street roots
4
Aug. 2, 2013
HUNGER from page 1
the same problems seen in actual suburbs
like Gresham.
Roughly 46 percent of Portland Public
School’s 47,523 students qualified for free
and reduced meals in 2012. In Park Rose
and David Douglas school districts, both of
which serve East Portend, the numbers get
higher.
The most recent numbers for Park Rose
have the district’s enrollment at 1,587
students; 1,176 of these kids qualify for free
and reduced meals. David Douglas faces a
similar situation 80 percent of the district’s
10,538 students qualify for the meal
program.
The hunger trend continues in Gresham
and neighboring Fairview, Wood Village, and
Troutdale. In the Reynolds school district,
which serves these communities, 76 percent
of its students qualify for free and reduced
meals. South in the Centennial school
district, which also serves Portland, that
number is 69 percent. Five of the district’s
seven elementary schools have rates in the
80s. Further east in Gresham-Barlow, the
district average drops to 55 percent.
So how should a suburb respond? The sad
answer is it might not be able to.
Gresham’s Response
"With issues surrounding poverty and
homelessness in Gresham, we can’t keep
up,” says Gresham City Councilor Mario
Palermo.
Councilor Palmero is a benefits
coordinator for the Oregon Department of
Human Services. Being a Gresham
councilor, he explains, isn’t a full-time paid
gig like being a Portland city commissioner.
It’s volunteer work, he says, which is why
he’s kept his day job. Palmero also lives in
Rockwood and has seen first hand the
poverty there. In fact, he’s one of three
Gresham city councilors who live in the
notoriously impoverished neighborhood. He
says small city governments like Gresham
just can’t muster the same resources that
larger cities like Portland can. They also
don’t have the infrastructure to do so, which
is why, he says, Gresham relies heavily on
nonprofits to administer services to those in
P H O T O BY ROBERT
B R IT T
need.
According to numbers provided by City of
Gresham spokeswoman Laura Shepard, in
2013, Gresham gave area nonprofits
$834,041 in federal money as part of its
community revitalization program. This
included money for job training and $83,068
to groups helping with rental assistance,
and transitional and affordable housing.
Gresham gave no money to hunger relief
efforts, according to Shepard.
Palmero says there’s still a lot more that
needs to be done. In particular, he says
there’s not enough affordable housing in
Gresham. But according to some it’s the
concentration of low rent and affordable
housing in Gresham and East Portland
that’s driving much of the current need in
the area.
Aw overview of
SnowCap’s
warehouse, which is
undergoing an
expansion to keep
up with the demand
for food am ong low-
income fam ilies in
Rockwood.
Affordable Housing’s
Suburban Drift
“People came because there was low
rent,” says Human Solutions Executive
See HUNGER, page 5
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