Vendor Profiles
Street Roots vendor profile | A community-oriented person
Before joining Street Roots, Heather Duffield was a cook for a living. She shared her grandmother’s recipes with the world and was promoted to kitchen manager, where she excelled. “It was a man’s world, but I succeeded,” she said. Heather worked in a kitchen for as long as she could remember, until she was a…
News
Photos | The canners of North Portland
The wait at the bottle redemption center on North Hayden Meadows Drive can take up to three hours. And that’s after the miles-long bicycle trek some canners make to get there. Canning, the practice of collecting recyclable containers for redemption profits, sometimes requires long trips to one of just a handful of Portland area BottleDrops.…
Despite court orders, 16 held in jail rather than Oregon State Hospital
Despite court orders, 16 people found guilty except for insanity in Oregon are being held in jail rather than transferred to the Oregon State Hospital to receive treatment, as of July 16. The pattern was highlighted during a July 14 hearing, in which the Oregon State Hospital and Oregon Health Authority, the agency that oversees…
Employment department settles lawsuit after ending PUA for thousands of people
Matt Belanger recalled laughing with his wife in May while bringing in the mail at their St. Helens home. But as he sifted through it, he opened a letter that he said cast a “really negative feeling on the house for several days.” For a year, Belanger, 36, was among hundreds of thousands of Oregonians…
Housing
Report: Rent in Oregon continued to climb during pandemic
Despite a global pandemic that stalled the economy and resulted in widespread unemployment, the average wage needed to afford rent in Oregon rose again in 2020, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s “Out of Reach” report released July 14. In order to spend no more than 30% of one’s total wages on rent,…
Opinion | Confronting inequity in the homeless system requires immediate action
Donald Whitehead is executive director of National Coalition for the Homeless. “This is no time … to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In the long, shameful history of homelessness in the United States, we have never looked over the precipice into such a deep chasm while at the…
Opinion
Opinion | Confronting inequity in the homeless system requires immediate action
Donald Whitehead is executive director of National Coalition for the Homeless. “This is no time … to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In the long, shameful history of homelessness in the United States, we have never looked over the precipice into such a deep chasm while at the…
Editorial | Portland Street Response is waiting for the city to catch up
Leanne was worried. Her daughter lived in a bus and struggled to manage her mental illness. After the 114-degree heat that resulted in hyperthermia deaths in Oregon, Leanne feared what might have happened to her daughter. Leanne lived hours away, out of state, and her option was to call the police for a welfare check,…
