Housing
Outside In workers vote to join union
Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect the results of the Outside In vote. Workers at Outside In, one of Portland’s leading homeless programs, voted to form a unon with Oregon AFSCME. The results of the vote, which took place over two days May 15 and 16, were learned Thursday afternoon. The union will…
A fierce advocate for Central Oregon’s homeless residents
“You’re going to cry? Give me a hug instead of crying.” Stacey Witte embraced a homeless woman who came to the Back Door Café seeking help. The Back Door Café, which is located in the basement of Bend Church, a Methodist denomination, serves breakfast each Wednesday morning to between 120 and 170 homeless people who come…
When homeless patients can’t go to clinic, the clinic goes to them
Lisa Kuettle never gets what she calls “caregiver fatigue” – the feeling a doctor or nurse may get after a day of seeing patients, a feeling of depletion and emotional exhaustion from witnessing so much illness and trauma. Kuettle is a family nurse practitioner who provides health care to Central Oregon’s homeless people in…
Director’s Desk: Metro housing bond’s regional scope the right approach
There are two women who stay nights in a shelter, and on some warm days spread a blanket on the waterfront like picnickers. One morning I saw one woman helping the other walk with a cane, because her wheelchair just stopped working in the shelter – something about the wiring, they suspected. I witnessed the…
Old Town choir gets personal with performance about housing insecurity
Thank you. Thank you for your patience Trekking from office to office. Thank you.” Sixty voices sing in unison in a large room with floor to ceiling windows at the Maybelle Center for Community. The music is prayer-like, interspersed with discordant notes that are mournful but stirring. The choir sings with…
News
Outside In workers vote to join union
Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect the results of the Outside In vote. Workers at Outside In, one of Portland’s leading homeless programs, voted to form a unon with Oregon AFSCME. The results of the vote, which took place over two days May 15 and 16, were learned Thursday afternoon. The union will…
Guns, capitalism and race: A conversation with Bill Fletcher Jr.
Gun enthusiasm is rooted more in racial suppression than in the Second Amendment, Bill Fletcher Jr. told an audience at the SeaTac Hilton in April. From their banquet-room chairs, more than 100 union organizers and labor scholars leaned in, eager to catch every word of Fletcher’s highly anticipated diction. They had gathered for the Pacific…
Vendor Profiles
Street Roots vendor profile: ‘Street Roots has freed me’
“Every day I pray for wisdom, knowledge and understanding so I can understand people and work to make them happy.” These are words Rich Pounds lives by. He is a deeply spiritual man and a man who loves to work, and lives to work. Rich was born in Orange County, Calif. He grew up across…
Opinion
Director’s Desk: Metro housing bond’s regional scope the right approach
There are two women who stay nights in a shelter, and on some warm days spread a blanket on the waterfront like picnickers. One morning I saw one woman helping the other walk with a cane, because her wheelchair just stopped working in the shelter – something about the wiring, they suspected. I witnessed the…
Editorial cartoon: May 11, 2018
Portland native Elizabeth Considine is the creator of Street Roots' editorial cartoon, Sheeptoast. Want to see more Sheeptoast cartoons? VIEW OUR GALLERY Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning…
Culture
Old Town choir gets personal with performance about housing insecurity
Thank you. Thank you for your patience Trekking from office to office. Thank you.” Sixty voices sing in unison in a large room with floor to ceiling windows at the Maybelle Center for Community. The music is prayer-like, interspersed with discordant notes that are mournful but stirring. The choir sings with…
