The City that Ended Hunger

An Email I recieved with a remarkable

> The City that Ended Hunger
> by Frances Moore Lappé
> http://tinyurl.com/cge38l
>
> A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have
> yet to do: end hunger.
>
> In writing Diet for a Small Planet, I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not
> caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy. But that realization
> was only the beginning, for then I had to ask: What does a democracy look like
> that enables citizens to have a real voice in securing life’s essentials?
> Does it exist anywhere? Is it possible or a pipe dream? With hunger on the rise
> here in the United States—one in 10 of us is now turning to food
> stamps—these questions take on new urgency.
>
> To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens
> making democracy work for them, real-life stories help—not models to adopt
> wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of
> Brazil’s fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a rich trove of such
> lessons. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its
> population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children
> going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a
> right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy
> food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.
>
> The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger
> effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member
> council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in
> the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved
> regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the
> “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread
> across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy,
> perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of
> citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to
> more than 31,000.
>
> The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to
> food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It
> offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to
> sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on
> produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers.
> Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor
> people got access to fresh, healthy food.
>
> When my daughter Anna and I visited Belo Horizonte to write Hope’s Edge we
> approached one of these stands. A farmer in a cheerful green smock, emblazoned
> with “Direct from the Countryside,” grinned as she told us, “I am able to
> support three children from my five acres now. Since I got this contract with
> the city, I’ve even been able to buy a truck.”
>
> The improved prospects of these Belo farmers were remarkable considering that,
> as these programs were getting underway, farmers in the country as a whole saw
> their incomes drop by almost half.
>
> In addition to the farmer-run stands, the city makes good food available by
> offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to bid on the right to use
> well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets, from the Portuguese
> acronym for “food at low prices.” Today there are 34 such markets where the
> city determines a set price—about two-thirds of the market price—of about
> twenty healthy items, mostly from in-state farmers and chosen by store-owners.
> Everything else they can sell at the market price.
>
> “For ABC sellers with the best spots, there’s another obligation attached
> to being able to use the city land,” a former manager within this city
> agency, Adriana Aranha, explained. “Every weekend they have to drive
> produce-laden trucks to the poor neighborhoods outside of the city center, so
> everyone can get good produce.”
>
> Another product of food-as-a-right thinking is three large, airy “People’s
> Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily
> serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent
> of less than 50 cents a meal. When Anna and I ate in one, we saw hundreds of
> diners—grandparents and newborns, young couples, clusters of men, mothers
> with toddlers. Some were in well-worn street clothes, others in uniform, still
> others in business suits.
>
> “I’ve been coming here every day for five years and have gained six
> kilos,” beamed one elderly, energetic man in faded khakis.
>
> “It’s silly to pay more somewhere else for lower quality food,” an
> athletic-looking young man in a military police uniform told us. “I’ve been
> eating here every day for two years. It’s a good way to save money to buy a
> house so I can get married,” he said with a smile.
>
> No one has to prove they’re poor to eat in a People’s Restaurant, although
> about 85 percent of the diners are. The mixed clientele erases stigma and
> allows “food with dignity,” say those involved.
>
> Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school
> gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government
> contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now
> buys whole food mostly from local growers.
>
> “We’re fighting the concept that the state is a terrible, incompetent
> administrator,” Adriana explained. “We’re showing that the state
> doesn’t have to provide everything, it can facilitate. It can create channels
> for people to find solutions themselves.”
>
> For instance, the city, in partnership with a local university, is working to
> “keep the market honest in part simply by providing information,” Adriana
> told us. They survey the price of 45 basic foods and household items at dozens
> of supermarkets, then post the results at bus stops, online, on television and
> radio, and in newspapers so people know where the cheapest prices are.
>
> The shift in frame to food as a right also led the Belo hunger-fighters to look
> for novel solutions. In one successful experiment, egg shells, manioc leaves,
> and other material normally thrown away were ground and mixed into flour for
> school kids’ daily bread. This enriched food also goes to nursery school
> children, who receive three meals a day courtesy of the city.
>
> The result of these and other related innovations?
>
> In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as
> evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit
> almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period
> in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And
> between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption
> of fruits and vegetables went up.
>
> The cost of these efforts?
>
> Around $10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget.
> That’s about a penny a day per Belo resident.
>
> Behind this dramatic, life-saving change is what Adriana calls a “new social
> mentality”—the realization that “everyone in our city benefits if all of
> us have access to good food, so—like health care or education—quality food
> for all is a public good.”
>
> The Belo experience shows that a right to food does not necessarily mean more
> public handouts (although in emergencies, of course, it does.) It can mean
> redefining the “free” in “free market” as the freedom of all to
> participate. It can mean, as in Belo, building citizen-government partnerships
> driven by values of inclusion and mutual respect.
>
> And when imagining food as a right of citizenship, please note: No change in
> human nature is required! Through most of human evolution—except for the last
> few thousand of roughly 200,000 years—Homo sapiens lived in societies where
> pervasive sharing of food was the norm. As food sharers, “especially among
> unrelated individuals,” humans are unique, writes Michael Gurven, an
> authority on hunter-gatherer food transfers. Except in times of extreme
> privation, when some eat, all eat.
>
> Before leaving Belo, Anna and I had time to reflect a bit with Adriana. We
> wondered whether she realized that her city may be one of the few in the world
> taking this approach—food as a right of membership in the human family. So I
> asked, “When you began, did you realize how important what you are doing was?
> How much difference it might make? How rare it is in the entire world?”
>
> Listening to her long response in Portuguese without understanding, I tried to
> be patient. But when her eyes moistened, I nudged our interpreter. I wanted to
> know what had touched her emotions.
>
> “I knew we had so much hunger in the world,” Adriana said. “But what is
> so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy.
> It’s so easy to end it.”
>
> Adriana’s words have stayed with me. They will forever. They hold perhaps
> Belo’s greatest lesson: that it is easy to end hunger if we are willing to
> break free of limiting frames and to see with new eyes—if we trust our
> hard-wired fellow feeling and act, no longer as mere voters or protesters, for
> or against government, but as problem-solving partners with government
> accountable to us.
>
> ============
> Frances Moore Lappé wrote this article as part of Food for Everyone, the
> Spring 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Frances is the author of many books
> including Diet for a Small Planet and Get a Grip, co-founder of Food First and
> the Small Planet Institute, and a YES! contributing editor.
>
> The author thanks Dr. M. Jahi Chappell for his contribution to the article

