PDF: Read the full 2019 Annual Report
Dear Street Roots readers,
2019 was a monumental year at Street Roots. We marked 20 years of our organization, took stock of our past and clarified our vision for the years ahead.
We’ve grown a great deal over the past two decades — from a handful of vendors to more than 800 last year, from a monthly paper to a weekly paper, from the Rose City Resource as four pages in our paper to 215,000 guides we print and hand out all over the city. All of this other work informs our advocacy, which over the years has meant that we’ve led efforts to both demand more resources for the poor while also calling out the criminalization of poverty. In 2019, this advocacy coalesced into a focused campaign for the Portland Street Response, a plan for a new first-responder system for street crises that emerged from the pages of our newspaper and moved very quickly to the policy of City Hall.
We continued our ongoing collaboration with Multnomah County to count the number of people who die on the streets. This year, sadly, we reported the largest number of reported deaths on the streets since we began this report in 2013 — at least 92 people died at an average age of 47.
We hosted the Domicile Unknown press conference in our small Street Roots headquarters, so that our vendors could more easily be present. Likewise, we hosted a second press conference this fall decrying the Trump administration’s focus on policing the poor.
Committed to the idea that a vibrant democracy means full participation of the poor, we hosted listening sessions for our vendors to say what was on their mind to elected officials – Mayor Ted Wheeler and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley at Street Roots, and then in collaboration with Sisters of the Road, a listening session with Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty.
At our core, we work so that everyone has access to an income. All of you made sure that every week at least $10,000 reached around 170 people selling Street Roots. In addition, we know that legal barriers prevent people from accessing housing and employment. Through a Portland Housing Bureau pilot, we held a legal clinic for our vendors last spring: playfully dubbed “expungement-palooza,” we brought in pizza and a host of attorneys from the Metropolitan Public Defenders office to help vendors remove fines and fees from their records. When possible, the attorneys began the process to wipe old arrests, misdemeanors and felonies from people’s record, a process that can be otherwise very costly.
Partnerships are key to our ability to support our vendors. This happens daily through our work with social services to connect vendors to shelters and housing. It also happens in other ways, from the library that Street Books set up in our office to the ceramic work Gather: Make: Shelter does with vendors, some of whom who are now supported by a Gather: Make: Shelter apprenticeship program. Our transportation partners, Uber, Biketown and Trimet through Ride Connection, ferry our vendors to and from their sales posts.
For the third year, Business for Better Portland provided quality holiday gifts for every vendor. Kamp Grizzly has begun creating new branded gear, including the black hoodies you might see vendors donning at their sales posts. Laughing Planet feeds our vendors monthly and in honor of our 20th Anniversary, launched a special beverage and provided food for everyone at our summer anniversary celebration. Like in years past, La Luna Cafe, ChefStable Catering and Grand Central Bakery provided a delicious spread for our vendors at our annual holiday party, while Por Que No taqueria fed vendors at our annual summer taco party. Toro Bravo and Pizzicato fortified our fund drives. Marigold Coffee continues to roast and sell Street Roast coffee, an additional income source for our organization.
The Leadership Portland program at Portland Business Alliance helped us research our need for expanded space by hosting listening sessions, analyzing finances and creating plans.
We also worked with Tusk Consultants to lead an equity assessment, building those recommendations into our strategic plan (which we will release next month) so we can double-down on anti-racist, anti-oppression work as an organization.
Yes, it was a big year, and we commemorated how far we have come by hosting a 20th anniversary event every season. Last winter, Mikki Jordan performed “From These Streets I Rise,” a cabaret performance based on interviews with Street Roots vendors. In the spring, Portland State University public history students staged an exhibition, “Get It On Paper,” in the central branch of Multnomah County library. This summer, we danced in the streets, hosting the Street Roots Street Party with live music and food to bring unhoused and housed people together. This was so successful that we are hosting another party in July. This fall, we hosted a special anniversary annual breakfast, where we honored Desmond Hardison, our very first fundraiser, for his dedication to Street Roots.
Thank you, all of you, for your part in making 2019 such a significant year for Street Roots vendors. It takes all of us, so we look forward to moving into our third decade together, stronger than ever.
Onward we go!
