Some Good News From Yachats

Readers:

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 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!

Homeless shelter at Yachats church moves to full-time, six month schedule to house five individuals

By CHERYL ROMANO/Yachats News (October, 29, 2024)

YACHATS — 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.

Operators of the Don’s 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.

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’clock each morning, the residents will have access to their units throughout the day with the ability to occupy them full-time through April 30.

To take the strain off volunteers, the shelter’s 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.

In a presentation Wednesday to the Yachats City Council, committee member and church pastor Bob Barrett said Don’s Place was used for just 21 days last season. The new format will be re-assessed in May.

“We realized we were not open enough (last winter) to make a significant impact,” he said. “It was not a good use of our resources … the beds just sat empty.”

Being open only when certain weather thresholds were met was “impractical and unsustainable for both guests and volunteers,” Barrett said in a news release announcing the changes.

The changes are designed to “make it easier for individuals to use the shelter without having to move their belongings back and forth — and having to go back out into the rain each morning with nowhere to go where they can keep warm and dry,” Barrett said.

“The shelters in Florence and Eugene have already gone this route — to being open 24 hours,” Barrett said in an interview.

The Don’s Place committee had “significant input from the unhoused community, even those who didn’t apply,” 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.

“We’re not a hub for the unhoused. We just want to do small things well,” said Barbara Loza-Muriera, a committee member and church staffer. “As we are helping people get their basic needs met, we’re calming their fears; they’re able to become more integrated into the community.”

Barrett told YachatsNews he has yet to hear any negative comments about change from the community. He told the council Wednesday, “We want to do this with as much respect as possible for the community but to also keep people alive.”

“Nobody’s calling; there hasn’t been much pushback,” 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. “A lot of the fears just haven’t manifested.”

In answer to a question Wednesday, city planner Katherine Guenther told the city council that the church did not need the city’s permission or a conditional use permit to change the operation.

The new operating model “prioritizes local unhoused residents from the Yachats and south County area,” 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’s larger, mass shelter in Newport.

This winter Don’s Place will not host any “drop-in” 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.

The Don’s 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.

The paid staff hired to supervise the operation from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. nightly are “all local candidates that have experience working with the unhoused,” 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.

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.

Most of the shelter’s funding came from the Housing Authority of Lincoln County, in addition to private donations.

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.

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.