After more than 40 years in Portland’s Old Town, homeless services nonprofit Sisters of the Road is moving. Last month, the organization closed on a house in the Lents neighborhood which will serve as the new base of operations for the organization. This comes after the nonprofit closed its physical doors in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and after the organization initially announced its intent to purchase the House of Louie before walking away from the deal. Nicki Dardinger is the executive director of the nonprofit. They join us to share more about this news.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. After more than 40 years in Portland’s Old Town, the long-standing homeless services nonprofit Sisters of the Road is hitting the road. The organization recently closed on a house in the Lents neighborhood in Southeast Portland. It’ll serve as the new base of operations for the nonprofit, which closed its physical doors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nicki Dardinger is the Executive Director of Sisters of the Road. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Nicki Dardinger: Hey, thanks for having me today.
Miller: Can you remind us first, before we get to the future, I want to hear a little bit about the past. What is Sisters of the Road and what has your organization been doing in Old Town starting in 1979?
Dardinger: Oh, thanks so much for asking this. Sisters of the Road has always been rooted in systemic change and addressing the root causes of homelessness and poverty with the ultimate goal of ending them. So, as you mentioned, lots of folks are familiar with the Sisters of the Road Cafe, which opened in 1979 in Old Town. It was a place where people could come, they could get a hot meal regardless of ability to pay, so people could barter. There were meal coupons and so many folks have a story about their time at the cafe, whether it was building friendships or just having a place to rest, building power together and organizing and advocating together. So many folks are familiar with the cafe, which, as you mentioned, it was a sad moment, when it closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Miller: Maybe this is obvious, but why did it close?
Dardinger: Well, the pandemic was really hard, so that was certainly a part of it, and along with that, there were some challenges with the building and just being able to maintain that very old space that we were in. And it was really important to us that folks who were coming to the cafe had a really safe and beautiful place to come to, and we really struggled with that in our old space. And so we wanted to be able to find something new, a place where people could come and rest and, again, just be treated with dignity and respect.
Miller: My understanding is that you did plan and try to reopen three years ago. What happened?
Dardinger: We sure did. So we did try to reopen in the historic House of Louie building in Old Town, and unfortunately, as we got in, we just realized that from a financial perspective, it wasn’t the right thing for Sisters to do. It wasn’t going to work out long term. So we made the really hard decision at that time to walk away from that property. Again, it was so hard to say farewell to Old Town and really think about what’s next for the organization,
Miller: Right. It’s one thing to say that a particular building in Old Town wasn’t right for the next incarnation of Sisters of the Road. It’s another, though, to say we’re gonna go across the river and, and, you know, 80 blocks further east. So how did you decide to go from Old Town to Lents?
Dardinger: Absolutely. Well, first, I just wanna name that, you know, Old Town absolutely still has a need for services. It’s a bittersweet move for us. We have such great friends and partners here who are doing incredible work, and we know that our partners here are gonna keep doing that work in Old Town even after we move. So we’re really grateful to all of them.
In terms of moving to Lents, we had this amazing opportunity of a family in Lents had called us up. They had dreamed about their home being turned into a space that would benefit the community. They were looking to move and they asked Sisters if we would be interested in purchasing their home and transforming it into this beautiful community space. So after a lot of discernment, after looking at our history, many folks know our founder, Genny Nelson, but they might not know that she had a long dream of Sisters owning a house and having a real home for people to come to.
So, thinking about this house, thinking about the Lents neighborhood here in Portland, so often when folks think about homelessness, we think about downtown, we think about Old Town, we’ve invested as a community a lot of resources in the downtown area. Folks might not realize that homelessness is also very present on the east side of Portland. It can look a little different. So many folks are living in their cars, they’re living in RVs, they might be couch surfing with friends or family, they might be living unsheltered on the streets, but trying to stay hidden because camp sweeps are very common and so there’s a real need in East Portland.
And we also discovered that there aren’t nearly as many services in East Portland. So, it just helped us to make the decision to say wow, we’re really sad to leave Old Town and the friends that we have here. But also, there’s a real need for Sisters and our work and not just what we do, but how we do it and are really rooted in our philosophies of gentle personalism and treating people with dignity and systemic change. We wanted to really bring those to our new neighborhood in Lents.
Miller: Can you describe the actual house, the building itself?
