It is the goal of the City of Portland to undertake work on a new state-of-the-art, one-story, adult emergency shelter to replace the Oxford Street Shelter. The new shelter will be open 24-hours a day, 7-days a week with on-site meals and a wide range of services including:  health and mental health care, substance use treatment, housing assistance, peer support, case management, employment assistance, and more.

The City of Portland’s shelter guests and valued staff deserve to live and work in a respectful and safe environment. We will no longer allow some of our most vulnerable community members to live in inadequate conditions and in locations where they are easily abused, taken advantage of, and judged for their perceived shortcomings.

The current adult shelter on Oxford Street is leased, poorly configured, and requires residents to vacate the facility every morning with all of their belongings. The building has three floors which require almost double the number of staff who could oversee guests in a single-story building designed specifically as a shelter. It also has cramped sleeping space which necessitates floor mats rather than cots and utilizes a large area for sleeping in the eaves of the building.

This page contains information about all of the staff presentations made and public testimony given as the Committee has worked through the public process. We will continue to update the page as new information is shared. Thank you for your interest and support.

The Council's Health and Human Services and Public Safety Committee moved to recommend the Angelo’s Acre and Riverside locations to the full Council at the April 16, 2019 meeting. On June 17th, 2019, the City Council voted to adopt Order 248­18/19 Approving a Homeless Services Center at 654 Riverside Street.  The Health and Human Services & Public Safety Committee is currently working on a shelter policy recommendation. There was a public hearing on shelter policy at the committee's October 8, 2019 meeting and the committee recommended a Single Adult Shelter Policy Resolution to the full City Council in a 3 - 0 vote on November 12, 2019.