street roots
2
Feb. 14, 2014
liujujuuu
A snowstorm, a tent city and Chief Reese
A job well done deserves a
statewide encore
hen the snowstorm ended and the ice thawed —
there was a lot td celebrate.
■
During the snowstorm, a coordinated
emergency effort led by the Portland Housing Bureau and
others brought together an army of city and county
workers and volunteers to do outreach for people
experiencing homelessness and poverty.
The Portland Police and Fire Bureaus, along with
211Info and JOIN outreach teams, worked with local
emergency shelters around the clock to ensure that
people experiencing homelessness had a chance to come
in from the cold.
While one person did pass away from exposure in
~
,
Clackamas
Multnomah County,
County in
th e .
At a time of growing
Medical Examiner
discontent and
reported that there were
compassion fatigue
no fatalities for people
surrounding the issue of
experiencing
homelessness and
poverty, Portland rose
homelessness. That’s an
above and was able to
amazing accomplishment,
show great compassion.
especially considering
Athat in other
communities around the country, that hasn't been the
case.
In San Jose, Calif., seven people froze to death on the
streets, during a similar storm in December. Afound the
country, there have been numerous reports of people
experiencing homelessness left out in the cold and
freezing to death.
At a time of growing discontent and compassion fatigue
surrounding the issue of homelessness and poverty,
Portland rose above and w as able to show great
compassion.
hat a week on the homeless front A
partnership between some of the
most powerful interests in the city
and a group of homeless, activists, a
snowstorm, and the
Portland police chief
announcing a plan to
DIRECTORAS address homelessness
downtown. Wow.
DESK
I haven’t evern
mentioned that there’s
B y Israel Bayer
a plan in the works to
t
potentially move a
Israel Bayer is the
prominent downtown
executive director o f
Street Roots. You can
shelter to the Eastsidé, but honestly, that s a
reach him at
story for another timé.
israei@streetroots.org
I go on the Internet and see reporters and
or follow h im on •
pundits making fun of the conditions in Sochi
Twitter @israelbayer.
during the Winter Olympics and then walk out
the door at Street Roots in Old Town to see a
64-year-old man freezing in the doorway. You
tell me. First things first, a big kudos should
go out to all of the men and women, who have
been working around the clock to serve
people on the streets.
Individuals on the streets endure much and
none more than during the current
WHAT DO
There’s nothing logical or
YOU THINK? snowstorm.
remotely civilized about watching people
struggling without a home during the dead of
Send letters to the
.editor to the Street winter.
There’s been an army of social workers,
Roots office, 211
do-gooders, police Officers, the fire bureau
NWDavisSt.,
and many others, working around the clock
Portland, OR 97209, during these cold nights. They have one
or e-mail to joanne® simple goal — to not let anyone freeze to
death. They do it with compassion and heart.
streetroots.org
They should be saluted. z
If you’re interested in volunteering or
donating goods during cold spells, or anytime
for that matter, holler. Dial 2-1-1. It’s one of
the most important numbers you canhave in
■
F retty sw eet th a t R ight 2 D ream Too
practices for communities to use during emergency
weather. Imagine if all of Oregon was able to implement a
similar strategy to Multnomah County.
A Housing and Urban Development homeless team
could mandate local communities to have an emergency'
response strategy in place before allocating funding. In a
time when government is looking at a more strategic
approach to ending poverty, a uniform emergency
response plan makes sense.
We know that in Multnomah County dozens of
individuals experiencing homelessness die each year on
the streets. Having an emergency response plan in place
saved lives this past week. Working to create and
maintain this kind of coordination year-round is critical to
being able to save individuals and families lives on the
streets in the future.
Salem and Washington D.C. should be locking at both
tracking individuals who die on the streets and these
emergency plans. Understanding why people are dying on
the streets and being able to save peoples lives is
something government both could and should do.
While homelessness at times may feel like an obstacle
our city can’t overcome, we know that together,
regardless of our political beliefs or own experiences, we
are able to accomplish great things. Multnomah County,
we salute you.
continues to navigate, with grace no doubt, in
some very complex political waters. I’m very
happy they’ve been able to negotiate the next
steps of their journey with the city
Here we have a group of 70 individuals
experiencing homelessness, many from the ,
Our mission
Staff
BuaiM tfW reaW
Executive Director Israel Bayer
Bruce Anderson (Chairman), Michael Anderson (V ice-' ’
cfiairman), Heather Stadick (Treas.), Eddy Barbosa (Sec.),
Rich Rodgers, Brad Taylor, Leo Rhodes, Nora Coon, -
Darren Alexander, Amber Bielman .
