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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
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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'.