Page 3 - Sandra Comstock News Today

Homeless face less access to critical supplies with program cut, Local News, Portland local News, Breaking News alerts for Portland city.

Like many programs that materialized in spring of 2020, the three city-sanctioned tent camps that appeared in central Portland in April of last year were born out of a crisis. Oregon’s COVID-19 pandemic social distancing rules had just fallen into place. The mandate forced homeless shelters to immediately reduce capacity, leaving hundreds of vulnerable Portlanders to shelter-in-place outdoors in the midst of a still-mysterious pandemic. At the same time, places that unhoused people relied ...

Hepatitis A outbreak sickened nearly 600 San Diegans in 2016-17 and was blamed for 20 deaths

“People don’t realize that these things happen because there’s an utter lack of infrastructure — there’s no place to dump household trash and in that 70-city block at that point there were a total of two public bathrooms,” notes Sandra Comstock, a sociologist and advocate for houseless people. She saw a logical alternative to an enhanced services district: Fund a safe space where people could access a hot shower, bathrooms, laundry and basic medical care, as well as dump trash. To ...