NEWS
BY MORGAN THEOPHIL
NEW NEIGHBORS
Southeast Neighbors to vote on a new rest
stop in South Eugene
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epresentatives from Nightingale Health Sanctuary met
Aug. 29 with the Southeast Neighbors Board to discuss
turning the one car camp in South Eugene into a full-
functioning rest stop to provide shelter for the homeless.
A rest stop is “somewhere for people on the streets to
go, be safe and rest while they get connected with services, jobs
and eventually permanent housing,” said Nightingale co-manager
Nathan Showers.
Eugene has four active rest stops, all located in or near the
Whiteaker neighborhood. A rest stop at 3500 Hilyard Street would
be the first outside the Whiteaker area, part of a city effort to bring
help for the homeless to other parts of the city.
While the four rest stops benefit from being close to the Eugene
Mission and its services, the one in South Eugene would be on the
Good Samaritan parking lot — an organization that seeks to “pro-
vide exceptional care and services to seniors and others in need in
our community” — and Good Samaritan, owned by the Lutheran
church, says they support plans for the new rest stop entirely.
The rest stop would be made up of Conestoga huts — “essen-
tially tiny homes,” Showers said — fit for one person. The huts
cost between $1,000 and $2,500 to build.
Showers and co-manager Tracy Forest began the meeting by
sharing the process for admittance into the rest stop: Potential
residents must fill out a detailed application — discussing their
previous living situations, their reason for wanting to stay in the
rest stop, their goals for different timelines down the road — and
complete a background check and an interview.
Forest and Showers emphasized that they’ll pay close attention
to the new residents of the rest stop, but they’ll likely go unnoticed
by other residential neighbors — seemingly one of the neighbor-
hood board’s biggest hesitations.
Residents would likely leave the property from 9 am until 4 pm
to find a hot shower, look for a job or go find and receive various
treatments and services. “It is the secure, safe place to sleep that
allows residents to seek out other resources during the day, and we
have processes in place to ensure they will,” Showers said.
Different local services would come in each Monday and Tues-
day to meet with residents, help sort out what treatment or services
they may need, and get them on a path to receiving them. Laurel
Hill Center, Willamette Family and ShelterCare are groups that
would frequently help.
Attending frequent meetings, following rules that include “no
dumpster diving or being a bother to any other neighbor” and tak-
ing part in “gate duty” — four-hour shifts monitoring the gate into
the area — would be requirements for living at the stop.
“Having gate duty in different shifts as well as the other man-
datory requirements teaches commitment and responsibility, and
helps creates community,” Forest said.
If residents fail to comply, there is a write-up policy in place
and residents would eventually be asked to leave. According to
Showers, that’s rarely a problem at other rest stops.
The Southeast Neighbors Board presented hesitations about the
location of the rest stop, as it would be in “fairly close proximity”
to residential areas. Regan Watjus, a representative from the city
of Eugene, says the challenge is to find passable sites.
“An ordinance in 2015 declared rest stops shouldn’t be close
to schools or residential areas, which together make up a lot of
Eugene,” Watjus said. “So it’s been a challenge to find viable sites,
but this one works.”
If the stop is approved, Forest and Showers say they want
to have up to 20 huts for residents, adding two per month until
they’ve hit full capacity. “But while we want to take in as many
as we can, if the board only wants 12, we’ll do 12,” Forest said.
Currently at the car camp, water is given from Good Samaritan,
any electricity comes from solar panels, and clothing, food and
resources for Conestoga huts all come from donations. Showers
says he will attend a training next month to learn to build the huts
himself, and he has a friend who has offered his shop as a place
to build.
“We have a lot of friends who have transitioned out of living
situations like this, and it’s a beautiful thing to have them now
come back and help,” Showers said. “We want to show that this
can be created and succeed with very little money but a lot of vol-
unteers and community support.”
According to Watjus, an “Outreach Handbook” is available on-
line and by request from the city manager’s office that discusses
everything one needs to know about a rest stop. She says she is in
full support of helping with outreach efforts because having com-
munity support will “greatly help the chance of success when pre-
senting this to City Council.”
Forest said that the duration residents stay in rest stops com-
monly runs anywhere from three months to one year. “The goal
is that people come, we help them get on their feet and then they
transition out,” Watjus said. “The only thing we’d continue to ask
from the neighborhood is friendliness, the same kindness you’d
offer to any other neighbor.”
If the Southeast Neighbors Board votes to recommend the rest
stop, the matter will be presented to the Eugene City Council im-
mediately, with the hope to begin building huts before winter.
The Southeast Neighbors Board vote takes place 7 pm Tues-
day, Sept. 19, at the Hilyard Community Center.
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IT’S
ABOUT
TIME
beads
ld
high mountain lakes and enjoy berries alongside bears,
squirrels and birds. Wet meadows in the old Cascades are full of
flowers and butterflies. Many such places are likely to be
closed to public access until the fall rains come. May rain
please come by the first week of October!
End of summer has brought the goldfinches, chickadees
and bushtits back to our garden. Their fledglings add to the
flurry around the suet cages and birdseed feeders. It is a delight
to watch the fuzzy teenagers figuring out how to land gracefully.
One of the berries still accessible is thimbleberry.
Thimbleberries are abundant along lower forest roadsides. Yes,
it takes an hour to gather enough for jam, but it’s worth it.
fro
T
he solar eclipse in August was a rare and spectacular
event, predicted with the same accuracy as the timing
of the equinox this month (1:02 pm, Sept. 22). A
hurricane like Harvey is a rare and spectacular event
but predicting hurricanes is much more complicated
than calculating the timing of celestial events. It is remarkable
that people who accept the prediction of celestial events even
when they cannot fathom the math behind them are willing to
challenge scientists who predict climate change. When political
leaders are climate change deniers, catastrophic damage to
natural ecosystems and human habitation is inevitable.
Nature lovers are suffering the effects of warming when
entry into our favorite wilderness and forested areas is closed
due to fire. In normal years we would be able to camp around
THIMBLEBERRY,
RUBUS PARVIFLORA
or
BY D AV I D WA G N E R
m
a ro
und the
w
2833 Willamette • (541) 683-5903
www.harlequinbeads.com
David Wagner is a botanist who works in Eugene. He teaches moss classes,
leads nature walks and makes nature calendars. He can be contacted through
his web site: fernzenmosses.com.
eugeneweekly.com • September 7, 2017
9