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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (March 16, 2012)
2 street roots March 16, 2012 EDITORIAL Moving ahead with sm art partnerships S Investing in safety net pays off in lives, community ortland’s long-standing safety net provides a basic level of security that we all deserve. In particular, when people have a safe, stable, affordable place to live they’re better able to invest in themselves, their children and a better city for us all. City Council’s support of the safety net is a powerful stand for Portland values. The safety net consists of critical investments. There are several vital programs at risk in this year’s budget cycle: ■ Critical up-to-date We're talking about referral services for Portland families at the Portland residents in end of their ropes — need: This includes families trying any way 100,000 copies of possible to avoid the Street Roots Rose City streets. Resource guides distributed to more than 200 organizations and institutions along with services from 211Info, which fielded 240,000 calls from people in need last year. ■ Short-term rent assistance (STRA) for people experiencing homelessness in our community: Stabilizes more than 1,300 households annually in permanent housing, freeing up hundreds of spaces in shelter and assisting hundreds more to avoid the enormous personal and community impacts of living on the streets. ■ Emergency Shelter: Provides year-round day space and shelter at the Bud Clark Commons, which last year served over 4,300 people, and offer hundreds of additional shelter beds for men and women during the winter months and during life threatening episodes of DIRECTOR'S P severe w eather. ■ H om eow nership and Foreclosure Prevention: Assists hundreds of households, especially in communities of color, to achieve homeownership and avoid losing their homes to foreclosure. Our community’s foreclosure prevention programs have helped 757 households of color protect over $132 million dollars in assets. Beyond the numbers, what we are talking about are people’s lives. After years of recession and declining revenues, we’re no longer cutting the fat off of an institution. Instead, we’re starting to cut into the meat of an already fragile system. We’re not just talking about a growing homeless population. We’re talking about Portland families at the end of their ropes — families trying any way possible to avoid the streets. When a family doesn’t have access to housing, their capacity for an education, good health and emotional stability are equally jeopardized. It’s all connected. In order maintain a healthy city, together we have to invest in people. When we invest in people, we invest in hope and when we invest in hope, then anything is possible. We recognize that difficult budget decisions need to be made, but we ask that City Hall find a way to protect the safety net. It’s in all of our best interests. producing a newspaper and other media that are catalysts for individual and social change. Street Roots publishes every tw o weeks, launching on Fridays, and is available exclusively through our street vendors or by subscription. We are proud members of the North American Street Newspaper Association and the International ■ ; Network of Street Papers. Street Roots 211 NW Davis St. Portland, OR 97209 503-228-5657 Fax: 503-227-3117 www.streetroots.org www.streetroots.wordpress.com treet Roots is happy to announce a partnership with the Meyer Memorial Trust with the goal of publishing weekly at the end of 2013 or beginning of 2014. Over the past year, along with the help of supporters like you, Street Roots has been building capacity dfcsk within the organization for such a venture. We B y Israel Bayer have expanded our physical space and opened up a new editorial and development office at 203 NW 2nd Ave., just around the block from our current office (211 NW Davis) which now serves both the vendor program and the distribution center for the Rose City Resource guide. We recently built a new ADA restroom in the vendor space with the help of our partners at Innovative Housing. Currently, we offer coffee, fresh water, computers, and hospitality - including hygiene items for vendors. We’re hoping to continue to give vendors the best tools available to sell the newspaper. Ask our vendors what they would change at Street Roots and they will tell you, “Give us a weekly paper.” This is key to helping our vendors to continue moving back into the mainstream and to maintaining the mission of the organization. Israel Bayer is the executive director o f Street Roots. You can reach him a t israel@ streetroots.org How do we get there? Along with the improvements outlined above, the organization is working on a range of outcomes to get us to a weekly publication. We are updating our technologies, including a web-based platform that will help readers and others communicate more directly with us for vendor concerns, advertising, sponsorships, newspaper submissions and more. We have also created a partnership with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest, giving us additional people to help with the transition, and we’ll continue to build smart and effective partnerships to help us move forward. Over