As opioid crisis rages, Oregon must decide how to spend its settlement dollars

Mar 12, 2024
States are allocating hundreds of millions. Officials weigh spreading it among treatment, recovery, prevention and harm reduction.
Fernando Peña shows NW Instituto Latino's supplies funded by opioid settlement money, including Narcan, which treats overdoses, as well as safer-use, safer-sex and wound care items.
Mitchell Hartman/Marketplace

To provide temporary shelter, Oregon launches hotel-to-housing program

Nov 22, 2021
Faced with an affordable housing shortage, COVID-19 restrictions and wildfires, Oregon started funding a program to purchase hotels and motels to shelter the unhoused.
Maria Caballero Rubio is the executive director of Centro Cultural de Washington County, the foundation that purchased the Forest Grove Inn to shelter displaced, low-income Latinx people.
Melanie Sevcenko

As rodeo returns to Eastern Oregon, plenty of broncs and bulls. Not so many masks.

Sep 24, 2021
The Pendleton Round-Up was canceled last year. It came back in the midst of a delta variant surge in the rural Oregon county.
The Pendleton Round-Up arena can hold about 16,500 fans — about the whole population of the town. On several days this year, ticket sales topped 10,000.
Mitchell Hartman

Oregon retirement savings program offers national roadmap

Economists found the automatic IRA program OregonSaves meaningfully increased retirement savings.
The success of OregonSaves, an automatic IRA program, suggests making it a national plan.
Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

How one unemployed bartender is making ends meet

May 4, 2020
A government stimulus check, unemployment benefits and helpful roommates are keeping Neil Cairns afloat — for now.
Bartender Neil Cairns in Portland, Oregon, hasn't been able to work since mid-March.
Thomas Patteron

Smoke from this season’s wildfires is worrying West Coast winemakers

Sep 29, 2017
Notes of ashtray or campfire in your pinot? Vineyards say smoky weather from this year’s wildfires could leave lasting mark on wines.
Jocelyn Bentley-Prestwich, the marketing manager at Cathedral Ridge Winery in Hood River, Oregon, tests the ripeness of the vineyard's Riesling grapes. 
Molly Solomon/ for Marketplace

The latest fight for employee rights: work schedule predictability

Sep 4, 2017
Worker rights advocates say unpredictable schedules, and dreaded "clopenings," take a toll on employees.
Nadine Vassallo, manager of independent bookseller Book Soup, in West Hollywood, California, schedules a 20-person staff with an Excel spreadsheet. 
Larry Buhl/ for Marketplace

For public good, not for profit.

New bike? In Oregon, that could mean a $15 tax

Aug 22, 2017
Cyclists in Oregon will soon pay a tax for their new wheels — the first bike tax in the nation.
Bike mechanic Barb Bohm-Becker hopes Oregon’s $15 sales tax will diffuse claims that cyclists don’t pay their share for infrastructure. 
Amanda Peacher/ for Marketplace

Wanted: qualified people who will work for yesterday's wages

Aug 3, 2017
The tight labor market is making it harder to hire without raising pay significantly.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Farmers in Oregon look to cash in on the solar eclipse

Jul 24, 2017
Farmers are renting out their fields to eager eclipse watchers.
Farmer Christina Carpenter gestures toward one of the fields that will host campers during August’s total solar eclipse. She and Grant Putnam (left) are taking advantage of the rare opportunity to host an eclipse festival on their farm, Organic Earthly Delights. 
Amanda Peacher/for Marketplace