Tent Cities On The Rise Across America 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/2991742/Tent-cities-of-homeless-on-the-rise-across-the-US.html


In Reno, Nevada, the state with the nation's highest repossessions rate, a tent city recently sprung up on the city's outskirts and quickly filled up with about 150 people Photo: AP
Robert Scott Cook, originally from Alaska, walks his dog Tramp through the tent city that sprung up next to the homeless shelter in downtown Reno, Nevada Photo: AP
Nearly 61 per cent of local and state homeless organisations say they have witnessed an increase in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, the Washington DC-based National Coalition for the Homeless study says.

And the problem has intensified since the report was produced in April, along with rising repossessions, soaring energy and food prices and job losses, the group says.

"It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition, said.

"The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."

Homeless groups and government agencies from Seattle, in Washington state, to Athens in Georgia, report the most visible increase in homeless encampments in a generation.

"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the '80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group of homeless groups in west coast cities.



In Reno, Nevada, the state with the nation's highest repossessions rate, a tent city recently sprung up on the city's outskirts and quickly filled up with about 150 people. Many, such as Sylvia Flynn, 51, who came from northern California, ended up homeless after losing their jobs and home.

Officials say they do not know how many homeless the city has. "But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember," Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city's redevelopment agency director, said.

In California, the upmarket city of Santa Barbara is housing homeless people who live in their cars in city car parks while Fresno, has several tent cities. Others have sprung up in Portland in Oregon, and Seattle, where homeless activists have set up mock tent cities at city hall to draw attention to the problem.

Meanwhile, new encampments have appeared, or existing ones grown, in San Diego, Chattanooga in Tennessee, and Columbus, Ohio.

A recent report by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development noted a 12 per cent drop in homelessness across the nation, but the latest figures – from 2007 – predates the current housing and economic crisis.

PDX Portland - Sit/Lie Law Unconstitutional - Feb 2009

Sit/Lie Law Unconstitutional

This was posted by Matt Davis on The Mercury Blogspot
on Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:38 AM

PORTLAND OREGON
http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2009/02/19/judge_rules_sit_lie_law_uncons#Scene_1

A downtown judge has ruled the city's controversial sidewalk obstruction ordinance unconstitutional.

Judge Michael McShane made the ruling yesterday about the part of the ordinance that requires people to keep their personal belongings within two feet.

"I found that an ordinary person would not understand from the statute that mundane and everyday behavior would be prohibited by the law," McShane tells the Mercury.

"The ordinance encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement," says McShane,

McShane gave the Mercury two examples of mundane behavior that would in theory be illegal under the ordinance.

"A woman with a baby in a stroller who walks away from the stroller for a moment to get the baby strapped into the car would be breaking the law," says McShane. "Or a window washer who steps two feet away from his bucket while he is washing a storefront window."

McShane said Deputy District Attorney Brian Lowney was unable to convince him otherwise in court. Both Lowney, and defense attorney Maite Uranga are yet to return calls for comment.