— Kaia Sand, Street Roots executive director
Advocacy update
Portland Street Response was borne out of 20 years of Street Roots challenging the criminalization of homelessness, but this year, Street Roots tapped into a groundswell of public awareness and political will. In our March 15 issue, reporter Emily Green presented the Portland Street Response blueprint, a first responder system for non-criminal street crises. We then launched a campaign, gathering endorsers, writing letters and testifying at budget forums. By June, the city allotted $500,000 to launch a pilot, and we shifted into a new campaign phase – advocating that unhoused people inform pilot development. Street Roots staff worked through a community outreach work group to host listening sessions with unhoused Portlanders. In July, Street Roots vendors led teams to survey 184 unhoused people on what they wanted in the Portland Street Response. This effort was in collaboration with Portland State University Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative, Mapping Action Collective, Right 2 Survive, Yellow Brick Road, Sisters of the Road and Street Books. The results were compiled in a report, “Believe Our Stories & Listen," released in a September press conference. In November, City Council approved a pilot design for Portland Fire and Rescue to dispatch one EMT and one crisis worker in Lents. Bureau of Emergency Communications will code 911 calls for the new system. Street Roots vendors will next survey unhoused people in Lents with PSU, learning from the pilot while preparing for the next phase of our campaign. This is a big opportunity to update the first responder system, and we will demand that it be large enough to meet the need, and nimble enough to be effective.
Editorial update
Recently, Street Roots published an editorial reflecting on our organization’s tagline: For those who can’t afford free speech. It's a part of the periodic check-ins on our work: Are we living up to our own aspirations?
With each edition of the paper, we work to do just that, but we understand that there is always a horizon to our work. It will always be aspirational.
We are regularly reminded of how much you love the poetry in our paper, and it’s great to be able to tell vendors how much their work and perspectives are appreciated. Their words, along with the weekly vendor profile and our own editorials, celebrate the people at the center of our mission.
We consider it our responsibility to provide readers with news that’s off the beaten path, on issues less covered in local media, amplifying voices not commonly heard in the public square.
This past year we launched a powerful new series by Helen Hill titled Life on the Streets, drawing almost exclusively from the experiences of the people you meet selling the newspaper. They share their thoughts and experiences with such issues as parasites, stress, getting older, faith and family — common matters we all share, but experience so differently.
We started the year with a series on our own neighborhood, Old Town, where people made of grit and determination carved out room for people in need, the working poor, for immigrants and populations unwanted in the rest of the city.
Criminal justice remains a regular topic for our pages, including original essays from people currently in prison and shedding light on the problematic grievance process in sexual assault complaints.
Foster youth also hold a special place in our pages. The Oregon foster care system is in shambles and the trauma it creates in the lives of children will always be a concern to our editorial team.
Likewise, the environment remains one of our pillars of coverage. Environmental justice impacts all of us and all generations, and we will continue to report in-depth on issues impacting our natural resources.
In March, we unveiled one of our most ambitious packages to date — a look at the need for a better response to the crises on the streets. What emerged was a proposal for the Portland Street Response, a new way to help people in crisis without a gun and with an emphasis on providing meaningful care.
In April, we joined OPB, The Oregonian, KGW, Pamplin Media and other media outlets for a series of reports on suicide, all coordinated with Lines of Life. All of us who participated hope the coverage and the information provided with our reports helped people see that suicide isn’t the answer and that help is available for anyone in despair or crisis.
This year we’ve put an emphasis on Native American perspectives, including our own reporting on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement and work by writers with the Grand Ronde newspaper Smoke Signals. We’ve also been honored to partner with Pollen Nation Magazine founder and author Jacqueline Keeler, Diné/Ihanktonwan Dakota, who shared her work with Street Roots on Native issues. It’s a relationship we intend to continue as members of the Native American Journalism Association. That relationship is a foundation for future reporting on the complexities of the sovereign nations within Oregon’s borders.
More immediately ahead is our new series, The Next Generation. It’s a two-year project reporting on today’s vulerable youth and what we as a society are doing to prevent yet another generation falling to the streets. We hope to foster a dialogue about the root causes of homelessness, and highlight the success stories and innovators who are making a difference.
And throughout the year, we try to bring you high-profile interviews on the issues around us. It underscores that we’re more alike that we often think, to all ends of the spectrums.
As always, thank you for buying — and reading — Street Roots.
— Joanne Zuhl, Street Roots executive editor
DIRECTOR'S DESK: Reflecting on a powerful year in print journalism
See the full 2019 Annual Report for details about the vendor program, the Rose City Resource guide, 2018-19 financials, volunteers and donors.