Claire Cao was only a senior in high school when she saw a vital need in her community — and filled it.
In 2024, the teenager spent her time outside of school volunteering at Blanchet House, a Portland-based nonprofit that serves people experiencing homelessness through food donations, clothing drives, and mental health assistance programs.
As she logged hours as a Blanchet House student ambassador, Cao soon realized how difficult it was for community members to keep track of shelter openings, rotating food service programs, and available mental health resources.
“During one afternoon meal service, I met Dano, an unhoused man who shared his struggles with accessing basic services like food and shelter,” Cao said in a recent press release.
“Left disconnected from essential services, Dano described his struggles of not knowing where to go or which shelters had available beds.”
Combining her love for technology, law, and public policy, Cao pulled available resources into a database and created the ShelterBridge app, which connects users to shelters and services in their area.
“ShelterBridge wasn’t simply inspired by Dano — it was inspired by the realization that access to resources is a fundamental need that we, as a community, can do a better job of providing,” Cao emphasized.
“I wanted to use my skills to build something that could bridge that gap, ensuring that no one falls through the cracks simply because they don’t know where to turn for help.”
In addition to linking users to services in their area, the app also has a rating system similar to Yelp. This system allows people to leave star ratings and reviews on shelters, food services, hotlines, and legal aid.
The ratings not only help users differentiate between services in their area — but they also provide invaluable feedback to the nonprofits, organizations, and government programs that service them.
“We've been asking for an app like this for a number of years now,” Scott Kerman, executive director of Blanchet House, told Portland news station KGW.
In mid-January, Cao won the 2024 Congressional App Challenge in Oregon’s First District for her work with ShelterBridge — outcompeting 12,682 student submissions.
Since the app first launched, Cao and her growing ShelterBridge team — which includes enterprising high schoolers and college students from across the nation — have expanded services to California, Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles, and North Carolina.
“Claire and the team she’s working with deserve all the credit in the world because they're doing something that frankly nobody else has really stepped up to do,” Kerman said.
“To have the kind of technology that we use every day with hotels and other kinds of reservations [to] help people get into safe, supportive and dignified shelter would be a game changer for our community.”
Although the app started as a class project, Cao said ShelterBridge’s success has far surpassed her expectations.
“I do hope to keep it up,” she told Oregon outlet KOIN 6 News, as she looked ahead to college and beyond. “I’ve made a lot of efforts to expand it to other cities as well — and it’s something I can mostly do from a computer or my laptop at home.”
Header images via Blanchet House / ShelterBridge
