Editorial: Region must work for housing levy

Ever wonder why so many people are experiencing homelessness in Portland, or why the panhandling debate never seems to die? It most certainly has something to do with the economy, but it also has something to do with the lack of ongoing revenue and affordable housing units available to low-income working people.

Our sister city to the north, Seattle, just overwhelmingly passed (63 percent) a housing levy for $145 million over a seven year period. Most of the levy, $104 million, will go toward producing and preserving 1,670 apartments for low-income individuals, while another $4 million will go to more than 3,000 individuals and families in need of rent assistance.

It doesn’t stop there. More than $6 million will go towards purchasing land for affordable housing, with $14 million going toward operations and maintenance for affordable rental units and another $9 million going for homebuyer’s assistance.

The levy not only provides homes for people experiencing homelessness and poverty, it also goes to create an ongoing revenue stream for jobs and construction projects in the region.

All for $17 per $100,000 of assessed property value annually. That means for most Portland homeowners, they would be contributing $34 to $68. That might be the same amount you find yourself donating to a local non-profit to help feed, cloth or house an individual. Why not put that money toward something that will house thousands of people?

Street Roots realizes there are barriers both locally and at a state level concerning the tax structures and how money will be allocated. We also realize there are many competing interests, ranging from the schools to human services and the arts. At the end of the day, all of these things – schools, human services and the arts would benefit from a revenue stream dedicated to improving the quality of life by providing a warm and safe place for individuals and families to call home.

The region has excellent leadership at a government level when it comes to helping secure funding for people experiencing homelessness and poverty. In the past year, both city and county government have been engaged at one level or another in helping maintain our fragile safety net for the area’s poor. They’ve done more with less and should be commended for their efforts.

In a time when unemployment rates, hunger and homelessness are at an all-time high both locally and throughout Oregon – we have a responsibility to help maintain the basic needs of our citizens – not just this year, but for many years to come.

The recent passing of the housing levy in Seattle gives us hope. Hope that even in hard times people can pull together and find a way to do the right thing – even if that means paying $17 to $100 a year for the areas most vulnerable citizens.

Street Roots believes the political will exists to pass a levy or a tax locally for affordable housing. We’re hoping that together as a community, we can make that happen in 2010.

Extra! Extra!

If you are already a regular customer of Melissa Walsh, one of Street Roots great vendors, you’ll especially enjoy this edition of Street Roots. It features a story in pictures of Melissa and her husband Sean’s lives, including the obstacles they face and the love between them that carries them through.

And if you’ve never met Melissa or Sean, come and discover this incredible couple that are among so many finding their own path to survival in this city. It’s a compelling piece of photojournalism by Leah Nash that you won’t want to miss.

Street Roots hits the pavement first thing Friday morning, and your vendor will be ready and waiting with this and many other stories to share!

Also in this issue:

“We want to live in peace.” The words of Isdud Al Najjar, who was recently honored for her work with Mercy Corps in Palestine. Joanne Zuhl interviewed Mrs. Al Najjar during her visit to receive the humanitarian award.

The last Republican: Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal looked deep into the heart of the Republican Party. What he found should make the GOP blush. Rosette Royale reports.

Plus, columns by Sally Martin and Ruth Kovacs, an interview on the Street News Service, a biting editorial on what really needs to be done on the housing front, and much more. Thanks, as always, for your tremendous support, and for proving time and time again that Street Roots readers are the finest in town!

Street Roots weighs in on Sidewalk Management Plan

Editorial in the current edition of Street Roots (Oct. 16)

Opportunities lie ahead to build up, not down

There are many reasons to have a doom-and-gloom attitude about the economy and homelessness in Portland. We know businesses are hurting. People are hurting. Workers are feeling the brunt of layoffs and uncertainty heading into the holiday season. There are bills to pay and hungry mouths to feed. That comforting sense of security has long since vanished.

Right alongside all those uncertainties are people who sleep in our doorways, under our bridges and along makeshift paths stretched across our city. It all signals a weary and unforgiving winter ahead.

