Regular readers know that Street Roots is one of my favorite "charities,"...and I put that word in quotes with a purpose, because while they are indeed a non-profit organization dedicated to serving the transitionally and chronically housing-challenged, and provide their clients with a range of social service referrals and help, they'd probably kill me if I referred to them as a "charity." That's almost the opposite of what they're about, a real hand-up-not-out kind of organization that specializes in the economic and social empowerment of folks who often have little of the former and almost none of the latter.
I love SR because it changes the frame that too often pervades our view of the homeless: that they're a faceless horde of incompetent, lazy bums who got where they are because they didn't try hard enough, or didn't show enough self-control to stay away from poor choices. SR serves our community by treating them instead as able, creative individuals who want to improve their situation and just need a little assistance to fill the gap or give them the confidence boost they need. Not only does street vending give them that chance, it sets a vivid counterexample of poverty as a temporary condition that affects regular folks, not a permanent label slapped onto the socially worthless.
The little paper that could has made it 10 years, and is one of the best independent newspapers of its kind in the country. It's no slouch as an original news source of ANY kind in Portland, covering stories that fall through the cracks of traditional media with every bit the same journalistic fervor and standards--if not more.
But while you shouldn't argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel, those barrels cost serious money. Can you help? I'll let them take over on the pitch:
Your donation goes to support individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty that sell the newspaper and access resources throughout the Portland region.
"Street Roots gave us a spark of hope," says Donna Bacon who became housed while with the organization. "They are there for their vendors and homeless people who want to change their lives for something better."
Vance Schweigart sells the newspaper downtown and in the Irvington neighborhood. Schweigart says that selling Street Roots allows him to pay for a room each night. "Street Roots customers are kind to me. They treat me like a real person, and not like a bum."
Selling Street Roots allows for individuals to gain access to a supplemental income. It also allows for individuals to rebuild their lives in dignity - without having to beg.
It also allows individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty to give something back to the community. With each purchase of a newspaper you are helping an individual improve their quality of life - wheather that's helping them access a roof over their heads or allowing them to eat healthy foods not available to many poor folk. The reader also gets something in return with a quality community newspaper. When you purchase Street Roots you are helping rebuild a person's life.
The best way to help is to become a recurring-gift member. Here are the options:
Rainy Day Supporter: $5.00 a month will provide the necessary materials (rain jackets, hand warmers, lip balm, etc.) for 10 vendors to stay warm and dry during the winter months.
Coffee Break Supporter: $10.00 a month will provide fresh water, tea and coffee to more than 200 individuals who sell the newspaper.
Tech Support: $25.00 a month will provide computers and Internet service for more than 200 vendors experiencing homelessness and poverty.
Front-Page Supporter: $50.00 a month helps produce one page of the newspaper a month. Street Roots delivers Portlanders some of the best journalism in the city. This is a great way to support this.
Cover-to-Cover Supporter: $100.00 a month covers the cost of one entire edition of the paper each year. A single print-run puts up to $10,000 directly in the hands of people experiencing homelessness and poverty.
But either way, your donation will support one of the best things Portland has going to help its own. If nothing else, next time you see a vendor hawking the latest edition of Street Roots, fish out a dollar and give someone a reason to keep going. In these times it's easier than ever to feel like things are hopeless; a twenty-second human interaction may not feel like much to you, but to someone who's having a rough go of life at the moment, it can make a world of difference. Loaded Orygun says thanks for being part of the solution.
Here are updates on two stories that likely deserve their own post, but as we've covered both here before, and both are updates connected to the ongoing homeless struggle in Portland, we'll combine them. (Also in common is the strong coverage of the issue by the Street Roots newspaper and blog.)
Freshest news first: we've received our answer to the campaign seeking emergency funding for hundreds of Oregon Section 8 voucher-holders to stay in their homes--but who aren't scheduled to do so for much longer, due to overextended assistance budgets that threaten to almost literally toss them onto the streets. It was not a mild and insignificant campaign, either; a coalition of grass roots advocacy organizations pressed for relief, and much of the Democratic Congressional delegation was incited to make a plea to the federal bureau of Housing and Urban Development.
The answer was a written metaphor for turned out pockets and a fairly terse "Can'tdonuttinfoya, man:"
The [Northwest Oregon Housing Authority--NOHA] contract with the Department covers a total of 1077 vouchers. For the first three months of 2009, the NOHA assisted an average of 1129 households per month. Because funding eligibility is based on prior year costs, the NOHA is actually funded this year for a total of 1040 households per month. The NOHA must either find another source of funding for some of the households or terminate households from the program. The Department has no additional source of funds to provide.
