Healthy, affordable, sustainable housing must be at the core of climate justice, and home repair moves us toward that goal. So, in 2023, we are going to start giving some of these reusable materials away!
With your support, we accomplished a lot in 2022! We thought you would appreciate a Progress Report on how far we’ve come!
Last year, we at ReBuilding Center shared how we can build on our strengths to help interrupt the environmental, racial, and economic injustice that continue to fuel our climate crisis. We invited you to join us in this work, and you did. Thank you!
Joyful shopping and learning experiences make ReBuilding Center a special place – for our guests, our students, our customers, and our staff, from finding exactly what you’ve been looking for (or didn’t know you needed!) to learning the practical magic of home repair. Unfortunately, it’s not always so joyful. As a result, we developed our Inclusion Policy, ensuring an environment where everyone feels safe, welcomed, and respected
Everyone who wants to learn is welcome at ReBuilding Center! Recognizing that cost may be a factor for some, we prioritized keeping our class prices low. As of November 1, we will be raising prices by $5 per class hour to cover the true costs of hosting in-person classes, to develop new classes, and to purchase safe and reliable shop tools. However, to maintain and EXTEND access to all, ReBuilding Center is proud to introduce our NEW Community Membership program.
People will be coming back to the office after more than two years of remote work, which means teams across America are going to be relearning how to be together in person, how to make small talk, how to hang out in an office environment, and how to be okay with these changes. It’s going to be weird.
Believe it or not, ReBuilding Center can help.
ReBuilding Center is excited to announce a new program to help BIPOC homeowners and homeowners with disabilities repair and retain their homes. No one should lose their home because they cannot afford to make repairs, so we’ve partnered with the Environmental Protection Agency and the City of Portland to help make critical home repairs possible for folx!
This year, we at ReBuilding Center grew to see ourselves as a climate justice organization. Since our founding nearly 25 years ago, ReBuilding Center has prided itself on the amount of material we keep out of landfills. But until recently, we didn’t talk about how reuse and repair can be tools for justice.
For decades, the decision to buy new has been made ever easier by cheap goods with hidden social and environmental costs. We feel the true costs of this more everyday, as our climate worsens, our landfills grow, and our air and water become increasingly polluted. As individuals, we long to answer the question: “what can we do?”
The practice of reuse and repair is a practice of sharing. It inspires a sense of interconnectedness, a feeling that we are all part of a continuum, creating something new together. We celebrate this joyful reciprocity as an important path toward equity, justice, and caring. This is the heart of COMMUNITY.
At ReBuilding Center, our materials re-vision the past into a piece of tomorrow. When we choose to donate rather than discard, when we choose to renew rather than buy new, we choose to be part of a community of makers and sharers. EVERYONE is welcome, so we keep prices affordable, but the simple truth is that barriers to reuse remain.
Materials are the message. For nearly 25 years, we’ve championed waste diversion and reuse, taking in material donations from our community (thank you!) and circulating them back into the hands of builders, makers, and DIYers. Over time, we began to ask ourselves, how can we best serve people in our community?
Today’s Finds is a weekly collection of some of our favorite items from the ReBuilding Center store! Are you signed up to receive the Finds via e-mail? Sign up below or, if you already receive our newsletter, update your preferences in MailChimp.
Did you see an item on the Finds and claimed it for your own? We love seeing your reuse projects! Share with us at info@rebuildingcenter.org.
July 27th Finds
July 21st Finds
July 13th Finds
All items are subject to availability.
We cannot guarantee that the items shown here will be available when you arrive. Call our store with any questions: 503-331-1877
People have been reusing and repairing things forever. Like, literally since the dawn of humankind. But over the past century, big business has taught most Americans that new is best, reuse is only if necessary, sharing is weird, and repair is just too difficult.
As a result, we consume and throw away more things now than ever before, depleting the Earth of precious resources, depriving people of precious land, and locating our ever-growing waste and pollution in ever-closer proximity to BIPOC communities and communities with low incomes.
For 24 years, ReBuilding Center has helped people re-learn that reuse and repair are not only possible, but they’re also joyous, self-sustaining, and political practices.
Making reclaimed materials and repair skills available and affordable creates economic resilience for people with low incomes, reduces the extraction of natural resources, and helps create an alternative economy that challenges the scarcity mindset that capitalism and racism rely on.
We fundraise with our community because we strive to keep our prices as low as possible, and we dream of a day when we’ve raised enough money in donations and memberships to allow us to just give away most of our materials. That would be amazing, and a significant example of the type of sharing economy that we are working toward. We're small, but we can help lead the way.