Street Roots
211 NW Davis-St
Portland, OR 97209
503-228-5657
Fax: 503-227-3117
streetroots.org
news.streetroots.brg
Managing Editor Joanne Zuhi
joanne@streetroois.org '
Vendor Coordinator Cole Merkel
cole@streetroots.org
,
Operations Director Sarah Beecroft
Program Assistant Grace Badik, Jesuit Volunteer,
grace@streetroots.org
Development Director Sarah Cloud
Office Assistant Am ber Bielman
R e p o rte rs Jake Thomas, Alex Zielinski, Nathan
Gilles, Sue Zajokar, Ann-Derrick G aillot
Photographers Kristina W right, Christopher
Onstott
a
m ave sid ew alk l/^gislafinn forward in t o
y ea rs. T h ey have to d eal w ith a h o m e le ss
t
camp called Right 2 Dream Too, and insiders
who belieye homelessness is actually driving
business away from downtown Portland.
Their whole message, packaged in various
See DIRECTOR'S DESK, page 3
D uring the recent
snow storm in
Portland, a homeless
person huddles
under a makeshift
tent in Old Town
Chinatown.
Street Roots creates income opportunities for
people experiencing homelessness and poverty by
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. W e are proud
members o f the North American Street
Newspaper Association and the International
Network of Street Papers.
Old Town neighborhood, who have managed
to collectively pull themselves up fry the
bootstraps and achieve some amazing feats.
How about giving hundreds of people on
the streets a safe placé to rest for pennies on
the dollar. I mean, we’re not even talking
breadcrumbs here. More so, the group has
held its head high, while being ridiculed and
undercut, sideswiped and pushed down by
some of the most powerful downtown
interests in this city. That’s what I call some
big-time resilience.
So what about Police Chief Mike Reese
dropping a pretty big surprise on Portland '
this week, when the mayor was out of town? /
Not many people saw that coming.
In case you missed it, Chief Reese unveiled
a plan to tackle downtown homelessnésS
using a range of services — for the most- part
supported by the community, but led fry law
enforcement
Before I even start. I have a lot of respect
for Chief Reese. I’ve watched the man
de-escalate some pretty serious mental-health
crises with my own two èyes. I’ve also been
involved in different processes with him to '
deliver real outcomes in the community for
people on the streets. The man has heart.
That’s why I was a little taken aback when
he laid out “Portland Prosper,” a complex
strategy to curtail homelessness downtown. A
lot of what was presented has been worked
and reworked for years. What made this
proposal different is that it comes at a time
when thére have been a range of different /
processes taking place to try to come up with
these same solutions.
Let’s step back for a minute.
First, it’s my assumption that the Portland
Business Alliance and some folks downtown
are mad as hell. They may not say it publicly,
but let’s be honest They haven’t bèen able to
Volunteers
Street Roots vendors buy the newspapers for 25 cents
each and sell them for $1, keeping the 75 cents in '
profit for themselves. In order to keep the cost low to
our vendors, we receive additional support from
donations and in-kind contributions.
Jan Bayer, Lisa Waldo, Elizabeth Tierney, Rob
Shyrock, Ann-Derrick Gaillot, Stacey Heath, Vinnie ‘
Kinsella, Michelle Breslau, Paula Cracas, Sharron
Thompson, John Barker, Mary Locke, Lucas Manfield,
Jessie Carver, Cherie Vedal, Sam Bouman, Alana
Kansaku-Sarmiento, JohnYohne.
Street Roots Rose City Resource
Street Roots publishes the Rose City Resource, a
comprehensive booklet o f services for people'
experiencing homelessness and poverty.
To inquire about getting guides, call 503-228-5657.
Resources aré also available-online at
www.rosecityresource.org.
75 ' ? ? /
goes directly to the vendor
w ho sold you the paper
25 c
goes toward
printing costs
Vendor orientations are at 1 p.m. every Monday,
W ednesday and Friday at the Street Roots office.