The law, which has been controversial since its inception, is scheduled to sunset in April, with City Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Randy Leonard opposed to its renewal, and City Commissioner Nick Fish still firmly on the fence with the deciding vote.

McShane made the ruling in the case of state versus Steven Joseph Elias, yesterday. Elias, who is only 23 but looks a little older, has a reputation for looking just like Jack Sparrow in the movie Pirates Of The Caribbean, and is a renowned member of Portland's street community. Police cited Elias last fall for violating the sidewalk obstruction ordinance when he left his backpack outside Peterson's convenience store on SW Yamhill. During the citation, officers asked Elias to remove an asp from his belt, and saw a knife concealed behind it on his waistband. They charged him with carrying a concealed weapon, but Judge McShane ruled that the evidence should be suppressed in court yesterday, since he ruled that the original cite—against Elias' backpack, was unconstitutional.

Judge McShane's ruling runs contradictory to another ruling last September, ( http://streetroots.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/judge-rules-portlands-sit-lie-law-constitutional-reasonable/ )

...when another downtown judge, Terry Hannon, ruled the law "constitutional" and "reasonable" in another case.

It's unlikely the state will appeal the ruling, since it's not uncommon for downtown judges to make different rulings on the same law. If the state appeals McShane's ruling, it would have to go before the court of appeals. If the appeals court rules the law unconstitutional, then cops would have to stop using it. In the meantime, the city can continue enforcing a law that has been found unconstitutional, regardless.

Calls to Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman's office were not immediately returned, but I expect we'll have some comments later.

Permalink
( http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2009/02/19/judge_rules_sit_lie_law_uncons )

The Human Face: Stories from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7PPsSENl7I&NR=1

Matt Davis ... Portland Homeless.... Nick Fish

I have found the following article by Matt Davis of the Portland Mercury about the cold season and getting shelter. The article on 12.13.08 (titled "In the Shadows, Warming to Fish") can be found here:
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/in-the-shadows/Content?oid=1011104

______________________

City Commissioner Nick Fish is standing among 150 mattresses and almost as many people in the gym of the Foursquare Church on SE Ankeny. He asks Red Cross Volunteer Supervisor Mohammad Ali about the challenges of operating an emergency warming center like this one.

"The personalities are the most challenging," says Ali. "These people live on the streets. Last night we had one fistfight and one inappropriate activity."

As Ali talks, another TriMet busload of homeless people pours through the doors. On Thursday, December 18, the center—which is open only when the weather is cold enough to make sleeping outside life-threatening—is on its fifth consecutive night. Regarding the "inappropriate activity" (what does that mean exactly?), Fish tells Ali he's already met with Police Chief Rosie Sizer to talk about stationing an officer in the center—but Sizer raised concerns about scaring off homeless people with outstanding warrants.

"Even if it were someone walking through once an hour, that uniformed presence would really help us," says Ali, and Fish says he'll see what he can do.

This emergency Red Cross center is in addition to two other winter-round warming centers Fish recently got funded by city council, in partnership with Multnomah County, to the tune of $300,000. Earlier in the evening, he toured the new family warming center, which has just opened in a former bridge club at NE 81st and Clackamas.

"We just scratched the playing card symbols off the windows last week," said the center's coordinator, Jean DeMaster, from the nonprofit Human Solutions.

The family center has 40 beds, and has thus far been catering to between 12 and 20 people a night. DeMaster anticipates an influx of clients in 2009, when homeless families tend to wear out their welcomes with relatives over Christmas. There are currently 2,500 homeless children in Multnomah County, but many homeless families sleep in their cars because of the stigma of this particular kind of homelessness, DeMaster says. There's also plenty more space in the building, including a former boxing ring in the basement, and Fish is abuzz with possibilities for it.

This reporter has had a few differences of opinion with Fish since he joined Portland City Council in June. For example, Fish is yet to formally take a position on the controversial sit-lie ordinance, and he ducked the Mercury's questions about oversight for rent-a-cops during our spring endorsement interviews. Despite past disagreements, Fish agreed to let this reporter join him on the warming center tour, if he promised be on his "best behavior."

Best behavior or not, it's time to give Nick Fish his due. His work to get the warming centers funded has been tireless, and shows an ability to cut through red tape to help those who need it most. Indeed, Fish seems at his best when faced with a human-scale problem, and the opportunity to solve it by drawing on his relationships in the homeless advocacy community. Like when Barry Lewis, a student at Portland Community College who is sleeping at the Clark Center men's shelter under the Hawthorne Bridge, lamented his inability to get into permanent supported housing because of his academic studies.

"Is that a federal rule?" Fish wondered. "Give me your details. I'll look into it, and get back to you. "That's the kind of commissioner Portland's homeless really need.

MENTAL BOUND

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWwesAMPsLI


Mental Bound

A song about depression and despair.

