UMATILLA COUNTY INCREASES TO 45 COVID-19 CASES » PAGE A5
Wednesday, april 29, 2020
HermistonHerald.com
$1.50
INSIDE
RESIGNATION
Hermiston City Councilor
John Kirwan announced
Monday he is leaving
Hermiston
Page » A3
Housing the homeless
FREE LUNCH
Bus drivers are working
with school districts to keep
students fed while school is
closed.
Page » A8
STANDOFF
Umatilla County has moved
ahead with widening
Airport Road despite conflict
with neighbors over proper-
ty boundaries.
Page » A10
BY THE WAY
Hermiston
Herald to
change
formats next
week
This is a reminder that
starting next week, the
Hermiston Herald will
be making big changes.
The newspaper will be
delivered to all Hermiston
residents, free of charge,
and will be available
on newsstands for free
to those who don’t fall
within the home delivery
radius. News will also be
available for free online
at www.hermistonherald.
com and on the Hermis-
ton Herald news app.
Current
subscribers
to the Hermiston Herald
will have their subscrip-
tion converted into an
East Oregonian subscrip-
tion. They will receive the
EO at no additional cost
for the remainder of the
time left on their Herald
subscription.
While we are keep-
ing many of our current
features, including Three
Minutes, By the Way and
Hermiston History, we
will also be adding a new
opinion page, a weekly
business column and
other features to replace
See BTW, Page A2
photo contributed by the Walla Walla alliance for the Homeless
A proposed emergency shelter for the homeless in Hermiston, known as Stepping Stones, would be modeled after the sleep center
created by Walla Walla Alliance for the Homeless, pictured here.
Hermiston group proposes using Conestoga huts to shelter homeless residents
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
A grassroots effort in
Hermiston is building the
foundation for a proposed new
shelter for the city’s homeless
residents.
Board members of a newly
formed nonprofit, known as
Stepping Stones, presented an
idea for a new kind of emer-
gency shelter at Monday
night’s city council meeting.
The city council held off on
approval of the project until
they could see more refined
plans, but agreed to start the
process of creating new zon-
ing rules for it.
Longtime Hermiston res-
idents Cathy Lloyd, Michael
Atkinson and Jeff Snell said
Stepping Stones hopes to
model their project after the
sleep center in Walla Walla
run by the Walla Walla Alli-
ance for the Homeless, using
small Conestoga huts to pro-
vide temporary shelter.
“I have worked in the
warming station in Hermiston
for a number of years,” Lloyd
said. “I’ve been a volunteer
there and while I love the fact
that through three months out
of the year we provide shelter
for those who don’t have any,
we have another nine months
that we don’t provide any
shelter.”
She said the Hermiston
Warming Station has limita-
tions — guests sleep on mats
about 16 inches apart, which
photo contributed by Walla Walla alliance for the Homeless
A proposed emergency shelter for the homeless in Hermiston,
known as Stepping Stones, would be modeled after the sleep
center created by Walla Walla Alliance for the Homeless. One of
the Walla Walla huts is pictured here.
puts them at risk for pick-
ing up illnesses and doesn’t
afford any privacy. They don’t
have anywhere to leave their
belongings during the day,
aren’t allowed to bring food
in, and can’t stay up and read
or do other activities after
lights out.
The plan
The Stepping Stones proj-
ect would provide 25 Cones-
toga huts on about 0.8 acres of
land behind the Agape House,
which provides emergency
food boxes and other services
to people in need. The proj-
ect would also include a com-
mons area and, if funding per-
mits, showers and laundry.
Each 6-foot by 10-foot
hut would hold a single per-
son, a couple, or a single par-
ent with one child. Stepping
Stones would provide the bed-
ding for the bed frames inside
— including plenty of heavy
blankets during cold weather
— and launder it once a week.
The huts would not have
electricity or running water,
but Lloyd said they are small
and well-insulated, and run
about 30- to 35-degrees
warmer than the outdoors
during the winter.
“These structures don’t fit
into HUD standards for hous-
ing,” she said. “They’re not in
any way meant to be perma-
nent housing. This is a step-
ping stone. That’s why we
chose that name. We want this
to be a step from having noth-
ing to becoming self-reliant.
They are affordable, but they
are not so comfortable that
people want to stay in them
forever.”
Lloyd said a heated, lighted
commons building would
allow people to stay up as long
as they wanted to read, play
cards, charge their cellphone
or just relax. On the other
hand, right now she hears
from people who don’t want
to stay at the warming station
See Housing, Page A12
Sole proprietors face tough road
Some have a hard time
getting stimulus funding
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
8
08805 93294
2
As stimulus money helps
prop up the economy, sole
proprietors are getting left
out of some types of help.
The Paycheck Protection
Program, for example, was
launched to provide loans to
cover payroll, rent and util-
ities, which can be forgiven
if up to 75% of the money is
spent on payroll. The initial
guidelines left business own-
ers without any employees
out in the cold at first, and
by the time the program was
opened up to them a week
later, the money was gone
before those in the back of
the line got anything.
Judy Gormley, who
owns Neighborhood Books
& Gifts in Hermiston with
her husband, Michael, said
she was still waiting to hear
back from their accountant
on questions about whether
they qualify to apply for an
Economic Injury Disaster
Loan, which is also currently
out of money.
“It’s really hard to get
good information, because
it’s all new,” she said. “Even
the banks don’t know. It
takes a lot of time to figure
out. I spent hours a couple of
weeks ago.”
Thursday
afternoon
Gormley said she was wait-
ing to hear back from Uma-
tilla County about whether
Neighborhood Books &
Gifts would get one of the
county’s grants for small
businesses affected by
COVID-19, which were
being awarded by random
draw. An hour later she
called back with good news
— the bookstore will get
$1,000 from the county.
“That does help a huge
amount,” she said.
Bookstores weren’t spec-
ified by name in Gov. Kate
Brown’s executive order of
March 23 shutting down
See Tough, Page A12
staff photo by Ben lonergan
A passerby is reflected in the window of Neighborhood Books
& Gifts in Hermiston on Monday afternoon. The business,
which has been closed under the governor’s stay-home order,
is among those left out of the initial iteration of the Paycheck
Protection Program.