Across Portland, reusable building materials are waiting in garages, basements, and workshops for someone who needs them today.
What happens when climate action leaders from across the country come together to examine the future of reuse? Reflections from the Levine Impact Lab Cohort Retreat on systems change, infrastructure, and the next chapter of the reuse movement.
What does it really look like to keep materials in motion? Take a tour with Ella Rose and experience ReBuilding Center from the inside—then look a little closer at what makes it all possible.
Ella Rose has worked at the ReBuilding Center for 21 years. Through changes in buildings, staff, and seasons, she has remained a constant presence. She welcomes people in and sends them back out a little more confident than when they arrived.
Reuse begins in the community, when someone chooses to donate instead of discard. From there, materials arrive at RBC—either dropped off on site or picked up by our drivers—and enter a carefully managed flow that turns generosity into shared resources.
If you ask Matt Elias, our Online Sales Specialist, what it’s like to run the ReBuilding Center’s e-commerce operation, he’ll smile, shake his head in amazement, and say the same thing he says every single week:
“Every day is Christmas.”
And he means it.
When I first walked through the ReBuilding Center, I felt something electric in the air—a hum of creativity, possibility, and purpose woven through every salvaged door, reclaimed beam, and shared conversation in the aisles. It wasn’t just a store. It was a living demonstration of what a circular economy looks like when a community chooses to reuse, repair, and reimagine together.
With deepest gratitude for her service to the organization, the Board of Directors of the ReBuilding Center announces that Jackie Kirouac-Fram will be stepping down from her role as Executive Director later this summer. Since 2019, Jackie has led the ReBuilding Center through significant growth and evolution – deepening our roots and stewarding us through challenging times.
Supporting local community reuse is more important than ever. As sustainable programs are defunded and environmental protections are unwound, supporting local efforts to keep materials out of the landfill is vital. Monthly donations keep us in the climate fight.
Hey ReBuilders! As we enter one of the largest spending weekends of the year, we are reflecting on what sustainability means to us.
At the ReBuilding Center, we’ve had a year full of positive impact, keeping usable materials out of the waste stream, empowering our community to choose repair over replacement, and maintaining everyday affordable prices on reclaimed materials.
Hey ReBuilders! As we enter one of the largest spending weekends of the year, we are reflecting on what sustainability means to us.
At the ReBuilding Center, we’ve had a year full of positive impact, keeping usable materials out of the waste stream, empowering our community to choose repair over replacement, and maintaining everyday affordable prices on reclaimed materials.
I love Earth Day, but I think it has the wrong name. Some awful suggestions to consider:
People Day | Community Day | Day of Togetherness
I am obviously not a branding professional! But the name Earth Day conveys a focus on the planet, when what we really need to focus on is how the solutions to our climate crisis are going to need all of us to put community (and humanity!) at the center of our choices, every day.
What’s one of the most commonly encountered types of reused items in the United States? Cars! So, why do people reuse cars so frequently and willingly in a country where encouragement to purchase new items is everywhere? Are people buying used cars because they care deeply about avoiding the resource extraction required to make a new car? Is the climate crisis fueling the used car market? Hardly.
Housing in Portland is increasingly unaffordable. Even if you manage to purchase a home, your mortgage eats up a large portion of your income, making it challenging to do the repairs and improvements that transform a house into a safe and healthy home. This is an economic issue, but it’s also an issue of education and empowerment.
Want to know what we have planned for 2024? Of course you do! We will launch our outreach programming! We will learn from the pilot Home Repair for All program and welcome a second, larger cohort of Home Repair for All participants in spring 2024. We will extend our Open Shop hours and open time slots to the public!
Last year at this time, we wrote to you about all we had accomplished and what we were planning for 2023. Your response was so enthusiastic, we’re doing it again! With your support as financial donors, material donors, customers, and students, we more than accomplished what we said we would do in 2023
When you donate materials to ReBuilding Center, you make it possible for someone to fix, build, or create something that will bring them safety, joy, peace of mind, income…the list goes on, because there are endless, inspiring ways our community members make use of your materials.
Creating space for women and BIPOC folks is one way to encourage their participation in the tool and trades training. But when we began offering BIPOC-only classes, we were found in violation of the Civil Rights Act. Essentially, we were accused of discrimination. This is what happens when the law lags justice.
ReBuilding Center is a store unlike any other. We’re funkier, more inclusive, more joyful, more helpful, and more equitable than most other retail stores, in large part because we are a nonprofit social enterprise. What the heck is a social enterprise? And how are we a nonprofit if we have a store? Great questions! We have answers.
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.
At ReBuilding Center, equity, accessibility, home repair education, and waste reduction are pillars of climate justice. But what holds us together is our culture of scrappiness and joy in what we do. Creative reuse, be it in art, craft, or design, is a reflection of this ethos, of our belief that sustainable living can be fun as well as responsible.
As a climate justice organization that works our tails off to reduce the climate effects of wasteful production and consumption by making reuse and repair both super cool and super affordable, we are excited!
On July 11th, ReBuilding Center partnered with the African American Alliance for Homeownership (AAAH) for our seventh annual Day of Service event. Over 40 community volunteers assisted five Black homeowners throughout North and Northeast Portland neighborhoods!
Becoming a ReBuilding Center Member means that not only do you get a bunch of cool new ReBuilding Center benefits, you get to support housing justice through the newest aspect of our Membership program: Community Membership, supported by members like you!
