Save vital BHCD funding!

Street Roots believes it’s crucial to fund the Bureau of Housing and Community Development’s proposed budget, including the $6.7 million in one-time General Fund dollars, to preserve vital services and housing for people in crisis. We believe that in this current economic climate it’s critical that the City of Portland show leadership in funding and maintaining crucial services that impact low-income Portlanders.

In addition to BHCD’s ongoing funded programs, we support the following one-time funded projects in the city’s upcoming budget process:

- Supportive Housing: Rent assistance and services for individuals experiencing homelessness, including families, children, adults, and people experiencing mental illness.

- Homeless Prevention: Rent assistance to continue for the School-Families-Housing Stabilization Fund. – Shelter services for women, men and youth.

- Transitional housing operations for homeless youth.

- Public Safety and Livability: Preserve the day shelter and important resource information, as well as a sobering station, Hooper Center and Syringe exchange programs – Workforce development: Preserve Central City Concern/JOIN homeless employment programs.

- Economic Opportunity Workforce Projects, including Project Clean Slate and marketing assistance for micro entrepreneurs businesses – Microenterprises to support 19 artists involved in the Trillium Artisans Project.

- EOI Youth Workforce: Support employment programs for 214 low-income youth.

- Affordable Housing Homebuyer Access to continue to reduce the minority homeownership gap and to prevent foreclosures.

- Rental Housing Access and Stabilization: Support for a variety of services including 211 Info, Fresh Start, relocation assistance, Shared Housing, Fair Housing Enforcement, Housing Partnership Workgroup and Community Point web-based housing search assistance.

Many social-service agencies are seeing an increase in individuals and families seeking services due to the economic climate. We are living in extraordinary times and now more than ever people’s lives are in danger. We trust that the City of Portland will find the resources to maintain the essential programs listed above.

Sign the petition!

Send a letter to the Mayor and Commissioners!

Don’t be shy!

Street Roots highlighted in Relevant Magazine

John Pattison Deputy Editor for the Burnside Writers Collective writes a piece on Street Roots.

Relevant Magazine is a bi-monthly publication about faith, politics, life and progressive culture.

Street Roots highlighted in the Oregonian, Examiner

From the Oregonian: At 10-years, Street Roots builds on its base.

 From Examiner.com: Street Roots: an unemployment parable.

Photos from the Street Roots 10 year celebration!

Street Roots celebrated 10 years today with an Open House. More than 150 supporters celebrated with us. Here’s a few pics from parts of the event. Look for more photos tomorrow from the event.

Early on in the celebration.

Street Roots copy editor Mary Pacios and Board President Bruce Anderson.

Longtime supporter Bob Durston with the Portland Development Commission, Rich Rodgers, a Street Roots board member and City Commissioner Randy Leonard.

Street Roots vendors Kevin Bynum and George Mayes.

Greetings. 

Book Smarts

Grassroots democracy comes by our own hands

“Hegemonic Love Potion,” by Jules Boykoff. Factory School, Queens, NY, 2009 103 pages.

By Jay Thiemeyer
Contributing writer
At a recent reading, Jules Boykoff, anarchist scholar and activist with Agit-Prop Collective, opened with:

the economic cue cards were a’ flippin’
the livid civilizers were a’ slippin’
there were no jobs left, so
there were all these jobs, so
he called it ‘gringostroika’
a process of primitive accumulation?
ah, the NAFTA rapture of yesteryear
conditions revisited
upon the people…
– from “Gringostroika”

His recitation reminded me of “Howl” and that famous gathering of  the soon-to-be Beats where Kerouac jumped among the seated, pouring wine, drinking himself under their tables. But the crowd listening in Powells On Hawthorne were all very young and student-like and drinking coffee shortly before. Testimony to Boykoff’s trick: he is both mad poet (“mad as Hell”) and professor. He knows whereof he speaks when he rails on about NAFTA’s reduction of all but the rich.

