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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 2, 2013)
AUGUST 2, 2013 III ■ H lis i - 111 IUinBHI sshh P H O T O B Y R O B E R T B R IT T A woman reaches fo r a can o f food at the SnowCap pantry in Rockwood. The pantry, established fo r low-income individuals and families, has seen its customer base grow rapidly over the yeras a n d . n o w s e e s m o r e th a n 8 , 0 0 0 c u sto m e rs a m o n th . Food insecurity a primary benchmark in our rising suburban poverty BY NATHAN GILLES same period, poverty nearly doubled in Portland and Vancouver area suburbs, outpacing the two t’s lunchtime at Alder Elementary in the east cities which together saw poverty grow by 71 Portland suburb of Gresham., and even though percent. it’s summer, the school’s gym-turned-cafeteria From housing to unemployment, the new is packed with children. There are about 80 grade landscape of poverty has many metrics. But school kids sitting at benches munching away at hunger, in particular, draws some stark lines on sandwiches and fruit as about 20 parents look on. Portland’s metro area map, clearly depicting This food is free, and that’s important says Lena poverty’s suburban migration. Fox, who oversees the meals’ distribution, because “Are you guys hungry? Did you already eat?” Fox without this extra help many of these low-income asks a mother clutching her young son. The kids might go hungry. woman looks reluctant to enter the noisy cafeteria. “We really worry in the summer about what kind The coordinator assures the mother that it’s OK of food is available because we know a lot of them and that the food is free. (students) face hunger issues,” says Fox. The mother looks skeptical. But Fox’s face is Fox coordinates the Schools Uniting warm and disarming. After waiting in the doorway Neighborhoods, or SUN, program for Alder. A joint for a few minutes, she puts her ambivalence aside. effort between the Oregon Food Bank, Multnomah She enters the cafeteria and grabs a tray for her County, and Metropolitan Family Service, the son. poverty-abatement program expects to serve The food is free and not just for the children. thousands of summers meals like this one at Alder Along with serving lunch, SUN also serves kids and its other affiliated schools. Like Alder, many of breakfast over the summer. During the school year, these schools are not in Portland but in its it provides qualifying students a meal before they suburbs. This, say experts, is poverty’s new head home. “We don’t want them to go home and landscape: America’s suburbs now have more not eat,” explains Fox. But Fox says the program people in poverty than its cities. isn’t just about helping kids. It’s also about helping According to a recent Brookings Institution families. report (“Our Sinking Suburbs,” Street Roots, June That’s why year-round SUN schools provide 21), between 2000 and 2011 poverty grew in qualifying neighborhood families with a 3-to-5-day America’s suburbs by 64 percent, or roughly twice supply of food. This is done via eight metro-area the rate it grew in the nation’s cities. During the schools that double as pantries. Alder is one of S T A F F W R IT E R I these. According to numbers provided by SUN Hunger Relief Coordinator Rick Freed, last year Alder alone gave out 45,000 meals through its pantry. And these meals were needed. Alder is located in Gresham’s Rockwood neighborhood where above average rates of poverty and the number of kids on free and reduced meals; 95 percent of Alder students qualify for the program. It is by many accounts the most impoverished neighborhood in the Portland metro region and Multnomah County. But Rockwood isn’t so much an outlier as a poster child for poverty’s suburban shift. SUN on the Map Currently, SUN’s 68 schools are split roughly in half between Portland Public Schools, the Portland’s central school district, and the outlying districts. But hunger’s suburban presence really pops on the map when looking at SUN pantries. Six of SUN’s eight pantries are within Portland city limits with the remaining two in Gresham. However, five of those six Portland pantries are located in east Portland in the once expanding strips malls and track homes that made up the city’s post-war suburbs. Many of these burbs have since been incorporated by Portland. But incorporation hasn’t kept these former suburbs — now known as East Portland — from experiencing See HUNGER, page 4 Inside Sharing a smile We can ‘change people’s lives' Customers rally to restore a vendor's pearly whites Oregon's new D H S director on meeting a growing dem and Page 3 Page 5 Keeping watch over Vista Bridge Volunteers patrol to prevent more suicides Page 8