On the street, the buzz is about the new Sidewalk Management Plan. Street Roots has been getting calls from supporters, organizers, politicians and foundations on what our thoughts are on the Sidewalk Management Plan. So, what do we think?

We think a real opportunity exists to change the way Portland messages and works for with individuals on the streets.

On the front end, the plan is fantastic and builds a base for ongoing support for services, such as public restrooms, that are essential not just for people experiencing poverty, but all Portlanders. But concerning homelessness on our sidewalks and neighborhood corners, there are two ways the city can go: the familiar route of antagonism, or a new path of cooperation.

The city could opt for an anti-panhandling campaign that will fire up the engines of advocates for people on the streets and groups such as the ACLU. If the city goes for the anti-panhandling strategy, the plan risks being polarizing and falling into patterns that have failed many times before in cities across the U.S.  And at the end of the day, it doesn’t get to heart of the problem – which isn’t panhandling per se, so much as it aggressive behavior.

Or the city could choose, through a public education campaign, to engage people on the streets through outreach from social-service agencies and support from the broader community.

What if the general community was asked to give to services and support a larger spectrum of goals set out to curb the problem without saying don’t give to panhandlers? In the end, it’s not the city’s responsibility to direct or discourage any particular form of individual charity, but it is entirely appropriate for the city to spread the word on how people can plug in to and support the great programs Portland offers. Services that exist for people experiencing homelessness are strained, just like small and large businesses in this economy, and that strain ripples across the streets.

Why not beef the outreach up and engage people into getting into housing and accessing services? For those who choose to step over the line and commit aggressive acts, there are tools for addressing that behavior. Not everyone is kind, housed or homeless. There has to be personal accountability on the streets and it’s that simple. Why not educate people on the streets to show kindness and respect when facing adversity and survival? Street Roots does it every day with its vendor program, and it works.

If we embrace the approach of what we can do, instead of what we can’t, we might not have to read about police stings and anti-panhandling campaigns anymore. And instead of seeing negative stereotypes reinforced in the daily headlines, we might get some good news about a city that chooses to stand up together, instead of tearing one another down.

Police, “Cops” intrude on St. Francis diners

Shortly after 5 p.m. on Sept. 10, at the height of the Thursday evening dinner at St. Francis, diners were disrupted by a slew of police and a camera crew who entered  from either side of the dining hall with camera’s rolling.

The camera was for the show “Cops,” filming the police pursuit of a man wanted in a homicide. Staffers told the officers the man was not there, but according to people at the scene, the camera kept rolling and officers continued to question diners at the charitable meal for the homeless and poor.

The event was a traumatic experience for some diners, who did not give their permission to be filmed.

“The people were very, very agitated,” said Valerie Chapman, pastoral administrator at St. Francis. “And unfortunately, there is an assumption on the part of people who are vulnerable anyway that the staff must have been in on it. So we’ve been mitigating this that the staff didn’t know. We’re trying to do the best to maintain calm. We’re keeping the peace in a very awkward moment. And finding out what and why.”

Although St. Francis is in the newly reconfigured Central Precinct of the Portland Police Bureau, the officers who went into St. Francis were from the North Precinct.

Calls to the North Precinct offices were returned by Mary Wheat, public information officer with the Portland Police Bureau. Wheat said that periodically they have the show “Cops” following officers and filming, and in this case, the officers received permission from someone at the door to enter St. Francis at the time they arrived with the camera crew. Chapman said she’s the only one who can authorize a film crew to go into the hall.

“We would never take a film crew in without people knowing what’s going on,” Chapman said. “We maintain a place where people have the dignity they deserve and that’s our goal.”

Wheat said that she has looked at the footage and the police have decided it will not be released for broadcast.

“None of that footage is going to be used,” Wheat said. “We’re very sensitive to people being concerned about it. We’re not going to push something like that with the community. It’s not that we feel that we did anything wrong, we’re just trying to be a good partner.”

But for Chapman, the damage has been done.