Seeing the streets though a mother’s eyes

From the March 20 Street Roots on the streets today…

Today I bought my first Street Roots newspaper. It’s a great newspaper. I bought it from a nice young man on his way back to the Portland Rescue Mission. His name is Scott and he just turned 43. I asked myself, how did he become homeless? And, what brought him to this point in his life? Was it the economy…twists and turns of his life?

If I went back just nine years of his life, I would have seen him graduate from Oregon State police academy with the other 130 graduates to be new Oregon Troopers. Then the layoffs started. They were the first to be let go, and he wanted this to be his career job. He only got one year in with them and then fell back on long haul truck driving again. His last temporary job was a mail carrier truck driver for a company that contracted to the downtown post office. Christmas came and Christmas went, and so did his job. He was hoping to get a bid run, but cutbacks started.

He was to start driving a log truck just a couple months back. He drove down to Eugene ready to start work that Monday. But again, the layoffs started. The truck he was to drive that Monday was one of the trucks put on hold. The owner had a meeting with Weyerhaeuser and the cutbacks started. Scott came back to Portland, disappointed, broke, and now homeless.

You ask, where was his family to fall back on? He had just lost his grandfather to cancer who had lived in Medford and was the last living grandparent that Scott had. His father, who had once been a Portland policeman, had just lost his home in Las Vegas, with his new wife, to foreclosure. He had no place to offer him to go for support, except the phone. For myself, I too am struggling on a fixed income (Social Security) and living in a one-bedroom apartment where he could only stay for a short time.

It is a time for reflection and transition for many families in America. I am thankful for the job that Street Roots has given Scott as a vendor. He notices how some people just walk by without a glance, but then again, I was once one of those people he is talking about.

I had worked in downtown Portland for a number of years at one of the banks, and was too busy, as I thought, to notice the one standing on a street corner. Today, I stopped and noticed a young man named Scott, who I bought my first Street Roots newspaper from. He said it was his first paper he sold. Today was an awakening to homelessness and how easy each of us can be there with no home to go to, when life challenges come our way. I don’t have a lot of money right now, but I see I can donate each month to Street Roots and the rescue missions. I would like to do that.

Thank you for all you do.

JEANETTE
(Scott Walden’s Mom)

Notes on becoming an urban gypsy

From the March 20 Street Roots on the streets today…

I am new. Portland may be my hometown, but suddenly it feels as foreign as some far-flung city in the Near East.

Why? Because I am new to the streets. So many names for it – I prefer to say I am becoming an urban gypsy, not that I am exploring my inner bum. But these are just semantics. The fact is, I have become homeless. The reasons for this are only important to myself, and quite frankly, some days even I fail to see their relevance, in the light of all these adjustments.

At 45 years old, being gloriously round, semi-crippled, with grey beginning to dance in the strands of my hairline, it didn’t occur to me that I would have to chose between protection and core values.

Yet here I am – trying to still the icy tentacles of fear racing along over-exposed nerve endings. I try desperately to sleep on this one street corner. I have turned down the dubious offer of “protection” from the bleary-eyed, slack-jawed man next to me – which leaves me alone with Maggie, my Italian greyhound, whose only saving grace seems to be her ability to give good shiver. I snort, trying to squash my sudden yearning for a mastiff on steroids – disloyal I know – but, oh, so momentarily true.

Just about the time that sleep begins to tease my senses, suddenly my blankets are ripped off my body.

“Who are you? This is my spot.”

The man who is drunk and currently clutching my blankets roars. My hands dart up, and I snatch the blankets back while my heart tries to rip itself out of my chest.

“Get out of here!” I finally manage to squeak out, dismayed that I don’t sound at all like the Billy Badass I was trying for, but much more like an angry gnat. Strangely, the man actually leaves – in spite of, not because of, my response.

I am woken up three more times this night by men walking past with suggestions for what I should do to “earn” protection from these interruptions to sanity. I spent the last two hours before dawn shivering under blankets with wide-open eyes and a thudding heart.

