St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker began in September 2003 aspiring to follow in the tradition of hospitality offered by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, using Mt. 25:31-44 as a guide in practicing the works of mercy. We are committed to active nonviolence, simple living, and prayer. The community of lay men and women staff welcomes guests off the street to live with them in the men’s and women’s houses of hospitality located in downtown South Bend at 515 and 518 S. St. Joseph St. There is no set length of stay.  

The Catholic Worker Movement was founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin with a vision for implementing the Gospels and Catholic social teaching. Guided by the principles of Communitarianism and Personalism, Catholic Workers are committed to serving those who are on the margins of society. We are devoted to working towards decentralized societies, a green revolution, manual labor, voluntary poverty, and nonviolence along with opposition of all war efforts.

 The St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker also offers hospitality at Our Lady of the Road, located at 744 S. Main St., two blocks from the community houses. Anyone can come to take showers, do laundry, have breakfast, rest and enjoy conversation with one another. Our Lady of the Road is open Friday and Saturday, 8 - 11am and Sunday, 8 - 10am. We also celebrate Mass together every Wednesday evening at 7:30 pm in our Oratory Chapel of the Holy Spirit at Our Lady of the Road.

Our Lady of the Road, the sponsoring organization for Motels4Now, has developed deep roots in the South Bend community over the last eighteen years, primarily through operating a free laundromat cafe and building connections with local religious groups, student groups, and voluntary organizations, and historically has mediated spaces of encounter between people of a wide variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. People all across the political spectrum have joined in our work. The conversations that OLR programming has facilitated led to our decision to start Motels4Now. We have an ethos of personal responsibility and abundance, and through our longstanding work in the community, we have developed the connections, the history, and the talent to take on the work of creating a place of safety and respite for our neighbors. The personalist tradition out of which Motels4Now grew teaches that each person who participates in a community, whether as a guest, a volunteer, or a benefactor, brings both gifts and means. Without money for housing, we poured coffee for our unhoused neighbors and handed out towels for showers for many years at Our Lady of the Road. This commitment allowed us to develop the deep, trusting relationships which have enabled us to successfully start a housing-first program in our county.

The crisis of the pandemic revealed the crisis of homelessness. Utilizing a housing-first model that has proven effective in cities across the country, we have witnessed transformation both in the lives of individuals and the way that our community thinks about the problem of chronic homelessness.