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News
Street Roots • dune 5-11,2015
A new approach to helping homeless youths heal
BY EMILY GREEN
S T A F F W R IT E R
TL
ike Sandell was out of his usual
| % / | element He emerged from the
A V JL backseat of a Champagne-gold
Suburban, scanning the terrain. He was in
the rolling hills of rural Canby, at a ranch
where groves of cottonwood, alder and
Douglas fir dot an expansive and well-
manicured lawn.
As he stood at the foot of Heron Hill, he
spotted two Arabian thoroughbreds
paddocked on the hillside and made his way
toward them. As the 20-year-old trudged up
the slope, he relied heavily on a walking
cane to alleviate the torn meniscus in his
right knee - an injury he says he sustained
climbing carelessly onto a bunk bed in a
homeless shelter.
Three years earlier, when Sandell was 17,
social workers removed him from his
parents’ home near Los Angeles and placed
him with his grandmother in Newberg. Six
months later he found a rent-free place to
live in Beaverton. It was his ticket out of the
small town, which he says, “sucks.”
The living situation didn’t last and the
space he’d occupied at his grandmother’s
had since been filled. He was able to find
employment as a substitute educator,
working with kids in special education
programs, but it Wasn’t enough money to
Magic and Dungeons and Dragons like other
get him into housing.
kids their age.
According to U.S. Department of Housing
The 2015 Point-In-Time count found on
one night in January, in Multnomah County
and Urban Development’s annual report to
Congress in 2014, 60 percent of Oregon’s
alone, there were 266 unaccompanied youth
1,096 unaccompanied homeless youth were
ages 24 and younger and an additional 369
sleeping outside on a
children living with
single night in
families who were
January that year, but
experiencing
I t seems that egnine therapy
Sandell wasn’t among
homelessness.
subtly snbw rts an im m ediate
them. He had found a
At p:ear, about 900
react!©» ©I distrust t©wards
new home in
homeless and
something by nslag a w r y
Portland’s crowded
transitional youth
homeless shelters. ■ large and noticeable example
between the ages of
It was at a shelter
15 and 24 come
lik e a horse» Gaining a m ntnal
in downtown Portland trust w ith something lik e that
through its doors
that Sandell noticed
each year.
can really be com forting/^ .
stickers plastered all
In December, p:ear
~~~ cody sukratt began to shuttle
over the walls and
bunk beds depicting
youth from downtown
p:ear’s logo. “What’s
Portland to The
p:ear?” he asked his
Center at Heron Hill
bunkmates. “It’s this great art space, you
in Canby, a horse ranch where certified
should come check it out,” someone replied. therapists use activities with horses to
“The rest,” says Sandell, “is history.” -
foster healing within clients through its
P:ear, an acronym for project: education,
Alliance Counseling program.
art, recreation, is a nonprofit in downtown
Equine therapy programs have been
Portland providing homeless youth with
rising in popularity for , decades. According
opportunities to explore their creative sides, to Alliance Counseling and Center at Heron
go on field trips in nature. It’s also a place
Hill co-owner and director Joyce Korschgen,
to feel normal again and to play games like
there are at least 50 equine therapy
providers in the area surrounding Portland.
But she’s the first to offer a program
specifically for homeless youth - a program
she and Robinn Rudd, her partner in life and
in business, are offering pro bono to
homeless youth in Portland through p:ear.
As Sandell approached the paddock, a
fenced enclosure for: horses, a bay-colored
beauty sauntered up to thè fence and
nickered a greeting as he began to gently
stroke her neck and snout. “I wish I knew
your name,” Sandell said to her. Today was
his first visit to the ranch.
MerriBeth Vaughn, the certified equine
specialist facilitating activities with P:ear,
says while horse therapy can be extremely
beneficial to any disenfranchised group - it
doesn’t require a lot of talking - she’s ?
noticed it’s especially effective with the kids
from p:ear. I
“They get around the horses and you can
just feel the tension go out of everybody
that’s in there,” she says. “They all seem
like they just give a sigh of relief once they
start petting the horses.”
Brandon Houston discovered Center at
Heron Hill when he visited the ranch for a
class he was taking at Lewis & Clark
Graduate School. At the time he’d been a
volunteer mentor at p:ear for about one
See STABLE, page 5