What's the best word to describe the situation here? 'Sucks' might be a good one. Hundreds of billions of dollars for Citibank and Chrysler et al, but not enough to keep 1100 families from getting kicked back down the ladder. That's the state of social equity in 21st Century America. The SR article and a firewalled piece by the Astoria Times indicate that NOHA is trying to buy time for its families, but someone somewhere is going to have to step up.
Every time lately I read something from corporate journalistic masters whining about their pending loss of 30% profit margins as "the death of the news," I about retch. Kos ran a great piece Saturday dropping the dope on this charade, and like much of his recent focus on the subject it's dead on.
Part of the charade is deliberately ignoring where successful journalism not only exists but thrives--niche news, including what are collectively known as "street papers," a group of low-budget outfits primarily concerned with homelessness and social justice in general.
Only a couple of years removed from the days when the paper was more of a flyby give-them-something-to-sell pseudocharity effort, today Portland's Street Roots is a legitimate outpost of journalism, an award-winning state publication that reports news under the radar of larger traditional Oregon media.
One such story is about the impending funding cut to nearly 300 of Oregon's poorest and neediest households that receive what's known as "Section 8" housing vouchers, which help poor and disabled residents--often the elderly--pay their rent. The affected areas in Columbia and Clatsop County have stories running in their local papers, but a search hit from any major state papers for what should be a statewide-quality story on the devastating potential effects on the state's most vulnerable, turned up nada.
We need papers like Street Roots to keep the focus on these issues, particularly right now as Oregonians struggle to stay above water in this year of economic retrenchment. For many of us it's a temporary downturn, a significant loss but one with a safety net supporting us from true disaster. For others that net just isn't there, and it's those people who have to be supported from falling through the cracks. The numbers who have lost nearly everything, right down to a place to sleep, are going up right now, bigtime.
The new issue of Street Roots came out last week, and you can help them celebrate their 10-year anniversary by giving a little bit of holiday cheer through the Willy Week Give Guide. Why would you want to do such a thing? Because besides empowering people in transition, and creating a dignified way for people to earn money through their own efforts...the paper is a pretty damn good little rag, folks. If you haven't paid a dollar for a copy since the days of heartfelt but lame poetry and scads of white space, dig down and pony up for one the next time you see a vendor. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
SR's original reporting is virtually second to none in this city is on anything regarding homeless issues (as you might expect), and this month they're on top of a little-publicized change in Portland Police practices towards homeless camps on public property.
The new guidelines say homeless and civil rights advocates, have created definition loopholes and exceptions to the 24-hour posting requirement, making it permissible for police to not give notice before a sweep.
The old guidelines mandated that exceptions to providing 24-hour notice were made for camps on private or state property, and in cases where illegal activities and emergencies occurred.
The new guidelines continue to provide those exceptions, but now add city and parks property to the list. They also interpret permanent postings and signs prohibiting camping as providing sufficient notice before a sweep.
If you mentally ticked off private, state and city property as places where notice is no longer given, you'd be left pretty much with the Multno courthouse and the various federal buildings around town--none of which tend to be places where homeless people like to camp. So the gross effect of this rule change is that the 24 hr notice rule has almost no chance of ever being granted to a camper anymore.
Which might be something just to grumble about as the number of people needing transitional services continues to spike during this recession...except that it also appears to violate state law:
“I don’t think the police have the authority to do that under state law,” says David Fidanque, the executive director of the ACLU of Oregon. Fidanque is referring to ORS 203.079, the state law requiring that 24-hour notice be given to camps not on “public property that is a day-use recreational area” or a “designated campground.” The law also says removal of camps needs to be done in a “humane and just manner.”
The constitutionality of Portland’s anti-camping ordinance already is under question. [Oregon Law Center attorney Monica] Goracke sent a demand letter to the city attorney in November 2007, stating concerns that the ordinance cruelly and unusually punishes homeless individuals because of their status as homeless. “I don’t think the ordinance as it is currently applied is humane in letter or in spirit,” Goracke says.
Goracke is currently working with the city attorney’s office to reach a settlement. She says if the case makes it to court, she would tack on the new guidelines to the case.
Sgt. Matt Engen, who patrols Old Town/Chinatown and was in charge of re-writing the guidelines, maintains that the new guidelines are both legal and humane.
“If an officer was going to act inhumanely, I really don’t think a few words on a piece of paper would change that,” Engen says.
When pressed to provide an example of a place where homeless individuals could legally camp and be given 24-hour notice, Engen offered no specifics.
I can only hope that Egan is just trying to spin us, and doesn't actually believe that laws enforce themselves. It's painfully clear that while nothing prevents the free will of officers in the field, a rule that seeks to ensure humane treatment for a city's residents--if ENFORCED can provide a disincentive to break that rule. Not having the rule creates no such disincentive, obviously. In Egan's mind, cops are just going to be dicks if they want to, and there's no utility in trying to craft guidelines seeking to avoid such behavior. Maybe the previous rule was not being broadly enforced, fine. See how far you get trying to obtain compliance with a rule that DOESN'T EXIST.
