August 21, 2015 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com • 7A
Helping Hands seeks
south Seaside property
for re-entry facility
Hyak from Page 1A
a potential zoning issue. Use
of the Hyak Building as a
multifamily dwelling in the
residential medium-density
zone had lapsed, and would
no longer be allowed.
While the group could
have legally fought the zon-
ing interpretation, the cost
to do so would have been
prohibitive for either orga-
nization, according to Todd
Johnston, executive director
of Northwest Oregon Hous-
ing Authority.
Helping Hands deter-
mined it wasn’t worth the
time or cost to go through a
strenuous legal process, espe-
cially since there was another
option, the new location off
Highway 101.
Johnston agreed, adding
even if Helping Hands scaled
down the scope of the proj-
ect so it wouldn’t violate the
Hyak Building’s zone desig-
nation, “there was a feeling
the neighbors still were giv-
ing a lot of resistance.”
In response, Helping
Hands changed its focus.
Rosemary Baker-Monaghan,
a former Seaside mayor who
lives in the neighborhood
near the Hyak Building, ini-
tially suggested the new loca-
tion at an April meeting of the
housing authority.
Federal block grant
To proceed with building
a facility at the new loca-
tion, the city of Seaside will
need to pursue a community
development block grant for
Helping Hands. The program
is run through the U.S. De-
partment of Housing and Ur-
ban Development, and grants
are awarded to communities,
not organizations.
Helping Hands has ap-
proached the city about host-
ing the grant and will for-
mally make a request at an
upcoming council meeting.
“We’re not going to sit
down for a planning session
without knowing the city will
host the grant,” Evans said.
Once the organization
gets a commitment from the
city, the partners can begin
to draw up a budget. The
housing authority’s property
would either be transferred to
Helping Hands or purchased
by the organization through
the grant program, Johnston
said.
“Our involvement mostly
would be providing the prop-
erty,” he said. “I think the
main partnership would be
through Helping Hands and
the city of Seaside,”
Evans believes this is a
good solution, since it means
Helping Hands likely “won’t
get resistance from neighbors
and other things we have
dealt with.”
Helping Hands also plans
to extend its reach into Til-
lamook County. Last year, a
group of citizens, communi-
ty leaders and professionals
approached Helping Hands
about the homeless problem
in Tillamook.
Helping Hands challenged
Tillamook County civic lead-
ers to raise $50,000 as start-
up money. In late July, the
organization made an offer
on a 21,000-square-foot for-
mer naval command center
with the goal of transforming
it into the state’s ¿rst, fully
functional homeless relief
center.
Planning Commission
weighs many factors
in UGB expansion
Planning from Page 1A
“We’re not proposing or
suggesting that any proper-
ty owner has to change their
current use,” Commission
Chair Ray Romine said. “All
we’re doing is making a pro-
posed Urban Growth Bound-
ary expansion for some future
development to occur. That
doesn’t mean that it will, it
just means that it can.”
The city is working with
consultants from HLB Otak,
Inc. The local engineering
and consulting ¿rm was hired
for the city by Weyerhaeuser,
which owns much of the land
under consideration.
During the meeting, the
commissioners brought up
concerns over how future tsu-
nami events of various sizes
might impact the Southeast
Hills area and how to factor
that into urbanization deci-
sions.
Don Hanson, a principal
and director for HLB Otak,
provided a map of the South-
east Hills area overlayed with
a tsunami modeling graph-
ic, developed by the Oregon
Department of Geology and
Mineral Industries. The map
showed the probable impact
on the area in case of ¿ve dif-
ferent tsunami event scenari-
os, labeled as “T-shirt sizes,”
or S, M, L, XL and XXL.
“We went through the
acreage by zone, by proposed
land use in the area and pro-
vided a summary so you
could see which land uses end
up in which T-shirt size tsuna-
mi event,” Hanson said.
