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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (May 8, 2013)
Local News Guns SUH’s Gift to Grant hopeful. Sen. Peter Courtney would not have sent the gun bills back to committee if he saw no chance of a bipartisan agreement. Oregon Republicans could be persuaded to sign on, she says, to avoid the backlash that has stung Washington politicians who voted against background checks. “Republican senators have seen that national backlash,” Okamoto says. “The people who voted against the federal back- ground checks bill have seen their ratings drop, and they don’t want that.” Johnson argues that the bills would not reduce gun violence Ceasefire Oregon Gun Turn-In because criminals don’t obey When: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the laws. But Okamoto says we Saturday, May 11 might as well say we shouldn’t Where: Lynwood Friends Church, make laws against murder 835 S.E. 162nd Ave. because some people will mur- Gift cards to Safeway or Fred Meyer for each work- der anyway. ing gun: “We know that background Handguns: $100 checks work,” she says. Rifles and shotguns: $75 “Nationally eight million peo- Assault weapons: $150 ple have been stopped from Magazines—capacity 50 and above: $25 buying guns because they failed Pellet and BB guns: $10 the background check. That’s Limit 3 per person when they turn to back-alley No questions asked sales and people selling guns out of the trunk of their cars. “This is how criminals are proposed gun bills. One lone Democrat, getting are getting their guns, and it’s why Sen. Betsy Johnson of Scappoose, also we need to stop people from buying guns opposes background checks, along with all without a background check. It’s a common sense bill that will save lives.” the other gun control measures. Okamoto said polling suggests the major- Johnson seems unlikely to change her vote. Last year, she voted against a bill to ity of Oregonians believe school districts ban guns from school grounds. And she has should be allowed to ban guns from school militant supporters in her district. A St. grounds if they choose. The Oregonian’s poll showed a majority Helens softball league recently offered an in the state also favor banning assault AR-15 assault rifle as a raffle prize. Still, Penny Okamoto, executive director weapons (52 percent) and high capacity of Ceasefire Oregon, says she remains magazines (53 percent). But thanks to – Says citizens cannot openly carry guns in buildings where public bodies are deliberat- ing. Senate Bill 796: In-Person Class for Con- cealed Handgun License – Requires citizens to attend an in-person class before obtaining a concealed handgun license. Polls show Oregon voters support back- ground checks by a large margin—81 percent favored them in a recent poll for the Oregonian. Yet so far, not a single Republi- can has agreed to vote for any of the four Detroit Lions football star Ndamukong Suh, center, wields a shovel Thursday, May 2, at the groundbreaking for Grant High School’s new turf athletic field and a new synthetic track at the school. Also on the scene was City Commissioner Nick Fish, officials from NIKE, Portland Public Schools, and the Friends of Grant Athletics, who together pooled more than $1 million for the project. Suh graduated from Grant in 2005. PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED continued from page 1 intense pressure from highly vocal gun rights advocates, neither of those ideas became bills in the Legislature. At the rollout for the Ceasefire gun turn- in, Vaune Albanese, executive director of the social services nonprofit Friendly House, spoke about the murder of her brother. Joe “Vito” Albanese was one of four people shot in the Racer Cafe in Seat- tle, May 30, 2012. “The seasons have turned around since then and the fragrance of wisteria once again fills the air,” she said. “I will never be able to associate this time with anything but my brother’s death, and how it has turned my life and so many others upside down. Albanese urged Oregonians to make their voices heard. “It’s too late for my brother,” she said. “It’s too late for the good people who lost their lives at Clackamas Town Center, and the 26 children and adults who died in New- town Connecticut – and as of this morning the 3,835 human beings who have lost their lives to guns since Newtown. But it’s not too late to make a change.” Success continued from page 2 we offer, Attridge said. “We all have a spe- cial purpose and we are trying to help women find that path, something that really fits who they are, and their strengths and skills.” Today, Dress for Success does much more than put women into the right suit and accessories for a job interview. It’s about to open the career center, where it can expand its work in mentoring and supporting women to progress in their chosen fields of work. “It’s sending that message that you are ‘It’s sending that message that you are important, you matter and there are possibilities for your life.’ —Barb Attridge important,” Attridge said. “You matter and there are possibilities for your life.” About 200 volunteers help run the pro- gram. They include women executives from the highest levels of corporate management, who work with women as mentors and stand in terms of their differing rules and requirements. “So I’m thinking that this woman who called you has a tenant-based Section 8 public housing which is a different flavor entirely.” The mix-up is part of a bigger effort to bring up rents. career advisors. And outside speakers come to talk about everything from personal finance and stress management to commu- nication skills and The Unwritten Rules of the Workplace. “We have women who are presidents of companies who come in here to volunteer,” Attridge says. “In their daily lives, the women we work with would never have the chance to meet these very talented and accomplished women.” Rent continued from page 3 $1,200 in July. The woman declined to be identified, she said, because she was afraid of being kicked out of her housing altogether if she com- plained about the management. The Skanner News’ email query to the hous- ing authority’s office led Marchesi to check Guardian’s letter to residents – she says about two dozen received the memo — and she says she saw the problem immediately. For instance, a letter that says, “Effective July, 2013, your rent is going to be $720 on your lease, and we’d like to sign a 12 month lease with you,” doesn’t mean that you are going to pay $720 because if you have a tenant-based voucher, the rent that you pay is a percentage of your income – it’s not a percentage of the rent. The New Columbia project is a combina- tion of “flavors” of affordable housing, Marchesi says, which can be hard to under- A woman called The Skanner News to report she had received a letter from Home Forward’s Guardian Management informing her that the rent was jumping from $800 to $1,200 in July voucher in an affordable apartment, as opposed to being in an apartment that has project-based Section 8 that’s attached to the apartment as opposed to the tenant — or Home Forward says that New Columbia rent levels were below market rent, and hadn’t been increased for several years. Increasing the apartment rents would get more Section 8 subsidy flowing to the prop- erty, which officials say is needed to operate a big community such as New Columbia. Marchesi stressed that she did not want to blame Guardian Management for the mis- leading memo because at the end of the day, Home Forward is responsible. “But now that we’ve seen the letter we can totally understand why somebody who maybe doesn’t have a finely tuned under- standing of how their portion of the rent is calculated – there’s nothing in this letter that reassures them that their portion of the rent as a result of this change, isn’t going up.” Marchesi says residents with questions should call their case workers for help in troubleshooting any problems. For more information on New Columbia go to their website, www.newcolumbia.org. May 8, 2013 The Portland Skanner Page 3
