Start improving your community today by helping these local programs. Get involved by spreading the word, volunteering, or donating.
Created in 1969 as a support center, Transition Projects, a leader in transitioning people from homelessness into housing in Portland, Oregon, operate and manage ten unique locations and facilitates hundreds of apartment placements each year throughout the Portland Metropolitan area.
The agency offers programs, resources, and tools to individuals through access to social services including caseworkers, healthcare, mentorship, and housing. As of 2018, TPI housed more than 1,100 houseless people. Transition Projects provides services including but not limited to: restrooms, showers, laundry, haircuts, shelter, clothing, nutrition resources and mail services.
Founded in June 1968, Outside In was one of the first free community health clinics on the West Coast. Outside In was founded with the intent to focus on servicing the “alienated youth” of Portland, consisting of youth with substance abuse and mental health issues. To this day, Outside In still focuses on helping marginalized youth among other groups to boost health and self-sufficiency.
They currently provide loads of services, including: medical services, aiding transgender and gender non-conforming peoples, drug user health services, health and wellness centers, pharmaceutical provisions, insurance access assistance, tattoo removal, outpatient counseling, dialectical behavior therapy and assertive community treatment. The program also provides youth services including meals, housing, general support, medical services, mental health and substance use recovery support, education services, employment services and nutrition education.
Central City Concern, an organization changing lives since 1979, consists of all sorts of facilities and outreach programs designed to tackle all facets of homelessness. With facilities for single parents, substance abusers, those who suffer mental illness, general housing facilities, medical care facilities, and much much more, CCC has a very comprehensive approach to tackling the houseless community head on.
Supporting over 13,000 individuals a year, community outreach coordinator Gary Cobb shared a plethora of statistics on the work CCC does. CCC places over 1,000 employees into jobs a year, safely delivers upwards of 300 babies a year through Letty Owings Center on Flanders Street, and provides access to over 1,000 units of housing - about 30 buildings dedicated to placing people off the streets.
A four-pronged approach to homelessness, CCC has resources focused on housing, health care, recovery and employment for those struggling in the Portland area.
An outreach and homeless immersion organization founded in 1992, JOIN was primarily founded on creating outreach to bridge the gap between the homeless community and housed population in Portland. Expanding their workforce and reach over the last 30 years, JOIN has transformed their program into a stable housing support network that aids hundreds of families every year.
TIn 2020, JOIN raised over 2 million dollars in support to over 550 households to stay in a safe living situation, placed nearly 200 more people in safe permanent houses, and fed over 2,000 individuals from March to December in partnering with Feed the Mass.
Still a growing organization, JOIN is expanding their services every day, still looking for volunteers, long term employees, and donations to help solidify their services and not only get families off the street, but help keep them off the street.
One of the largest nonprofits in the Pacific Northwest since 1972, Janus Youth Programs is focusing on building and maintaining safe and healthy lives for children, youth and family throughout Oregon and Washington.
Starting as a small project to aid young adults facing homlessness and drug abuse in Multnomah County, Janus Youth now provides over 40 programs throughout the Northwest. These services include Yellow Brick Road, a volunteer based program where volunteers take to the streets every night and make contact with over 2,000 youth a month to build relationships and connect them to resources that will meet their needs to get off the streets.
Janus Youth Programs has loads of homeless youth programs as well as multiple programs focused on residential placement and re-entry services, parent services and even yearly scholarship funds for youth involved in Janus programs that are seeking higher education.
Homeless Shelter Directory is an online database that contains information on over 14,000 homeless shelters and 17,000 soup kitchens in the United States. The Directory also contains information on rent assistance programs and affordable housing through secondary databases and search engines. The database provides information on 18 shelters in the area surrounding the city of Portland alone, as well as 17 more in the Vancouver area.
Established in 1994 Portland Homeless Family Solutions was initially opened as a family shelter in a church basement that has now grown to provide almost 800 services to over 900 children and families in the time frame of July 2020 to July 2021 alone.
PHFS is focused on the permanent housing and empowerment of families in Portland aiming to support these families not only through resources that point them to housing but also through showing compassion and empathy in helping these families thrive.
PHFS provides multiple services in housing, prevention, shelter and education.
The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans is a national non-profit organization that is a primary resource and technical assistance center that connects national and local agencies to hundreds of thousands of homeless veterans annually. The agencies that are connected to NCHV provide emergency and supportive housing, food, health services, job training and placement assistance to the over 40,000 homeless veterans across the entire United States.
The NCHV also serves as an advocate to multiple congressional groups and individuals that pushes to increase funding and resources to virtually every veteran aid bill and resource that hits the table.
Providing hotlines for reporting homeless veterans and veterans in crisis as well as having multiple ways to help and donate to the organizations they service, the NCHV is a hotspot for connecting people who care to people who can help.