SLO’s original homelessness nonprofit is closing after 54 years of service
San Luis Obispo County’s original homelessness response nonprofit is ending its services after a 54-year run.
Grass Roots II, a nonprofit that traces its roots back to its founding in 1972 by San Luis Obispo activist Maxine Lewis, is ending its services after decades of operation and thousands of lives changed.
What started as an annual Thanksgiving dinner for a handful of homeless individuals and seniors hosted by Lewis in her San Luis Obispo home grew under her leadership into the city’s original homelessness nonprofit as the 1970s progressed, offering meals, clothing and guidance on how to get out of homelessness.
Peggy Fowler, who joined the nonprofit a year after its inception and became its executive director following Lewis’ death in 1988, said after more than three decades of operating on shoestring budgets with an almost all-volunteer team, it was time to wind down the organization’s operations.
Fowler said she hopes the work she and the dozens of people who made Grass Roots II what it was sufficiently honored Lewis’ vision, which was fundamentally rooted in compassion for the most vulnerable people in society.
“Maxine had the most incredible charisma, because she saw the heart of an individual, and she treated every single person with the same depth of listening and understanding and caring,” Fowler said.
Grass Roots II: SLO’s orginal homelessness nonprofit
Grass Roots II — named as such because it replaced the original Grassroots nonprofit that operated in San Luis Obispo County in the 1960s — was unlike any other response to homelessness when it first started out, Fowler said.
In an era in which the most common method of aiding unhoused people was “Greyhound therapy” — just buying someone a bus ticket to the next town over — Lewis’ focus on food, clothing and shelter were a breath of fresh air, Fowler said.
Fowler’s daughter Dr. Tia Gilchrist, who grew up watching her mother work with Lewis in the organization’s early days, became a volunteer and eventually a board member in the years after Lewis’ passing, an experience that shaped her view of how to care for unhoused people.
“I wasn’t born till 1975, but Maxine was like a grandmother to me, so I knew her my entire life, and was around during all of those projects,” Gilchrist said. “In the early years, Grass Roots had a physical location where people would come in for referrals and food and clothing, and she spent a lot of time identifying needs and how people fell through the cracks and didn’t get the services they needed.”
In the years following Lewis’ passing, Fowler and Gilchrist did their best to maintain Lewis’ approach, finding their services in even higher demand as visible homelessness grew across the state.
As recently as 2022, Grass Roots II’s annual Thanksgiving meal was still serving more than 2,000 San Luis Obispo County residents, and the nonprofit continued providing food, clothing and shelter referrals to clients through 2024.
But eventually, the strain of keeping the nonprofit running — largely out of garages and the occasional office space when the nonprofit had enough money — took its toll, leading the Grass Roots II board to vote to shut down in February, Gilchrist said.
“Maxine was a wonder and had a great love for her community and an incredible commitment to fighting poverty, and it was an honor to keep carrying on her war,” Gilchrist said. “Times change, things change — it’s time for her agency to sunset, and when we voted, we were certain that we had done our mission.”
Grass Roots’ mission to continue through successor organization
Though the original Grass Roots II is gone, taking with it the people who knew and volunteered with Lewis, its spirit will live on through a new nonprofit bearing a similar name.
SLO Grassroots, a separate nonprofit started in 2025 by former Grass Roots II volunteer Heather Todd, is taking up the mantle and mission of the original organization.
Todd, who’s volunteered with Grass Roots II for around two decades and served on its board for the past five years, said while the “old guard” board won’t be a part of the new nonprofit, many of its volunteers will continue serving with the new Grassroots into the future.
“Everybody else who has been previously involved with Grass Roots II has also stepped down, but I have decided to continue with Maxine Lewis’ legacy,” Todd said. “We are really focusing on going forward and the foundational work that she did in our community, and her long term vision and desire for Grassroots.”
Grass Roots II rented a small space at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church that served as its walk-in pantry and clothing distribution site, though this site was taken over by the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo in February when the old nonprofit moved to dissolve.
While the new Grassroots doesn’t have an office or point of service for its clients, Todd said that’s one of her new nonprofit’s top priorities, along with preparing for its first Thanksgiving dinner.
Todd said because it’s still early days for the new organization, funding is a significant need. Even with donations, providing a Thanksgiving meal for more than 2,000 people can cost north of $10,000, she said.
Finding a home for the nonprofit — most likely by resuming operations at Saint Stephen’s — will also cost at least $1,000 a month, Todd said.
You can support the organization financially at slograssroots.org/donate/ or with your time at slograssroots.org/volunteer-2/.
“Everybody deserves to have this meal,” Todd said. “Everybody deserves to have a roof over their head and food in their bellies and all the things that make us human.”
