Human Solutions

Human Solutions’ mission is to help low-income and homeless families and individuals gain self-sufficiency by providing affordable housing, family support services, job readiness training, and economic development opportunities.

Human Solutions has been helping homeless and low-income families build pathways out of poverty for more than 25 years. Our 245-mile service area in outer East Portland and East Multnomah County includes some of the highest poverty neighborhoods in Multnomah County. Last year, we touched the lives of more than 88,000 people. We offer services in four interrelated areas:

• Prevention Services: Last year, we helped over 9,000 households avoid having their utilities shut off and remain warm and safe in their homes by providing utility assistance. We also help over 440 households remain in their homes each year through short-term emergency rent assistance.

• Direct Services to Homeless Families: We operate emergency shelter, transitional housing, “Housing First” programs, and permanent supportive housing. Acting on the belief that housing is a basic human right, we move homeless families into permanent housing as quickly as possible and then offer them the supportive services necessary to stabilize their situations and overcome their homelessness.

• Employment and Economic Development Programs: Having a family wage job is essential to a family’s ability to overcome homelessness and be self-sufficient. Human Solutions operates three distinct employment and economic development programs that help more than 660 individuals with significant barriers to employment find family wage jobs and/or improve their job skills to increase their household incomes each year.

• Affordable Housing: Human Solutions owns and operates 18 high-quality affordable housing complexes containing 701 apartments. At each property we offer Resident Services, which help families maintain housing by connecting them to quality social, educational and employment services (both within Human Solutions and in the wider community) so they can move forward in their lives.