Category: SNACC

The Community Care Committee (SNACC) meeting is usually held on the first Thursday of the month at 6:30 p.m. at SE Uplift (3534 SE Main Street). Actual dates, times or locations can vary, so please check the announcements below and our calendar to confirm the exact details for upcoming meetings.

The Committee Co-Chairs are Hannah Wallace and Josette Hodge.

Sunnyside Neighborhood Community Cares (SNACC) Committee Updates

The SNACC committee met in-person again this month (although a few members joined virtually, including two new faces). Welcome to the neighborhood Ignacio and Eleanor! We discussed several updates on meetings our members recently attended, including LNA’s IDEA committee meeting and a community listening session about a possible tiny home village coming soon to Laurelhurst that will serve Indigenous houseless folks. We discussed planning a series of community meetings between our volunteers and guests at the Sunnyside Shower Project (SSP), as well as some fundraising plans to repair damage at the Sunnyside Methodist Church. This brought us to a discussion of our strategic vision for our committee’s work and the future of the SSP. 

June’s SNACC meeting will be devoted to a deeper dive into strategic planning, and we intend to host this meeting outside (location TBD) to make attendance more accessible. This will be the beginning of a multi-step process that engages housed and unhoused neighbors to set intentions for how we can bring our collective vision for this committee and the SSP to life.

May SNACC Meeting

Here is the link to the agenda for our May SNACC meeting this Thursday, May 19th from 6:30-8pm. We will be meeting in person again in Jes’s office at 838 SE 37th Ave. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Sunnyside Neighborhood Community Cares (SNACC) Committee Updates

The SNACC committee met in-person to discuss working with other neighborhood associations to support our houseless neighbors. We are hoping to attend Laurelhurst’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee meeting in May. We also reviewed the needs assessment findings and recommendations. Slides are available here. Jes will be creating a summary of findings and recommendations which will be distributed to shower guests and volunteers. We also continued our conversation about other potential projects. We talked about the gap in services created when Beacon Village moved to Montavilla and a desire to replicate some of what they were doing last year. We hope to discuss with our shower volunteers what capacity people might have to provide rides, assistance navigating services, and other support. We also discussed some potential ways we might optimize use of the showers – expanding to offer a mobile unit, setting aside time for walk-ins and having volunteers doing outreach during shifts to help facilitate people getting to appointments or coming in during walk-in hours. Many of the projects we discussed are long term. We also debriefed Monday’s community listening session on the City budget, which Cole and Jes attended. They each gave testimony asking the City for funding for the Sunnyside Shower Project. We are going to reach out to volunteers to see who has capacity and interest to submit written testimony as well.

Sunnyside Neighborhood Community Cares (SNACC) Committee Updates

In our March meeting the SNACC Committee discussed the Sunnyside Shower Project (SSP) Needs Assessment which was conducted to shine a light on barriers to the service, unmet needs, core strengths, as well as finding paths to move the project forward. We learned that time stood as a barrier for SSP guests with seven requesting more available days and times to shower, three mentioning the difficulty of scheduling appointments, two asking for everyday availability, and many admitting that a time limit of more than the current 30 minutes would be more welcome. Many strengths were accounted for by all participants, including 12 who declared the SSP as their sole support in maintaining their hygiene and personal care needs. Findings are available online HERE. We will be sharing a full report with the community soon, as well as discussing next steps for implementing changes based on these findings.

We also discussed additional projects that the SNACC Committee might consider taking on to provide further aid to the houseless community, such as administrative and paperwork assistance. We plan to continue this conversation in our next meeting on Thursday, April 21st from 6:30-8:00 p.m. at The Formation Lab (838 SE 37th St.). We hope you’ll join us.