House Bill 2215 would end criminalization of sleeping while homeless, support basic human rights Homelessness is hell. Sleep deprivation. Verbal taunts. Physical violence. Surviving in the cold and wet. Being displaced by law enforcement on a routine basi ...
2 Mar 2017 - Israel Bayer
Lack of access to basic hygiene compounds difficulties of homelessness Daryl doesn’t like waiting in line for two hours to take a shower. While he’d prefer to shower once per day, he said that while living outside, he’s able to shower only about three ti ...
2 Mar 2017 - Emily Green
Oregon legislation sought to end criminalization of sleeping while homeless and other basic human rights A newly released ACLU of Oregon report, “Decriminalizing Homelessness: Why Right to Rest Legislation is the High Road For Oregon,” finds that there is ...
6 Apr 2017 - Israel Bayer
As the homeless figures rise, the need for more toilets, showers and laundry facilities is evident During the last week of September, two portable toilets were placed in downtown Oregon City, providing access to public restrooms in downtown 24 hours a day ...
6 Oct 2017 - Amanda Waldroupe
Those who have the least are being displaced and forced to downsize – to discard the possessions they hold dear “I can only carry so many backpacks on my back at the same time with my precious items,” Barbara told me. She was tired, upset, exhausted. Stan ...
16 Feb 2018 - Kaia Sand
An emphasis on sweeps is an emphasis on making life more difficult for our neighbors who live outside Mark jotted a letter on a sheet of amber-green colored paper that he tucked into a Street Roots newspaper. He did this over and over, writing letters to ...
9 Mar 2018 - Kaia Sand
Policing the poor just means there’s so much more work to do Now we know: More than half of the people arrested in Portland last year were homeless. Rebecca Woolington and Melissa Lewis reported in The Oregonian on June 27 that unhoused people comprised ...
6 Jul 2018 - Kaia Sand
COMMENTARY | Resources should go to housing, mental health and addiction treatment outside of the criminal justice system Trump’s new zero-tolerance policy for immigrants is based on the idea that if a law exists it must be enforced 100 percent. In contra ...
6 Jul 2018 - Elliott Young a...
City receives hundreds of camp complaints weekly, we should send demands for compassion instead Sometimes it feels like we’ve been given different maps to the same city. When your map has no residence that you rent or own, your city looks dystopian, one w ...
13 Jul 2018 - Kaia Sand
Portland needs to be all-in as a national leader Calling a city a cesspool certainly grabs attention. That’s how Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner started his public Facebook statement on July 16, decrying the new Independent Police Revi ...
20 Jul 2018 - Kaia Sand