MENTAL BOUND
by:
http://www.youtube.com/user/cuaroundclown

Twilight dances on midnight fright
Who and how are bound so tight
Hope never lasts and why I cry?
The blessed ones just wonder by
Yeah the blessed ones always wonder by
Please don't sit so damn near
My breathings hard when I'm in fear
but not a word you wonder why?
I'm just a coffin left to die
Yeah just a coffin waiting to die
Thought I was ready for the town
a big mistake had to turn around
my arms, legs, and mouth seemed bound
Reflections of a lonesome clown
Yeah reflections of a very lonesome clown
Not a face just a hole
An angry man thats lost his soul
The spiral down took its toll
Mental bound without control
Yeah mental bound with no chance of parole
A living hell with no rest found
My only hope is in the ground
Hope never lasts and why I cry?
The blessed ones just wonder by
Yeah blessed ones always wonder by
How can the blessed ones not care if I die

Warming Centers in Portland - Discussion in City Hall

I filmed this discussion which was on TV ...about "Warming Centers" for the homeless in Portland Oregon durring this cold freezing weather

The YouTube video is a Ch.#30 Metro TV copy of the Portland City Hall council meeting on 12.17.08




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxzrSBebrVM

STEPHEN PIMPARE discusses Poverty with Amy Goodman

Stephen Pimpare, author of a new book called “A People’s History of Poverty in America” (New Press). Pimpare is a professor of political science and social work at Yeshiva University here in New York. His previous book was titled “The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics, and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages.”

INTERVIEW

on Democracy Now

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/25/stephen_pimpare_on_a_peoples_history

11.25.08

AMY GOODMAN: Share some of the stories, because its really the color, the power of this book.

STEPHEN PIMPARE: One of, I think, the things that comes through most clearly if we actually listen to those who are facing dire need of one form of another and looking towards institutions whether they are public or private, familial or neighborhood, for some sort of assistance, is the almost universal contempt and disdain for the manner in which they’re treated by those institutions. The notion their poor through some of their own moral failings and they need to be redeemed, they need to be rehabilitated, that they need to be made a respectable, normal . If we look at the experience of poor people over time, that independence is something they hold very dearly just as you or I would.

What they’re fighting for is dignity, independence. What they’re fighting for often access to a good job at a living wage that makes it possible for them to have some control over their own lives, some ability to support their families in the manner that they chose. It is perhaps some measure of how poorly—the narrowness we think about poverty, we focus our attention on welfare, which is absolutely essential as an interim measure while people are in between jobs, escaping abusive relationships, trying to put themselves through college. These are vital and essential programs as interim measures but they are used as interim measures. The notion that poor Americans are looking for a free ride, that they are looking for a welfare check so they do not have to work is simply not borne out by the testimony by offer over and over again about the need for greater choice in their own lives, the ability to make their own decisions of how they are going to put together the complex puzzle that is survival day-to-day.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about surrender a culture of poverty.

STEPHEN PIMPARE: We have historically understood poverty as a more failure. In fact, we have a whole architecture of language we use to talk about this, the culture of poverty. The notion that there is either something inherent in individuals that leads them to be poor selling them to be poor, some sort of moral emotional, intellectual failing, or some sort of collective culture that is born and bred in poor communities, in which we pass poverty around, almost as if it is some sort of disease.

To read the rest of this interview click Here

You can watch or listen on these links below:

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Counting the homeless who are serriously ill in Portland

The following report is by Amanda Waldroupe

It was posted here on "Portlands" street newspaper called

"Street Roots"

Nov. 12, 2008 (from the October 31-Nov 13 edition)

http://streetroots.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/for-the-first-time-portlands-homeless-are-ranked-by-how-likely-they-are-to-die-on-the-streets/