The Southeast Hills pro-
vides relative safety in the
case of a small- or medi-
um-size seismic event. If a
small tsunami occurred, only
3 percent of the land would be
affected.
If an extremely large event
occurred, all of the Southeast
Hills industrial and parklands
would be impacted. A large
portion of residential land
would be affected, including
80 percent of high density
residential lands.
Because a large or medi-
um event is considered “very
probable” in the future, com-
mission members focused on
those scenarios. Under a large
disaster scenario, 41 percent
of both residential high-den-
sity and 41 percent of indus-
trial land in Southeast Hills
would be impacted, which
concerned members of the
commission.
The proposed expansion
doesn’t get buildable lands
completely out of the inunda-
tion zone, but it lessens their
risk and in some cases takes
future residents completely
out of risk categories, Sea-
side Planning Director Kevin
Cupples said.
Commissioners
Tom
Horning and Richard Ridout
suggested it might be best to
think ahead and start encour-
aging population growth fur-
ther uphill through the Urban
Growth Boundary expansion
process.
The decision to put the
area with a higher-densi-
ty designation on the lower
slopes, and subsequently
more at-risk in case of tsuna-
mi events, is because the area
would provide better access
to the public transportation
system or pedestrian path-
ways, which many residents
rely on, Hanson said. “We’re
always weighing one thing
against another,” he said.
During the two public
hearings on the topic, land-
owners in the Southeast
Hills area voiced concerns
about how the Urban Growth
Boundary expansion could af-
fect their neighborhood. They
said they are worried about
tax increases, overdevelop-
ment, environmental impacts
and higher traf¿c volume, es-
pecially Wahanna Road.
Other residents have
stressed the need for more af-
fordable housing to maintain
seasonal and resort employ-
ees. Expanding the boundary
means providing additional
land that can be developed at
urban-level densities, which
could help with the city’s
housing issue.
Planning
Commission
members said they are seek-
ing input from the state on the
zone changes.
Seaside resident Angela
Fairless suggested the city also
seek input from the North Coast
Land Conservancy and Necani-
cum Watershed Council.
The public hearing was
continued to the Planning
Commission’s Sept. 1 meet-
ing.
Helping Hands to celebrate 13 years of
achievements with dinner theater, concert
Organization shares data
on homeless population,
successful solutions
By Katherine Lacaze
Seaside Signal
LuRain Penny — whose
successful career as a perform-
er in New York City included
opening for Ray Charles, Taj
Mahal and Dr. Billy Taylor
— is a singer, songwriter and
self-described “kindness ad-
vocate.”
“That’s my role; making
things feel better is the only
job to have,” she said.
Penny will be spreading
that kindness at the Seaside
Civic and Convention Center
Aug. 22. Her 5 p.m. concert
performance, “Angels Among
Us,” takes place on behalf of
the Helping Hands Re-entry
Outreach Center “Everyone
Has a Story” campaign. Penny
will share the stage with Asto-
ria-based musician and com-
poser Peter Unander.
Penny’s collaboration with
Helping Hands made sense,
she said, because they have
the same goals of healing and
helping.
“Any of us at any time in
our life could come to a crisis
place, where we could use a
helping hand,” she said.
After dinner, Helping
Hands hosts “Blues at the
Beach,” a free kid-friend-
ly concert starting at 8 p.m.
JunkBelly, out of Wenatchee,
Washington, will perform
along with the Boneyard
Horns.
A cause for
celebration
Helping Hands Executive
Director Alan Evans said the
purpose of the events is to cel-
ebrate the organization’s ac-
complishments during the past
13 years. They hope to raise
awareness about the organi-
zation’s campaign and share
with the public data illustrat-
ing solutions to homelessness.
During the past two years,
Helping Hands has become a
data-driven organization. In
¿ghting homelessness, Evans
said the organization hopes to
get families off the street and
into sustainable, affordable
housing.