And still Portland's finest wonder why a fair segment of the citizenry thinks they're a mean-spirited group of jackboots. Not even state law shall impede their quest for total control!
As regular readers know, we're big fans of Israel Bayer and the paper of the shelter-challenged, Street Roots--now in its 10th year. One of the things we like best, and which seems most crucial, is that SR speaks as an advocate for the homeless and general concerns of low-income populations. If they don't, there are precious few other places that will give them the voice they deserve, so it's pretty much the least we can do to support those efforts.
Along those lines, we're no fans of the thinly-Constitutional "sit-lie" ordinance, which remains in effect despite severe disillusionment on the part of homeless advocates with regard to Portland Council's promises to provide alternate respite. We've covered the subject several times, including discussions with then-Commissioner Erik Sten (he wasn't really for it) and a pretty comprehensive practical and legal look, here.
Speaking to that disillusionment, Bayer has released a statement and a call to action for Portlanders: tell City Council to repeal sit lie!
I've always been a big fan of Street Roots, the newspaper sold by homeless folks for a dollar on Portland's corners. When it started out, the paper was fairly bare bones and consisted in large part of columns, poetry and art by the SR vendors themselves. That certainly gave them an investment in the process and also opened a window to the non-homeless, to show that these are people, dammit, and they've got dreams, fears and feelings like everyone else.
These days, the paper is much upgraded, assisted by freelance work on timely topics related to the issues that affect homeless and poverty-stricken residents. The stories are as good--frequently better, IMO--than any you'd find in the trad-media, and the layout of the paper is also greatly improved.
To be honest, I used to buy the paper just to support the notion of help through self-sufficiency--now I buy it to read things I didn't know. And because I think it's such a great thing, you're going to start seeing Oregon-related pieces from the paper, when new editions come out. Watch for it!
Street Roots is now 10, and remains one of the most dignified ways to help people who lack a stable housing situation. But they need your help. I turn it over to Israel Bayer, SR's director, to ask the LO community to recognize the significant good that SR achieve, and consider your support for a very worthy organization. (If you're already convinced, donate here!) Iz?
Over the years, Street Roots has been a vital component in empowering people experiencing homelessness and readers alike to have voice. Together we have helped bring the issue of homelessness and human rights to the forefront of our community. Stereotypes have been broken. Dreams have come true. Lives have been changed.
I'll let Israel at Street Roots handle most of the analysis on this one; he does a nice job summing up the new concept being pushed by Portland Police on/for downtown businesses:
Two Portland Patrol Inc. security guards just walked into Street Roots, and asked two of our vendors (one of whom slept in our doorway last night) and then me if we wanted to sign up for a trespass enforcement agreement with the Portland Police Bureau. They are going door-to-door in the neighborhood.
The agreement would authorize the Portland Police Bureau to act as agents for the purpose of enforcing trespass laws on private property(s).
What does this mean? It means that the Portland Patrol funded by the Portland Business Alliance and the Portland Police Bureau continue to offer a stick without a carrot. They walk a big talk, and offer money for direct service in the guise of caring about homeless people. Where’s the carrots, folks?
[Happy Labor Day weekend; as you can imagine we'll be taking it easy at LoadedO. Of course, that's only true for the front page; you can always keep the content fresh by writing a diary! Interesting diaries always stand a better chance of front-paging when regular traffic is slow...!]
If you haven't bought a Street Roots newspaper from a street seller in Portland lately, you really should pony up a dollar to one of the polite vendors and check them out again. While there was a certain charm to the sometimes-addled poems and honest but less substantive government rants of the past, it always felt more like charity to help a vendor, rather than something of real value that you were buying.
No more. Street Roots has joined the national chain of street papers, allowing it to share content and avail itself of a strong redesign. Even better, the poetry and street culture sections remain alongside hard news, intelligent editorial, and probing letters. Under Director/Editor Israel Bayer's hand, I now buy Street Roots for the paper itself--helping a self-starting vendor with 70% of the proceeds is icing on the cake.
And not only are they covering hard news, they're covering current news, and (OK, I'm biased) IMPORTANT news--like the 2008 elections, and whether Oregon is going to hold Gordon Smith accountable for actions like those leading to the fish kills of 2002.
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I've always been a big fan of Street Roots, the newspaper sold by homeless folks for a dollar on Portland's corners. When it started out, the paper was fairly bare bones and consisted in large part of columns, poetry and art by the SR vendors themselves. That certainly gave them an investment in the process and also opened a window to the non-homeless, to show that these are people, dammit, and they've got dreams, fears and feelings like everyone else. 
