Building a better Portland for
people experiencing poverty
elcome to the 2012-13 Street Roots
annual report. This past year has
been an exciting time for Street
Roots, as we continue to grow as an
organization and media outlet.
At the heart of Street Roots is
community. More than 300 men and women
earned a dignified income this past year
with Street Roots. More than 15,000
readers engaged with those vendors on
street corners and in neighborhoods around
the region.
Hope was established in the lives of
people on the streets, and the general
public who believe that we have a
responsibility to maintain a healthy
community. People came together across
class lines, through conversation and a
newspaper. Stereotypes were shattered.
Lasting relationships were built.
Street Roots witnesses some of the most
brutal and unforgiving realities people
experiencing poverty face in our region. It
would be easy to become bitter and cynical,
and to just publish a newspaper that didn’t
concentrate on solutions or innovation. Both
individually and collectively, we refuse to
accept defeat.
In many ways, Street Roots is that little
train that could. The amount of work the
organization produces week-in and week-out,
with a small staff and a dedicated crew of
volunteers baffles me at times. The human
spirit and the power of love should never be
underestimated. Marry that with smart,
innovative people, strategic thinking and a
willingness to change the world and
anything is possible.
Is it possible for a man to gain hope, after
25 years of being lost and homeless, or for
someone coming back from war to regain
their trust of humanity? Can a woman go
from the depth of hell and domestic violence
to standing on her own two feet and
providing for herself? We see it happen
every day at Street Roots.
We watch in awe at times, when readers
like you come together to pay for new
dentures for a vendor, or help someone with
a surgery, or get a new pair of eyeglasses.
There’s nothing sweeter than watching a
vendor get his or her first set of house keys
after years of stress, trauma and abuse.
There’s nothing more defeating that seeing
another person struggle, only to die literally,
on the streets without ever being able to
overcome poverty. It’s these individual
stories and relationships that drive Street
Roots to do what we do.
It is not easy being an organization that
will say, or report what others can’t or
W
won’t. It takes its toll on the organization
financially, and sometimes politically. Saying
that, Street Roots will never waiver from
doing what we feel is right based on our
experience and knowledge in the field and
the hundreds of hours of research and
relationship building it takes to develop the
quality journalism in the newspaper.
That’s why the support of Street Roots
ultimately lies in the reader’s hands. Since
2007, Street Roots has gone from $30,000
annually in individual donors to nearly
$100,000. That’s during the biggest
recession since the 1930s. That’s impressive
and testament to the public’s support of
Street Roots and the work we are doing.
What are we doing?
Street Roots published more than
300,000 copies of the newspaper that put an
estimated $600,000 into vendor’s hands this
year. Nearly 70 percent of those sales
happen during the first week of our
biweekly news schedule. During the first
week of sales, vendors do well. During the
second week of sales, vendors tend to
scramble and are not as successful.
That’s why it remains the
organizations number one
objective to publish weekly.
We believe that sales of the
newspaper would increase
dramatically week-to-week,
giving vendors more stability
in their lives
to
improve their
quality of life.
The organization launched an
organizational and news website (news.
streetroots.org) this past year. Partnering
with the open-source software community
and OMBU, a local web development
company — the technology industry donated
more than $100,000 of in-kind services to
Street Roots to make sure we stay on the
cutting edge of technology and expand our
readership statewide.
The organization continue to work
towards centralizing our internal
communications and systems to improve the
work we do and to streamline the services
we provide to vendors and the general
public.
We added administrative, development
and editorial staff. We accomplished this
through partnership with the Meyer
Memorial Trust and the Oregon Community
Foundation.
We partnered with JOIN and Northwest
Pilot Project, among others, to help
facilitate housing more than 50 individuals.
We estimate that we helped prevent more
than 100 people from falling into
homelessness.
We partnered with Precarious Egg, a local
film production company to create a
15-minute training video that gives people
experiencing poverty the tools and training
they need to sell the newspaper in the
community. More than 10 vendors took the
time to be part of planning and starring
in the training video.
The organization published
more than 100,000 Rose City
Resource Guides, distributed to
nearly 400 organizations and
institutions in the community.
We published the second
annual Domicile Unknown, a
report on homeless deaths in
Multnomah County, in
partnership with the county
health department. We helped
facilitate countless conversations
about solutions to poverty at
local universities,
through the media
and at
conferences
around North
America.
Vendor Luke Sensei shows off the key to his new apartm ent and a new life
Street Roots helped lead important
advocacy efforts to preserve millions of
dollars for housing and homeless services
through the safety net campaign. We
continue to facilitate, and be a part of a
range of proactive and innovative
conversations concerning issues of poverty
- ranging from the civil liberties of people
on the streets to resource development for
housing.
Street Roots continues to experiment and
provide a robust social media presence in
the community, including spending 24 hours
on the streets and delivering the experience
of homelessness through Twitter. We also
work weekly to highlight the voices of
vendors and people on the streets through
the newspaper and social media. We are
constantly working to maintain the
relationship between the public, technology
and poverty.
The newspaper continues to grow and
expand its coverage. Tackling a broader
range of issues related to poverty, social
justice and other taboo subject matters that
you’re not going to read anywhere else. The
partnership with the International Network
of Street Papers continues to grow —
working with other newspapers from around
the globe to share best practices and
content.
All and all, Street Roots remains healthy.
That doesn’t mean we aren’t flying close to
the treetops like every other media outlet in
Portland. Saying that, we haven’t been this
strong in our 15-year history.
What’s to come?
Weekly publication remains the goal. We
hope that in the next year we are able to
gain the momentum and financial support to
give vendors a stable income week-in and
week-out, while becoming even more
relevant in today’s media market.
We will continue to work on developing
support and to create the best opportunities
for vendors selling the newspaper — ranging
from a motivational speakers series for
vendors to creating a speakers bureau.
We will continue to publish and create
new, innovative conversations in the
community and through the newspaper and
online. We will continue to work toward
social change and to create a better
Portland. We will also work toward
expanding our reach outside Portland and
statewide. We believe Street Roots is a
vehicle not just for poverty issues, but
instead a platform for quality journalism and
voices from people working on social justice.
A strong Street Roots, means a strong social
justice community. We will continue to make
a real difference, one newspaper and one
conversation at a time.
Israel Bayer
Executive Director
“W hat I like about
Street Roots is it
made me a better
person, ” he says. “I
fin d myself being
more polite. Pm
more patient. I feel
better about myself
because Pm working
fo r Street Roots.”
- RICK PHILLIPS
Street Roots vendors do their part fo r a campaign to preserve fu n d in g fo r people in need. Street
Roots helped lead the successful campaign titled “Safety Net,” to secure $2 million in housing
and homeless services at the city o f Portland.