Multnomah County, Ore., said this week that it would no longer use race or sexual orientation to determine who is eligible for housing support, citing pressure from the Trump administration and a class-action lawsuit.
The county, which includes most of Portland, removed race and “LGBTQIA2S+” status from its points-based system for allocating homeless services, which had awarded more points for expressing interest in “culturally specific services” than for having a disability. Applicants need roughly 16-19 points in order to obtain housing support. The original scoring rubric—first reported by the Washington Free Beacon—made it substantially harder for straight white applicants to meet that cutoff.
“To ensure total compliance with shifting guidance and legal interpretation from the federal government, the Homeless Services Department is changing the coordinated access scoring system it uses to prioritize households for certain services, namely supportive housing,” county spokeswoman Julia Comnes told the Oregonian on Tuesday.
Other officials cited a class-action lawsuit filed by a disabled white woman, Michele Mei, who narrowly missed the cutoff for rent relief because of her race. That complaint describes a raft of race-based policies beyond the scoring system, including “culturally specific” apartments for the “BIPOC Community” and a pledge that “[p]eople of color will be served at higher rates.” Asked about those policies specifically, Multnomah County spokesperson Denis Theriault told the Free Beacon that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.
The decision to revise the rubric is nonetheless a major concession for the county, which initially claimed that its policies were fully compliant with federal law. The Trump administration disagreed, with both the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development launching probes of Multnomah’s homeless department in May. In a statement about the investigation, HUD Secretary Scott Turner noted that the county has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the nation, suggesting that its race-based policies were not only unlawful but ineffective.
“Rather than address this crisis in a fair and clear-eyed manner, the County scapegoats its most vulnerable residents and doles out housing support on the basis of race,” Turner told the Free Beacon at the time. “No government benefit should be distributed based on race.”
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