OPINION | When housed and unhoused neighbors gathered at a Portland park to listen to each other, new opportunities emerged The circle was big. Standing 6 feet apart, neighbors — at first mostly people who are housed, and slowly, more and more unhoused — ...
30 Dec 2020 - Kaia Sand
OPINION | The Street Roots Action Team's voter registration drive builds on efforts to broaden civic engagement They just keep at it. The day the Proud Boys attempted to disrupt the city, the Street Roots Action Team was undeterred and focused, out o ...
7 Oct 2020 - Kaia Sand
Opinion | Street Roots suspended our print edition this week because of the air quality It wasn’t much, but it was pizza – a small effort at fire prevention. Mike D, a Street Roots vendor who coordinates action team outreach, and I crossed the busy St. He ...
12 Sep 2020 - Kaia Sand
DIRECTOR’S DESK | Street Roots is connecting impoverished people with cash assistance, stimulus checks and tax credits, but it’s not enough These days, I think about money a lot. Where is it, and how can it get into the pockets of poor folks? An antidote ...
15 May 2020 - Kaia Sand
DIRECTOR'S DESK | We can build a better future, even though we don’t yet know what that is A wedding during a pandemic. Unhoused people running an office. A rainbow in a stormy sky. During these undeniably hard times many of us grapple with new expe ...
24 Apr 2020 - Kaia Sand
DIRECTOR’S DESK | As we confront this pandemic, we continue to look toward our best future There’s nothing incremental about this moment. At Street Roots, we’ve developed a theory of action: When we solve for one problem, we also solve for something else ...
27 Mar 2020 - Kaia Sand
DIRECTOR'S DESK | Accustomed to getting the news out, they are becoming the media in a new way — by word of mouth Street Roots vendors are hitting the trails to deliver accurate information about COVID-19 to other unhoused people. Accustomed to getti ...
12 Mar 2020 - Kaia Sand
DIRECTOR'S DESK | It's all-hands-on-deck when it comes to hygiene support We’re not helpless out here,” Raven Drake told me, standing in front of an eight-person tent that, she explained, would serve as a medical tent should any people in neighb ...
6 Mar 2020 - Kaia Sand
REPORT | Portland Street Response survey, conducted with and for unhoused people There’s plenty of Trumpian cruelty toward the poorest people in our nation in the news. While it is tempting to challenge that wrong-headedness head-on, I will challenge it i ...
19 Sep 2019 - Kaia Sand