Street roots., September 07, 2018, Page 9, Image 9

Street Roots » Sept. 7-13, 2018
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Page 9
ONTARIO, from p age 8
could be delivered to them. Since school’s
been out, I’ve been coming about every
week. I’ve only got two more visits because
my grandkids have to eat, and it’s summer.”
Nora Bean, pantry manager at Next
Chapter, estimates that 40 percent of all
Ontario residents visit food pantries
regularly. While the number of SNAP
benefit recipients has steadily decreased
since 2013 nationwide, Malheur County saw
a 4 percent rise from last year.
Community members often line up an
hour before the pantry opens.
“The end of the month is always the
busiest because they’re toward not having
any food stamps left,” Bean said.
Food insecurity, a lack of viable public
transit and education, and a shortage of
affordable-housing options leaves Ontario
lagging behind many comparable rural
communities in Oregon. The Clientele of the
food pantry - diverse in age, ability,
ethnicity and religion - reflect the culturally
rich community of Ontario itself, and yet
simultaneously reflect the universality of
issues that have long plagued the region.
The city of Ontario proudly occupies the
river-lush high desert and sprawling
ranchlands along the easternmost edge of
the state in Malheur County. Several major
highways, including Interstate 84, Connect
the community to nearby towns in mere
minutes on either side of the Oregon-Idaho
border in an area known locally as the
Treasure Valley. The Snake River, which
divides and winds along the state border, is
one of four major waterways.
On the Oregon side of Snake River, the
absence of a sales tax makes Ontario a
popular retail hub, and the county’s
minimum hourly wage of $10.50 appeals to
workers from Idaho, where the minimum is
only $7.25. By contrast, the Idaho side of
Treasure Valley boasts far more lax land-use
regulations, which, in turn, have encouraged
more commercial and housing
developments.
Ontario’s ties with Idaho are so strong
that local television and radio programming
is broadcast from the Gem State, and most
of Malheur County operates on Mountain
Time, rather than Pacific. Despite proximity
to Idaho and the city’s thriving economy,
Ontario residents and Malheur County,
Oregon’s second-largest county by area, are
among the poorest and most economically
disadvantaged in the state.
Ontario is also at the crossroads of two of
Malheur County’s three “high poverty
hotspots,” the Census Bureau’s label for
concentrations of poor residents. East
Ontario, a neighborhood within Ontario, has
as the highest rate of poverty in all of
Oregon.
From 2011 to 2015, 25.5 percent of the
people in Malheur County were living in
poverty - a rate far above the state, at 16.5
percent, and the nation, at 15.5 percent -
according to a 2017 report prepared by the
Department of Human Services’ Office of
Business Intelligence and the Office of
Forecasting, Research and Analysis, part of
DHS and the Oregon Health Authority.
Furthermore, census figures from 2016
show 38 percent of residents of Ontario
living in poverty.
And when comparing the cost of housing
in rural Oregon to rural households across
the country, the Oregon Office of Economic
i
1
Dancers perform
a Basque dance
during the
Tradition
Keepers Event
and Exhibit at
the Four Rivers
Cultural Center
in Ontario, Ore.
PHO TO BY
CELESTE NO CHE
A haven for immigrant families: How it got there
Diversity runs deep in Ontario
BY EM ILLY PRADO
S T A F F W R IT E R
eartily doused barbecue pork sliders, Indian fry
bread, and stewed chile verde filled the platestvf Si
hungry guests at the Tradition Keepers Event and
Exhibit. The June celebration, hosted by Four Rivers
Cultural Center in Ontario, Ore., honored the region’s rich
cultural roots, with dishes from each to boot.
In addition to cuisine, hands-on workshops and lectures, Four
Rivers invited taiko drummers, Paiute dancers and cowboy
poets to perform in the main lobby beneath four soaring
paintings depicting the area’s most significant ethnic groups:
Mexican, Japanese, Basque and Native American.
Although Oregon is noted as one of the nation’s whitest
states, cities such as Ontario in Malheur County disrupt that
S
Analysis found that rural Oregonians are
facing home prices 30 percent higher and
rents 16 percent higher than their
counterparts on average.
A broken system
Like many places across Oregon and the
U.S., Malheur County and Ontario are
experiencing a severe housing crisis. But
beyond following suit with national trends in
rising housing costs and stagnant wages, the
county faces other difficulties. In late
spring, the Housing Authority of Malheur
and Harney Counties suddenly announced
that the Housing Choice Voucher Program,
commonly known as Section 8, had caused
the agency to enter a budgetary shortfall.
“We are experiencing a deficit in money
(due to) the fact that we’ve had an extreme
amount of people that have come in from
other areas, be it Idaho or California or the
East Coast, because our Section 8 housing
voucher’s wait list was very, very minimal,”
said Kristy Rodriguez, Housing Choice
Voucher Occupancy Specialist at the local
housing authority. “It was only like three to
six months or a year maximum wait as
opposed to these higher cost areas that are
years and years to wait. Word got out, and
narrative. As the largest city near the Oregon-Idaho border and
the largest in the county with an estimated population of 11,009
residents, according to the U.S. Census, Ontario is among thè
10 most diverse cities in the state.
The annually updated Census program approximates the
city’s demographic makeup to be 54.5 percent non-Latinx white,
41.7 percent Latinx, 4.4 percent multiracial, 1.7 percent Asian,
0.7 percent Native American, and 0.4 percent African-American.
In comparison, .75.8 percent of Oregonians identify as non-
Latinx white.
“Where Oregon Begins” is. the city’s proud motto, but diving
into Ontario’s own historic beginnings reveals a story of
migration and a story about how Ontario itself became the truly
multicultural community it is today.
Decades before the weaving highways, sprawling homesteads
and .big-box stores of Ontario were built, the land was home and
(people) moved into our jurisdiction.”
Across the United States; more than 2
million low-income households receive
Section 8 rental assistance administered
through the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development, but that’s only
about a quarter of all people who would be
eligible for services. The average wait time
for Section 8 vouchers nationwide is more
than two years. In Portland, the Section 8
wait list was last open in September 2016
and is estimated to stay closed for a
minimum of three years. In some cities,
such as Los Angeles, the wait time cart
exceed a decade, which is why Ontario’s
short wait list appealed to a large number of
people in need.
When eligible applicants are approved for
a Section 8 voucher, they are required to
reside in the county granting the voucher
for a minimum of one year. While on the
wait list, applicants cart live in a different
county but must relocate to the granting
jurisdiction to receive rental assistance
upon approval. After one year of receiving
rental assistance, Section 8 recipients may
move to a different county and receive
assistance from the original county for
another full year.
See HERITAGE, page 10
“They (could) go back to California or go
back to Boise, Idaho, if they wanted to.
There was no way for us to restrict that
unless we were in a shortfall status,”
Rodriguez said.
“A lot of our money and our vouchers
have gone out to other areas where other
housing authorities aren’t able to pick up
the bill. Now, if any families are requesting
to transfer out of our jurisdiction, they may
transfer only if the other-housing authority
is willing to issue them one of their own
vouchers and actually pay for their
assistance. And there’s a big housing barrier
now where we’re not able to issue housing
vouchers to anybody. That puts a damper on
our current residents who are living here
and are poor and are homeless.”
Section 8 rental assistance allows low-
income tenants to afford housing units of
their choice. The amount of each Section 8
voucher depends on the applicant’s income
level and what’s considered suitable for the
local fair-market rent set by HUD based on
available units.
In Malheur County, the fair-market rent
of a two-bedroom apartment is $697 per
See ONTARIO, page 10