Much thanks to Amanda for this well documneted article

___________________________________________________

Measuring our vulnerability
(by Amanda Waldroupe)
Forty-year-old Shannon Boat, who has been homeless on the streets of Portland for three years, was told that the bladder cancer she was diagnosed with would kill her.
“They told me I had two years, and that was six years ago,” she says.
She stops by at the Downtown Chapel regularly to stock up on Depends — adult diapers — because she can no longer control her bladder.
“It’s painful,” Boat says. “Being homeless makes my health problems worse… If I wasn’t homeless, I wouldn’t have to be worry about leaking urine all over the place.”
Boat’s story of becoming increasingly unhealthy while homeless is a common one on the streets, but her story — like many others — has largely remained untold.
That changed on Friday, October 24, when the results of a survey detailing the severe health problems homeless individuals suffer from was presented to an auditorium full of those charged with ending homelessness in Portland.
The survey created what is called the Vulnerability Index. Ranking homeless individuals according to the fragility of their health, the Index reveals how likely those individuals are to die on the streets if they do not receive housing, medical care, or other services.
Created by the New York non-profit Common Ground, the Index is based on the research of Dr. Jim O’Connell, a street physician with the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. O’Connell’s research found that having one, or a combination, of eight specific illnesses increased a homeless individual’s likelihood of dying (see sidebar).
The results of Portland’s survey are alarming (see results at right).
“Frankly, they shock me,” says City Commissioner Nick Fish, who oversees the Bureau of Housing and Community Development.
Altogether, 646 surveys were taken, far exceeding the housing bureau’s goal of collecting 400. Of those 646 individuals, 302 people, or 47 percent of those surveyed, have a high risk of mortality, meaning they reported having one of the eight illnesses increasing morbidity.
Most disturbing is the number of individuals who are “tri-morbid,” meaning they have co-occuring mental health, substance abuse, and medical issues.
“Your tri-morbidity rate is really high,” said Becky Kanis, Common Ground’s director of innovations, adding there are more tri-morbid people in Portland than in any other city the index has been taken in, including Los Angeles, New Orleans, and New York City.
“The people we’re talking to are in very poor health,” said Sally Erickson, program manager at the housing bureau.
Creating the index requires surveying homeless individuals and asking them 45 questions about their personal health: Have you been diagnosed with HIV and/or AIDS? Have you ever been violently attacked while homeless? Liora Berry, program coordinator at the housing bureau, and the person who initiated doing the index here, describes them as “very personal questions.”
Gathering at City Hall at 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 21, 22, and 23, volunteer outreach workers, bureaucrats, and housing advcoates split into 13 teams led by an outreach worker and medical professional, and from 6 to 8 a.m. they hit the streets of downtown Portland and the inner quadrants conducting the survey. Each team, armed with clipboards, surveys and passion, surveyed the same area each morning, at the crack of Portland’s cold dark dawn.
****
5:30 in the morning on Thursday, 40 people gathered in City Hall’s Rose Room. It is the third and last morning of surveying. “By Thursday, I was exhausted,” says Dennis Lundberg, a Janus Youth outreach worker. “I was really feeling worn out.”
I walked in as Berry was giving a pep talk to people seated at the conference table, along the edges of the room, and standing in line to pour themselves Stumptown coffee from a box.
It is pitch black when we leave City Hall, following a team led by JOIN outreach worker Quinn Colling. Colling and his team have been covering the area around the Burnside Bridge, Burnside Avenue, and parts of Old Town.
First, though, Colling makes an important stop, out of consideration for the people he has worked with for the last year and a half: Voodoo Doughnuts.
“I wouldn’t want to be woken up without coffee and breakfast,” Colling says.
“Walking into someone’s camp uninvited at 6 a.m. and waking them up is generally an invasion of privacy,” says Dennis Lundberg, an outreach worker with Janus Youth.
Driving along SW Naito Parkway, we find three people. Three more people are found, woken up, and surveyed along Ankeny Street in Old Town. After finding no one sleeping on the Burnside Bridge, we arrive at the Downtown Chapel around seven in the morning, first light.
About a dozen people were already lined up outside the Catholic-based agency waiting for its hospitality center to open at nine-thirty, including Boat.
Boat was one who listed a myriad of health issues. In addition to having bladder cancer, Boat says she has had frostbite on her fingertips, vision and hearing problems, suffered from a past head injury, and used injection drugs in the past.
Boat tells me she is not hesitant to be frank about such personal matters; she prefers to “share my experiences out here to help the younger generation.”
“It’s the hardest thing to be out here and be homeless,” Boat says.
She echoes what a man who identified himself as Alan said earlier that morning. Homeless since December, Alan says he has lived in Portland for four years, after immigrating from Liverpool, England.
“It’s a good thing,” he says, of the survey. “If you don’t ask questions, you’re not going to find out what’s going on.”
A few feet away from Boat and me, Linda Klein, a Providence Hospital physician, surveyed a young man. He sat atop a wool blanket Colling had given him, his legs crossed.
An overpowering rancid smell thickened the air as he removed two layers of damp, dirt-stained socks. Klein shines a flashlight on his feet, revealing blisters covering his toes and bottom of his feet. Bright red lines circled his toes and meandered up his feet. As Klein looked, the young man’s body was racked by a loud, hacking cough.
“He needs to get treated,” Klein said.
Colling and Klein decide to take him to the emergency room at Northwest Portland’s Good Samaritan hospital. Colling drives, while I sit in the back of Colling’s van keeping a thermos of coffee steady between my feet to stop it from spilling. Klein continues to administer the survey on the way. The man responds by nodding or shaking his head, the only verbal sounds coming from him incoherent murmurs.
Arriving, he swung his legs out of the van to walk to the emergency room. Klein asked if he wanted to put his socks back on. He shook his head, said “thank you” and walked away.
Klein said the man’s feet had bacterial infections that were beginning to “track” up his feet. Klein also said he may be cachectic, a condition of extreme weight loss. “He looked like someone who could get sick fast,” she said. “He didn’t have the reserves.”
The man spoke so quietly, almost timidly, that I couldn’t hear why he would not put his socks back on. As we headed back to the Downtown Chapel, Klein repeated what the man said.
“He said (his feet) felt like they were on fire.”