“I’m not sure if any of the powers involved have any idea just how much damage was done just being there,” Chapman said. Chapman said the event has strained the trust developed between the diners and the staff, and also between the St. Francis community and the new officers patrolling the expanded Central Precinct area.

“I work on a regular basis with the police, meet with them and try to mitigate any issues on the campus. And I have a lot of respect with the officers with which I talk, and have a relationship with.”

Chapman said she has met and talked about the incident with police at Central Precinct and with the police Neighborhood Response Team that patrols around the campus.

“There is still a lot of angst. I think they (patrons) get that it wasn’t the staff. On a regular basis officers do not go into St. Francis, into the dining hall. We’ve been thinking about, with the new precinct situation, doing some tours. We’ve put that on hold because we’re a little concerned with how people will respond.”

The man the police were looking for was not there while they were there. However, later, staff called police to inform them that the person was on the campus, and police took him in custody without incident. He later was released without charges, Wheat said.

“We want to create a place of sanctuary and rest for people who don’t often find that,” Chapman said. “At the same time we don’t want to create a hiding place for criminal activity. It’s a real balancing act.”

Chapman, who doesn’t own a television, said she learned only after the incident that the camera crew was with the show “Cops,” a show she has never seen, but already has sized up.

“I’m not sure I understand a television show that can, in essence, prey on people in their worst hour or their most vulnerable moment,” Chapman said.

“We understand that St. Francis was upset with it. We’re sensitive to that,” Wheat said. “We need to hold up our end of the bargain as do they. Our officers acted professionally and received permission to come in with the cameras.”

SR Staff Reports

Homelessness poses special challenges for H1N1 preparations

From the Sept. 18 edition of Street Roots.

Flu season, and perhaps a particularly nasty one, is on the horizon for everyone. On the streets, it looms like a pall.

The network of homeless providers face challenges unlike those for the housed populations, and with the H1N1 (formerly called the Swine Flu) vaccine still weeks away from being delivered to the public, and still then prioritized for distribution, questions remain as to how an outbreak would be managed at the street level. How would a serious outbreak play out in the shelter system, with its dormitories of mats and cots, or the clinics that are working under heavy loads with a vulnerable population, or simply the realities of another rainy season outdoors?

For the answers to those questions, all eyes seem to look to the county.

“There are couple of realities we’re going to face, particularly for those who utilize shelters,” says Gary Oxman, health officer for Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties. “There’s a danger there of transmission of disease in those settings. Obviously, vaccination is a part of that strategy.”

Oxman said they anticipate receiving the H1N1 vaccine in the coming weeks, and it will be administered to those priority groups identified by the CDC and adopted by the state.

Those priorities are for pregnant women, children and their caregivers, health care workers and emergency personnel. It would also notably include people with high-risk health conditions.

Return of the dragon – heroin takes over Portland’s streets

From the Sept. 18 edition of Street Roots.

On a sunny Monday during the early afternoon, a 27-year old homeless man only wanting to be identified as “Joe” for this story walks down a hill overlooking I-405 and sits on a piece of cardboard laid out among, bushes, empty bottles and litter. The sounds of cars and buses are all around. Joe takes out a blue bag, unzips it, and takes out a twisted-up piece of white wax paper. Inside the paper is an almost imperceptible amount of a gooey, dark brown substance. Joe says it’s a couple dollars worth of black tar heroin.

“I treat this like a medicine,” Joe says. “Oh shit, a cop just went down the street.” He quickly gets up to move.

“You’re focusing on doing something pretty intricate and you have one eye scanning so you don’t get caught and hemmed up,” he says as he walks down the street.

Stopping at an intersection, Joe looks around. “I think we’re good,” he says. He walks down along a hill overlooking another part of I-405. Tucking himself in between two bushes and setting his backpack next to him, he takes out a needle from a Ziploc bag of 10 he recieved at Outside In’s Syringe Exchange Clinic. Holding it in one hand, he takes the tin cup out of his backpack and puts the heroin in it. He also takes out a small water bottle, puts it on the ground, and puts a red lighter on his leg.

