Multnomah County, Ore. (June 5, 2026) — The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners early Friday voted 4-1 to adopt a $4 billion balanced budget that makes difficult cuts to close major funding gaps for the second year in a row — while striving to preserve core safety net services and public safety programs that support hundreds of thousands of County residents.
The adopted Fiscal Year 2027 budget will keep thousands of people who were formerly homeless from losing their housing and returning to the streets. It will prevent evictions for thousands more people so they don’t need homeless services in the first place. And it adds resources to more efficiently transition shelter guests to a housing solution, ending their experience with homelessness and opening up shelter beds for new people.
The budget also maintains investments for school-based mental health clinicians and mental health supports for high-risk people on post-prison supervision. It funds construction of the County’s 24/7 Sobering and Crisis Stabilization Center and maintains full capacity for the County’s jails.
The budget supports the County’s rollout toward universal Preschool for All. And it recognizes the ongoing threat to immigrant communities in Multnomah County, providing funding for rent, food and utilities to support families put at risk by federal policies and enforcement activities.
“When I started this budget process — my fourth and final one as County Chair — it was my goal to leave us in the best possible position to support our community despite federal and local challenges and a difficult fiscal landscape,” said Chair Jessica Vega Pederson. “I believe we have succeeded in that. And while the budget reality is such that we’ve had to make some really tough tradeoffs — which will have a real impact on people’s lives and livelihood — we will continue to be a mainstay for Multnomah County through the difficult moments ahead.”
"This was a difficult budget. I do not take lightly the reductions in services and the loss of employees. I am saddened by the cuts we made today, but proud of my restorations to SUN schools and emergency rent assistance.” said District 1 Commissioner Meghan Moyer.
"I came to this process representing the voices of District 2 and communities across Multnomah County who deserve better — and even when those voices don't prevail in a single vote, they are never lost on me,” said District 2 Commissioner Shannon Singleton. “I'm proud that investments in housing stability, placement out of shelter, sustainability and continued support for our immigrant neighbors are now part of this County's commitment, and I will keep fighting for workforce opportunity, a more equitable justice system and approaches to homelessness that meet people where they are. I also want to acknowledge the extraordinary work of County staff who made this process possible — their professionalism and dedication through an incredibly difficult budget year did not go unnoticed. To the communities who showed up and made their voices heard: I hear you, and I'm not done fighting for you."
“The Commission was able to continue investments in homeless services, school-based mental health services, and include funding to complete the 24/7 Sobering and Crisis Stabilization Center. The Commission also restored investments by adopting amendments to fund behavioral health services, employment programs, and preserve funding for neighborhood safety,” said District 3 Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards. “But ultimately, I voted no on this budget as it leaves too many gaps and will not reduce homelessness or deliver the level of change our community is asking for. I could not support a budget that misses an opportunity for course correction – to reduce outgrown layers of administrative leadership and prioritize investments in direct services and programs that demonstrate improved outcomes and show real results.”
“Together we can do just about anything. I will continue to focus on east Multnomah County, but I was reminded this evening and throughout this budget process of our responsibility not only to east County but our entire community,” said District 4 Commissioner Vince Jones-Dixon. “I have a deep appreciation for the work we do here to build America's favorite county.”
Amendments follow hours of public discussions
The final spending plan funds the work of 11 County departments and nearly more than 5,700 full-time employees, as well as the work of three public offices led by the independently elected Auditor, Sheriff and District Attorney. The budget finances operations for the County’s next fiscal year, which runs from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027.
The adopted budget reflects several changes since Chair Vega Pederson released her Executive Budget in April.
Those changes, among several, include additional funding for employment services for people experiencing homelessness; full funding for SUN Community Schools after-school programs; funding to restore four prosecutors; additional support for transitioning pretrial services to the state court system; additional legal and rent assistance for immigrant communities; and continued and additional funding for homeless services in Gresham and east Multnomah County.
Commissioners have been discussing amendments and budget notes for several weeks, hearing updates from all departments and offices, receiving testimony from community members, asking questions, and proposing and discussing dozens of proposals in nearly two dozen public work sessions.
That work included nearly 20 hours of public discussion this week alone. Commissioners also held three community hearings in April and May where they heard directly from the public.
The Board ultimately considered more than 50 amendments and approved 39, accommodating requests and adjustments brought by every member of the Board. A list of all amendments and budget notes — including information on which Board member proposed each amendment — will be posted and updated here.
Reflecting the County’s challenging financial circumstances, the budget also includes several difficult programmatic reductions that were made with the aim of protecting as best as possible the County’s highest priorities of direct services and community safety. The budget also makes administrative reductions to preserve direct services to the community, streamline their delivery and make programs more efficient.
Overall, the final budget eliminates at least 158 full-time positions, compared to the County’s adopted Fiscal Year 2026 budget, starting as much as possible with those already vacant. A full count of affected positions, following this week’s amendments, is not yet available.
