Blair Stenvick

Sleeping outside or in tents can be especially dangerous during winter months, when Portland’s temperature often drops below freezing. JOSHUARAINEYPHOTOGRAPHY / GETTY IMAGES A winter homeless shelter opens for the season tonight at 1150 NW 17th. It will accommodate 75 children and their parents. The shelter, operated by Portland Homeless Family Solutions, will serve families […]

PORTLAND DIAMOND PROJECT No, taxpayers won’t be footing the bill to build a Major League Baseball (MLB) stadium in Portland. At least, that’s what Mayor Ted Wheeler promised reporters Friday afternoon. “The taxpayers here are not going to buy a team, and we’re not going to buy a ballpark,” Wheeler said. Wheeler did say he […]

The Buck-Prager building on NW Hoyt will be transformed into an affordable housing complex. CITY OF PORTLAND Members of the Northwest District Association (NWDA) wanted to make one thing clear at Thursday’s Portland City Council meeting: They aren’t against building more affordable housing in their Alphabet District neighborhood. They just don’t like this particular affordable […]

Move over OHSU, there’s a new sky tram in town. PORTLAND DIAMOND PROJECT Beautiful views of Mt. Hood, sleek wood-and-steel finishes, cheerful diverse Portlanders drinking beer and taking selfies… and a sky tram. These are all present in new renderings of a possible future ballpark in Northwest Portland, released Thursday by the Portland Diamond Project. […]

Artist Alex Chiu’s mural at the NE 82nd MAX station. TRIMET The future of 82nd Avenue was one of the focal points of the city’s sole legislative agenda town hall, held Tuesday night at the Portland Community College’s Southeast Campus. Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioner Amanda Fritz hosted the meeting. The town hall was held […]

GRIM GRAM / GETTY IMAGES The Portland City Council will hear an appeal to an approved affordable housing development in Northwest Portland on Thursday. A neighborhood organization is complaining that the new project will not fit in with the area’s aesthetics. In September, the Portland’s Historic Landmarks Commission approved a plan to transform the old […]

Mayor Ted Wheeler speaks at an event for Home Forward, a local affordable housing organization. Affordable Housing is among the city’s top priorities for the upcoming Oregon Legislative Session. MULTNOMAH COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and City Commissioner Amanda Fritz will host a town hall Tuesday evening on the city’s 2019 Legislative Agenda. Attendees […]

SW Barbur Blvd Mercury Staff Huy Ong can sum up the far-reaching implications of the planned Southwest Corridor MAX line—both its potential benefits and feared drawbacks—with one question: “Who is this system being built for?” As the director of OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, Ong and his colleagues work to improve public transportation in Portland, particularly […]

Huy Ong can sum up the far-reaching implications of the planned Southwest Corridor MAX line—both its potential benefits and feared drawbacks—with one question: “Who is this system being built for?” As the director of OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, Ong and his colleagues work to improve public transportation in Portland, particularly for low-income people and people […]

JADE SCHULZ Multnomah County’s jails have an overpopulation problem. The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners adopted a new plan last week that will change the protocol for releasing inmates to make room for new ones. As the Mercury reported last year, one of the county’s two jails, the Iverness Jail in Northeast Portland, lost capacity […]

YANA PASKOVA / GETTY IMAGES Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), an occasion to memorialize transgender people who have been killed in the last year. According to GLAAD, trans advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith started TDOR in 1999 as a way to memorialize her friend, trans woman Rita Hester, who had been killed the year […]