****
At least twice as many people were at the Downtown Chapel when Colling, Klein and I returned. Shannon Rhodes, 39, said a woman staying at the Salvation Army’s women’s shelter nearby on 5th Avenue had taken the survey earlier and told the women about it upon returning.
As we got out, people asked us if we had surveys. Because I had a clipboard, people asked me as well. I’m a reporter, I said. I’m not doing the surveys. Well, couldn’t you? Someone asked, looking me straight in the eyes.
Sure, I thought. I know how to ask questions.
I ended up giving two surveys Thursday morning. One was to an African American woman only two years older than I am (twenty-five), responding to the questions mainly by shaking her head.
The woman, Rhodes, and many other individuals encountered by the survey teams, were more than willing to answer the questions posed to them. One of the unique things about the Portland survey, Kanis said, was that the ratio of people consenting to take the survey in Portland was, at 90%, higher than any other city the survey was taken in.
Lundberg, initially concerned about whether the survey would violate people’s privacy, said, “it felt comfortable and it felt compassionate.”
At the same time, some people were motivated to take the survey purely, it seemed, because of the $5 gift card to Starbucks, Safeway or Burger King given at the end of the survey.
“I need something to eat,” a homeless youth said to me as I questioned him. Shaking his head or droning no after no, at one point, as I asked him whether he was HIV positive or had AIDS, he said, “I’m only 18.”

****
“We will use the data from the Vulnerability Index to make sure that people with serious medical conditions receive priority for housing, medical care and other services,” Fish said in introductory remarks to the presentation of the survey’s results.
“We should serve the people who are the most vulnerable,” Erickson says.
Erickson sticks by those guns, even in what appears to be the current scenario where the net number of shelter or housing spaces does not increase, leaving those serving homeless individuals making difficult, moral choices regarding whether to perform triage, and house the vulnerable, at the cost of leaving healthier individuals still on the street.
“I have no problem with housing them first,” Erickson says.
“I recognize we have to make tough choices,” Fish says.
Despite being homeless for 25 years, and describing her experience as being “through hell and back,” Robin Tolbert, 48, agrees. “The ones who are really, really sick need to come first,” she says. “It doesn’t bother me.”
In addition to rapidly housing unhealthy individuals, the index will also enable some “problem solving” when it comes to how the city serves those individuals.
Shelters using a first come, first serve or lottery system may need to change the way individuals are admitted and receive priority. Erickson thinks the current system excludes those who are not organized or too unhealthy (mentally or physically) to “advocate for themselves,” effectively prioritizing one population over another, but the population is not the most vulnerable.
During the Friday presentation, Fish publicly charged the housing bureau to devise a plan on how to best serve those individuals by Nov. 10. Fish expects the bureau to “be as creative and enterprising as they can to come up with a menu of options.”
Dark lines of exhaustion etched underneath their eyes, Erickson and Berry were not sure on Friday afternoon what, exactly, the proposal would be.
“I don’t know what the full outcome will be,” Berry said. “The main thing is to regroup.”
Homeless on and off for five years and on the wait list for the Salvation Army’s women’s shelter, Rhodes knows exactly what she wants to see happen. “I want them to use the information to get more funding, more spaces,” she says.
Into the future, some see a major opportunity to use the hard data the Vulnerability Index provides as leverage for acquiring new resources and increasing the net amount of housing and service resources for the city’s efforts to end homelessness. “It helps our arguments,” Fish said.
“How can we be a great city when we cannot take care of our most fragile?”

Just found this website - Realty Company & Homeless

I have only read some of this page
There are comments below the main story
It is interesting slant and I am sure I have my opinion
though I have not voiced it I still wanted to pass along this link
The site that is hosting this is a "Housing Realty" type of website

Portland has become a place for the homeless to come. The city embraces them, and even is willing to drive hard working mom and pop stores out in order to help the homeless. We have something called dignity village here that is a homeless camp, is on public land, and doesn't have to be up to code.

