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The congregation at Sunnyside United Methodist Church on Southeast Yamhill Street at 35th Avenue moved out last year, but a ragtag group of nonprofits has continued to provide a patchwork of services in the space for all members of the broader community. Tenants include everyone from a youth basketball organization to Alcoholics Anonymous to a felt and fiber artist.
And in coming together under one roof, tenants say they’ve become one big, supportive family working together to creatively solve each other’s problems while preserving a historic landmark key to the surrounding neighborhood. “A lot of our guests have been coming to this building in some way, shape, or form over the last 30 or 40 years,” says Lindsay Cogan-Sant, director of the Sunnyside Shower Project that’s housed in the community center.
That project’s mission is to provide people free access to showers, clothes, hygiene, and related supplies three days a week. Cogan-Sant says it came about during the pandemic, as project founder Hannah Wallace tried to understand what her neighbors—housed or unhoused—needed most.
The group has opened up to about 70 volunteers, who Cogan-Sant says turn out to serve their unhoused neighbors by “hanging out, eating snacks, and getting folks connected” to what they need. “The world is on fire,” Cogan-Sant says. “Having a strong community and knowing everybody from housed to unhoused, that’s what’s going to make a neighborhood and community successful and tight knit.”
