How about some good news on the homeless front in Oregon from one of my favorite places near the ocean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stumbled upon the below article in the Yachats News, an outstanding online newspaper on the Central Oregon Coast serving one of the great small town in the state. It is free to read and features outstanding reporting on local issue and is the model for how newspapers stay alive these days. It is also exactly what I want to do one day with a newspaper serving Gold Beach and Port Orford. Please consider donating the paper and the shelter profiled in this story. The effort to help the homeless in Yachats is inspiring and seems like it could be duplicated by other churches around Oregon. So many are just sitting there, practically unused, with tremendous facilities already in place. Well done Yachats!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Homeless shelter at Yachats church moves to full-time, six month schedule to house five individuals<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By CHERYL ROMANO\/Yachats News (October, 29, 2024)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
YACHATS \u2014 After operating just 21 days in its first full season, the emergency cold weather shelter in the parking lot of Yachats Community Presbyterian Church is changing to instead house five local homeless people daily for six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Operators of the Don\u2019s Place shelter plan to open it Nov. 15, shifting away from being a weather-driven service available to the homeless only when temperatures drop below 35 or when heavy rain with cold is forecast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under its new model, the shelter will house a pre-approved group of five individuals each day and night for six months through the end of April. Instead of nightly, weather-driven check-ins and having to vacate the units by 8 o\u2019clock each morning, the residents will have access to their units throughout the day with the ability to occupy them full-time through April 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To take the strain off volunteers, the shelter\u2019s oversight committee is hiring two to three staff to supervise the operation overnight and have added a combination shower\/laundry\/toilet unit next to the shelters for residents to use. Shelter residents will also have access to a vestibule at the back of the church that has a refrigerator, microwave and electric kettle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a presentation Wednesday to the Yachats City Council, committee member and church pastor Bob Barrett said Don\u2019s Place was used for just 21 days last season. The new format will be re-assessed in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe realized we were not open enough (last winter) to make a significant impact,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was not a good use of our resources \u2026 the beds just sat empty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being open only when certain weather thresholds were met was \u201cimpractical and unsustainable for both guests and volunteers,\u201d Barrett said in a news release announcing the changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The changes are designed to \u201cmake it easier for individuals to use the shelter without having to move their belongings back and forth \u2014 and having to go back out into the rain each morning with nowhere to go where they can keep warm and dry,\u201d Barrett said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe shelters in Florence and Eugene have already gone this route \u2014 to being open 24 hours,\u201d Barrett said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Don\u2019s Place committee had \u201csignificant input from the unhoused community, even those who didn\u2019t apply,\u201d said committee member Morgen Brodie of Yachats. Barrett told the council Wednesday the five individuals were to be notified of their selection Friday. All are from or have ties to Yachats or south Lincoln County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not a hub for the unhoused. We just want to do small things well,\u201d said Barbara Loza-Muriera, a committee member and church staffer. \u201cAs we are helping people get their basic needs met, we\u2019re calming their fears; they\u2019re able to become more integrated into the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barrett told YachatsNews he has yet to hear any negative comments about change from the community. He told the council Wednesday, \u201cWe want to do this with as much respect as possible for the community but to also keep people alive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNobody\u2019s calling; there hasn\u2019t been much pushback,\u201d he said. In fact, he said, one or two people who expressed concerns about providing shelter to the homeless have since made donations to the program. \u201cA lot of the fears just haven\u2019t manifested.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In answer to a question Wednesday, city planner Katherine Guenther told the city council that the church did not need the city\u2019s permission or a conditional use permit to change the operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new operating model \u201cprioritizes local unhoused residents from the Yachats and south County area,\u201d according to the presentation to the city council. Barrett said last year volunteers noticed that the Yachats shelter attracted some homeless from out of the area, preferring its individual sleeping units over Lincoln County\u2019s larger, mass shelter in Newport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This winter Don\u2019s Place will not host any \u201cdrop-in\u201d guests, the committee says, and the homeless passing through Yachats seeking shelter will be redirected to the Newport facility. To get there, the committee may issue bus tickets or possibly use a county van.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Don\u2019s Place committee operates in cooperation with YCPC, which hosts the shelter, as it does the Yachats Food Pantry. Only one church member serves on the committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The paid staff hired to supervise the operation from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. nightly are \u201call local candidates that have experience working with the unhoused,\u201d said Loza-Muriera. Candidates are being sourced through a temporary employment agency in Newport that is also used by the Newport shelter to hire staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barrett estimated that the total staff cost for the season will be $30,000. Electricity and water costs are estimated to be $400 monthly. The new shower\/laundry unit costs just under $50,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the shelter\u2019s funding came from the Housing Authority of Lincoln County, in addition to private donations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The five prefabricated shelter units sited in the church parking lot were originally funded by a $70,000 city allocation from an unused pandemic community loan fund, a $20,000 grant from Lincoln County and $15,000 donated privately. Each insulated, 8-by-8-foot shelter has light and heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project is named after Don Dougherty, a longtime and well-regarded local homeless man who died in 2022 after being found unresponsive in his car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How about some good news on the homeless front in Oregon from one of my favorite places near the ocean? I stumbled upon the below article in the Yachats News, an outstanding online newspaper on the Central Oregon Coast serving one of the great small town in the state. It is free to read and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9206,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9208,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9205\/revisions\/9208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}