Multnomah County, Oregon, which is home to Portland, is using a points-based screening system that awards extra priority for housing assistance based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
The policy, part of the county’s Multnomah Services and Screening Tool (MSST) rolled out in 2024, is under fire for not using traditional measures of need to determine who gets assistance, such as length of homelessness, domestic violence survival, and having young children.
Multnomah County uses the MSST through its Coordinated Access process to prioritize who gets access to its limited housing resources.
The tool prioritizes groups described as “over-represented” in the local homeless population, including non-white households and “LGBTQIA2S+” individuals.
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