Dardinger: It’s a home that’s been lived in as a residential home by a family with their kiddos, and they’ve been there for almost 20 years. So, it is a one story with like a little half story up top, and so we have the work to do as we move into this space, that of thinking about how will this building be used and how will it best meet the needs of our new neighbors in East Portland.
So a lot of folks have asked us, “Well, are you going to reopen the cafe?” or “What are you gonna do in the house?” What we’ve told people is just like the original Sisters of the Road Cafe was co-created with our neighbors, when we went out in Old Town and we asked people, “What do you need? What do you not have access to in Old Town?” And people said, “Oh, we need a place for a hot meal, we need a place to rest.” Well, we’re doing that same thing in our new neighborhood in Lents, where we are really taking the time to ask our unhoused neighbors, ask community partners, ask businesses, what are the needs here in Lents and how can Sisters best meet those needs?
Miller: And it seems like that process, you’re still in the middle of that. You don’t have all the answers yet?
Dardinger: That is so correct. We are definitely in the middle of it. We’ve gotten a great start. So we have done a series of insight interviews and connected with a lot of community-based organizations and service providers and faith communities in the Lents and surrounding neighborhoods. So we’ve learned quite a bit. But we still have a lot to do. We know that we will be a newcomer in Lents and we don’t expect to just drop in without really taking the time to build trust, to build relationships, to get to know our neighbors. So it is a work in progress.
We have a lot coming up, so you’ll see us out on the streets in Lents. We will literally be knocking on people’s doors, introducing ourselves, asking people about their experience in the neighborhood. We’ll have a series of listening sessions where folks can come and share about their experience and what they want Sisters to be, and we’ll also be present at a lot of community events. So really excited about being a good neighbor and being invested in our new neighborhood.
Miller: I want to hear more about those partnerships in just a second, and clearly as you’re saying, the listening process is still ongoing, but have you heard enough at this point to know whether or not you will be recreating some kind of cafe?
Dardinger: Good question. I don’t know that it will be a full-service cafe in the way that the cafe operated in Old Town, but what we have heard is that there is definitely a need for folks to have a place to come together to build community, to rest, to have a place where they are safe and won’t be asked to move along. We’ve heard a lot of folks share with us that food access is a real need in East Portland. There’s a lot of hunger. There’s a lot of just lack of access to food resources. So we are thinking about things like that and what we might do in that new space to help meet some of those needs.
Miller: How are you planning to partner with existing organizations in the area?
Dardinger: Oh, absolutely. You know, Sisters, and no one can do this work alone, so those partnerships are really important. One of the things, as we were doing our kind of insight interviews and talking to community partners, we realized there is an amazing group of grassroots organizations that are already working in and around the Lents neighborhood, all doing just work that is really grounded in care and compassion and love for our neighbors. And so we’ve joined up with them. We formed a new coalition of sorts. And so PDX Saints Love, Rahab’s Sisters, Hope and Bread, East Portland Collective and Clackamas Service Center, just coming together to think about, again, we can’t do this work alone and so how can we collaborate to support each other? How can we work together to really amplify the voices of our neighbors who are unhoused?
We often talk about not wanting to do for others what people can do for themselves, and people who have lived experience of homelessness, they are experts in that experience. They absolutely know what the challenges are and have ideas for making it better. And so how can we make sure that our unhoused neighbors, that we’re not just speaking for them, but that they feel confident and they have a seat at the table and they are part of those decision-making processes.
Miller: What do you think you’re going to miss most about Old Town?
Dardinger: Mm, oh, that’s such a hard question, I think we’re gonna miss our community here. We still have an office in Old Town, and almost every day we see someone out and about who shares with us their story about the time they had a meal at the cafe or talks to us about how important Sisters of the Road was to them and their journey. So we’re gonna miss our friends that we have here, and we also know that we’re moving to East Portland, but that doesn’t mean we won’t still visit our friends here in Old Town. So we’re still close to partners at Ground Score, Street Roots, Rose Haven. We’ll still look for opportunities absolutely to partner with organizations who are here in Old Town, because we all really care about the work of addressing the root causes of homelessness and poverty, and that’s everywhere in Portland. So we’ll still be around.
Miller: Nicki, thanks very much.
Dardinger:Thank you.
Miller: Nicki Dardinger is the Executive Director of Sisters of the Road.
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