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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 26, 2009)
www. _ _ JUNE 26, 2009 m HERE TODAY... A DECADE OF roots The creator o f flash mobs sets his sights on the phenomenon o f instant - and fleeting fame Page 8 org Education ♦ Dialogue * Independence Northwest Oregon's Section 8 disaster is,being repeated across the country "We probably BY JOANNE ZUHL STAFF W R IT E R This is the second story on the crisis facing families in' Northwest Oregon. The first article, "The Letter" published June 12, is available on our blog at www. streetroots.wordpress.com. t has been called a perfect storm. A rare convergence of forces that, on their own, could possibly be withstood, but in combination are L insurmountable, leaving disaster in their wake. But this no act of God, or Mother Nature, but rather the high-pressure system of government. The storfti, 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. • ,' ? “I don’t really know what to say,” says N0HA Executive Director Carol Snell. “They can blame us if they have to. It was a situation that we got caught in and don’t really know how we got there. “Certainly, if I knew I was going to be here, I would not have done the things that were done to get us here.” ocally, NOHA has taken the brunt of the blame still don't have on the situation, facing accusations of an Idea on how mismanagement in fulfilling its 1,077 Section 8 big this housing vouchers. It overcompensated for falling - below full capacity for most of 2008 hy exceéding problem Is." capacity at the end of the year and throughout ““ TED VAN DYKE 2009. To do so, NOHA dipped into its réserves^to DIRECTOR, . GOVERNMENT cover the costs. But in mid-May, nearly two months ; A F F A IR S FOR T H E PUBLIC. H O U S IN G beyond normal notification schedules, NOHA — a u t h o r it y which had signed up more than 100 families over D IR E C T O R S A S S O C IA T IO N its HUD-proscribed limit — learned that it wasn’t going to get the funds to cover, the difference. NOHA screwed up — end of story. Only the story isn’t over, nor is it limited to Oregon or even a particular style of management. ■ See PERFECT STORM, page 11 Judge: Sit-lie still unconstitutional BY JOANNE ZUHL AND ISRAEL BAYER S TAFF W R ITE R S TL yi"ultnomah County Circuit Court Judge Stephen K. Bushong has ruled that the X ▼ city of Portland’s sidewalk-obstruction ordinance — commonly referred to ns sit-he, | unconstitutionally exceeds the city’s authority. The ruling was issued June 19, and grants the motion to dismiss a sit-lie case being defended by attorney Clayton Lance. | - “This ordinances has been found - unconstitutional on three separate and distinct grounds,” Lance told Street Roots. “That’s a heck of a lot of unconstitutionality for one little ordinance out of the city. It just is not going to work and they just keep trying'to make it fit, arid it will never be able to fit, in my opinion.” The sit-lie law prohibits sitting or lying on downtown sidewalks between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. The city has said that it is to keep the sidewalks free of obstructioris. Records show that l\Z I JL ' PHOTO BY M A R A G R U N B A U M Tobiah Tillm an, a homeless advocate, was am ong a crowded room o f people protesting the Sit-Lie ordinance when it came u f fo r renewal before the City Council this past spring. - -the majority of people cited under the law are homeless. Judge Bushong ruled that the city’s law conflicts with and is pre-empted by state law; State v. Robison, which Lance says already allows the city to penalize people for obstructing sidewalks. “The (sit-lie) ordinance does not at all deal with obstruction. That’s a myth,” Lance said. “It was to- move the transient and thé homeless because the transient and homeless were sitting on the sidewalks in downtown Portland. Nothing else;” As Lance noted, this is the latest round in the city’s failed attempts to institute â sit-lie law. In 2004, Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Marilyn Litzenberger ruled that the city’s 2003 version of the ordinance, was unconstitutionafly vague and overbroad. The current version was a response to that ruling with more specific information on what was arid was riot prohibited. See SIT-LIE, page 3