the next 18 months, Street Roots will be fundraising and concentrating our energies on building our editorial department - redesigning the paper, fundraising and adding staff to help us prepare. Each year, more than 250 people experiencing homelessness and poverty gain a hand up by selling the paper. By going weekly, we can significantly increase our impact on individuals and families to prevent or help end their homelessness in the Portland metro area. There’s a lot of work to be done. We believe at Street Roots we are on the right course, and that with your help, we can get there. Thank you, readers, for supporting the organization week-in and week-out. It takes a village, and together we can overcome and do this. LETTER Don't dismantle our promise to community e believe in a Portland government and financial institutions where all families can that many communities of color prosper. To build such a rightfully have. community, we need to invest in a The work we do is critical to continuum of services that helps helping first-time and first-generation «famiftes not only build- stability, but homeowners achieve and sustain assets too. Homeownership is the success. Together our organizations single most important way families in have educated and counseled over our community build these assets. It 3,500 households of color to prepare is not relegated to the wealthy, for homeownership in the past five either. The median net worth of low- years, leveraging $142 million in income homeowners is 12 times mortgage lending for the more than higher than that of renters with 800 families of color who have comparable incomes. purchased their home. Foreclosure Portland, like much of the United prevention services have helped States, has a checkered past in protect $132 million in assets for providing access to homeownership more than 750 households of color for communities of color. The result who received counseling in the past has been that communities of color three years. own homes at half the rate of white Homeownership also provides a Portlanders. collective vision in our communities. The city of Portland, through the Homeownership inspires our families Portland Housing Bureau, has made to make use of services along a a commitment to address this continuum: accessing affordable disparity. We have been partners in rental housing, financial wellness meeting that commitment, helping courses, matched savings programs, the city deliver on its commitment to career-building skills and other equity and fair housing by providing services. The end goal — and primary quality coaching to first-time motivator — remains a home of their homebuyers, counseling homeowners own. in danger of foreclosure, and building The city of Portland has invested trusted relationships with families. in our communities’ aspirations, built We do this to bridge the historic and capacity in culturally-specific service unfortunate distrust of the delivery and has achieved success. In W joanne^streetroots.org Operations Director Sarah Beecroft Program Assistant Cole Merkel, Jesuit Volunteer AmeriCorps Member cole@streetroots.org Grant Writer Sarah Cloud Accountant Heather Stadick Reporters Amanda Waldroupe, Jake Thomas, Devan Schwartz Photographers Leah Nash, Ken Hawkins, Kristina W right a time of declining one-time resources, however, City Council ultimately will decide if these programs should continue in 2012. If funding is n o t renew ed during this b u d g et cycled th is successful sy stem of creating and sustaining homeownership will be dismantled. The cut to these programs would disproportionally impact communities of color, undermining the city’s commitment to equity. We join the city in our commitment to identify more sustainable sources of funding in the long-term, but we cannot risk dismantling this service delivery system in the short term. We must continue to be a resource for those facing foreclosure. At the same time, current interest rates and housing prices means that homeownership is more accessible to families of color than in the past fifteen years. Now is the time to invest in Portland families — and in Portland’s future. African American Alliance for Homeownership Hacienda Community Development Corporation Native American Youth and Family Center Portland Community Reinvestment Initiative Inc. Portland Housing Center Proud Ground Bruce Anderson (Chairman), Michael Anderson (Vice- chairman), Headier Stadick (Treasurer), Eddy Barbosa (Secretary), Rich Rodgers, Brad Taylor, Leo Rhodes, Ken Hawkins, Nora Coon. Volunteers Mary Pacios, Leo Rhodes, Jan Bayer, Eliese Baker, Sue Zalokar, Tave Drake, Michael Moore, Malka Davis, Robert Britt, Dennis Walker - " ' '' ' the cxìtm * s r m w uw M ' Street Roots Rose City Resource Street Roots publishes the Rose City Resource, a comprehensive booklet of services for people experiencing homelessness and poverty. To inquire about getting an order of the Rose City Resource for distribution, please write to pdxrosecityresource@gmail.com. Resources are also available online at www.rosecityresource.org. goes directly to the vendor who sold you the paper goes toward printing costs Vendor orientations are at 1 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the Street Roots office'.
