From Chaos to Continuum
Sharon Meieran’s Plan to Solve Portland’s Homelessness Crisis
Emergency room doctor and former Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran has witnessed more of Portland’s housing crisis than most. She’s seen it from the inside—eight years navigating county governance—and from the sidewalk, treating unhoused patients through street medicine.
She recently shared with the NW Examiner her solutions to the homelessness crisis. It’s an insider’s view: part blueprint, part indictment and part public challenge.
Her diagnosis is blunt: The region’s homelessness response is “chaotic,” politically driven and lacking even the most basic functional tools—like a reliable count of how many people are actually sleeping outside.
Her proposed solution? An evidence-based continuum that helps people move from street to shelter to housing—with data and dignity guiding every step.
🌀 CHAOS: The System We Have
“We do not have a homelessness system. We have a nonsystem better referred to as chaos.”
Meieran opens her “picture book” guide with a sprawling visual map of Portland’s fragmented homelessness response system. Dozens of overlapping entities—from Portland Street Response to Metro’s housing bond, from the Joint Office to shadowy “steering committees”—lack a clear chain of command.
The result? A disorganized network that leaves thousands on the street, despite billions in funding.
✅ ORDER: The System We Could Build
“The solution is not as complicated as we’re making it.”
In contrast, Meieran’s “ORDER” diagram imagines a coherent structure with:
A central Homelessness to Housing Coordination & Command Center
Clear roles: outreach, shelter, transition, housing, prevention
Accountability rooted in independent experts, not political appointees
At its heart is a simple question:
How many people are actually living outside? And are we reducing that number?
📊 The One Number That Matters
Meieran calls for a real-time By-Name List (BNL): an accurate list of every unhoused person in the county, updated by coordinated outreach teams.
“We don’t have one. Despite the County’s claims, our data systems are incomplete, inaccurate, and misused for PR.”
Instead of passive HUD compliance databases (like HMIS), Meieran wants boots on the ground and eyes on real people—to know who needs what, where, and when. Without that, she argues, it’s impossible to measure progress or invest wisely.
🏥 Rethinking Shelter: From Dead-End to Transition Point
“Shelter must do two things: save lives, and help people move forward.”
Drawing from both fieldwork and policy experience, Meieran outlines a shelter ecosystem built on options—not mandates. She advocates for cost-effective, rapidly deployable models like:
Microvillages: 10–15 unit communities with minimal footprint and resident buy-in
Safe Parking Sites: designated places for car-dwelling families, often overlooked
Sanctioned Camping: a humane alternative until real shelter is available
Her diagrams show which models cost less per bed, which populations they serve best, and how each fits into a broader system of care.
“We’re not spending too little. We’re spending without strategy.”
⚠️ Red Flags: Rent Assistance, Accountability, and Political Paralysis
Meieran’s memo doesn’t mince words. She warns of:
A “black hole” rent assistance system run by the County and Home Forward
A “coordinated access” process that’s anything but coordinated
A culture of false deliverables and zero accountability
She cites cases—including a domestic violence survivor with disabilities left navigating a Kafkaesque maze of agencies—to argue the system is retraumatizing the very people it claims to help.
“The County’s governance structure is opaque, its data unreliable, and its contracting unaccountable. We cannot fix homelessness until we fix this.”
🛠️ A Framework for Real Change
Her proposed “Homelessness to Housing” continuum is built around four pillars:
Prevention – Stop people from entering homelessness, especially from institutions
Shelter – Rapid deployment of lifesaving, appropriate options
Transition – Person-centered support from crisis to stability
Housing – Match people to the appropriate housing with the right services
All of it, she argues, is guided by data, not dogma.
👥 Why It Matters Now
Meieran’s work includes clear deliverables, cost analysis, and implementation steps. It’s been shared with city commissioners, county board members and the mayor.
Whether they act—or continue the cycle of what she calls “far-potshket” policies (Yiddish for well-meaning efforts that make things worse)—may define this moment in Portland’s history.
“We do not need another decade of platitudes. We need a system built to function.”
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🛍️ Reader Callout: What’s your experience with Portland’s shelter system? Have you tried to help someone get housing? Let us know below in the comments or email allan@nwexaminer.com.
Editor’s note: This article was compiled with editorial assistance from ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI, to help analyze source materials and organize complex content.
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Once they're in housing then what? We're not going to be a permanent storage facility to house nation's vagrants indefinitely.
Something you hear often near services: Hey man, how are you, I'm.. so and so. I just got in town. We shouldn't accommodate them. We need to keep them from coming in from elsewhere. What can we do?