Difficult financial outlook
Balancing the FY 2027 budget — a task that required navigating a substantial funding gap for the second year in a row while upholding the County’s values — was extraordinarily challenging.
The same factors that helped drive last year’s budget gap remain in place.
Downtown Portland’s struggling real estate market has slowed growth in property tax collections, one of the main sources of revenue for the County’s General Fund. The County has also seen federal and state funding for important health and human services programs clawed back. At the same time, the County’s expenses, including personnel costs, continue to grow faster than the County’s revenues because of inflation. That combination led to an $11 million structural gap in the County’s General Fund.
Additionally, because of reduced revenues from Metro’s Supportive Housing Services tax and reductions in state, city and federal funding, the County’s Homeless Services Department faced its own $67 million spending gap.
Most of the County’s $4 billion total budget comes from funding sources that must be used for specific purposes, such as road funds. The Board’s months of consideration largely focused on how the County should spend its roughly $918 million General Fund, the largest pool of discretionary funds that Commissioners can allocate.
Housing and homelessness
The Homeless Services Department faced another year of major reductions — largely because of the expiration of one-time funding.
In light of those constraints, the budget adopted June 5 sets out to chart a balanced and sustainable course for the future of homeless services.
The budget ensures that none of the roughly 9,000 formerly homeless neighbors supported right now who are living in permanent housing will have to return to the streets. At the same time, the budget calls for a phased closure of 605 adult shelter units and 90 scattered-site shelter vouchers for families. Those reductions, affecting a mix of shelter types, still leave 1,667 County-funded shelter units overall.
In light of those reductions, the budget commits $6 million in one-time General Fund money to more efficiently move people from the County’s remaining shelters to homes. These funds will allow the County’s remaining shelter sites to serve more people over the course of the year by freeing up beds for hundreds of guests. An amendment by Commissioners Brim-Edwards and Singleton, approved unanimously, also sets aside up to $1 million of those dollars to provide housing specifically for people in shelters that will close after July 1.
Additionally, an amendment from Commissioners Moyer and Brim-Edwards, approved unanimously, dedicates up to $2.1 million toward recovery housing placements to better serve the community.
The Board voted 4-1 to approve an amendment from Commissioners Singleton, Brim-Edwards and Jones-Dixon that adds back funds for employment and hygiene services programs that offer income, housing support and skills training for people experiencing homelessness. Chair Vega Pederson, whose proposed budget sought to restore some but not all of the reductions proposed by the Homeless Services Department, voted against the amendment.
To restore funding for employment services, the Board tapped one-time-only revenue and reduced the amount of funding available for eviction prevention, housing placements out of shelter and specialized street outreach programs. The Board also reduced one-time-only funding proposed for the relocation of the County’s Vector Control office.
And commissioners eliminated nearly all funding for the North Portland Drop-In Center — which will lead to the closure of the center — to fund these services. A separate amendment from Commissioner Singleton, approved unanimously, provides funding to wind down operations by Oct. 1.
The Board also voted unanimously to approve an amendment that restored full funding to the Marie Equi Center, a day center providing culturally specific services for the LGTBQIA2S+ community.
The Board voted 3-2 to approve an amendment from Commissioners Jones-Dixon and Brim-Edwards to maintain funding for homeless services in Gresham, moving $731,000 from funding used to support housing placements across Multnomah County. Commissioner Singleton and Chair Vega Pederson voted against the amendment.
Community safety
The Fiscal Year 2027 budget preserves investments in every part of the community safety continuum, funding programs that hold people accountable, provide alternatives to incarceration, support victims and reduce recidivism — spanning the Sheriff’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office, the Department of Community Justice and the Health Department’s Corrections Health Division. Altogether, budgets for these entities account for roughly 50% of the General Fund.
The budget once again maintains current capacity in the County’s two jails. It also adds $870,000 — for a total of $1.3 million in ongoing funding — to expand the District Attorney’s Office’s Digital Evidence Management Unit, which processes body camera footage and other digital evidence.
This County’s proposed budget had called for the District Attorney’s Office to take a nearly 5% reduction, commensurate with other County departments.
One amendment, sponsored by Commissioners Jones-Dixon and Brim-Edwards, approved 3-2, tapped $514,000 in additional one-time revenue to restore three positions in the office’s Strategic Prosecution Unit, which tackles high-impact property crimes and theft cases. Commissioner Singleton and Chair Vega Pederson voted against the amendment. The Board also unanimously supported an additional amendment sponsored by Commissioners Brim-Edwards and Moyer to restore a prosecutor position focused on civil commitments.
The Board voted unanimously to invest $160,000 alongside expected federal funding to build a "reentry transition hub" in a former storefront next to the downtown Multnomah County Detention Center. The facility would provide case management, housing coordination and other services for people being released from detention. The Board used funding that had been initially proposed for the relocation of the County's Vector Control program.
