On any given night, thousands of people sleep on the streets in Portland, Oregon. They seek shelter in tents, bushes and overpasses in a city that has struggled with one of the worst housing crises in ...

Lichen is 34-weeks pregnant and worried about where he’s going to live. His partner left abruptly last month, leaving Lichen with a month-to-month rental agreement he can’t afford. He was a ...

In March 2024, Oregon lawmakers voted to recriminalize the simple possession of small amounts of opioids, heroin, fentanyl and other drugs, reversing Measure 110, the landmark 2020 voter initiative ...

Albany Planning Commissioner Remi Hill worries that local shoppers could find what’s really for sale is their privacy. “Customers should simply be the customers,” Hill told city councilors July 7.

The starving artist is cliche. So is choosing between supporting the arts and paying your bills. The broad art world still has a reputation for being elitist and exclusionary. While plenty of the ...

Portland, Oregon's award-winning weekly street newspaper - for those who can't afford Free Speech.

Portland faces record levels of gun violence and homicide. As of July 21, there have been 91 homicides in Portland in the past year, and from January through July 27 there were 688 shootings according ...

Lawmakers and advocates have long debated the authority of the state Psychiatric Security Review Board. Critics now say the board’s extreme caution is colliding with Oregon’s strained mental health ...

The Oregon Governor is a statewide elected position serving a four-year term. As Oregon’s chief executive, the governor is responsible for executing laws, leading and coordinating the executive branch ...

Editor’s note: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence. In May, Willamette Week reported the Old Town homeless village was closing. One of the original C3PO (Creating Conscious ...

Jacob Pizzo was sick when he entered the Oregon State Penitentiary a year ago — and he only became sicker. His hypertension ran unchecked as his blood pressure reached dangerously high levels and he ...

In the mid-1980s, the most dire problem on the streets of Portland (from the point of view of the downtown business community, which funded campaigns to elect persons to city hall and the county) was ...