FAC thanks students, teacher for homeless huts

Benny Westcott

Community leaders recognized some 60 Sweet Home High School students and vocational education teacher Will Coltrin Thursday, Feb. 2, for building 30 huts for the Lebanon-based Family Assistance and Resource Center’s managed outreach and community resource facility, opened Jan. 14 on a Sweet Home land parcel east of Bi-Mart.

Coltrin and the students also received gift cards as tokens of appreciation from various local businesses during the FAC’s “Thank You Celebration,” which took place in the Sweet Home Senior Center’s community room.

“We’re here for a pretty special thing,” FAC and Sweet Home Rotary Club member (and former school district superintendent) Larry Horton told the students. “It’s something that I think all of you and our community should be very, very proud of. I want you to know that this is something that you’ll be able to be proud of for the rest of your lives. It’s going to make a difference. It’s already making a difference. And it’s because of what all of you did over the last year.

“The community and the people that live here are appreciative,” he continued. “You’ll probably hear some negatives. That’s life. Some people don’t think we should be housing the homeless and that we shouldn’t be helping the homeless. Well, I disagree strongly.”

Other speakers voiced their own gratitude.

“You guys just participated in something larger than yourselves,” Sweet Home Mayor Susan Coleman added. “You should be proud of it for the rest of your life, that you were able to do this. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the difference it’s already made, but it’s making a difference in our community and the lives of very specific people.”

“In addition to getting [homeless people] off the street and into shelter, they’re able to make gains, and hopefully we’ll permanently move them into housing,” Sweet Home Police Department Community Services Officer Sean Morgan said. “This is a key step to making that happen.”

High school principal Ralph Brown emphasized how the huts offered inhabitants refuge from the recent cold.

“The last few days have been colder than heck,” he said. “When I was scrubbing frost off my window last night, I wondered about the people living out on the street – that’s bad. And you guys made it so some of them are going to have a warm place.”

FAC Program Manager Brock Byers agreed.

“It was really cold out last night, but now these people have a bed to sleep on,” he said, adding that the facility had already provided more than 400 “bed nights.”

“You’ve made a major difference in peoples’ lives,” FAC CEO Shirley Byrd told the students. “It won’t be forgotten in all of Linn County. It’s the first low-barrier shelter in the county, and you guys created it. I wish that you could be there when I hand that person a key to their own place. Their faces light up. They just can’t believe it.”

Horton recalled meeting with Coltrin near the end of the summer of 2021, when the project was just an idea.

“I walked into your class and brought in some plans and said, ‘What do you think?” he told the instructor. “And you said, ‘I think we can do this.’ I said, ‘Are you sure? Maybe one or two?’ And you said, ‘No, I think we can do all 30 of them.’

“He took on a big, big challenge,” Horton said of Coltrin. “He helped tremendously. Without this man, this project would not have happened. Everyone is very grateful for what you and your students have accomplished over this past year.”

As Coltrin distributed gift cards to the students and thanked them for their work, he said, “This is for you guys. I didn’t do any of this for me. I did this all for you.”

Byrd capped the recognition with one last thank-you.

“We’ve been working on getting people housed for the last five years,” she said, “and if it wasn’t for Will and this group, we’d still be trying to figure it out.”

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