The Board also unanimously approved an amendment from Chair Vega Pederson and Commissioner Singleton that adds funds to a $1 million plan in the Chair’s proposed budget to shift pretrial monitoring services away from the Sheriff’s Office and Department of Community Justice and to the circuit court system. The amendment diverts $728,000 in one-time funding and Vector Control office relocation funding — and makes those dollars ongoing — to provide a longer runway and ongoing County support services as part of the transition.
Healthcare, mental health and substance use
The FY 2027 budget fully funds the County’s downtown Portland Behavioral Health Resource Center, which provides a day center, shelter beds and transitional housing serving people with mental health issues who are homeless or in transition. The budget also backfills federal budget cuts in the Health Department to ensure the County’s public health infrastructure remains intact.
The budget preserves the County’s School-Based Mental Health Program while still supporting work to improve services and access for students with the most needs.
And the budget maintains support for the County’s evolving deflection program and work to develop a permanent 24/7 sobering center, along with other programs that create a path away from jail to treatment.
The Board unanimously approved an amendment from Commissioners Brim-Edwards and Moyer that uses $173,000 in savings from Health Department vacancies to restore a Mental Health Court clinical services specialist. The amendment backfills state cuts that reduced the number of specialists from five to two.
The Board also unanimously approved an amendment from Commissioner Moyer that uses $655,000 in one-time funding to preserve four positions in the Health Department’s Behavioral Health Division: two team members who support CARES NW (Child Abuse Response and Evaluation Services), a mental health staffer serving the LGBTQIA2S+ community and a mental health position in the County’s Gun Violence Response program serving the Latinx community.
Youth, families and seniors
Amid heightened federal immigration enforcement activities that are separating families and creating housing instability for immigrants and refugees, the budget prioritizes direct core services centered on some of our most vulnerable community members.
The budget funds the County’s Immigrant Resilience Program, which provides direct assistance to families in need and helps stabilize their housing. And it preserves a $3 million investment in the County’s Bienestar de la Familia program that ensures a variety of culturally sensitive, multilingual services for immigrant and refugee communities.
The budget also adds $3.5 million in ongoing funding to prevent evictions for an additional 500 families. And it allocates $200,000 in new one-time funding to support other families who face eviction while waiting for federal Medicaid waivers to cover their rents.
An amendment from Commissioners Moyer, Singleton and Brim-Edwards, approved unanimously, restores full funding for the SUN Community Schools program, which serves roughly 18,000 students across six school districts.
The program faced a $1.2 million reduction in the Chair’s proposed budget that would have closed nine of the program’s 92 school sites. The Board paid for the restoration by tapping expected savings from ongoing work to centralize certain administrative and internal support services.
The Board unanimously approved an amendment from Commissioners Moyer and Brim-Edwards to draw from newly available revenue to restore funding for the Aging, Disability and Veterans Services Division’s Long Term Services and Supports program, which helps low-income older adults and people with disabilities live safely and independently.
The funding also allows the County to draw down Medicaid match dollars — leveraging an additional $423,000 in federal funds — amid federal policy changes that will require Medicaid eligibility checks every six months.
The Board also unanimously supported an amendment from Commissioner Singleton that directs $565,000 in one-time Supportive Housing Services funds to create a mobile eviction prevention team serving tenants in Home Forward’s affordable apartments. The amendment will allow the County to leverage an expected $7.8 million in Medicaid rent vouchers.
Additional key investments and decisions
The Board unanimously approved an amendment from Commissioners Brim-Edwards and Moyer that provides an additional $1.5 million for a memorial by Metro that honors the unrecognized stories of Chinese Americans originally buried at Lone Fir Cemetery. To fund the contribution, the Board diverted dollars that had been set aside for the Vector Control office relocation.
More than 2,800 Chinese and Chinese American people were buried in Lone Fir starting in the 1860s. After the County purchased the cemetery in the 1920s, it ordered members of the Chinese community to remove buried loved ones from the cemetery’s Block 14 to make room for a maintenance building. While many were exhumed and returned to China in accordance with their cultural practices, some of their bodies remain in unmarked graves.
Last year, the County provided $1 million for the memorial while also issuing a formal apology for the deep harm the County caused.
The Board also unanimously backed an amendment from Commissioner Brim-Edwards to create a new countywide position focused on economic and workforce development, shifting a position from the Chair’s Office starting Jan. 1, 2027.
And the Board voted 3-2 to approve an amendment from Commissioner Brim-Edwards to restore an animal enrichment position in Multnomah County Animal Services, reducing instead a vacant position in the Chief Operating Officer’s office. Chair Vega Pederson and Commissioner Jones-Dixon voted against the amendment.
Additional information and comments
You can watch a video of the Board’s deliberations and meeting.
The Budget Office’s FY 2027 website includes links to program offers, amendments, department and office presentations, and more.