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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (April 17, 2015)
Street Roots • April 17-23, 2015 Page 3 Editorial Write in . If you would fiko to have / / \ \ ¿TO thltg ' ' that you’ve \ WFittenpublished ■' \ J m our pages, or would , ' ' like to get involved as a ' • member of our reporting staff, contact Managing Editor Joanne Zuhl at 503-228-5657, joanne@streetroois.org. We ask that all submissions include the author’s name and contact information, if available. StreetRoots 211 NW Davis St Portland, OR 97209 503-228-5657, : @@ , • Fax:503-227-3117 www.streetroots.org www.news.streelroots.org Hours:7:30 a;nt-3jxrix M orvA t, 7:30 , a.m.-2 p.m., Sat, and 7:30-11 a.m. Sun. Advertising Interested in advertising in Street Roots? < Contact Israel Bayer at israel@streetroots.org A group o f women left homeless in 2014 after being released from women's winter shelter. “M y experience has been hell, "one o f the women told Street Roots. “I do n ’t have all the answers, but 1 do know that no one in their right m in d would let hundreds o f women sleep on the streets. Where's the leadership in this city?” Staff Executive D irecto r Israel Bayer israd@streetroots.org Managing Editor Joanne Z u hl Let's work on making things right on housing This year both the City of Portland and Multnomah County launched Home For Everyone, a new plan to address housing and homelessness in our community. Mayor Charlie Hales and Gity housing commissioner, Dan Saltzman, along with Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury and commissioner Jules Bailey helped launch the process that brought together the community to oversee an array of complex services to deliver the best outcomes for ending individual and family homelessness in our region. The group recommended an additional investment of about $33 million over two years - some of which are m m one-time allocations and some will be ongoing. The goal is to provide hundreds of people experiencing — homelessness a safe and stable place to call home, while helping prevent thousands more from becoming homeless. The recommendations, as outlined in StreetRoots in the March 26 edition, call for increasing women’s and family shelter beds along with a menu of other options for elected leaders to consider - including increasing short and long-term rent assistance, Section 8 vouchers, creating more mobile outreach teams and $20 million for affordable housing development. The recommendations also include allocating resources toward income opportunities to help stabilize people experiencing poverty. Low-income Portlanders need access to stable housing in a variety of forms, and creating affordable housing requirements last month in South Waterfront and investing money in a'East Portland affordable housing strategy with Home First Developement and the Portland Habilitation Center (PHC) are steps in the right direction. Infact, Street Roots would argue that we need to be budding more stable affordable housing in E ast Portland - considering how many school children and families already live in extreme poverty. Saying that, there’s a storm lurking on the horizon. The Portland Housing Bureau’s budget is projected to decline by million of dollars in the next five years. This comes on top of an already burdened system that’s not producing even close to the affordable housing units needed to address the ongoing housing crisis. The newly formed Welcome Home Coalition, which Street Roots helped found, estimates that we will need an additional $50 million annually to actually tackle the problem. We have hard choices to make Portland, and Street Roots believes individuals and families should have access to a safe place to call home, especially women and children. It’s that simple. The City of Portland and Multnonah County should m eet in the middle. That m eans investing an additional $8 million a piece for the next two years to achieve the initial investments needed for the Home For Everyone plan. That’s phase one. Phase two should be indentifying a long-term local resource that will generate at least $20 million annually and look at costs associated with a variety of housing models to build new affordable housing. Street Roots understands the hard realities the city and county have to make when it comes to budget priorities. We also know that nothing should take priority over saving people’s lives on the streets. Why bring the community together to create a plan if you don’t plan on funding it? We’ve been here before, and it isn’t pretty. We have a moral obligation as a community to give people experiencing poverty safe and stable places to call home, especially knowing that education and health care systems, along with the business sector, will all benenfit from these smart investments. If not, it’s a vicious cycle that will continue to plague our city until < we have the leadership to make things right. Street Roots believes there is no better time than the present to do so. Let’s make things right. joanne@streefroots.org Vendor Coordinator Cole Merkel cole@streetFOOts.org Operations Director Sarah Beecroft Program Assistant Grace Badik, Jesuit Volunteer, grace@streeiroots.org Development Director Sarah Cloud Development Assistant Ann-Derrick Galliot Reporters Emily Green, Sue Zaiokar, Christen McCurdy, Sarah Hansell, Sam Bouman, Jacques Von Lunen, Jared Paben Photographers Diego Diaz, Joe Glode Canvasser Desmond Hardison Board of Directors Chairman Bruce Anderson Vice-Chairman Brad Taylor Treasurer Heather Stadick Secretary Amber Bielman Directors Rich Rodgers, Michael Anderson, Leo Rhodes, Mora Coon, Darren Alexander, Eddie Barbosa, Rachel Langford Volunteers Jan Bayer, Rob Shyrock, Stacey Heath, John Barker, Sarah Hansell, Aaron Von Reyn, Chere Cobb, Audrey Cerchiara, Jade Maniscalco, Anjali Rathore, Eliese Baker, Doug Spangle, Susannah Kamala, Susan Gallagher, Tom Ray, Lee Ko, Dan Jones, Lisa Waldo, James Yu, Sam Bouman, Cherie Vedal If you are interested in volunteering w ith Street Roots, please submit a volunteer application at streetroots.org/vofunteer. Or ■ call Volunteer Coordinator Grace Badik for more information at 503-228-5657,
