OPINION | The Ambassador Program emerged from the pandemic, and now, new doors are opening Doug Marks smiled broadly standing outside the former Econo Lodge in Washington County where more than 40 people now reside in the Greater Good Northwest Shelter. H ...
14 Jul 2021 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | Unhoused people deserve to know how the new ordinance on camp sweeps will be applied. P ortland City Council last week unanimously passed an ordinance on homelessness put forward by Commissioner Dan Ryan. While the ordinance instructs the city t ...
7 Jul 2021 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | When conditions demand it, many unhoused people step up as informal health and safety workers D ressed in an elegant straw hat and walking her golden Labrador, a woman wandered over to the Street Roots cooling station in front of our Old Town of ...
30 Jun 2021 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | I love how flexible the English language is, that it keeps bending D.J. didn’t hesitate. “Superfluous” because it “sounds really pretty.” I said the word aloud a couple of times and appreciated how it fluttered from my lips. He then added “or su ...
23 Jun 2021 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | Trash is infrastructural, but it’s also personal. It connects us in on a human level. W ith his woven blanket attached like a cape, Lor wandered around a camp with a garbage bag attached to his waist. He dipped down repeatedly to pluck litter wi ...
16 Jun 2021 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | Leo Rhodes reminds us that people’s needs vary: ‘You might not need it, but somebody else will’ “ I think it’s great,” Leo Rhodes told me of the range of camp villages the city and county governments are floating for Portland. “What I like about ...
9 Jun 2021 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | How should Portland and Multnomah County funding be spent for what is, in fact, a diversity of needs? How could the city of Portland possibly sweep unhoused people when there’s nowhere to go? And about those places to go — where and what should ...
26 May 2021 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | When writers provide familiar details, they help us make sense of unfamiliar experiences Q uite simply, we are committed to writing it down. We do so in recognition of the thousands of people who survive deprivations right before our eyes and th ...
12 May 2021 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | A conversation with CAHOOTS coordinator Ebony Morgan about how Portland Street Response should be rolled out In rolling out the Portland Street Response pilot, the teams must keep going to continue to build trust with unhoused communities, and t ...
12 May 2021 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | The mayor proposes underfunding the non-police crisis response program by 77% Mayor Ted Wheeler’s budget allotment for Portland Street Response falls short. And this is not the time to short-change a non-police response Portlanders have demanded ...
4 May 2021 - Kaia Sand