SRs supporters give 8k in the first week of fund drive!

Street Roots supporters have kicked in $8,000 dollars in the first week of the summer fund drive. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

The organization needs to raise another $7,000 this summer to keep the train on the tracks and programs running smoothly. To find out more about the summer fund drive read the letter from the director.

Give now!

Listen to a Street Roots story.

What does the arrest of a Harvard Professor and people on the streets in Portland have in common? Disorderly conduct.

Time Magazine looks at the disorderly conduct statute in an article today titled, The Gates case: When disorderly conduct is a Cop’s judgment call. The article touches on the history of the law and makes a case that more than any other law, disorderly conduct calls for officers to use their own discretion when making an arrest.

In Portland, the police bureau is now using disorderly conduct in replace of the sit-lie law. The City of Portland is currently mulling over what a recent verdict by a judge ruling the sit-lie unconstitutional means. In an interview on July 10, city commissioner Amanda Fritz told Street Roots her concerns about using disorderly conduct as a tool to police behavior, specifically with folks on the streets.

It (the sit-lie verdict) also highlights a concern that Commissioner Fish raised in terms of criminalizing homelessness. What the court ruling said was, you can’t do (sit-lie) this because state law says we have a disorderly conduct law that comes with a maximum of one year in prison.

We have concerns about the charge from advocates that sit-lie criminalizes homeless people, when it fact, it made it a citation rather than a misdemeanor.

I.B.: But isn’t forfeiting your right to counsel through a citation process a violation of a person’s civil rights?

A.F.: You’re right, there are a lot of different twists and turns with this issue. But in my six months at City Hall I’ve come to realize that we all care about the homeless and having a place to go, and that the sidewalk obstruction ordinance was truly a tool meant to get people services.

I.B.: Have the city attorney or others at City Hall inquired into why the sit-lie law was needed then, if something else was in place?

A.F.: Obviously, we wanted something that wasn’t criminalizing people and throwing people in jail for being homeless.

I.B.: So the police bureau and the business community have been advocating all this time to decriminalize homelessness?

A.F.: I don’t know what the motivation was because I wasn’t involved at that time. What we need to look at now is what options do we have and move forward.

In the meantime, the city has held two well-attended community forums on the law and the services attached it. It’s unclear what the next steps are and if the city plans on letting officers continue to make judgment calls on behavior on Portland’s downtown streets, specifically when an individual is sitting or lying on a sidewalk.

Posted by Israel Bayer

Extra! Extra!

Hot! Hot! Hot! The new edition of Street Roots is! And your vendor is keeping his cool on a corner near you. Check out what’s coming tomorrow morning in the latest edition:

West meets East: Attorney and writer Ronault “Polo” Catalani is the world’s ambassador to Portland. He sat down with Israel Bayer to talk about the dynamics facing Asian immigrants to Portland.

Violence in, violence out: Author Jerome Gold talks about his new book, “Paranoia and Heartbreak,” about the juvenile corrections cycle. Adam Hyla reports.

Escaping boys’ town: Vancouver’s male sex workers fight to emerge from the street’s shadows.

Addict’s Almanac: Back by popular demand, Tye Doudy picks up where he left off last year chronicling his life on the streets of Portland.

Plus you’ll get to know Kevin Bynum, one of our vendors, a little better in a profile by Elizabeth Schwartz.

But that’s only half the fun! Great commentaries and more await you this weekend. So take a copy to the beach, and when you’re done reading, Street Roots makes a great fan!

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

Balancing act: Ted Wheeler wants to talk urban renewal areas. Here’s why you should listen

From the July 10 edition of Street Roots

From his corner office on the sixth floor of the Multnomah County building, County Chairman Ted Wheeler has a panoramic view of a lot of money; looking west is downtown Portland and the Pearl District, and looking north, the Interstate corridor and the Northeast renaissance. The city grows all around him.

Which makes dealing with a $46 million budget shortfall all the more bitter.

For the ninth year in a row, Multnomah County has been defunding — cutting public safety and health services — in order to adjust to a regressive tax formula for urban renewal.