Pulling the syringe with his mouth, he pulls water out of the bottle and shoots it into the tin cup. Holding the cup with a twisted bread tie, he heats it for about 20 seconds with the lighter.

With the syringe’s plunger, Joe mixes the liquid. Licking the end of the plunger, he sucks the heroin into the syringe.

“She didn’t give me a tourniquet,” he says, looking through the Ziploc bag.

He takes off his belt and wraps it tightly around his bicep. His veins begin to pop out, and faintly lining his arm are the scabs and scars from previous injections.

Slowly, he inserts the needle, his fist clenched. But he doesn’t inject. Instead, he moves the needle left to right inside his arm, looking for and missing the much-sought-after vein. Murmuring to himself in pain, he pulls the needle out. A small bead of dark blood follows.

“Maybe there’s something wrong with this needle,” Joe says. “I’m just used to having the tourniquet.”

Swiping the blood onto his fingertip, he licked it off. Every time Joe saw a drop of blood as he poked his arm three more times, he’d lick—not to miss a single grain of heroin.

On the fourth injection, Joe stopped moving the needle. Holding it still for a moment, he slowly pushed the plunger with one finger, staring at the point of entry the entire time, watching until every drop of light amber fluid disappeared into his arm.

He loosens the belt before he lets the needle out. Blood trails down his arm. Wiping his arms with his hands, he licks his fingers.

“Sometimes it turns into a bloody mess and you’re just trying to get your fix,” he says as he uses an alcoholic wipe given to him at the needle exchange clinic operated by Outside In.

Joe says he does not feel that much different after taking the heroin. “This is even for me,” he says, not describing the high any further.

On his way up the embankment, Joe stops to talk to a panhandler sitting at the corner. Crossing the I-5 bridge back to downtown, he quickly walks in the direction of a surplus store, his gait almost gliding.

Joe says he will probably shoot up in another four to six hours.

A growing trend

Dennis Lundberg and Mike Reese rarely see eye to eye. But recently, the outreach worker for the homeless youths organization Janus Youth and the commander of the Portland Police Bureau’s central precinct have found common ground on a unlikely topic: the rise of heroin use in Portland.

Heroin use, Lundberg and Reese say, ebbs and flows in Portland with the seasons. Summertime is when the presence of the drug reaches it peak, coinciding with the presence of a seasonal homeless population frequenting downtown. As the weather cools and dampens, the amount of heroin declines as some youths leave town.

Extra! Extra!

They say rain is headed our way, which means bring a plastic bag when you head out to pick up your new copy of Street Roots. These colors don’t run, but the paper gets sticky when wet. Here’s what’s fit to print this week:

Will success spoil Michael Franti? The hip hop/reggae rocker of Spearhead has his first megahit riding up the charts, but he’s keeping his (bare) feet on the ground with his grassroots activism. Joanne Zuhl spoke to Franti in advance of the band’s concert at the Roseland.

Healing lessons: How the U.S. can adopt a health care system that’s fairer and costs less. Adam Hyla interviews “Healing of America” author and researcher T.R. Reid.

Reuse, recycle, respect: Portland re-use artist Taylor Cass Stevenson reports on her travels and the obstacles for urban recyclers in the Third World.

Children of all ages: Portland photographer John Ryan Brubaker stopped by The Circus Project’s rehearsal in advance of their debut – a show o benefit the nonprofit’s work with at-risk and homeless youths.

All this and a crossword puzzle! Yes, you clamored and our vendors delivered the message loud and clear. Each edition of Street Roots will now feature a crossword puzzle on the back page, and we hope to hear from you as we work to put a Street Roots spin on each one. Thanks for your input and your support of our dynamic vendor team!

