Street Books

Mission

🚲📚 Street Books is a mobile, bicycle-powered and place-based street library committed to providing connection, resources, and advocacy for people living outside or at the margins in Portland, Oregon. We cultivate mutual relationships rooted in dignity and autonomy by showing up every week, year after year, in all kinds of weather, all around the city, to meet people where they are. 🩵

Bottom Line for Portland

🫶At Street Books, we create space on our city streets for conversations about books and life. We lend books and provide support with no fees or fines and no need for an ID or address. In addition to good books, we offer reading glasses, harm reduction, and other survival supplies. Our friendly street librarians know our regular visitors' names and reading preferences, and patrons find their interests and lives reflected in all that we offer. Street Books engages our whole community while working for solutions and challenging harmful narratives and systems. We believe it is vital to include the stories, ideas, and voices of people who have experienced houselessness in creating any effective solution to ending houselessness. 🏙️🏘️⛺👓

Quote

“I was living outdoors when I first found Street Books, and I checked out maybe three books a week. I probably got over 50 books that first season. I’d sit down at the waterfront on that bench and pass the time of day. It really, really beats sitting around doing nothing, and it most definitely beats sitting around feeling bad.” – Ben Hodgson, Street Books board member, street librarian, library patron, author.
 
“Street Books is about imagining a different kind of interaction between people who don’t know one another.” –Diana Rempe, Street Books Community Outreach Coordinator
 
“Street Books has helped me stay clean and sober for more than 4 years. It is a positive activity and I’m helping my community. Now I get paid and have a regular shift every Friday.” – Kerry Robison, longtime library patron and Street Books street librarian for 3 years.
 
“It’s precisely because this isn’t a mechanism of day-to-day survival that it matters so much.” – Author Omar El Akkad

Incentives

🩵 All donations at all levels will be matched 1:1 up to $10,000 by a generous group of donors. A $100 donation will grow to $200 and $10 becomes $20! Help us meet our match - thank you!

🩵 Smith Teamaker will donate a $5 credit to purchase delicious goodies of your choice on SmithTea.com for the first 100 people who donate more than $50 (up to $99) AND they will up that to a $10 credit to the first 50 people who donate $100 or more!

🩵 On 11/1 the first 8 donors who give $50 or more will be offered a $20 Annie Bloom's Books Gift Card.

🩵 On Giving Tuesday (12/2) for people who donate $400 or more to Street Books through Give!Guide, Street Books board member, 2025 National Book Award finalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, MacArthur Fellow winner, and beloved author, Karen Russell, will mail you three (3) signed books of your choice.  *We will contact you for your choice of which 3 books you would like.

Partner(s)

Thank you to all of the generous and committed donors providing a matching gift for this campaign. We appreciate you! Many warm thanks to the following stellar partners: Karen Russell, Annie Blooms Books, Smith Teamaker, Elizabeth Haidle, Mother Foucault Bookshop, Obon Shokudo, Bold Work Collaborative, X-RAY FM,  Ground Score Association, Street Roots, Hygiene 4 All, Portland Literacy Council, Write Around Portland, and Rose Haven. Thank you for your generously partnering with Street Books for the 2025 Give!Guide and for all you do for our communities and to make the world better for everyone!