Kelly Kenoyer
The weather was dreary the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 18.
The sky was dark and rain was coming down in buckets on the Church of Nazarene.
Regardless, a small group of volunteers gathered under the awning, chatting with Jammers, a local homeless man, and waiting for a truck to arrive.
Soon it did. Cascade Timber Consulting Director Milt Moran pulled in with a truck loaded with wood, and volunteers moved to quickly unload every board into shelter from the rain. The plywood and treated boards soon turned into 20 platforms for the homeless to get a bit more shelter than their current tents.
The platforms will help the homeless who stay on the grounds of the Church of Nazarene keep dry and warm throughout a long winter with few opportunities for emergency shelter otherwise.
The project came together through the efforts of several organizations: CTC donated the lumber after purchasing it from Lester Sales, and the Rotary Club donated the hardware and the labor. Home Depot donated PVC pipe to help rig an extra rain shelter over the tents, and the Albany Grace Point Mid-Valley Willamette Women’s Bible Study donated food, blankets, sleeping pads and hygiene products to the effort. All in all, organizers estimate more than $5,000 in materials was donated.
One Sweet Home, a cooperative effort between local churches, spearheaded the effort and helped coordinate all the other organizations.
Executive Director George Medellin said the non-profit is “people of faith working with people of good will.”
He said the churches of Sweet Home are a giant, untapped volunteer base that can fix problems one at a time.
First, they developed cold-weather shelters to take care of the unhoused during the winter. Then, when COVID shut those down, he started working with Pastor Bethanie Young of the Church of Nazarene to help the homeless who were permitted to stay on the church grounds.
“This is a band-aid, and there will be more meetings for what is the next step,” Medellin said.
Moran said it was an easy decision to donate the materials for the project. He wasn’t reluctant to get his hands dirty, literally, while unloading the materials in the rain, either – the pressure-treated wood tends to stain, but it lasts really well in direct contact with the ground, he said.
“Getting them off the ground is really important,” Moran said, noting his own experience camping in cold temperatures and wet conditions.
“It’s going to save a lot of wear and tear on their feet and their gear and that’ll be a good thing.”
Saturday, Nov. 21, the rain held off as even more Sweet Home citizens came by to lend a hand. The Rotary Club and One Sweet Home provided more than 25 volunteers of all ages, armed with screwdrivers and ready to work together to help their homeless neighbors.
In just about two hours, the volunteer crew had built 40 4-by-8-foot platforms, which can be combined to create a bigger base for the tents to rest on.
Jeff Young, Bethanie Young’s husband, said he’s grateful for the community support in helping the homeless stay warm and dry.
“I think it was a great community-wide effort,” he said. “The Rotary Club was the biggest part of it, but we had individuals drive by and help.”
Some showed up after Medellin put out a call on social media asking for volunteers – which was how he started the emergency shelter three years ago, he said.
For now, the organizations are waiting on insurance to make use of the newly constructed temporary platforms, and the entire camp may have to move to a new location, Young said. The planned insulating “domes” will be constructed once the insurance question is resolved.
Those will be like large, external tents that surround the entire platform and keep everything dry.
It’s not a permanent housing situation, but to Jeff Young, even these temporary measures add significant stability to the lives of those he’s helping.
“I had a guy drop by the other day and say they’re just a bunch of drug addict, and they’re never going to change and this, that and everything else,” Young said. “Yeah, some of them will never get out of the tent. But I know of at least two that have already gotten services and out.”
He said there are three or four others who are making great progress on finding emergency shelter – something they never could have imagined before.
“If they feel more secure, then they feel like they can do the next step. If they’re always living on the edge, you can never advance. You can’t get anywhere because you’re always worrying about tomorrow, not worrying about five years down the road,” he said.