You can join us in making this dream a reality by shopping with us, donating materials to us, taking classes with us, volunteering with us, or becoming a ReBuilding Center member. Your gifts of time, talent, and financial resources will fuel our work toward climate justice. Thank you!
Available: Immediately
Lease: One-Year, potential for renewal
Rent: $1,500/month regular rate, $1,350/month non-profit rate
What’s included:
452 sq. feet
Two offices
Access directly from Mississippi Ave. or from within ReBuilding Center office lobby
Secured access
Includes utilities & internet (triple net)
2x month cleaning
Shared building lobby open to public Monday-Friday
Access to shared conference room & fully stocked breakroom/kitchen
Bathroom access
Large windows that open
This space would be great as a small office or studio, meeting space for remote workers, a small artisan workshop, and so much more. Furnished & unfurnished options are available.
For more information, please call Jennifer at 503-542-5052
or email rental@rebuildingcenter.org.
By: Jackie Kirouac-Fram, Executive Director
Today is Earth Day and, in honor of the day, I’ve spent some time reflecting on how terrible this “holiday” has become. There. I said it.
Over the past 20 years, Earth Day has evolved so far away from the movement its organizers envisioned as they worked alongside the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, borrowing tactics like civil disobedience, mass action, and a focus on the impact of environmental degradation on people, and particularly on Black people.
Those early organizers knew that climate justice is bound with racial justice. Racism upholds the extractive, exploitive elements of our current economic system, which prioritizes consumption and endless growth while ensuring that the outcomes disproportionately affect Black, Brown, and Indigenous populations.
Compare that to our era’s version of Earth Day, which has largely been hijacked by corporate entities cashing in on our guilt about climate change and what feels like an inability to do anything about it. Buy this metal lunchbox! Buy this green cleaner! But our climate crisis will not be solved by consumer product purchase choices, especially when a focus on consumption is actually at the root of the crisis.
So what can you do this Earth Day to step outside the mainstream and participate in the climate justice movement?
First, listen to this fantastic episode of How To Save A Planet, about the value of individual action vs. policy change and corporate regulation. (Spoiler: it’s all important!)
Second, consider what you can do, what changes you can make, and how you’ll talk to others about it. By talking to others about changes you’re making (eating less meat, biking more, installing solar, insulating your attic) you can multiply the limited impact of your actions by making them contagious.
Third, learn more about how climate justice is linked to racial justice. Some very smart people have written about this if you want to dig deeper, including Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. of Hip Hop Caucus, and Elizabeth Yeampierre of the Climate Justice Alliance.
At ReBuilding Center, we see our work as providing countless opportunities for people to see how their individual actions (choosing to reuse or repair, instead of buying new) can have an impact on the climate crisis and racial justice. Our work marks one path toward an anti-racist economy that is based in sharing and abundance and equity, rather than the racist strategies of extraction and exploitation. This might feel like heavy stuff for a reuse organization, but it’s what guides our work internally. We envision a world in which reuse is the norm, people are valued over profit, and solutions to our most pressing challenges come from the communities most impacted. We try to live our version of Earth Day every day, with the support of our community of customers, material donors, students, volunteers, and members. We’d love for you to join us on this journey.
It’s almost Earth Day! That means it’s time for our Spring Members and Materials Drive!
What is a Members and Materials Drive? It’s your opportunity to join us in making the most of our planet’s limited resources through our model of reuse and repair as elements of a new, non-extractive economy.
There are two great ways to join us:
Become a Member! Our Salvage Supporter Membership is your opportunity to build a new economy with us through an annual donation, starting at $50, while receiving some cool benefits. With our members’ support, we are able bring in more salvaged items, keep our same affordable prices, and provide 150+ home repair skills classes per year. If you have the means to support our work through membership, now is the time to become a Salvage Supporter!
Additionally, if you become a Salvage Supporter during our membership drive (through the end of Earth Day April 22), you'll receive these additional benefits:
a FREE download of our popular Intro to Homeowner Tools online seminar
10% off any membership (ex. receive a $25 discount on the $250 level membership)!
You can also...
Donate Materials! Everything we sell in our store is donated by our generous community. Spring is a time for cleaning and so it’s a great time to remind you of what we accept and encourage you to bring it down to us or call for a free pick-up of large items. Have a door or some tools you’re not using? Check out our material acceptance guidelines. We give new use to your unused items!
Reuse and repair are a means of preserving and sharing resources, and our work is to make them accessible to all. We couldn’t do what we do without our Salvage Supporter members and material donors!
ReBuilders accomplished so much in 2020! Despite the circumstances, we were still able bring in more salvaged items, keep our same affordable prices, and provide in-person and online repair and skills classes.
