It’s been plain all along that this was going to be an especially ugly city budget season, what with Mayor Charlie Hales’ call for universal 10 percent cuts and a fight over what scraps might be left after city council closes a $25 million deficit. But somehow that realization doesn’t even begin to describe what […]
Homeless
Posted inOccupy
Read This Letter From an Evicted Homeowner
Last Tuesday, Debbie and Ron Austin—two of Portland’s longest-tenured foreclosure resisters—finally got the dreaded doorknocking from the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and were rousted, along with their kids, from their Southeast Portland home in the pre-dawn dark. The Austins’ story, however, is especially worth reading. Yes, they got behind on their mortgage payments because of […]
Posted inCity Hall
Guess How Much Right 2 Dream Too Owes the City: $12,592.02
Over the weekend, organizers for Right 2 Dream Too—the “rest area” for the homeless flourishing on some vacant parcels at NW 4th and Burnside—took to Facebook and posted their latest assessment from the city’s code enforcement bureau. The bill is part of a yearlong city crackdown, since spun out into a court fight, that accuses […]
Posted inPolitics
Police Stats Don’t Make Case for Crime Spike at Old Town Tent Refuge
As you might recall, the Portland Business Alliance sent a stern letter to Commissioner Dan Saltzman last week demanding that he dramatically step up efforts to oust Right 2 Dream Too, the successful tent refuge that’s been operating at NW 4th and Burnside since October 2011. The PBA, in making its case, listed two major […]
Posted inCity Hall
Portland Business Alliance: “City Must Seek and Apply Other Tools” to Oust Old Town Tent Refuge
Now that a lawsuit has been filed over months of code violation fines, Portland City Hall can no longer talk openly about Right 2 Dream Too—the well-managed rest area for the homeless leasing a lot at the highly visible corner of NW 4th and Burnside. That doesn’t apply to the Portland Business Alliance, which remains […]
Posted inCity Hall
Right 2 Dream Too Files Suit Against City—Protest (Almost) Draws Riot Cops
Photographs by Denis C. Theriault Mark, an advocate with Right 2 Dream Too, says the rest area on NW 4th and Burnside, open since October 2011, “may have saved my life.” Right 2 Dream Too and Michael Wright, the controversial figure who co-owns the homeless rest area’s lot at NW 4th and Burnside, have finally […]
Posted inMedia
Black Friday Commerce I Can Endorse: Picking Up an Issue of Street Roots
I’m pretty sure the moment for giving thanks officially expired some time last night, evaporating in the beer-and-turkey fart clouds rising from all the awful greed fests lined up outside big box stores up and down 82nd Avenue. (And downtown. And Jantzen Beach.) But this video below—and this article linked here—remind me I ought to […]
Posted inCops
Another Family Resisting Foreclosure Evicted From Home
A week after housing activists rallied around a family facing eviction in Outer Southeast—a confrontation that drew riot cops and saw the use of pepper spray—the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office this morning took a more strategic approach when showing up at another Portland home where a family had vowed to defy an order to quit. […]
Posted inFood and Drink
Mobile Grocery Truck Making Its Way Down to Old Town
My Street Grocery Come Monday, Portlanders facing homelessness or struggling poverty (or anyone who’s just plain hungry) will find a new oasis in the food desert of Old Town Chinatown: My Street Grocery. The mini grocery-on-wheels has joined with Central City Concern to provide inexpensive, nutritious, and accessible groceries to a neighborhood teeming with social […]
Posted inHomeless
Interviews with Homeless Portlanders
“Like all interesting people and places, Portland, Oregon is a multifaceted character,” writes Aaron Gilbreath. “There is Portland the socially progressive utopia of artists, food carts and environmentally conscious urbanism. And there is the Portland of pretension, heroin addiction, racial separation and rampant homelessness. The city occupies a county that has over 15,000 homeless people. […]
Posted inCops
Mayor Sam Adams Addresses Camping Lawsuit Settlement
Mayor Sam Adams’ office just sent out a release addressing an important, if quietly placed, item on this week’s Portland City Council agenda: a long-awaited settlement in a nearly four-year-old lawsuit challenging the city’s rules against camping, structures, and park exclusions. I shared my thoughts about the settlement late Friday, after reading through the city […]
Posted inCops
Settlement in Camping Lawsuit Headed to Council
It’s not obvious what this is just from looking at next week’s Portland City Council agenda. But that item above marks the quiet end to a nearly four-year legal fight over Portland’s anti-camping laws—AKA, in some circles, the city’s “camping ban.” Why a “quiet” end? Unlike in a 2010 attempt at a settlement, which would […]