Portland Mayor Keith Wilson will be 80 beds closer to his goal of offering 1,500 overnight-only shelter beds by Dec. 1 when a new shelter opens next week at the old St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church on Southwest 13th Avenue and Clay Street.
The Episcopal Archdiocese sold the stately, if slightly down at the heel, church building to nonprofit homeless services provider Operation Nightwatch in February for $1. The city then contracted with Agape Village, a service provider associated with the Church of the Nazarene in Southeast Portland, to run the overnight shelter in the space.
“Typically, overnight shelter is our first point of contact” with homeless people, said Krizti Margraves, the St. Stephen’s shelter manager and an employee of Agape Village. She said her organization’s mission was “to love our neighbors well” and hoped that providing overnight shelter would help curb the “relationship poverty” she said is suffered by many people living outside…