Sharon Meieran for Multnomah County Chair

It’s time for a reset.

Black and white street scene with parked cars, a sidewalk, a storefront with graffiti on the right, and illuminated street lamps. A high-rise building and trees are in the background.

A person with long hair wearing camouflage jacket and tie-dye pants, bending over, washing their hair at a water fountain on a city sidewalk with a tree, sidewalk, planters, and clothes on the ground nearby.

Multnomah County spends $4 billion a year, hundreds of millions on homelessness alone. Yet unsheltered homelessness has more than tripled in five years. Mental illness and addiction remain largely untreated. Public trust has collapsed. Hundreds of people are dying on our streets every year.

These are not isolated failures. They are symptoms of a government structurally incapable of serving its people.

As an ER doctor and former county commissioner, I’ve seen the system from the inside and the front lines. I’ve worked with local experts, community leaders and those impacted by county services.

Guided by their wisdom and incorporating what’s worked in other places across the country, I wrote a comprehensive plan to turn the County around. The principles are simple:

Organize for impact
Measure what matters
Budget for results
Account for every dollar

I invite you to review the detailed plan, share feedback, and subscribe to my newsletter for updates.

“Together we can build a county government that actually works – one that saves lives, restores trust, and delivers results worthy of our community – while spending less.”

- Dr. Sharon Meieran

The Plan

The Vision

Set Achievable Goals. Tie Spending to Results.

Multnomah County needs to live up to its promise. This should be a place where we lead the nation not in crisis, but in proving that human values, implemented well, can transform lives.

Read Sharon Meieran’s plan here.

From Chaos to Order

A detailed flowchart of Portland's current Homelessness and Outreach System, called CHAOS. It includes organizations like Metro, Multnomah County, and Portland, with various groups managing oversight, health, safety, emergency response, outreach, and housing services for homelessness. The chart features boxes with labels like City Manager, Public Works, and Housing Policy, interconnected with arrows, illustrating roles, responsibilities, and coordination among multiple agencies and committees.

Current Multnomah County Homeless Response System

A Yiddish word, farpotshket, does a great job of encapsulating the problem in Multnomah County– it refers to efforts to fix things that end up making them worse. The hopelessly convoluted diagram of current Multnomah County’s “homelessness response system” shows why.

Flowchart diagram illustrating the Homelessness to Housing Planning and Command Center, its connections to various regional and organizational entities, and components such as prevention, outreach, shelter services, transition, and housing support.

Proposed Results Driven Coordinated New Structure

We need to elect people who want to Do Something

Not keep electing people who want to Be Something

Dr. Sharon Meieran, candidate for Multnomah County Chair, standing with her arms crossed, blurred city lights in the background.

Multnomah county needs more than a new name on its front door. We need an actual plan to get people with serious addiction and mental health issues off the streets, implemented by a leader who’s driven to DO something, not just BE something.

Right now, the money and time we are wasting is measured in people’s lives.

So - as much as I hate the idea of running for office in a political system that is as broken as the county government - I am announcing my candidacy for Multnomah County Chair.

I hope my presence in this race helps make the next five months about thoughtful, rigorous engagement about what should happen to improve our community. If each of the candidates has a plan that goes through a process of vetting and debate, then any one of us will be prepared to lead. And no matter who becomes our next Chair, the people of Multnomah County will win.

Because at the end of the day, with ranked-choice voting, we don’t have to run against each other. We should all be running for Multnomah County.

This election needs to be about more than money and ego. It needs to be about our community, not the politician who has the most money and endorsements from special interests.

I look forward to reading the other candidates’ plans and making the case for mine.

I Want to Do Something