Note to self: This moment will pass. Just breathe past this terror. But right now, with the residue of last night’s adrenaline running in rivulets up and down my spine, I remain somewhat skeptical. Quite frankly, I would prefer to click my heels and just go home.

Oh yeah – right now, this is home. It appears that here in hell, it’s gonna be just another day in paradise.

By Julie McCurdy

Act Now! Important housing measures hang in the balance in State Legislature

Several measures before Oregon lawmakers have the potential to fortify the state’s housing stock and preserve units for lower income, elderly and disabled Oregonians. Keep your eyes peeled on the following:

SB 5535 – Issue lottery-backed bonds to fund housing programs that preserve existing subsidized rental housing and manufactured home parks. $19.4 million in lottery-backed bonds is needed in 2009-2011 to keep vulnerable Oregonians in their homes.

SB 199 – Increase the cap on the Oregon Affordable Housing Tax Credit. This is unique tax credit leverages private dollars to fund affordable housing development and acquisition, including manufactured home parks. This will have little to no fiscal impact in 2009-2011, but will allow planning for future development.

How will these resources be used?

Oregon laws spells out how these resources will be used: to meet housing needs of low and very low-income Oregonians in both rural and urban areas. Oregon Housing and Community Services has effective programs in place that maximize the impact of state dollars and support community efforts to meet priority housing needs.

Shortages of affordable housing and homelessness affect all areas of Oregon. These resources will fund locally based strategies for housing Oregonians.

What you can do:

Call your local state Representatives and Senators asking to support Senate Bill 5535 and 199 to help secure affordable housing for all Oregonians. Also ask your representatives to support allocating general fund dollars to meet the affordable housing needs of Oregonians.

Write a letter to your local state representative or call the legislative line Monday-Friday 9AM-5PM at 1-503-986-1000 and ask for your local legislative office.

Extra! Extra!

Smile and the whole world smiles with you! Give it a try, starting with your neighborhood vendor who is always happy to see you. The new paper comes out tomorrow, the first day of spring, and a perfect way celebrate is to pick up your copy hot off the press. Here’s a sneak peak:

Bitter blood: Portland residents who survived the brutal Khmer Rouge regime document their stories in a new oral history project. Mara Grunbaum reports on this remarkable Portland project to capture the voices of a population that lived through the unspeakable.

Reckoning with poverty in Native America: Stacey Ives recounts the trauma of isolation and poverty through the memories of her own youth. It’s a stirring telling of how bigotry and racism can pull the strings of homelessness and poverty.

Northern exposure: Northeast Portland may never be what it once was, but Maxine Fitzpatrick wants to make sure it can once again be a home for everyone. Joanne Zuhl talks with Fitzpatrick, the executive director of a community development corporation that works to improve the livability of Northeast Portland.

Labor pushes for single-payer plan: Tom Leedham, Portland Teamster and chairman of the Taft-Hartley Health Care Trust, talks about the potential, and necessity, of a single-payer, universal health care plan.

The Murnane Wharf: Is it forgetten? Portland author Michael Munk (The Portland Red Guide) writes about the man behind the long-neglected Murnane Wharf near the Burnside Bridge. Francis J. Murnane was a Portland organizer and activist with the longshoreman; the Wharf was named in his honor. But that memory risks being lost to renovations if the city falls back on its promise.

All that, plus a great profile on vendor Jojo Brittain, comments and essays by people in our community, and the best poetry money can buy. And throw in your two cents on our blog, or by writing to the editor at joanne@streetroots.org. We always love hearing from you!

Vendor odyssey at Third and Alder

Nathan Junkin has agreed to let me write about what it is like for him to be schizophrenic and homeless.

I interviewed Nathan on the corner of SW Third Avenue and Alder Street on Ash Wednesday. Pedestrian traffic ebbed and flowed as buses across the street dropped off passengers. When he saw me approach, he took off a glove and shook my hand. “Good to see you,” he said. It was a cool, cloudy morning that began to clear as we talked. He seemed gentle, unassuming, but self-confident.

