Welcome to the 2010 Street Roots Annual Report. The past year has been a breakthrough year for the organization. (Download the report here: SR 2010 Annual Report)
With the great recession hammering our city, SR has become a go to for Portlanders for many different reasons. It’s easy to feel helpless, or to not understand how to help during these hard times. SR serves as an important tool that offers tangible and proactive ways to make a difference.
For people on the streets and experiencing poverty, it has become a stopgap tool to create stability and get off the streets or avoid homelessness. We’ve had people walk through our door who have been homeless for years, and others for only days — people who sell the newspaper on the weekends after working one or two part-time jobs to maintain their housing, health care and their quality of life.
From a reader perspective, SR has become an important tool in understanding and engaging in the issue. The newspaper and vendor program allow thousands of Portlanders to become proactive in the fight against poverty. Whether that’s building a relationship with someone on a street corner or becoming educated and learning how to take action through reading the newspaper.
This past year, SR became more of a leader on the poverty and social justice front. We led campaigns in partnership with government to start counting individuals who pass away on the street. We helped ease tensions on sidewalks through the sales of the newspaper and by creating a poster campaign to educate panhandlers in the city. We also continue to call for a long-term revenue stream for affordable housing in our region. We exposed a group of right-wing Catholics that are driving the defunding of social justice organizations in Portland and around the country, including SR. We have helped facilitate conversations among non-traditional partners to help understand the complexities of homelessness, while never backing away from tough issues.
We are proud to be taking journalism and homeless advocacy in a new direction in our city. We believe SR is a vehicle for creating real change in our community. We believe that by offering solution-based ideas, programs and conversation, we will be able to break out of the derogatory stereotypes that have built up over the past three decades around the issue of homelessness. In short, there is hope, and together we will continue to make a difference, one newspaper at a time.
Read the entire report here: SR 2010 Annual Report
Sincerely,
Israel Bayer, Executive Director