Do not avert your eyes. Yes, the subjects of urban renewal areas and tax increment financing make for a powerful sedative, but they have begun to light fires under politicians’ and taxpayers’ feet. They are workhorses in local development plans, including a 30 percent dedication of those funds toward affordable housing. It’s how tax dollars move in this town, for better or worse.

The urban renewal construct – which draws an increment of property tax dollars as a funding incentive for projects in “blighted” areas — most recently flared up over the Major League Soccer deal. That proposal sought to draw urban renewal funds to build a minor league baseball stadium in Lents. It was later withdrawn, with Wheeler being the stony messenger decrying the use of such funds for such a project, and the consequences in depleting a property tax base that suports education, health care and safety programs in the most populated county in Oregon.

Joanne Zuhl: In your opinion, do you think the city has responsibly used urban renewal areas to this point?

Ted Wheeler: I support urban development, I support job creation, I support the creation of urban renewal areas around truly blighted areas that would not be developed but for the investment of tax increment financing in those areas. I’m fundamentally opposed to the improper use of tax increment financing. If you invested in an area that is not truly blighted, you’re simply taking dollars away from a jurisdiction that would be providing important community services, whether it’s education, basic health, or basic human services.

J.Z.: On those criteria, how has the city performed?

T.W.: I think it has been a mixed bag, to be honest. It’s not just the city. I don’t think the county has been paying attention either, historically. We have not been good advocates for our basic services, nor have we made a clear statement to the community about the real trade offs that exist between creating new urban renewal areas and our ability to deliver basic health and safety services in this community.

I’m interested in the business at hand — which is whether we should create new urban renewal areas and whether we should expand existing ones.

What I want to do is drive into that conversation this very important issue of the trade off between existing services and the projects in urban renewal areas. My concern has been that because the county and the school districts have been asleep at the switch, and because the City Council has had this powerful tool, tax increment financing, available to it with virtually no oversight, they’ve used it as an ATM for projects that are important to the City Council but aren’t necessarily a top priority to the citizens of this community.

Tax increment financing (TIF) is easy money, and it shouldn’t be easy money. It should be the dollars of last resort. There are other ways you can fund projects, whether it’s debt, whether it’s an economic enterprise zone, whether it’s going out and finding private-sector investors. You should only use TIF in the case where there couldn’t be any other development but for the TIF dollars.

J.Z.: Do we really have areas of such blight – that we need urban renewal incentives?

T.W.: The legal definition of blight is wishy-washy, so that almost any neighborhood in this city could be described as blighted. Blight includes surfaced parking lots, improper developments that were mistakes that were made previously.

Vendor corner: Customer’s kindness saves a vendor’s life

From the July 10 edition of Street Roots

Vendors experience generosity from Street Roots customers on a daily basis. It is usually done out of compassion for another human being without any thought of getting something in return. John Alden calls  such giving “paying it forward.”  This vendor profile is a thank you letter to everyone who “pays it forward,” but especially to a man named “Matt,” who helped John on July 1 by giving him $10 for a doctor co-pay.

John had spent three months in Salem this spring helping a disabled friend prepare her house for sale and doing some landscaping. The house sold in mid-June, allowing his friend to move to a handicap accessible apartment.  After the house sold, John returned to Portland and began selling Street Roots outside Starbucks on NW 12th and Glisan.

Even though his corner doesn’t have much traffic, John likes his chosen spot. He gets there around 7:30 a.m. and sells papers for about three hours. Then he goes to the park, a coffee shop, or library and writes his autobiography while resting his legs. He returns to Starbucks about noon and sells his newspapers, picking up just enough money to survive on.

Precinct shuffle brings new faces, attitudes to Southeast

From the July 10 edition of Street Roots

One month since the Portland Police Bureau’s June 11 consolidation of inner southeast Portland into Central Precinct, no one is quite sure what lasting effect the consolidation will have on policing in inner southeast Portland.

“In terms of service delivery, there’s no change,” says Central Precinct Captain Mark Kruger.

