For Joe V., the five months of March to August without a print edition of Street Roots was tough. By June, he was actively lobbying the Street Roots staff. “I told them, ‘Look, man, I gotta get back to work. We need to get rolling.’”
Street Roots and food stamps are Joe’s only income. He was struggling to find food for his beloved companion dog, Gilgamesh. He didn’t receive the $1,200 stimulus payment from the legislation Congress passed in March. Many of the resources to homeless and low-income people were shuttered.
He even tried socially distanced panhandling once, holding a sign, rolling out a cart to accept offering 6 feet away. “If I can do that, we can be selling papers,” he said.
“I am so happy to come back to work.”
At his Street Roots post at the Safeway at Northwest Lovejoy Street and 13th Avenue, Joe is paying attention to keeping his customers safe. Each paper is individually sleeved and displayed at his table, so there’s no contact to hand customers the paper. He buys the sleeves in bulk from a local comic book store. He has a jar for cash. He offers a bottle of hand sanitizer. He wears a mask.
Now that he’s back to work, one-third of Joe’s monthly income from selling the paper will go toward his rent each month. The rest of his rent is subsidized.
Joe lived on the streets for 20 years, seesawing back and forth between Portland and his birth home of Salt Lake City, Utah. (“I was a non-Mormon in a Mormon-run state,” Joe explained.) He worked food service jobs of all kinds, but he had trouble keeping a job. He has post-traumatic stress syndrome from years of living on the streets and from early childhood experiences he’s repressed.
“It’s just a wall of black,” he said of his childhood. “There’s a lot of unresolved issues.”
Then, 11 years ago, things started trending the right way for Joe. Under the Burnside Bridge one day, he was in the right place at the right time. A person who promised to buy a puppy didn’t show, and Gilgamesh became Joe’s dog. He found Street Roots and was featured in a Street Roots vendor profile. And then a Transition Projects caseworker approached him as he was selling the paper.
“Right in the middle of my sales day,” he said, “this guy comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, I read your vendor profile. I can get you into housing. You don’t have to get rid of your dog; you don’t have to go into a shelter.’
“And at that time, that was one of the really big roadblocks for people to get housing. You couldn’t bring your animal into the shelter, and you have to be staying at the shelter to access case management that can help you get housing.”
Joe’s been housed, in various apartments, ever since. He follows the rules so he stays there.
Gilgamesh is always by his side — unless Joe’s in a hurry to be somewhere. Gilgamesh doesn’t hurry. “His nickname is Sir Stops-a-Lot,” Joe said, “because he stops every 5 feet.
“He’s become my foundation. Before him, my depression always lured me back into the streets. I’m not a very social guy, and it’s a daily struggle. When Gil sees me getting mad, he comes and loves on me.”
And, of course, Gil has his own Street Roots badge.
“Street Roots is a bootstrap program,” Joe said. “Pull up your bootstraps, get out, and make some money. It’s a way for me to create an income for myself versus begging for a handout.”
And that’s worth a lot to Joe. And why he’s so glad to be back.
