Street Roots has big news.
First, I’ll give an update regarding a number of stories published last year, as well as in our Spring Anthology issues in April. Then I’ll introduce the first story Street Roots is co-publishing with ProPublica, which is in this June 11 issue of Street Roots.
Each year, Street Roots submits its work in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Region 10 contest, which covers Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Montana. The full winners’ list, released June 3, contained no fewer than eight mentions of Street Roots in the small newsroom division — six first-place awards and two second-place.
Four stories (and some incredible design) included in the Spring Anthology were in entries that won first-place awards. Staff reporter Jeremiah Hayden’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court case, Grants Pass v. Johnson, won first place in poverty and homelessness reporting. His story on the decision won second place in the breaking news category.
Kimberly Cortez’s reporting on Portland’s so-called affordable housing programs won first place in business and economics reporting — likely the first time Street Roots won in that category. She wrote the pieces as a Street Roots intern with a year left of school, and winning a professional contest as an intern is quite the feat.
Hayden and I worked together on a series delving into Portland’s crime data, which revealed a narrative that was radically different from what we’ve heard from officials. The series won first-place in the series category.
My series covering Oregon’s prison health care concerns amid a rising death toll won first place in the politics and government reporting category, as well as the health care reporting category.
Street Roots’ illustrator and designer, Etta O’Donnell-King won first place for page layout and design, which is essentially a portfolio award. The entry included their amazing design for Street Roots’ 2024 ranked-choice voting explainer, among other page layouts that enhanced the stories they accompanied.
We don’t do the work for awards, and nothing can match the real-world impacts these stories and presentations had, but to win over a quarter of all written news awards in the small newsroom division speaks to the Street Roots newspaper’s continued advancement. Our partnership with ProPublica, also held as a sign of our growing impact in the Spring Anthology issues, produced its first story this issue.
I began working on it last October. It’s the product of thousands of pages of public records and academic studies, countless hours of interviews, and a lot of spreadsheets. It’s also the product of a lot of hard work from ProPublica and Street Roots staff alike.
I’ve often heard the phrase “sweeps kill” as a journalist covering and editing many stories about homelessness since I began at Street Roots nearly four years ago. The impacts of sweeps are hard to quantify, but easy to understand. At its core, someone potentially losing everything they own, and their community, and their proximity to services and any sense of stability, clearly has negative impacts on that person. But despite the city maintaining it sweeps encampments for health and safety, the city doesn’t study the impact of its sweeps. Academic research into the impacts of sweeps was pretty scarce when I started this job.
In the intervening years, encampment sweeps exploded. Deaths did, too. And research is starting to catch up. That research indicates the city’s sweep-centric response is more likely to increase deaths than it is to reduce them.
Katie O’Brien, Rose Haven executive director, was careful to explain to me that sweeps are more than an inconvenience. Other service providers were adamant on this point — arguing sweeps are dangerous. The data showed the city conducted more sweeps than other major West Coast cities — over 7,500 last year — and its homeless population had the highest mortality rate of any West Coast homeless population with available data in 2023.
Then I started reviewing the research. Everything I heard from service providers — that sweeps disrupt addiction treatment, sever important community ties, push people into less safe areas and take critically important belongings from homeless Portlanders — was backed up by academic study. Researchers explained that the potentially deadly impacts of sweeps occur over time, which makes them hard to track. One researcher, a physician, compared it to the link between red meat and heart disease. We may not be able to point to the ribeye that caused someone a coronary, but we know that with every reintroduction of the risk factor, the risk increases.
Researchers were clear: Repeatedly displacing homeless people increases their risk of death, and it’s especially impactful on people with disabilities and members of marginalized communities who select spots due to perceived safety. The city hasn’t elected to study possible links, but it has elected to sweep at a rate that outnumbers how many unsheltered people were captured in the last Point-in-Time Count.
This story, of critical importance as Mayor Keith Wilson and City Council chart a new path in responding to homelessness, required a lot of time and money to produce. Time and money are seemingly always in short supply for a small nonprofit newspaper, but we were able to pursue this reporting with the support and collaboration of ProPublica.
If you value this type of journalism, I encourage you to consider donating to the Street Roots newspaper. If you value being informed about local issues, I implore you to find a vendor and purchase a paper for $1 (+tips, please). If you’re reading this in the print issue because you already bought one, maybe find a vendor and buy a few for your friends.
Sincerely,
K. Rambo
Street Roots editor in chief
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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This article appears in June 11, 2025.