Dear Portland,

When people have a safe and secure place to live, everything else in life improves.
 
Health, employment, and community all begin with housing.
 
History shows we can conquer significant challenges. Between the 1940s and the early 1970s, the United States reliably constructed more than one million homes each year, supported by New Deal-era housing policies and sustained public investment. Today, we build less than half that amount, leading to predictable shortages, rising rents, and record numbers of people experiencing homelessness.
 
But this doesn’t have to be our future. By focusing on both upstream and downstream solutions, we can turn the tide.
 
Follow along for ways to get involved... new activations coming soon 👀
 

We are working with a designer to create a beautiful, mobile, and exhibition that makes way for spaces of different kinds to host the exhibit. It’s a smaller version of Dear Portland with the same heart.
 
Have a lead, a space, or a “maybe”? We’d love to hear from you –– fill out the form at the link in our bio.
 

18,289 MISSING STORIES...
 
On a given night, more than 18,289 people in Multnomah County lack a stable place to sleep. This exhibit shared the stories of six of those people representing only a small fraction of the county’s reality.
 
Many voices are still absent: families with children fearing separation, parents juggling poverty and caregiving, individuals impacted by incarceration or exploitation, and neighbors from Indigenous, undocumented, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities.
 
Their absence is not silence but a reminder of the barriers that determine whose stories are seen and heard.
 
These 50 photos represent a fraction of the thousands of missing stories, captured by Keith Z. Keith is a local photographer and social worker. His forthcoming book, Outside, is a self-curated project. He can be found at keith z 📷

Our housing shortage has a human cost, and our most vulnerable neighbors are paying the highest price.

Kids grow up without stability. Older adults have nowhere to age with dignity. Thousands endure the daily trauma of life outside.

To help make sense of it, think about musical chairs:

You have 10 friends.
The music starts.
Then the leader removes a chair,
so now there are only nine.

One friend, Mike, has a bad ankle and uses crutches. When the music stops, everyone rushes for a seat. Mike doesn’t get one.

Most people feel bad for Mike. It seems unfair. But the real problem isn’t Mike’s ankle — the real problem is that there weren’t enough chairs. When there aren’t enough chairs, the most vulnerable are the ones left standing.

The same is true for housing.

Like a game of musical chairs, Portland’s housing crisis leaves the most vulnerable without a seat. For many, that math doesn’t add up.

A huge thank you to KATU News Axios Portland Oregon ArtsWatch and The Oregonian for covering our exhibition when it was installed at Stelo earlier this spring 💌
 
Click the link in our bio and scroll to “Dear Portland in the Press” for all the links.
 

Our legacy Dear Portland website is now LIVE! Thank you to all who financially contributed to make this shift in online presence possible, and to .dev for working with us to make this next phase of the site perfect.
 
Link in bio 💌

This is a reminder of why we do this work.
 
Households earning 0-30% of the area median income (~$0-$30,000) experience the largest gap in Portland’s housing stock. The city lacks roughly 19,000 deeply affordable units, leaving tens of thousands of Portlanders without a place to live. Stats like this [fuel our storytelling efforts... or something like that]. Stay tuned for more on policy, data, and ways to get involved.
 

“A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built of love and dreams.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson 🏠
 
Home means safety, belonging, and a place to call our own. A home is more than just a roof and four walls.
 
Research shows that stable, affordable housing strongly predicts health, learning, and well-being, forming the foundation for nearly everything else that makes life work. With a home, you can keep food in the fridge, take your medicine on time, trust your children will wake up in the same bed, build friendships, and imagine the future.
 

This is why we do what we do — the power of story 💌