Vendor Profiles
Street Roots vendor profile | ‘I try to pay it forward now’
Belinda Estermyer is one half of a sister duo selling papers for Street Roots. She and her sister, Karen Fleming, moved to Portland from Missoula, Montana, and had previously been victims of flooding in Texas. “When my sister and I first came to Portland, I kept hearing about a newspaper called Street Roots,” Belinda said.…
Opinion
Opinion | Billions lack access to clean drinking water. We must do our part.
While 71% of the world’s population has access to clean water, according to the World Health Organization, at least 2 billion people use drinking water contaminated with feces or another substance. Drinking contaminated water puts people at risk for the transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, typhoid, polio and more. It’s appalling and disheartening…
Opinion | The New Deal for Housing Justice should be a Biden administration priority
Like the air we breathe and the food we eat, housing is a basic human need. But even before the pandemic hit, our housing system was already broken. We’ve seen over the last year that those most vulnerable — Black, brown, Indigenous, immigrant families and women-led households — have been impacted the worst. Now, more…
Kaia Sand | The pandemic lowered some barriers for unhoused folks. We can’t slide back.
Tiny house villages on city land. Car and RV safe parking. Motels purchased for housing. Public toilets. Cash for the poor. These are some gains made for people living without housing in our region during the past year as a result of the pandemic and regional fires. Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street…
News
Congress is talking about reparations — and this time, it looks promising
Last month, a subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing to discuss House Resolution 40, a bill that would allow for studying and developing a plan for reparations that would be paid to Black Americans. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) introduced the legislation, which many Black leaders and organizations have championed for…
Guard at Oregon women’s prison faces felony charges for domestic violence
Despite facing felony charges for domestic violence, the Oregon Department of Corrections has allowed Alex Doran to keep his job as a corrections officer at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, where he directly supervises female prisoners. Two of those prisoners independently contacted attorney Meghan Bishop with concerns that Doran was continuing to hold power…
Housing
Opinion | The New Deal for Housing Justice should be a Biden administration priority
Like the air we breathe and the food we eat, housing is a basic human need. But even before the pandemic hit, our housing system was already broken. We’ve seen over the last year that those most vulnerable — Black, brown, Indigenous, immigrant families and women-led households — have been impacted the worst. Now, more…
Opinion | Even before COVID-19, nursing homes were filling empty beds with psychiatric patients
One year ago, a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, became an early battleground for the U.S. coronavirus outbreak. The disease has since decimated nursing home populations – more than one-third of the COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. have been nursing home residents and staff. Virtually unnoticed is what has followed: In some nursing homes, a shift has occurred in…
Kaia Sand | The pandemic lowered some barriers for unhoused folks. We can’t slide back.
Tiny house villages on city land. Car and RV safe parking. Motels purchased for housing. Public toilets. Cash for the poor. These are some gains made for people living without housing in our region during the past year as a result of the pandemic and regional fires. Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street…