Maybe we should issue the homeless cell phones

Getting Soaked by Clean & Safe

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2008/10/23/in_safe_hands

Here is the complete story from The Mercury

Matt Davis Reporter from the Mercury tells us "whats going on" to the poor and houseless in Portland Oregon at 4am

__________________

Quote:

__________________

In Safe Hands Posted by Matt Davis on Thu, Oct 23 at 10:31 AM I was up at 4:30 yesterday to follow the city's Bureau of Housing and Community Development along on a vulnerability survey, looking for the people in Portland most likely to die on the streets over the winter. It's the first time the city has done a survey like this, and there'll be more on it in next week's paper. But in the mean time, I wanted to relate this incident. By 7:15, the volunteers I was with had surveyed about 25 people sleeping on the streets outside the Portland Rescue Mission on West Burnside, when a Clean & Safe van showed up to hose down the sidewalk:

Among those sleeping on the street outside the mission was a barefoot man, whom I'd estimate to be around 55-60 years old, whose hands appeared to be suffering severe infection. He seemed to be suffering, too, from confusion, was very difficult to re-direct, and when asked if he'd seen a doctor, said "God will take care of me." His hands were weeping pus and blood, and covered in these scales:

Nevertheless, come hose time, the Clean & Safe crew made no allowances for the man, and appeared to show no interest whatsoever in his medical welfare. He was forced to stand up and move along, just like everybody else:

About 10 yards further down the sidewalk, the Clean & Safe crew eventually had to stop hosing, while the cops were called to attend to a man who had passed out and at first, didn't seem to be going to wake up. After five minutes he was eventually roused and hauled off in a police car.
On the one hand, I can accept that the city's business leaders want to present an attractive face for downtown consumers. But when they're hosing down the sidewalk outside a shelter that's already full, and showing apparent disregard for the welfare of those on that sidewalk with severe medical conditions, I wonder what messages we're really sending to the suburbs? I wonder whether a Beaverton soccer mom would really be comfortable knowing that by spending money in our downtown shopping malls, she was inadvertently sponsoring that kind of activity?

Poem by Shannon Andrews

I read this in the Portland Street Roots - Oct 17 2008 issue on page 7

The heat from the fire
Silhouettes the dancing shadows
Cast from us huddling to stay warm
My stiletto heels begin to dance with the pounding of my heart
And my hair weeps down my chest
So it calls a memory soaked after
The electrical storm as we
Sit in our helpless shelter
And bring on the infinite boredom
Beginning to appreciate
Each other's warmth
How I would spend this moment over and over
And hope this night would never end.

U N C E R T A I N D A Y S video

Hello my friends,
I am passing along a link to a short "trailer" that looked really good
The video is only 10.oo$ ... I wish I could order it.
Maybe I will get it later
Meanwhile check out the short out-take
http://freedomtracks.com/udtrailer.wmv

Cinefocus & Media Productions presentsa film by Joseph Piner

"U N C E R T A I N D A Y S"
Living Homeless

Featuring music byNashville Session Players{ only $10.00 + $1.00 S&H }

Click below for Elkton, Maryland newspaper followup story
http://freedomtracks.com/elkton.html

Tent Cities on the rise

The economic bailout plan being debated in Washington is coming too late for one small, but growing population of America.
In the shadows of Reno's high-rise casinos, one community lives with almost nothing. dwelling in tents.

Nevada's unemployment rate is at a 23-year high. In Reno, the number of jobless jumped 60 percent in the last year.

Now for 170 people, their home is nothing more than a tent.
"I know that god is going to take care of me," one resident said. "But some days, it's very scary."
Whether it is the blaring train or the blazing sun, life is not easy for the mix of chronically homeless, and those newly so.

Just last Christmas, Michael Moore and Marian Schamp (as seen in the video) lived in a rented house in Portland. After Mr Moore lost the job he had had for three years at a gas station, the pair moved to Reno in search of jobs. However, they never found any.

Across the US, tent cities have either popped up or expanded in places like Seattle, Portland and Columbus.

The problem got so bad in Reno that officials decided to organise the tent city and run it themselves.

They put up fencing, brought in security and fresh running water until they can move the people into housing or shelters.

CBS

The complete article is from here:
http://www.3news.co.nz/News/InternationalNews/IncreasingnumberofAmericanslivingintentcities/tabid/417/articleID/74225/cat/61/Default.aspx

Watch the video fro this story here:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/World/tabid/313/articleID/74225/cat/61/Default.aspx#video

Interesting Video

The link for this is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYMnKRv4TH0
The Story Of A Sign

Nicklesville - Homeless in Seattle

AUDIO:
"Nicklesville"

AUDIO TRACK CLICK HERE

http://images.indymedia.org/imc/seattle/media/2008/07/267957.mp3

http://images.indymedia.org/imc/seattle/media/2008/07/267957.mp3.shtml

author: Tara HayesJul 28, 2008 01:27

So what happens when you’re homeless in Seattle? Many find a doorway. Others, illegally camp out in various Green Spaces. And some are organizing to take matters into their own hands. A group of roughly 35 people gathered on a sunny University of Washington campus lawn to rally for a permanent homeless encampment. They’re calling it Nickelsville in response to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and the city’s recent sweeps on homeless camps found on hillsides, in greenbelts and beneath freeways.

