Teen Center

Most do not have the option of returning home, often have experienced multiple foster care placements, and have been unable to succeed in transitional housing or residential treatment programs. Many have been primarily responsible for their own care for years, struggling to survive, often in dangerous and self-destructive ways.

What We Offer

Preble Street Teen Center is the hub of services for homeless and runaway youth, providing immediate access and an acclaimed service coordination model. As the core component of Preble Street Teen Services, the Teen Center helps to meet immediate needs — providing warmth and safety, nutritious meals, clothing, and crisis intervention — while building  positive relationships with young people, enhancing their self-esteem and offering them the opportunity to develop life skills that promote stability and independence.

The Teen Center empowers youth to make healthy choices and to plan healthy, hopeful futures through:

• Street outreach to encourage youth to leave the streets and to be safe
• Basic shelter services that provide a safe alternative to the streets
• Transition back to their homes or another safe living situation, including residential care and independent living
• Casework services to help youth identify and achieve their goals for health care, employment, mental health and/or substance use counseling, legal assistance, housing, etc.

At the Teen Center, Preble Street and its collaborative partners provide integral service components — Day One for substance use and mental health services, the City of Portland Public Health for health services, and Portland Adult Education Street Academy for educational services — and work with other youth service providers throughout the community.

More than 200 youth visit the Teen Center each year, and despite setbacks and disappointments, every time one of them takes a life-affirming step forward — begins a GED course, agrees to counseling, or finds someone to trust — we have kept our promise to them.