Homelessness in Portland, Oregon has been rated by the city’s voters as the city’s #1 problem. The City of Portland provides a very nice dashboard of reported homeless camps here. A directory of resources for homeless and low-income people is available at 211info.org.
Something that is missing in this information is an assessment of unmet need. We know where homeless people are reported camping, and we know where helpful resources for them are found. What we don’t know is what areas of the city have a lack of resources compared to their homeless population. Knowing this, perhaps action can be taken to help more people off the street.
As part of a group project done for a class with The Oregon Institute of Technology we tackled this question: What neighborhoods of Portland lack nearby resources for their homeless population?
We studied this by combining the city’s homeless campsite reports data from 2024 with data pulled manually from 211info on available resource providers. With this data we were able to compute which neighborhoods have the least-favorable homeless population to resources ratios and create a GIS map for a graphical overview.
Quick Overview:
Neighborhoods with the worst homeless population vs. resource provider ratios:
- Lents
- Lloyd
- Parkrose
- Brooklyn
An interactive GIS map of Portland with layers showing the locations of reported homeless camps in 2024, locations of the service providers in our data set and the ratio of the two:
Our work has limitations:
- The homeless data is only reported homeless camp sites, not a headcount of individuals.
- These are only reported homeless camps, a comprehensive count is not available.
- The selection of resource providers we included was limited to:
- Libraries
- Temporary shelters
- Day centers
- Coordinated re-entry services
- Group therapy
- Showers
- Meals
- Food box availability
- Laundry
- Health services
Further analysis is needed.
In particular the resources we included and how we calculated our resource scoring deserves additional detail and consideration. We also have access to another dataset on the homeless population which has a headcount. In addition further work can be done to include:
- The information by zip code
- Additional comparisons, such as property values and crime rates
- Further details based on time of year and other variables
- A web interface allowing the user to run their own reports based on the resource calculation they prefer
- Other features as requested
The next steps:
We are seeking people and organizations to help us expand on this work in order to provide valuable insights for anyone who is interested in helping address our city’s homeless situation and improve outcomes for those experiencing homelessness.
All data and code involved in this project are currently available on Github: https://github.com/stephenbpeters/OIT_class_project/
If you are interested in participating, please contact Stephen Peters:
- stephen.peters@gmail.com
- 503-575-0815