Nathan was 26 years old when one day, at work, he started hearing voices. He told me the story in brief, unemotional sentences. “I went to the hospital. They gave me medication. The medication made me tired. I lost my job.”

That was nine years ago. The hospital had diagnosed him with schizophrenia. He remains on medication today and has a counselor who checks on him to make sure he is taking it.

“Does she help you figure out how to deal with the voices?” I asked.

Mental health care funds left behind in the recovery

In February, Chris Bouneff got a phone call from a man whose wife has bipolar disorder. She had been managing it well with private health care, the caller said, but then the couple both lost their jobs, and their insurance was about to lapse. He wanted to know where else they could go for the mental health services his wife needed.

“He’s calling, saying, ‘What do I do?’” recounted Bouneff, who is the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Oregon branch. “What do you say to someone like that? ‘Sorry’?”

Are we stimulated yet?

We know the stakes are big – nearly $800 billion in stimulus money, more than $80 million headed to Oregon for housing and community services alone, just over $4 million pledged to Portland for homelessness prevention, with potentially more waiting in the wings. And the winner is…

“We’re like, the envelope — please!” says Beth Kaye, the public affairs manager for Portland’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development. “There are many different funding sources and many different processes and many different funding formulas… So we’re waiting.”

They’re waiting for the 50-plus spigots of funding open up and begin the flow of relief into Multnomah County and all government agencies and organizations within as part of the American Recovery and Revitalization Act. The act authorizes $13.6 billion for public housing and homelessness prevention programs, organizations and agencies nationwide. Oregon’s piece of that pie is believed to be just over $82 million (although some estimates have been closer to $100 million) some of which will trickle down from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to Portland, Multnomah County and local organizations by early April.

In the world of affordable housing, the emphasis for using this infusion of cash rests on two main components: Preserving the thousands of affordable housing units that are at risk of disappearing over the next five years and resuscitating the low-income housing tax credit market for new development.

Detroit’s fall lingers in its harsh winter

“I still believe in the 3-1-3, where street culture reigns supreme: Buying a bag of shitty pot through the window of a 20-year old Oldsmobile with a tin can supporting its muffler – that’s a kind of culture you can’t find anywhere else.” – Cassandra Koslen

If one thing speaks for the state of affairs in Detroit, Mich., it’s the utter vacancy of the Detroit-Wayne International Airport a few days before the World Auto Show.

The Motown Store at the end of my terminal blasted a favorite B-side into the empty corridor; the Brooks Brothers across the hall looked like a front, given the lack of business inside.

To get from the airport to my house takes about 45 minutes. Within 20 minutes, corporate skyscrapers edge in, the number of houses multiplies. Industrial buildings line the side of the highway; abandoned warehouses are prevalent.

Take a quick turn north on I-75, and for a few miles things look worse. Years of graffiti peel off the large cement barricades lining the freeway. Houses I have looked at my whole life seem sadder, more worn. Within 10 miles we cut off the highway, minutes from home. This is when the real shock begins.

Housing activists in Hennepin County take over sheriff’s office over foreclosures

Posted by Israel Bayer

Forum for the stimulus challenged

Feeling like the only one in the room who doesn’t fully understand the bazillion dollar stimulus package?

Then take advantage of Oregon ON’s Portland Public Forum, noon to 1:30 p.m., March 19 at New Genesis Community Church in NE Portland.

The forum will focus on the issue of housing within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  – or what most of us in the hood call the stimulus bill.  Susan Boyd  and Mark Kantor of Seattle’s Kantor, Taylor, Nelson and Boyd PC  will share information about the ways that this federal  money will impact our neighborhoods and examine best strategies for  making the most of these federal dollars. Oregon ON will also host a panel  of city, county and state decision makers.

Oregon ON’s Public Forum is a brown-bag lunch open to the public at no charge.  Genesis Community Church is located at 5423 NE 27th Ave.,  Portland  97211, on the corner of 27th and Killingsworth.  Please enter through the south door. Off street parking is available.

Posted by Joanne Zuhl