Tammy is soft-spoken, with a shy, gentle manner. She seems hesitant as the interview begins, but soon warms to the conversation and opens up with a ready smile and an easy laugh. She’s been a Street Roots vendor for about three-and-a-half years, and says it’s given her much-needed financial stability.
“I turned my life around,” Tammy said. “[Street Roots] keeps me from being where I can’t even go get a glass of milk. It keeps me being able to get things I need.”
Before finding Street Roots, she worked a variety of jobs through an employment service, including stints as a prep chef, a retail worker and at a construction job, where she was tasked with cleaning out the area underneath a house.
“That was quite an ordeal,” Tammy said of the construction gig, “but I’m glad that I have experience in various things. I liked the learning experience.”
Her love of learning and picking up new skills is a theme that comes up throughout the conversation. She’s engaged and ambitious, with wide-ranging interests. She wants to write children’s books and try her hand at journalism, and plans to start her own business making and selling jewelry and purses. She actively works on improving her literacy, challenging herself with complex words and writing summaries of Street Roots articles.
Tammy lights up when she talks about her five kids. She proudly shares that one daughter is a flight attendant and another is a caregiver, and her two sons work in construction. Her youngest daughter, age 11, loves to play video games.
“I want to brighten my children’s lives, their hopes and dreams,” Tammy said. “They’re really positive about what they want. They want to make sure that they have good careers. They have career goals.”
When Tammy was growing up in Portland, the city felt calm and safe to her. She said that she could just be a child and didn’t have to worry about crossing paths with dangerous strangers. Her neighborhood was a community, and people took care of each other. Her children, she said, haven’t grown up with that same experience.
“Portland’s changed,” Tammy said. “Before you didn’t have to have an escort, but I think kids have to have an escort now, because they can run into the wrong individual. People have challenges when there’s little income, and homelessness and drugs.”
Inspired, perhaps, by the political activism of her childhood friend Teressa Raiford, founder of Don’t Shoot Portland, Tammy wants to get involved in local politics, musing that she might run for public office to try to help find solutions to homelessness and poverty.
“I want to be involved in America,” Tammy said. “With housing people, funding people, promoting jobs. And psych therapy. Some people are out here engaged with really terrible things, and they need psych counseling.”
This summer, she looked forward to attending local music festivals like Good in the Hood, and hoped to be able to sell her handcrafted jewelry, purses and housewares at the Multnomah Days street fair in August.
You can find Tammy selling the paper near Basics Market on Southwest Capitol Highway. You can also send her a tip via @StreetRoots Venmo by entering her name and badge number (496) in the memo.
Street Roots 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. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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This article appears in August 20, 2025.