November 22, 2017
Page 5
Photo by d anny P eterson /t he P ortland o bserver
Kyle Camberg, executive director of the Portland Police Bureau’s Sunshine Division, opens a second
location at Southeast 122nd and Stark to distribute free groceries and clothes to disadvantaged
residents.
Help Moves East
C ontinued froM P age 1
stocked shelves of canned soup,
boxed dinners and frozen food.
“Beats being at home” she
said, acknowledging her volun-
teering commitment. “I don’t like
to be idle for too long.”
The Sunshine Division decided
to locate in east Portland in re-
sponse to rising poverty rates in
the area, backed up by figures that
show a majority of students east
of I-205 are receiving free or dis-
counted lunch programs.
The Reynolds School District,
for example, has nearly 74.7
percent of its students on free or
reduced lunches; The Parkrose
School District is at 74.4 percent;
Centennial School District at 75
percent; and the David Douglas
School District has the highest
number at 78.2 percent. All of
those districts are located on the
outer eastern edge of Portland.
Other factors, like rising rents,
are also hurting more and more
low income families.
The Sunshine Division’s own
surveys showed that many of the
patrons that came to its North
Thompson Avenue distribution
site in the Eliot Neighborhood of
inner north and northeast Portland
were actually from outer east Port-
land and Gresham.
“And so, without taking a su-
per deep dive, statistically, into,
you know, the income numbers,
you can just factually know that
three-fourths of children that live
east of I-205 in the city of Portland
face poverty and are dealing with
issues of hunger and a lock of re-
sources based on that data alone.
It’s pretty startling that the num-
bers are that high,” Camberg told
the Portland Observer.
Portland Public Schools, in
comparison, only has 46.3 percent
of its students on a free or reduced
lunch, while suburbs like Beaver-
ton and Tigard hover below 40
percent.
Neighborhoods in outer East
Portland, meanwhile, are seeing
rising numbers of poor folks, larg-
er numbers of ethnic minorities,
and more people with lower edu-
cation than the citywide average.
What’s more, a report from the
Portland Housing Bureau last year
found that the cost of rent has been
skyrocketing in east Portland, ris-
ing faster than anywhere else in
the city the previous year.
“People are getting pinched, so
the services we provide to families
are needed more than ever,” Cam-
berg said.
Since 1923, the Portland Po-
lice Bureau Sunshine Division has
been providing emergency food
and clothing relief to Portland
families and individuals in need,
for circumstances such as the loss
of a job, domestic crime, illness,
or victims of fire or disaster. The
organization will continue exist-
ing services at its North Thomp-
son Street location in addition to
the new site.
Though the Sunshine Division
has since morphed into its own en-
tity, a standalone non-profit, they
still get assistance from the police
to complete their mission and usu-
ally have an officer on standby at
any of their locations.
The new location is anticipat-
ed to serve an additional 10,000
low-income families with chil-
dren, seniors, veterans, and dis-
abled individuals with food and
clothing assistance in its initial 12
months of operation.
“Sunshine Division helped me
when I was down and out,” vol-
unteer Tanisia Clark said. “So I
decided to give back. It’s a great
organization.”
The 122nd and Stark Sunshine
Division will operate Wednesday
through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to
11:30 a.m. and from 12:30 p.m. to
3:30 p.m.
Other local food and clothing
services for the poor include the
Oregon Food Bank, Northeast
Emergency Food Program, New
Hope Baptist Church, Crossroads
Cupboard and Salvation Army.