic homelessness on the West Coast, particularly California and Oregon, offset those nationwide decreases, causing an overall increase in homelessness of 2.7 percent in 2019,” HUD reported in a Dec. 20 press release.

By the official count, California experienced a 16.4 percent increase in people living on the streets or in shelters in 2019 -- that’s 21,306 people. HUD Secretary Ben Carson blamed the “extremely high” cost of housing in California and said local communities should attack the problem with “crisis-like urgency.”

Twenty-nine states posted decreases in homelessness since 2018.

HUD’s state-by-state homelessness estimates are derived in large part from an annual nationwide effort by social-service workers and volunteers to come up with “one-night ‘snapshot’ counts” of people living in emergency shelters, transitional housing, in cars and on the streets during a single night in January.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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