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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (May 29, 2009)
WWW. MAY 29, 2009 BN| HHI A SITE OF THE TIMES HR E fH H K posf city The Rose City Resource goes online with expanded resources a n d inform ation .org CELEBRATING a decade o p Page 3 Education ♦ Dialogue ♦ Independence Shock wave I The number o f veterans falling into homelessness is on the rise, with older veterans arriving on the streets for the first time in their lives. ■ si BY MARA GRUNBAUM i M STAFF W R ITE R ‘ t’s a warm, still May afternoon as people mill around the curb, outside a downtown shelter, .and Tyrone Brown, a fiery Vietnam veteran • with a baseball cap and greying goatee; i^pissed off. “We got this country free,” he says, gesturing toward other veterans who are staying in the Glisan Street Shelter or, like him, waiting for a space in it. “What are we doing being homeless?” g Veterans have long been a large segment of the . U.S. homeless population. There are no perfect estimates of how many veterans are on thé streets, but by several accounts, the number is on the rise — especially for older veterans like Brown. The Department of Veteran’s Affairs estimates that there are 2,042 veterans' e^ e n e n c ihjgi a homelessness on any given nightin thê Portland service area, which includes Vancouver. That’s up from 1,790 in 2006. , Portland’s One Night Street Count, which surveys people who were homeless on a given night in January, found 192 veteran^ thisyear compared with 108 in 2007. The jump far outpaces the increase in the overall street count, which only grew by about 10 percent. Though some of those new to the streets are See SHOCK WAVES, p a g e 13 B Rick Stoller, who directs the Harbor Light shelter, says its veterans “because everyone’s looking for it. ” Community's heart for Vision in Action beats loud and clear City bails on funding the program to empower minority communities - PS U picks up the slack BY REBECCA ROBINSON C O N T R IB U T IN G W RITER ie City, Council hearing on* the evening of May 20was best summarized by Sisters of. the Road co-founder Genny Nelson: “It is not business as usual in Portland.” Indeed, the individuals giving testimony about the VisionPDX public engagement process and its progeny, the Vision Into Action coalition (VIA), stood indirect contrast to the city’s overwhelmingly white majority. Africans, Cambodians, Iraqis, Latinos and other immigrant and ethnic minority populations packed the seats in council chambers and stepped up to the microphone, detailing in voices alternately shaky and forceful how VIA had empowered their communities - and why the' city should not go , forward with its planned elimination of VIA’s $339,416 budget. “Through VisionPDX, I felt like I had access to " the city in a way I never had,” said Evelyne Ello- Hart, the interim director of the African Women’s Coalition. “It was a clear message that we really mattered.” Before concluding her testimony, she urged City Council “not to kill the vision.” Romeo Sosa with the VOZ Workers’ Rights i uT?nna”) Performs outside City Council Chambers as audience members file in to testify on behalf o f the Visions m month’ ™ c m M t0 8 iw m in o ri^ and c u itu m a stnmger platform in the city. See V IS IO N S , p a g e 11
