PORTLAND, Ore. — A well-known Portland nonprofit is pivoting after realizing they don’t have enough money to rebuild at a planned new location.
Sisters of the Road would offer meals to homeless people for $1.50 or 15 minutes of work at their café.
Micah Tyler, who lives on the streets of Portland, said their work "definitely made a difference."
Sisters of the Road is known for providing homeless people with a sense of normalcy, inviting them into their restaurant-style nonprofit on Northwest Davis.
“Whenever they happened to be serving a meal and I was in the neighborhood and hungry, I would try to eat there,” Tyler said. “I remember they always had well-made food.”
This work came to a close during the pandemic when they had no choice but to shut down their café. They were ecstatic to share with Portland in 2023 that they had found space for their comeback, with renewed goals.
“Even if they don’t need to get a meal, they can just come and have a place to be warm inside,” said Matt Chorpenning, vice president at Sisters of the Road. “Maybe they can collect mail there or just have a conversation and be treated with dignity and respect.”
They planned to renovate a former restaurant in Chinatown called the House of Louie. The project would take $6 million, and at the time, their board of directors felt this was feasible. Fast forward to now, it turns out that the goal was set a little too high.
“We weren’t in the position we hoped to be in, in terms of doing that fundraising,” Chorpenning said. “We had to decide to pivot from the House of Louie.”
But they aren’t giving up.
“The work that our staff does is incredibly hard. They’re up close front and center with a lot of trauma people are experiencing,” Chorpenning said.
They are moving on from the House of Louie location and working to find a different way to open back up, receiving a $500,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“But we have options,” Chorpenning said. “We are an organization that has options, and I think we are pretty fortunate about that.”
If you would like to donate to Sisters of the Road you can find out more information on their website.