Street Books

Mission

🚲📚 Street Books is a bicycle-powered and place-based street library committed to providing books, resources, connection and working toward systemic solutions 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

🫶At Street Books, we create space on our city streets for conversations about books and life. We work with more than 30 community-based partner organizations and 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 library patrons’ names and reading preferences, and everyone can 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.⛺👓

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 5 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 4 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

🩵The first 20 donors who give $100 or more will receive a copy of Keeping the Flame of Love and Creativity Alive, a book of oral histories from Street Books and Portland City Archives. These will be mailed in January (unless other arrangements are made).

🩵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) the first 5 donors who donate $50 or more will receive a $25 gift card to the Tin Shed Garden Cafe.

Gift Matching

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

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, David Naimon, Omar El Akkad, Lydia Kiesling, Annie Bloom's Books, Tin Shed Garden Cafe, Kristine Evans, Ground Score Association, XRAY FM, Street Roots, Outside In, New Avenues for Youth and PAW Team. 

Thank you for generously partnering with Street Books for the 2026 Give!Guide and for all you do for our communities and to make the world better for everyone!