Officers formerly reporting to Southeast Precinct are continuing to patrol the same geographic area they patrolled before the consolidation, but they are now part of Central Precinct.

That is a relief to the neighborhood advocates, who will take as much time as needed to praise their neighborhood officers for the work they do in the largely residential area comprising inner southeast Portland. (The boundaries are the Willamette River, Burnside Avenue, 39th Avenue and the Multnomah/Clackamas county line.)

“We have worked really hard to build up relationships,” says Valerie Chapman, the pastoral administrator of St. Francis of Assisi Church. “Officers know who people are and who we are, and what people need.”

But the consolidation presents another challenge to St. Francis, which provides lunch and a day center for the homeless: How to work with the police as they begin to more strictly enforce the city’s anti-camping and no-structures ordinances, sweeping homeless people and their camps.

Street Roots needs your help this summer!

Please support Street Roots!

It’s time for some truth telling. Street Roots is in a period of hard challenges in the months to come. Three years ago, the organization set out on an aggressive growth strategy that would boost the vendor program, improve and broaden the content of the newspaper and grow the organization in a way that would create systemic change in the community. Since 2006, the organization has done exactly that.

The vendor program for people experiencing homelessness and poverty has grown. The quality of the newspaper, specifically the journalism and a diverse range of community voices, including those on the streets, is at an all-time high. The Rose City Resource Guide transformed from a 4-page insert in the newspaper to a 104-page, 4×4 pocket guide and a state of the art web site connecting services to people most in need. The organization has led successful campaigns to secure homeless services in Portland and throughout the region, helped families maintain Section 8 housing and changed the conversation around homelessness and poverty.

Now we find ourselves at a crossroads. The organization is set to move into a new location in November in outer East Portland to expand the benefits of the vendor program to a growing homeless and low-income population on the eastside. We are working on developing the technology to bring the streets to the World Wide Web and are working to create a more timely and effective publication for readers and vendors alike.

All of this comes at a time when the economy has plummeted and the newspaper industry as a whole struggles to develop sustainable funding streams. It also comes at a time when homelessness is rapidly increasing and funding is drastically decreasing from foundations.

Street Roots is not a conventional social-service agency, so we don’t receive big government contracts or grants. Most foundations don’t fund media projects. While we pride ourselves on being outside the box, it’s true that often times we find ourselves on the outside looking in when it comes to institutional support for our programs.

We need your help now! Street Roots relies on individual donors and supporters in the community to survive. In theory, regular Street Roots readers give at least $26 dollars a year to their local neighborhood vendor. This act goes to support individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty with their day-to-day survival and increasing people’s quality of life. It also creates an atmosphere of relationship building across class lines that you simply aren’t going to find anywhere else in the city. We believe in believing in people, and your support and readership makes that a reality.

Saying that, Street Roots can’t support vendors and the relationships built with the community without having organizational support. It takes money to print and maintain a newspaper. And without a newspaper, there’s no vendor program. Both programs are tied at the hip. It also takes money to maintain a day-to-day space for vendors and people on the streets to gather in a safe environment and to have the supplies needed to support these efforts.

Street Roots needs to raise a humbling $15,000 in July and August to keep the train on the tracks. We’re not sounding alarm bells, but we are saying out loud that without your support we won’t be able to maintain at the level we are today in the coming months.

Your donation this summer will help Street Roots to:

- Get the news out to 10,000 readers every other week – covering the issues that affect real people every day

- Provide an income for 80 men and women experiencing homelessness and poverty in Portland

- Lead strategic campaigns that improve the quality of life for residents with the fewest resources

- Connect thousands of low-income residents with vital services through the Rose City Resource

 Street Roots always relies on community support. This summer it’s more important than ever. Thanks for giving what you can.

 Please give today! You can also make a check or money order out to Street Roots, 211 NW Davis, Portland, Oregon 97209. 