Motel limbo – some of Portland’s motels hide a troubling side to homelessness

From the August 24 edition of Street Roots

The first thing you notice when you enter Tiffany Shepard and Patricia Schafer’s motel room is the darkness, especially in contrast to the blindingly bright summer sunshine outside. The second is the fatigue on the women’s faces, betraying the exhaustion that accompanies living in limbo with an 8-month-old child. Tiffany looks lovingly but wearily at the blanket-covered crib in the corner, where a soft rustling announces the end of her son Caden’s nap and the beginning of nonstop infant supervision.

The fractured family’s room off Sandy Boulevard in outer Northeast Portland is a temporary residence; neither Tiffany nor Patricia calls it a home.

“It’s a roof over our heads,” says Patricia. “That’s it.”

Loss of low-cost housing routing poor from downtown

Affordable housing for Portland’s poorest residents has declined significantly in the city center, even as more high-end housing increased.

According to the Central City Housing Inventory, released in July by the Portland Development Commission, the city center lost more than 22 percent of its lowest income housing options, but gained nearly 12 percent more in the number of units for higher incomes.

The result, according to those in the business of placing people in affordable housing, has been a shift of poverty from the central city area to outer parts of Portland and Multnomah County.

“Here in mid-county and in east county we are seeing an increasing number of people seeking low-cost affordable housing,” says Jean DeMaster, executive director of Human Solutions. “And we believe part of it is the lack of housing in the central city areas and the decrease of housing in the central city area.”

The sources interviewed for this article all point toward a growing trend: the displacement of low-income people, who can no longer find affordable housing in the central city, to other parts of Portland and Multnomah County.

The increase of people looking for housing in eastern parts of Multnomah County has been happening for the last three or four years, DeMaster says, but Human Solutions saw a “marked” increase in the last six months, corresponding with the deepening of the recession.

The inventory, published every three years, monitors whether or not the city is adhering to its “No Net Loss” policy. Passed in 2001, the No Net Loss policy establishes that the same number of rental units available to people earning 60 percent of MFI or below in 2002 would remain the same through preservation or replacement. That number is 8,286.

Only $1,500 to go –tell your friends about the great work of Street Roots!

Dear Street Rooters, 

Street Roots needs to raise $1,500 dollars in August to reach our summer goal of $15,000 to help the organization remain sustainable during these hard economic times.  

You all have already done so much -thank you!  We’re almost there.  What we need to reach our goal is $1,500 and we hope that can be from old and new friends to Street Roots.  Please forward this to your friends, neighbors, co-workers and family to tell them about the great work of Street Roots and help us meet our goal.  Plus, new friends to Street Roots helps build the movement year round!

 The Ganapati Fund “Remover Of Obstacles” in Portland is offering a matching grant challenge for five one-hundred dollar donations in support of Street Roots Vendor Program. A $100 donation could help leverage $1,000 for Street Roots.  We, of course, would love to match a $100 donation from you, but would also love to match $100 donations from people new to the Roots – Please spread the word!

If you are interested in giving to this matching fund, please e-mail Israel at streetroots@hotmail.com or call us at 503.228.5657 or give safely on-line today and forward this to your friends. You can also give through the mail at Street Roots, 211 NW Davis, Portland, Oregon 97209. 

More than 80 vendors experiencing homelessness and poverty work with local businesses and thousands of customer’s everyday. The relationships being built are invaluable. This year alone Street Roots has worked with hundreds of individuals on the streets to give people access to job training skills, a supplemental income, housing and most importantly, dignity.

In July and August the newspaper highlighted important stories on the African and Asian communities while also featuring Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler.

In the current edition of the newspaper we report on life for people experiencing homelessness and poverty in Portland motels along with a hard look at affordable housing downtown and throughout the region. We also highlight the voices coming from the streets, giving all of us a unique perspective.

Over the summer we reported and led a campaign to save 100s of individuals from losing Section 8 vouchers in NW Oregon and throughout the country. We did it!  HUD recently fully funded the housing authority in NW Oregon and Street Roots coverage and advocacy helped save hundreds from losing their housing not only in Oregon, but around the country. 

