The revelation comes two days before the City Council considers a resolution to investigate city administration over $21 million in hidden funds disclosed last fall.
The Portland Housing Bureau has found additional unspent dollars in its coffers, adding to the previous $21 million it found through an audit last year.
It is unclear exactly how much money is in the fund, but Council President Jamie Dunphy called councilors over the weekend to tell them they would soon learn of the specifics of what was found in the Housing Investment Fund. He told the Mercury February 2 that he did not yet know how much total funding was available.
“Truly cannot accurately say,” Dunphy said. “It is in the millions. It is likely not as much as has already been found.”
News of the unspent money comes just over two months after city councilors learned the city’s Rental Services Office had amassed about $21 million in rental services fees paid by landlords, which went unreported for months. The newly uncovered Housing Bureau revenue is collected through two streams: the city’s transient lodging tax — taxes paid by hotels and booking agents — and short term rental fees from operations like AirBnB.
Dunphy said he expects a memo from Mayor Keith Wilson early Wednesday outlining the specifics.
The funding could impact two pieces of legislation before the City Council this week. On Wednesday, the Council will consider a resolution that would open an investigation into when the city’s administrative branch discovered the initial funds, and why the Council did not learn about the funds until immediately after an annual budget adjustment last November.
Secondly, the newly found funds could help Wilson and all 12 councilors notch a win on a contentious “Slow the Inflow” resolution aimed at homelessness prevention, which has been in process since early December. Some want to allocate the $21 million toward rent assistance, while others want to send more than 25 percent of the funds to Prosper Portland for a cash-strapped, 230-unit housing project.
Now, the money could stretch far enough to cover everything, and councilors will decide Thursday where the money should go.
Councilor Loretta Smith sent a press release February 2 saying she has been calling for a comprehensive audit of every bureau after learning of the initial funding surplus. She said the additional money raises concerns about the Council’s oversight over the administrative side of the city government.
“I am deeply troubled by the possibility that departments may be withholding vital financial information from the Council,” Smith said. “Our current financial structure has not successfully adapted to our new government model. In addition to calling for resignations from ICE employees, Mayor Wilson should also focus on his own employees and fix the inefficiencies plaguing our finance teams. We need to address the root causes to avoid perpetuating gaps and surpluses.”
Discovery of the additional funds, first reported by the Oregonian, comes days before the City Council is scheduled to take up a resolution requiring City Administrator Raymond Lee to release public records related to the initial $21 million surplus. If passed, the resolution will also require Lee to schedule an oversight hearing, the first under the city government charter.
Councilor Mitch Green filed the resolution December 16, 2025, urging the Council to use its investigative authority to learn how nearly $21 million in funds went unspent. The investigation would attempt to answer questions about who was aware of the funds and when, and why the Council was not informed of the funds until the day after it concluded a November budget process to address an $18 million shortfall.
The resolution says the Council should use public records and oversight hearings to understand the dynamics that left Council in the dark about the funds during the budget process, and to what degree the administration’s decision to stay quiet were related to the budget adjustment.
News of the unspent funds has generated complexity in how the local government runs its business since former Housing Bureau director Helmi Hisserich initiated an audit of the RSO in July 2025.
The funds, which come from a small registration fee that landlords pay for doing business in the city, accrued between 2021 and 2024. Hisserich joined the Bureau in early 2024.
Wilson, then-City Administrator Michael Jordan, and Chief Financial Officer Jonas Biery were made aware of an initial discovery of $12 million in early September, but did not alert the Council. Wilson and Oliveira placed Hisserich on a three-week administrative leave without cause on October 30, the same time the City Council was debating how to fill the funding gap. Hisserich resigned November 20.
In a December 3, 2025 Council meeting, Jordan said the issue of Hisserich’s removal and the funding questions were not necessarily related.
“It’s very challenging to talk about a personnel issue in public, so I’m not going to do that,” Jordan said. “But I also want to make sure that the public knows that the implied linkage between this money and the personnel issue you’re referring to is not a complete picture. So, I just want to make sure the public understands that.”
By December 4, Hisserich sent a memo to councilors, outlining her perspective on the series of events, seeking to clear her name and adding fuel to the burning question of why the Council was not made aware of the funds earlier. She said she believed she was unfairly blamed for revenue that went unspent prior to her appointment. Hisserich’s account said the administration viewed the funds as “a big PR problem,” adding that Oliveira told her not to disclose the audit’s findings.
Oliveira’s office disputed the assertion that he knew of the full $21 million, saying he was only aware of $12 million last August, when Hisserich alerted him. His spokesperson told the Mercury in December that Oliveira learned of an additional $9 million on November 17.
If passed, the resolution will require Lee, the city administrator, to release the records by February 20, and council operations staff to compile the information by February 27. Council President Dunphy will be required to schedule an initial oversight hearing, including testimony, no later than March 6.
In recent meetings, councilors have also hotly debated how to prioritize the previously known $21 million after the housing and homelessness committee and, later, the finance committee, passed two competing pieces of legislation, then merged them through amendment proposals. The resolution would urge the mayor to reflect the City Council’s established priorities for those funds in his proposed budget next fiscal year.
The process to develop that resolution revealed a small rift between councilors who wanted to level the funding toward rent assistance for those on the verge of entering or exiting homelessness, and those who wanted to divert roughly $8.1 million toward projects managed by the city’s economic development corporation, Prosper Portland.
The Council is scheduled to take a vote on the resolution Thursday with the unveiled funding in play.
