Sisters of the Road may be closed for now, but through this closure the organization hopes to emerge a stronger operation
Bronwyn Jones Carver is a member of Street Roots’ MoJo program. MoJo is composed of vendors learning about journalism, covering life on the streets and writing about issues important to our community.
A downtown Portland institution for people on the streets recently closed, though it may not be permanent.
Sisters of the Road cafe has served food to Portlanders in need since 1979. It was and is a safe space for people to sit down and dine on healthy food and be able to barter or pay a nominal dollar amount in order to eat.
Theirs has always been a mission “to alleviate the hunger of isolation in an atmosphere of non-violence and gentle personalism that nurtures the whole individual while seeking systemic solutions that reach the roots of homelessness and poverty to end them forever,” as stated on their website.
Dara Snyder, Sisters of the Road executive director, talks with a sense of urgency when discussing Sisters’ mission and the current closure of the cafe and halting of all food service.
Snyder spoke about the closure as something that will be temporary. She did not state any date regarding their opening.
“While Sisters is not permanently closing, Sisters is going through a challenging time and taking a strategic pause to make sure when Sisters reopens, it is in a sustainable and supported way,” Snyder said.
Art Rios Sr., the board of directors president for the nonprofit, said the closure of the cafe happened at a weird time — winter during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
”It was hard, as board members, to (close the cafe),” Rios said. “It needed to be safe for everyone and the working capacity of doing two or three peoples’ jobs was very, very hard.”
The closure of the cafe is a multi-month reorganization to address structural issues within Sisters, mostly stemming from ongoing staff shortages, according to Rios.
Snyder said staffing issues affected Sisters’ ability to staff the cafe in accordance with their mission.
“It is more complicated to understand and address the underlying reasons for (staff shortages) and other chronic issues — that is what Sisters are endeavoring to do at this time,” Snyder said. “The cafe has been the crown jewel of our operations and must also ensure the fulfilling of our mission by nurturing the whole individual and attending to things like our culture, practices and relationships.”
There is no set reopening date at this time and each board member spoken to had different numbers in mind. The closure could be as little as two to three months or as long as six months, depending on how soon the board addresses the systemic issues plaguing them.
The closure is not only a decision that affects the board, but also the downtown homeless community. Philip Fry, a long-time patron of the cafe, said what it offered is irreplaceable.
“I have been eating at Sisters since, like what, ‘95,” Fry said. “I have never been turned away. Even if I didn’t have the money to buy the lunch, they would let me bus the tables or help with the end of day chores. Whatever was needed, I did it.”
Fry lamented at the closure of Sisters as it is not only a place he can eat regardless of the money in his pocket, but also be treated with respect. Fry said just speaking with staff at Sisters helped turn his mood around when he was having a hard day.
Robert, another patron who declined to provide his last name, said he has eaten on and off at the cafe for a long time.
“The food is always made there,” Robert said. “They don’t bring in the stuff. They cook in-house so it tastes homemade. It isn’t always great, but I am grateful for the food and eat it, at least most of it.”
Gratitude seems to be the overall sentiment of those who patronized Sisters.
People are grateful for the meals and services provided by the organization. With the many years Sisters has served homeless Portlanders and low-income communities, Sisters is a fixture in the Portland landscape. There are other places people with little or no money can find a meal, but the cafe offers a unique opportunity as a more traditional style restaurant, rather than a soup kitchen or bag lunch.
There seems to be a shift within the Sisters organization to what they want to look like when they reopen the cafe. Rios, who has been around since the 1990s, looks at the numbers of those served.
“We were serving anywhere between two to three hundred people, sometimes four hundred depending on the folks that worked throughout the day or came and bartered and those standing in lines, to compare to now during Covid, which has been a little bit harder, but we were still able to be open,” Rios said. “(We) served between 75 to 150 people still.”
Rios is hopeful the cafe will reopen sooner rather than later.
“I am someone who sits at this table with lived experiences, 30 years myself on the streets,” Rios said. “I have been part of a community of Sisters, a past staff member with Sisters and now I am a board member with Sisters, and I am the president. I brought a lot of information to the folks that sit around this table, and I have a lot to give to the staff and (I) say ‘how can we work together as a board and staff to achieve some of these goals.’”
When Snyder speaks of the future of Sisters, she is reflective.
“A lot has changed at Sisters over our 42-year history,” Snyder said. “The ongoing pandemics, including racism, requires us to change and adapt, and growing social disparities require that we sharpen our focus on genuine systemic change, the root cause of houselessness and other systems of oppression. Sisters must meet these challenging times in an intentional and strategic way. We can position ourselves for the road ahead by ensuring we are entrenched in our philosophies, practicing in alignment with our values and grounded in our mission and community.”
In the end, Sisters needs to reemerge as a whole organization in agreement with each other and the mission and philosophies that are the bedrock of Sisters of the Road. The environment Snyder looks at is just becoming more complex. Homelessness has grown nationwide, food insecurities have grown to cover what was the middle class and now, more than ever, there is work to be done. With a strong and longtime presence in Portland, Sisters of the Road should be able to adjust, morph and move forward with intentional practice.
Ending poverty, hunger, isolation, racism and so many other ills of society, Sisters of the Road’s narrative around who is best qualified to do this work is expressed on its website:
“At the core of Sisters’ community organizing lies our belief that the people most qualified to change oppressive systems are those with lived experience of that oppression.”
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