Nicklesville homeless and formerly homeless people make up the Nickelsville committee; they were inspired by Depression era Hoovervilles, shanty towns made of wood, cardboard and metal pieces, so named after then President Herbert Hoover. Unlike Seattle area Tent Cities, Nickelsville would be made of permanent structures to house up to 1000 people people who wouldn’t be asking permission to be there. One World Report’s Tara Hayes was at the gathering and presents this audio potpourri from the event.

Stealing from the Poor in Portland Oregon 7/27/08

http://www. kptv. com/news/17005878/detail. html#

-Burglars smashed through a reinforced window and stole food from a Portland food bank Friday.

Investigators said the thieves broke into the Generous Ventures Food Bank and, in addition to food, made off with fire extinguishers and a rolodex that included names and phone numbers of employees.They also left behind shattered glass, broken venetian blinds and opened cooler doors.

Edna Ford, who started the food bank 22 years ago, said the stolen food was intended for elderly and homeless people."We help a lot of seniors, and I think it's just awful that they would attack places like this," she said.It's not the first time thieves have struck at the food bank. A year ago, a refrigerated truck was stolen.

Ford said the latest crime is the last straw, and she wants security cameras placed at the food bank."It's getting really old," Ford said. "(I'm) getting very tired of it."The food bank is left with the costs of replacing the stolen food and repairing the damaged building.Generous Ventures is asking for donations to replace the food, repair the building and to install security cameras.

Anyone with information on who may be responsible for the theft is asked to call police.

Homeless in Florida - Your not alone

8000 Floridians ,Homeless in the Woods 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0V2MdklcAE&feature=email

POOR PEOPLE POWER July 9 2008

The protest for human respect for the poor and homelss took their message to the streets
I have two Google videos of this afternoon action
Both videos are about an hour long

Video one starts in the park along Burnside in downtown Portland Oregon

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5728239920381017008

Video two starts when the march is just about to the police station and ends with a group - citizens / fourm in the parkblocks at PSU campus


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6044005549247939546

There is one YouTube outake that show the only arrest ... a token j walk ticket & blocking traffic is the topic in the Youtube outake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZF09DwJkzQ

Portland Coalition Against Poverty July 9 2008 Invite

Wednesday, July 9th 5 PM North Park Blocks Portland Coalition Against Poverty

On Tuesday June 24th, following the regular meal service under the Burnside Bridge, Portland Police awakened and dispersed over 50 people from above and beneath the Bridge. On Wednesday June 25th, the police and Clean and Safe awakened and dispersed 16-20 people from the East side of the Morrison Bridge and 10-14 people from the East side of the Hawthorne Bridge.

The people were removed with no alternative sleeping locations given. Alan Pyrah, who was sleeping on the Burnside bridge at the time of the sweep, asked an officer where he was expected to go. The unnamed officer replied, "Go across the river." Pyrah went to sleep under the Morrison Bridge, and was disturbed again the following evening. These aggressive acts on the part of the Portland Police highlight the continued contempt of the Portland Police bureau for the houseless and impoverished.

The police awakened the sleeping citizens using foghorns and boots, and gave them two minutes to collect their possessions. Clean and Safe, the security branch of the Portland Business Alliance, had brought large dumpsters with them, and all possessions not collected within the two minute limit were thrown into the dumpsters. A Portland Police officer stood by with a timer.

This method of dispersal is a break from standard Portland Police policy: Ordinarily, possessions are seized and taken to a central storage facility, where they can be claimed the next day.

Additionally, city policy requires the police to give 24 hour posted notice before enforcing the no-camping law. These dispersals are in accordance with the regular pattern of ticketing and harassment during the summer festival season. Interviews conducted at several nightly feeds immediately following the raids confirmed the worst suspicions of houseless advocates.
Larry Reynolds, a disabled veteran who sleeps outdoors, said, "They're targeting homeless people...taking people's gear and throwing it away. They're not posting notices or inviting social service agencies [as specified under the no-camping law] as they do it."

Two weeks before the Waterfront Blues Festival, the city has begun to increase pressure on people sleeping outdoors. It began with verbal warnings, and has been followed by ticketing and dispersal on a nightly or bi-nightly basis. This police aggression is intended to insure that attendees of the Blues Festival will not be confronted by the City's issues of poverty. Cheyenne, a houseless person affected by the dispersals, said, "It's the rich and the middle class stealing [sleep] from the poor."

In response to the targeting of poor and houseless people in the community, a demonstration is planned for Wednesday, July 9th. It will start in the North Park Blocks at 5pm. "Hands Off the Poor," a demonstration organized by the Portland Coalition Against Poverty demands an immediate end to police harassment and arrest of poor and houseless people in the community.