2025-2027 State Budget
These are profoundly unsettling times — for all of us, but especially for Oregonians who are already living on the brink or off the cliff of precarity. In May we saw the state revenue forecast fall by $500 million in response to a mélange of tariffs, geopolitical instability, and federal spending cuts. This budget crunch inevitably means there will be fewer resources available for every pressing need Oregonians face in their daily lives over the course of the 2025-2027 state budget cycle.
Amidst this challenging budget picture, the Housing Alliance led or contributed to advocacy that resulted in $1.14 billion in funding for housing and homelessness programs in the next state budget.
$426.7 million from the state’s General Fund, including:
- $204.9 million to keep homeless shelters open across the state
- $44.6 million for homelessness prevention – including emergency rent assistance and legal aid for renters facing eviction (the Housing Alliance and our members fought for additional funding for these services at the end of the session)
- $10.5 million for permanent supportive housing operations and resident services
$712.5 million in bond-funded investments:
- $549.1 million to build new affordable rental homes
- $52.5 million to preserve existing affordable housing
- $100.9 million to build new homes for homeownership
- $10 million for municipal infrastructure that will support the development of new housing
Policy Victories
We passed protections that will make a real difference for renters across Oregon. Landlords now have to pay damages when a prospective tenant pays a deposit to reserve a home, but then discovers it does not meet health and habitability standards (HB 3521). People living in affordable housing will get more advance notice when their homes are at risk of converting to market-rate, giving them more time to plan instead of facing sudden displacement (SB 973). Landlords are newly prohibited from discriminating against tenants on the basis of immigration status (SB 599). And we secured new limits on rent increases for manufactured housing residents (HB 3054).
Affordable housing development got support through the renewal of property tax breaks that will continue to incentivize construction (HB 2074, HB 2077, HB 2078). Meanwhile, we passed several measures that will help protect and preserve the affordable housing that thousands of Oregonians already call home (SB 32, SB 51, SB 829).
Our coalition collectively accomplished all of this while navigating a revenue shortfall and every interest group in the state competing for the same shrinking pot of dollars. It took rapid response organizing, coalition partners willing to show up on short notice for press conferences and visits to the Capitol, and advocates who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Unfortunately, We Didn’t Win Every Fight
While we celebrated major housing victories, we also faced setbacks.
Despite months of advocacy to “fix the funding” for Individual Development Accounts — from our statewide network of IDA savers, 73 endorsing organizations, and 77 people who joined us in Salem for IDA Lobby Day — the legislature fell short of our goal to secure an additional $10M in annual IDA funding. The final outcome: HB 2087 -2 only expanded the tax credit from $7.5M to $7.7M in 2025, and to $8M after that — far less than the program needs to maintain its level of statewide service. The constrained budget environment and federal uncertainty were cited as factors in a last-minute cut to the tax credit bill that was slated to provide more significant IDA funding.
Bond funding to preserve existing affordable housing was also alarmingly inadequate. The legislature allocated only $52.5M of the $285M that Housing Alliance members called for. As a result, thousands of existing affordable homes remain at serious risk of loss due to foreclosure, conversion to market-rate, or deterioration.
Several of our homeownership investment priorities were left completely unfunded: downpayment assistance grants, flexible homeownership development funds, operating funds for regional homeownership centers, and matching funds for accelerated-equity mortgages.
Finally, we remain shocked by the gutting of homelessness prevention services, including emergency rent assistance and legal representation for tenants. Even after our advocacy clawed back $11M in the last week of the session, these services were cut by $85.6M compared with the last biennium. This decision will leave some 20,000 households without protection from eviction over the next two years.
Gratitude to Our Coalition and our Community
The Housing Alliance’s successes at the 2025 Oregon Legislature were only possible through the collective efforts of our coalition members, funders, and every day people speaking up for a better future.
Over the course of the last six months, we saw over 1,000 people use our new Action Network system to contact their representatives. We had over 100 organizations send representatives to participate in our two full-scale lobby days, in addition to several targeted mobilizations at the Capitol in Salem. Nothing we accomplished could have happened without a strong community of advocates from across the state stepping up time and time again.