We are a domestic community at the intersection of a Catholic Worker house of hospitality to those in housing need, and a public household serving as node for neighborhood-based social, economic, and intellectual life. As our supporting non profit, In My Backyard (IMBY), we invite neighbors and friends to support this work, and support other nodes of these commitments.

The Catholic Worker

Our Christian commitment is reflected in our character as a Catholic Worker community of hospitality, offering:

1. Supported, community-house living in our 2-house community (made up of the Simone Weil House and the Dorothy Day House, both on NE 15th), usually for folks who were camping in the orbit of St Francis Dining Hall or who come to us as an international refugee; and

2. Weekly open-invitation meals and “open house” days, welcoming both friends neighbors wanting community, and friends and neighbors in need of respite, food, shower, and laundry facility. Recently, we also began hosting a PDX Free Fridge, which facilitates the sharing of food and other resources among folks in our neighborhood.

A Public Household

Our philosophy is reflected in our character as a public household: extending an open invitation and serving a public purpose whose functions - normally associated with commercial or institutional spaces - are shaped instead by traditional household characteristics such as personal belonging, shared responsibility, and robust home economy - all of which guests are invited into. This life of subsidiarity - handling the world’s challenges in the particular and personal before the abstract and aggregated - invites us into several commitments, to: relationship/responsibility scale in economy, sympathetic understanding in political strife, communal and personal responsibility in the current housing crisis, and responsible use of the natural resources we steward. So doing, Weil House intends to live the microcosm, the seeds of a small but encompassing way of life, “rooted and grounded in love”, yet, we believe, adequate to explore “the breadth, and height, and length, and depth” (Eph 3:17-18) of life in Christ.

Our Non-Profit

Our vision is advanced by the 501c3 non profit organization supporting Simone Weil House, In My Backyard (IMBY), which supports the commitments of Simone Weil House as they apply here and elsewhere, especially to parishes and other Catholic Worker houses acting as nodes of IMBY / Room for Christ hospitality, and relationship-based, sustainable, theologically grounded economics.

Simone Weil House
Catholic Worker & Public Household
5311 NE 15th Ave
Portland, OR 97211

Email: simoneweilhouse@gmail.com

Website: Simone Weil House

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SimoneWeilHouse

Consider contacting the Enid Catholic Worker to volunteer your time or to participate in their community life.