 Sincerely,

 Israel Bayer, Executive Director

A single payer sing-a-long Saturday

Musician Anne Feeney has organized a roadshow of singers to raise the roof on the need for universal health care

What: Sing Out for Single Payer Roadshow
When: 7:30 p.m., Saturday, July 18
Where: SEIU Local 49 Auditorium, 3536 SE 26th Ave.
Cost: Donations welcome to cover costs

By Joanne Zuhl

In the pantheon of classic folk music, songs about national health care don’t trip readily off the common man’s tongue. But for Anne Feeney, the right to affordable health care ranks as fundamental as peace and human dignity.

Feeney has organized the Sing Out for Single Payer Health Care Roadshow, a collection of folk performers touring the West Coast to raise awareness and solidarity for the national health care proposal.  The tour includes performers Al Bradbury, Pickles, Hunter Paye, Patrick Dodd, General Strike, Bluegrass Dave Wilmoth, Jason Luckett, and others, in addition to Feeney, who herself has been a force of activism in the folk music world. The Roadshow will perform at 7:30 p.m. July 18, in Portland’s SEIU Local 49 Auditorium.

Like everyone of her generation, her life was shaped by the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. Today, she is singing out about single payer health care, under consideration in both the House and Senate, which would create a single government fund to cover the cost of health care for the general public. She’s fighting for this because, like the rest of her generation, she’s come to the conclusion that the current system has been a deadly failure.

Joanne Zuhl: In the folk world, these kinds of musical events are more commonly associated with the peace movement and civil rights. And this is one about health insurance. What is it about single payer that has you fired up?

Anne Feeney: I think this is one of the great social movements of this era. It was tragic divergence that America decided to go with employer-funded health insurance for their employees, because it was doomed to fail, and we’ve watched how it has put American companies at such a disadvantage in the marketplace

Street Roots’ executive director receives honors

Street Roots Executive Director Israel Bayer was among a group of individuals and organizations recognized with achievement awards by the Portland Coordinating Committee to End Homelessness. The awards were presented Wednesday by City Commissioner Nick Fish and Multnomah County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury.

Bayer was honored for his “leadership and ingenuity in challenging the community to act, respond and live to promote justice for all people and be a voice for marginalized groups.”

Also receiving awards were the Multnomah County Mobile Medical Clinic, Cascade AIDS Project, and the Home Builders Foundation. Other individuals honored were Lio Alaalatoa with JOIN, Liora Berry with Cascadia BHC, Liv Jenssen with the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice, and Holly Redeau of Central City Concern.

Friday at Street Roots

Buying papers

Vendor meeting

NW Section 8 casualties get some relief

HUD: An estimated one out of every 200 Oregonians are homeless

Nearly 300 families in Northwest Oregon got some breathing room this month – a one-month extension on assistance to keep them in housing.

In late May, the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, NOHA, notified 285 recipients of Section 8 housing assistance vouchers that they would be dropped from the program as of July 1. The cuts from the program were caused by a shortfall in funding for the housing authority from the federal Bureau of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, which funds the Section 8 program. In some cases, NOHA was paying 90 percent of the rent for recipients, who stretch across Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties.

In late June, NOHA’s board of directors voted to tap $145,000 in its reserves to pay for the month of July for the effected families. One of those families belongs to Jennifer Cherry, who had nearly all of her family’s rent paid for by NOHA. She and her partner, who are recovering from disabilities, have three children.
“HUD gave us July, so we’ll see what happens for next month,” said Cherry, who said her landlord has also been very helpful during the ordeal.

On Thursday, the OHCS received half of a $15 million relief package from HUD’s new Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program. As the name indicates, the money is to help prevent people from becoming homeless and to rapidly re-house those who have. The funding is part of the economic stimulus package, and includes allocations to Portland, Eugene, Salem and Clackamas and Washington counties. OHCS received nearly $8 million, and will distribute the money to Oregon’s smaller communities and rural areas, including the three-county region covered by NOHA.

“Our intention is to help those folks who had vouchers and were terminated,” says Lisa Joyce, legislative relations manager for OHCS. “We know that they were eligible for assistance.”

