Street roots., August 02, 2013, Page 5, Image 5

street roots
Aug. 2, 2013
HUNGER fro m page 4
Director Jean DeMaster about the rise in low-
income residents in East Portland and
Gresham.
DeMaster’s organization finds affordable
housing for those in need through a mix of
facilities it runs and landlords it works with.
She says the reason you see the kind of
hunger in places like Rockwood is because of
the sheer volume of
affordable housing
Suburban unemployment
available there.
population for
“Historically there
Portland metropolitan area
was a large amount of
82,568
multi-family housing
that was not kept in
good repair,” she says
about the region. “So it
went down in quality.
That made rents go
35,971
down. So when there
was gentrification in
northeast Portland,
families looked around
and said, ‘Where is
there low rent?’” Many
Dec. 2010
Dec. 2007
moved to East Portland
and Rockwood.
Source: U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, as
Human Solutions has also moved into the
compiled by The Brookings
area. Of the organization’s 675 apartment
Institute
units, 350 are in East Portland. The rest are
in East Multnomah County, including
Gresham and Fairview. A look at how the
group’s Section 8 housing has been
distributed shows a similar pattern. DeMaster
says at least 100 Section 8 vouchers it helps
distribute are currently in Rockwood, 45 are
in Fairview, and another 100 are in East
Portland between 82nd and 162nd Ave.
And it’s not just Human Solutions. Home
Forward, Portland’s housing bureau, which
also serves Gresham, has also been slowly
lì
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moving its Section 8 housing eastward into
East Portland and Gresham.
Without blaming any one organization or
factor, DeMaster says this influx, and the
poor economy, has placed increasing pressure
on available services. Providers say it shows.
Again hunger is our guide.
The View From SnowCap
“You can see the higher part is where the
building will be,” says Judy Alley, pointing to a
recently poured concrete foundation in front
of her.
Alley is the executive director of SnowCap
Community Charities, a nonprofit food pantry
in Rockwood. The foundation, says Alley, is
part of a new expansion that she hopes will
help SnowCap serve more people.
Currently, Alley’s organization serves about
8,000 low-income Gresham-area people a
month. But, Alley says, due to a combination
of high demand and a cramped warehouse,
the pantry has had to turn away food
shipments. The new construction is an
attempt to solve that problem.
The foundation and the warehouse it will
support will give SnowCap an extra 2,000
square feet of storage. Alley says the need for
more space first became apparent five years
ago when the economy plummeted and
unemployment skyrocketed. As a
consequence, demand for SnowCap food also
grew.
“2008 was very scary,” says Alley. “We
started seeing more people. We were serving
about 4,000 people a month and that was all
we could do. But the people were lining up.”
To compensate for the increased demand,
Alley says she reached out to find new .
sources of food and funding. But adding more
food quickly filled up the pantry’s tiny
warehouse. They had to expand.
Along with laying the groundwork for more
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space, SnowCap also started a community
garden. Today it’s a sprawling cornucopia of
raised beds filled with zucchini, squash,
broccoli, kale, chard, and other sumptuous
vegetables tended by about 40 gardeners.
Alley says despite efforts like these and talk
about the recession being over, she doesn’t
see hunger in Gresham diminishing.
“The fact is Rockwood has changed the
demographic,” she says. “This is hardcore
systemic poverty happening in a small town.
And Gresham is a small town.”
Back to School
Back at Alder, lunchtime is over. Fox is at
the front of the gym. Nearly all the 80 kids
are sitting attentively, listening to her as she
reads off the results of a raffle. At the back of
the room, a group of five mothers sit talking
at the cafeteria’s furthest table. They’re
Latino immigrants and spoke with Street
Roots with help from Jessenia Jimenez, a
22-year-old volunteer fluent in Spanish and
English.
“My apartment is too much of a problem,”
says one woman, adding that her landlord has
yet to fix her leaking roof. These low-income
women say they don’t have cars and have to
endure long bus rides to get groceries. They
say violence is huge in Rockwood.
The mother who was reluctant to enter the
school is now among them, her child in her
arms. She says rape is a big problem in
Rockwood. She doesn’t feel safe. She says the
police aren’t helpful.
Another woman, 29-year-old Eva Morales
Vasquez, her three kids huddled around her,
says, “There are good things about the
community too. There are clinics that don’t
charge a lot. And there are places where you
can get (free) food.”