Kaia Sand | Roll the presses! Street Roots is returning, and you can pay with Venmo

Starting Aug. 12, readers will have a cashless option for purchasing the newspaper from vendors, who will all be trained in new health and safety protocols

by Kaia Sand | 31 Jul 2020

Hundreds of Street Roots vendors have weighed in. Nearly 700 of you, our readers, took our survey. We’ve received guidance from the Multnomah County Health Department. We’ve learned from all of the North American street newspapers that have returned to selling. We’ve studied the international models.


        Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street Roots. This column represents her views.

We are living with this pandemic for the foreseeable future — but are smarter now about how to do it. Given this reality, Street Roots vendors will return to selling the newspaper on Aug. 12, but with new guidelines.

EDITORIAL: Why we suspended our print edition

Starting Monday, Street Roots vendors will go through a health certification process, required before they return to selling the newspaper later in the month. These are our key principles:

Outdoors. We know that it is safer to be outside, in the fresh air.
Masks. Street Roots vendors will wear masks to prevent the spread.
Hand sanitizer. Street Roots vendors will carry sanitizer to maintain clean hands.
Physical distancing. Street Roots vendors have been practicing a number of methods to physically distance from customers. Please support them in these efforts!

One way that we are supporting physical distancing is by offering a cashless option for purchasing Street Roots. We have long heard from many of you who rarely carry cash that a cashless option would help you buy newspapers, so we were already building out a plan before COVID-19. The pandemic sped up our efforts.

Here’s how: If you don’t already have it, download the Venmo app. Visit @StreetRoots. Type in the total purchase (you can include tips) and, in the notes section, the vendor’s name and badge number (which will all be visible on the vendor badge).

And, you can practice before you see a vendor. Any payments to Venmo that aren’t noted for a specific vendor will go directly to our vendor assistance fund. Try it out now!


        A Street Roots special publication, "Streets In the Time of Pandemic," will be available for $5 from Street Roots vendors starting Aug. 12, 2020.

We are also planning a special publication for our return to print: a full-color booklet that chronicles the experiences of unhoused Portlanders during the pandemic. We’ll soon go back to our weekly newspaper, but we want to offer something special to get started. Thank you, Adam McIsaac of Sibley House, for the extraordinary design!

You can either Venmo the $5 cost of the booklet to your vendor (the weekly newspaper will still be $1), or drop cash into a container that your vendor will set out at a distance.

We’ll provide the first 10 copies of the special publication to each vendor for free to help get them started, and that’s in addition to some other steps we’ll take to launch them back into sales.

In order to do all of this, we need to raise $15,000, which will also help us to do the following:

Clear the books. Some Street Roots vendors have a negative balance on their accounts. Let’s zero all those out to make sure they start off on a strong footing.
Get the gear. We are setting vendors up with fresh T-shirts and caps, as well as masks, sanitizer and other tools to help with sales.
Underwrite the publication. We are sending each Street Roots vendor off with 10 complimentary copies to sell.

We also need to continue to raise money to get assistance to high-risk vendors who won’t be selling during the pandemic, as well as to continue to run our Coronavirus Prevention and Action Team.

For those of you who won’t be out in public, please know that you can continue to read Street Roots, support our vendors through Venmo, and donate to our ongoing vendor assistance to all vendors or by naming your specific vendor. Your support is a lifeline.

So many vendors talk about how much they miss their customers and how much they look forward to seeing you. These are daunting and tender times as we will navigate how to live and work in this pandemic.

Director's Desk is written by Kaia Sand, the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand.

Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. It is an award-winning, weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.

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Director's Desk, Street Roots vendors