A housing advocate recently sent this letter to us. ”Congratulations on the successful advocacy campaign spearheaded by Street Roots to save the homes of Section 8 tenants in Northwest Oregon and elsewhere around the country. It is inspiring to see the power of the press used to protect the most vulnerable among us.”

With your help we can continue to empower people and report and highlight stories that are not only real and meaningful, but that have an impact in our community. 

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely, 

Israel Bayer, Executive Director

Also read Loaded Orygun piece on Street Roots.

Vendor corner: Home sweet home.

Mental Health Association of Portland new column in Street Roots: Compassion, good guidance, the bedrock of new center

From the August 7 edition of Street Roots.

On July 2 the Multnomah County Commission voted to fund and build a new facility to help persons who are acutely mentally ill.

In 2001, during a generational redesign of Multnomah County’s mental health system, a variety of providers, former patients, referring agencies, community members, and independent clinicians decided to close a similar facility — the Crisis Triage Center, or CTC.

The CTC was a 24-hour psychiatric clinic attached to Providence Hospital, which planned to provide immediate treatment for anyone. It specialized in being a third choice for police, the first two being doing nothing or making an arrest. The CTC started unpredictably and badly with the tragic death of Emily Comeaux, a person with needs beyond the comprehension of the CTC staff.

Prospective patients, sick and in crisis, who were coached to seek services at the CTC regularly waited hours before seeing a clinician. Sick children were kept in the same waiting room as adult patients. The cost of care was high and rising. Some patients and clinicians chronically overused the CTC, clogging the service for others.  Patients were put on psychiatric holds unnecessarily, given the wrong medicine, or complained their concerns were dismissed.

After some public debate and critical events, such as the death of Jose Mejia Poot, Providence Hospital and Multnomah County, both pointing fingers at each other, quit the contract and closed the CTC.

A re-design was proposed. The newly formed Cascadia would operate five walk in clinics which would be open 24 hours, staffed with able-bodied clinicians, and located in all five quadrants of the city. Anyone could walk in and get help in a few minutes. The costs would be lower because the clinics were uncoupled from a hospital.

The clinics opened with much media fanfare, but within a few weeks, bureaucrats were thinking of how to save money. If services could be reduced, costs could be cut. Cascadia closed one clinic after another, leaving eventually only one that was not open 24 hours, and services were only available to certain people.

The closure of the CTC added a hard-to-measure burden on a variety of services and individuals which had no coordinated way of comparing experience and recognizing an additional set of responsibilities. We’d estimate the cost of not having this service is in the tens of millions of dollars per year.

So we applaud that the county leadership recognizes this new facility is an important component of the continuum of county services.

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.

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.”

Extra! Extra!

Quick! Grab your Street Roots and head to the park! Summer time is here and it always seems to vanish before we really get to enjoy it. Your vendor knows it too, and they all have their summer sales hats on, with new papers in hand starting Friday morning. Here’s what’s on tap:

Shock waves: The number of veterans hittings the streets is on the rise- but not necessarily who you might expect. Older veterans, from conflicts long past, are falling through the cracks now widened by even more wars and economic priorities. Mara Grunbaum reports.

Community’s heart for Vision into Action beats loud and clear: The city pulled the financial plug on Visions into Action, but people are rallying to spread the word on how important the cultural empowerment program is to Portland’s minority communities. Rebecca Robinson reports.

Out and down: After serving time, many former inmates find that the real trial begins upon release.

The Latino Obama?: Rafael Correa won a landslide second term as president of Ecuador in a “citizens’ revolution,” but he faces huge challenges in realizing his election manifesto and placating a demanding electorate.

The paper is just packed, but it doesn’t hang around long.  When they’re gone – they’re gone. Just like summer!

Posted by Joanne Zuhl

Coffee enthusiast, tourist want to experience buying Street Roots

Who says tourists are frightened by homeless folks? Not these cats.

And golly gee are they going to be surprised when they pick of the latest edition filled with some of the most serious coverage the newspaper has produced.

Welcome to Portland!

Update: Marla meets Street Roots.