Wheels scrape the ground as Joseph Grayson drags his bulging suitcase up the concrete stairs of the inactive Sunnyside Methodist Church. He pauses at the top of the stairs, fixes his luggage, and pokes his head through the propped-open doors.
Three afternoons a week — on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday — the Sunnyside Shower Project offers showers, clothes, and other amenities to Portland’s homeless residents like Grayson. He stops in the foyer, where two volunteers direct him to the basement.
Although the shower slots are taken for the day, he still heads downstairs and starts sorting through the clothing racks. “I haven’t changed out of these clothes since I got … [to Portland] two weeks ago,” he says. “It’s been a truly humbling experience.” Grayson became homeless right when he moved to Portland in late August, when his car got totaled and he couldn’t make his job interview.
Whether it’s just a clean set of clothes or a shower with toiletries and other amenities, the Shower Project aims to meet the needs of people without housing in the SE community. Their scale is relatively small — there are only six 30-minute shower slots each day they’re open — but this allows the program to channel its resources towards supporting its frequent visitors.
“I’d estimate that about 75–85% of the folks we see are regulars,” says Project Director Lindsay Cogan-Sant. Meeting consistently with frequent visitors allows the Shower Project to not only provide showers, clothes, and toiletries, but a support system for its visitors, helping them prepare for job interviews and find stable housing. “We’re actually stockpiling donations for one of our regulars who’s moving in[to stable housing] next week,” says Cogan-Sant.
Brent Lee is one of these regulars. Since getting evicted in 2017, he has consistently visited the Shower Project for their services. Lee even helped build the showers when the Hard Times Supper program held the space, serving weekly meals in the church’s dining hall. “I know this church inside and out,” he says. The Hard Times Supper program was suddenly evicted in 2019, after 38 years, likely due in part to complaints from the community, according to an article from Street Roots.
Homeless services returned to the building in 2021, when the Shower Project was founded by Sunnyside Neighborhood Association Vice President Hannah Wallace. After meeting with homeless people in the neighborhood, she decided the best way to help was to provide showers, and created the organization.
Central to the mission of the Shower Project is the right to be clean. “Hygiene is a human right, not a privilege,” says Cogan-Sant. “Everyone is entitled to feel clean and dignified.”
Like many homeless services, the Shower Project comes with some stigma and skepticism from the community. “I think there’s a lot of pushback against health services, because a lot of people don’t want to encourage houseless people to be in the area,” says volunteer Karl Anderson. “That dynamic is very real,” agrees Cogan-Sant. “We are working hard to … strengthen the relationships between the housed and unhoused folks in the neighborhood.” They also cite the Shower Project’s code of conduct, which Cogan-Sant says almost all the guests are very respectful of.
The Shower Project is fiscally supported by the nonprofit Southeast Uplift, which allows the organization to rent the space. In December 2024, they also received a grant from the Oregon Community Foundation, which allowed them to hire Cogan-Sant as their only paid staff member. The rest of the Shower Project relies on donations and volunteers to meet demand.
Anderson says the reason why he volunteers is not only to help others, but to serve his own interests as a resident of the Sunnyside neighborhood. “I think that [the Shower Project] can be supported from a purely selfish viewpoint,” he says. “If houseless people are supported, then it helps everyone in the neighborhood.”
