Multnomah County animal shelter urges community to adopt after seeing largest uptick in surrendered and stray dogs in 13 years.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Multnomah County Animal Services has seen the sharpest uptick in surrendered dogs in 13 years, leading to overcrowding in shelters. Officials are urging community members to seek adoption and is holding an adoption event Friday to Sunday.
“There’s really no way to sugarcoat this … We ask people to know that if you are ready for your family’s next dog, this is the weekend,” said Erin Grahek, director of Multnomah County Animal Services (MCAS).
In January, the shelter took in 268 dogs who were either surrendered or found as strays, while at the same time 234 dogs were adopted, returned to owners or transferred to other rescue sites, MCAS said. Currently, the shelter has about 40 dogs ready to be adopted and dozens of lost pets waiting for owners to reclaim them.
This surge in intakes has led to limited kennels available to house any new dogs. As of Thursday, shelter staff has taken to housing dogs in its office spaces, Grahek said.
“We have filled nearly everyone of our 85 kennels,” Grahek said. “And, we have animals in offices as well. There are another 48 dogs and puppies in volunteer foster homes. But this is a public shelter and that means our role is to take found animals and that is why we need the public’s help. When our kennel capacity is tight, we struggle to figure out how to take in that lost or stray animal.”
The animal shelter will be open 11 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Currently, the shelter is offering a Valentine’s adoption special all February-long, where dogs and puppies are $15, cats and kittens are $15 and rabbits and small pets are $15. Click here to meet the pets up for adoption.
Staff at Multnomah County shelters have attributed the uptick in surrendered dogs to dog owners losing or at risk of losing housing, financial struggles amid rising cost of living, or having trouble affording veterinary care.
“We see that dogs’ lives are really affected by what happens to their people, and while we don’t know a lot about found or stray animals and where they come from,” Grahek said, “we don’t have a dataset or study, but what we are seeing is that housing instability that people are experiencing, financial stressors that are happening to families and individuals happening in our community and scarcity of affordable veterinary care those issues all show up in the pets that we see.”
Grahek added over the last three years there’s been a steep increase in shelter intakes. The number of intakes in January equaled those in July, which Grahek said “tells a story,” since winter months tend to be a bit slower than the peak summer months.
The shelter has been actively adopting dogs and transferring dogs to partner organizations, but Grahek said, “We just are not able to at this point to keep up with the intake and so we need folks help to come on out and adopt pets this weekend.”
Shelter rebuild in the works
For a long time, MCAS has been looking to rebuild its current nearly 18,000 square-foot facility in Troutdale into one more accessible that can better accommodate all of the shelter’s needs. This includes accepting all types of stray animals, including pigs, chickens and doves, as well as surrendered pets. It also provides long-term housing for pets in protective custody and for dogs deemed dangerous that are in pending legal cases.
In late January, officials shared that it could cost up to $85 million in an early estimate to rebuild the shelter in a quarterly briefing to the county board of commissioners. The estimate came with a bit of sticker shock to commissioners, as the previous amount to rebuild was estimated at $65 million.
Current plans to rebuild would create a 35,000 to 45,000 square-foot facility, which would significantly increase space for support structures, triple the space for cat and small animal housing, double the space for dog housing, provide adequate space for pets needing isolation and grow the area that provides medicine and surgical needs.
“It has become very clear that the current location and building may not meet with the organization and community vision of what the county municipal shelter should be,” Grahek said in the briefing.
The board of commissioners is expected to review the plan to rebuild the shelter in March and potentially decide how the project should move forward.
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