What are we up to in 2021?
Renovating our store to provide new, accessible bathrooms and a new education shop
Forming a reuse collaborative to share a unified vision with policy makers across the region
Supporting our community by providing even more free and reduced-cost home repair classes
...and so much more!
How did we make use of support from our customers, donors, members, students, and volunteers last year? Check it out!
Today’s Finds is a weekly collection of some of our favorite items from the ReBuilding Center store! Are you signed up to receive the Finds via e-mail? Sign up below or, if you already receive our newsletter, update your preferences in MailChimp.
Did you see an item on the Finds and claimed it for your own? We love seeing your reuse projects! Share with us at info@rebuildingcenter.org.
All items are subject to availability.
We cannot guarantee that the items shown here will be available when you arrive. Call our store with any questions: 503-331-1877
Hey ReBuilders! We're here to chat about Give!Guide, but first, let's check in.
This is a heavy time. The ReBuilding Center is a store, but it's always been much more than that. We strive to be a place in the community where folks can come and be seen and be heard. In the warehouse, in the Education shop, in the offices. We hope you're taking care of yourself, to the best of your ability. Whether that's going for a walk, taking a shower, listening to a fun song on your way to work, cooking a meal, or playing a game with your kids. Or even distracting yourself by reading this blog post.
To transition, let's take a collective deep breath in and out. Innnnnnnn. And. Ouuuutttttttt. Okay, now onto Give!Guide!
The 2020 Give!Guide is here! We recognize that 2020 has been no easy year, for us, for our community, for our nation. There’s a lot of work to do. This year’s Give!Guide is the biggest ever, including 174 Portland organizations that are committed to doing this work. You can learn more about Give!Guide here.
How can you support the ReBuilding Center through Give!Guide?
Give HERE to the ReBuilding Center between now and December 31.
Our first 20 donors will receive a FREE download of our popular Intro to Electrical Theory class. All donors will receive a 10% off coupon to the Community Cycling Center and a 20% coupon to both Free Geek and our store. Yay reuse!
But wait, there's more!
If you donate on Big Give Days (like today!), you'll be entered to win HUGE Give!Guide-sponsored prizes like food packages, shopping expeditions, spectacular getaways, VIP entertainment packages, and more. If you give $10 or more to any nonprofit, you could win a $500 shopping spree to Patagonia Portland.
Are you in?
Every dollar you donate from now until December 31 will help the ReBuilding Center keep our prices low, our store full of useful reclaimed treasures, and our education programming meeting the repair skills needs of our community.
We thank you in advance for your ongoing support; without it, we couldn't do what we do every day.
P.S. The ReBuilding Center is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, so all of your donations are tax-deductible.
Teaming up for the fifth annual Day of Service, the ReBuilding Center and the African American Alliance for Home Ownership (AAAH) came together with volunteers to provide home repairs to a long-time homeowner in Northeast Portland. Although we were not able to serve as many homeowners as previous years, the day was just as meaningful.
Over the past few decades, the Boise neighborhood of North Portland—part of the historic heart of Portland’s Black community in the broader Albina neighborhood—has seen drastic changes to its population due in part to rising home prices and property taxes, resulting in displacement of many of the neighborhood’s Black homeowners. Surrounding neighborhoods have experienced similar changes.
The ReBuilding Center’s mission is to build community resilience by making affordable reclaimed home improvement materials and repair skills accessible to all, so people can afford to sustainably repair their homes. AAAH’s goal is help ensure home retention for existing African American homeowners in the Interstate Corridor. The Day of Service compliments the goals and missions of both organizations by providing critical home repairs to long-time homeowners in Northeast Portland, helping them continue to live safely and comfortably in their own homes. This year, we were able to serve Annie, a homeowner in Northeast Portland. Repairs included removal and repair of staircases and overgrown yard debris clean-up. While tasks were relatively small, they make a huge difference.
Annie and her son, Michael.
Annie has lived in her Northeast Portland home for over 50 years. She has raised two children in the home, and now lives there with her husband, Ross. Annie is 96 years old and grew up in a small town outside of Houston, Texas. Annie is a lover of stories, and spent some time reflecting on her experience growing up in the South and being a Black woman living in Portland. The common thread of her stories is one of heart and resilience. Annie has spent her retired life volunteering for organizations, such as Self Enhancement, Inc., and attends church regularly. She looks forward to returning to these activities once it is safe to do so.
Year after year, the Day of Service exceeds our expectations of what can be accomplished in one big day of repairs and community building. A huge thank you to every volunteer and organization involved this year. The 2020 Day of Service was sponsored by Consolidated Community Credit Union.
And finally, check out more photos from the day!
