Act Now! Demand HUD meet the full demand of housing in NW Oregon!

Street Roots has joined forces with Columbia County Citizens for Human Dignity, Neighborhood Partnerships, Oregon ON, Columbia River Business Alliance, Sisters Of The Road, Rural Organizing Project, Tillamook County Citizens for Human Dignity, Columbia Pacific Alliance for Social Justice, Latinos Unidos para un Futuro Mejor, and the Western Regional Advocacy Project to ask HUD to meet its housing needs in Northwest Oregon.

Northwest Oregon Housing Authority (NOHA) sent a letter May 26 notifying 285 low-income households in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook Counties that they will be cut off their Section 8 vouchers effective July 1. For some, the assistance is more than 90 percent of their rent. NOHA hopes to have funding reinstated at the end of the year, at which time the families could have their Section 8 restored. However, the assistance is uncertain and these households cannot wait that long.

Immediate action from HUD is requested to fill the funding gap to keep people in their homes. The overall gap is $600,000, but Oregon Housing and Community Services has contributed $50,000 to provide rental assistance for an estimated 15-20 households who were previously homeless and have the greatest need, for an estimated six months. The remaining figure requested from HUD, therefore, is $550,000.

Poverty and unemployment in these rural communities is a serious problem. The State of Oregon recently reported that homelessness in Oregon has increased 35-37%. The Oregon Department Of Education reports that in school year 2007-2008 the school districts in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties had 540 homeless students, of which 460 were in families.

Call the Portland HUD field office and tell them to restore $550,000 in funding needed to make sure more Oregon families are not kicked to the streets.

Phone: (971) 222-2600 or e-mail HUD at Miguel.A.FontanezSanchez@hud.gov

Restorative justice equals no justice

The current proliferation of separate court systems – often referred to as “restorative justice” – within the U.S. criminal justice system tells us all we need to know about how government is addressing the health care and housing needs of America’s poor.

Because many poor, mentally ill, unhoused or drug addicted people get arrested, the courts became more and more overcrowded with what were deemed “social issues.” The response was to create separate systems for the administration of these cases. Ironically, these substance abuse courts, mental health courts and, most recently, homeless courts all coincide with drastic reductions in state and federal government funding of community-based treatment and housing programs. In one classic example, the King County (Wash.) court system established mental health courts while at the same time the state cut $6 million in community-based mental health programs.

This is not an isolated incident. It has become a national trend. While the social-service branches of government have divested themselves of responsibility to fulfill their initial mandates, the branch of government charged with incarceration and rehabilitation has created a whole new role for itself, that of an access point to treatment, social workers and shelter services. In 1997 only two mental health courts existed in the United States. Today we have over 100. It is ironic that today the three largest residential mental health facilities in the United States are the Los Angeles County jail, Cook County jail in Chicago and Rikers Island in New York City!

Truth Commission offers tears and insight

August 7, 2008

Old Town was alive tonight. Nearly 60 individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty gathered with allies and advocates at Sisters Of The Roads’ sponsored Truth Commission on the sit-lie ordinance.

Around 20 people gave rather emotional testimonies about their experiences with the obstruction as nuisance ordinance and other realities of living on the streets.

Many of the testimonies touched upon the idea of that the law unfairly targets individuals who are tired and beat down – constantly living in fear for their safety from both law enforcement and criminal elements existing on the streets.

Housed community members delivered a series testimonies about why the sit-lie does not protect Portlanders and wastes taxpayer money.

One housed speaker told the audience that she never asked City Hall or the Portland Business Alliance for her safety to be protected from people experiencing homelessness. “We all live in the same city.”

Newly elected City Commissioner Nick Fish, City Hall staffers, and council candidates Amanda Fritz and Charles Lewis looked on, while reporters circled the event trying to get the scoop.

Charles Lewis spoke early in the event about his experience sleeping out on the streets for a night prior to deciding to run for office.

Tom Hastings with Portland State University, Jeff Bissonette a consumer advocate with Citizens’ Utility Board of Oregon, Father Ron with the Downtown Chapel Roman Catholic Parish, and Paul Boden with the Western Regional Advocacy Project based in San Francisco offered their insights and reflections about the testimonies and civil rights on Portland’s streets. Community organizer Patrick Nolen with Sisters mc’ed the event.

Crowds gathered in front of Sisters conversing after the event while festivities for Portland’s First Thursday filled the sidewalks.

Street Roots will be publishing exerts from interviews done with people on the streets about the obstruction ordinance in the August 8, edition.

On August 11th the Safe Access For Everyone oversight committee will hold a public hearing on the ordinance at the First Unitarian Church from 3-5PM.

Posted by Israel Bayer

Without rights, without housing

(July 14) Paul Boden connects the New Deal with today’s current climate on the streets.

In 1933, when more than a million Americans were homeless, President Roosevelt’s New Deal made their economic and social well-being a federal responsibility. In 2008, an estimated 3.5 million Americans will live without housing; homeless children in school number more than 900,000 according to the Department of Education. Ironically, in this election year – which marks the 75th anniversary of the New Deal – neither major party nor presidential candidate has acknowledged a federal responsibility. It is time that they do so.

The federal government created the contemporary crisis of mass homelessness by cutting and refusing to restore billions of dollars in funding for affordable housing programs. Since 1982, every federal plan to address homelessness has failed because every plan has been based on the assumption that something was wrong with the people who were finding themselves without housing. Every plan has focused on individuals: FEMA emergency shelter plans, HUD Continuum of Care plans and 10-Year Plans to End Homelessness as spearheaded by the Bush administration’s Interagency Council on Homelessness all identify homeless people as “the problem” that needs fixing.