Fritz talks sit-lie, process

From the July 10 edition of Street Roots

Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Nick Fish will be leading two community discussions this month on the controversial Safe Access For Everyone (SAFE) program that supports a range of different homeless services and oversees the obstruction as nuisance law, otherwise known as sit-lie for its ban on people sitting or lying on sidewalks in downtown Portland.

In May, after much fanfare, City Hall extended the sit-lie ordinance until October pending more community discussions on what to do with the law in the long term.

In June, a Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Stephen K. Bushong ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. Days later the police stopped enforcing the law until further notice, throwing the ordinance and the larger issue of sidewalk access into even more disarray.

Street Roots recently talked with Fritz to get her perspective on the ordinance and the community discussions later this month.

Israel Bayer: What are you hoping to accomplish with the community forums around the SAFE committee?

Amanda Fritz: What they’re for is a conversation, a dialogue, a listening tool. It has always been about the process and coming together so that the streets can be used by everyone. It was never only about the ordinance. It is about the big picture. What services have been created because of this process? In many ways, since the ordinance has been declared unconstitutional, the conversation is even more important.

Vendor corner: Home away from home in Portland

Like a lot of us who have lived a while, David Armitage wants to “go home.” He wants to go back to a time, place, and relationships where life was easier.  Although he is from Portland originally, David wants to return to his adopted village in northern Greece. While he prepares to return, he sells Street Roots newspapers because, “it gives me something to do.”

David refuses to succumb to the kinds of depression he sees in some other men who just sit in their rooms and “do nothing.” He reportedly only goes home at night to watch a movie on television and sleep. During the day, he sells Street Roots at the back door of Powell’s, then takes the streetcar to 23rd and Lovejoy and spends most late afternoons sitting in the shade of a tree outside the Lovejoy Grocery store. “I put my newspaper on the table in front of me where people can see them,” he told me. “Then if someone says they want to buy a paper, well, then they can.”

David is a people watcher. He sees students, working people who look stressed out, tourists, politicians, and traffic. Lots of traffic. And road rage. He watches the streetcar go by. He has learned to recognize the streetcar drivers and the mechanics who are called upon when something goes wrong with the trolley. While he watches all this he dreams of his friends and work in Greece where he was the caretaker for a family that owned an orchard outside of Thessalonica.

Extra! Extra!

The cool breezes call for a cup of joe and a seat outside of your favorite café with your favorite newspaper. The new Street Roots comes out tomorrow morning and your friendly neighborhood vendor will be standing sentry with all this in his or her hands:

Balancing act: Ted Wheeler wants to talk about urban renewal areas. Here’s why you should listen. Joanne Zuhl interviews the Multnomah County chairman.

Precinct shuffle brings new faces, attitudes into Southeast: Amanda Waldroupe explores what it means for Central Precinct to assume authority over Portland’s Southeast neighborhoods.

‘This is a bigger issue:’ An interview by Israel Bayer with City Commissioner Amanda Fritz on the latest decisions surrounding sit-lie and street access.

The eye of the beholder: From the Great Depression to modern day, ‘Hobos to Street People’ showcases artists’ interpretation of poverty and homelessness.

And so much more that 16 pages can barely hold it all. But we did it again – all for the price of $1! So pour a tall one and support fair trade by picking up a copy of Street Roots.

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

The Perfect storm: Northwest Oregon’s Section 8 disaster is being repeated across the country

From the June 26, edition of Street Roots

It has been called a perfect storm. A rare convergence of forces that, on their own, could possibly be withstood, but in combination are insurmountable, leaving disaster in their wake.

But this no act of God, or Mother Nature, but rather the high-pressure system of government. The storm, in bureaucratic terms, is the ongoing economic derailment compounded by a restricted federal funding system.

The casualties are 285 families in Northwest Oregon who as of July 1 will be terminated from Section 8 assistance, this despite their qualifications and need for the program to secure stable housing. Their provider, the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, or NOHA, learned in mid-May that it would not be getting the federal Section 8 funding it needed to continue the Section 8 program at current levels. And within weeks, the families were given a 30-day notice of their termination.