Helping Hands tracks each
individual who passes through
its door and then creates indi-
vidual re-entry plans for each
one to help them overcome
the particular obstacles they
face. The long-term plans in-
volve community partners to
help the client get set up with
housing, medical insurance,
employment, education and
other services.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Helping Hands emergency shelter in Seaside.
When a person comes into
the emergency shelter, they
¿ll out a form identifying who
they are, if they have chil-
dren, if they have committed
a sex offense (the organization
doesn’t serve sex offenders),
insurance information, the last
city they lived in, how they
were referred to the emergency
shelter and other information.
The organization also
keeps daily rosters with names
and birth dates downloaded to
ServicePoint, a central soft-
ware system licensed to NW
Social Service Connections in
Portland. Through that venue,
Helping Hands shares data
with partnering agencies.
Nightly rosters also are
sent to law enforcement agen-
cies, such as the local police
departments, corrections de-
partments and sheriff’s of¿ces
in the communities Helping
Hands serves.
“It’s a great communica-
tion piece for collaborative
efforts,” Evans said.
Helping Hands tracks
classes, mentoring pro-
grams and community ser-
vice efforts. Participants are
drug-tested to make sure they
are complying with the organi-
zation’s strict substance abuse
policy. The forms are audited
twice per month.
The electronic ¿ling sys-
tem has worked well, Evans
said, but they are excited to
introduce a new, more ac-
cessible data entry system in
January 2016. That database is
being built now.
A look at the data
Through data collection,
the organization can show its
communities which demo-
graphics are being served, the
primary challenges people
face on their journey to re-en-
ter society and the outcomes
so far. After months of track-
ing information, Evans said,
“we were just as shocked as
everyone else about what we
found.”
From Jan. 1 to May 31,
between the organization’s fa-
cilities in Clatsop, Yamhill and
Lincoln counties, 327 individ-
ual clients were served. More
than 94 percent had no form of
income. More than 27 percent
were female heads of house-
hold, which means they were
are ¿nancially responsible for
at least one child. People with
special needs made up near-
ly 26 percent of the clients;
8 percent were veterans and
11.6 percent were domestic
violence victims or survivors.
Helping Hands has iden-
ti¿ed a population of about 6
percent from its total clientele
who have been incapable of
moving on from homelessness
for various reasons, such as
drug or alcohol abuse or other
factors.
Through data collection,
the organization also hopes
to show the public what their
money is accomplishing.
“We can tell you exact-
ly where the dollar goes, we
could tell you exactly the per-
son that it helped, the dates
that it helped them, the classes
that they took and their walk
to re-enter society,” Evans
said. “With that data, what we
get to do is hopefully change
the way that communities deal
with their homeless popula-
tions.”
Helping Hands’ 2015 bud-
get is $530,000 and there are
110 beds available in the coun-
ties it serves. Based on those
numbers, it takes about $13
per day to provide services
to an individual, which accu-
mulates to about $4,745 per
person each year, Evans said.
The $13 covers building costs,
utilities, program support staff,
development,
fundraising
costs, food, laundry, house
management and supplies,
drug testing, transportation,
insurance and payroll.
He compared that to the
national average of approx-
imately $40,000 per year it
costs per person to leave them
homeless, an estimate pro-
vided by U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Develop-
ment Secretary Shaun Dono-
van in 2012. Evans said these
high costs support the value
and importance of funding
long-term solutions rather than
Band-Aid ¿xes.
“The cool thing about be-
ing a data-driven organization
is now we have the ammo to
show our local communities,
our state and the government,
that for a person to stay in a
re-entry facility similar to ours,
it costs 10 percent less and we
can actually track the success
of their re-entry into society,”
he said.
By giving partnering agen-
cies real information about the
clients being served and what
obstacles they face, the agen-
cies should get access to a big-
ger funding stream, he said.
Sharing the story
One of the biggest obsta-
cles Helping Hands has faced
“is the stigma of what people
think homelessness is,” Evans
said. The organization’s new
campaign, “Everyone Has a
Story,” is meant to educate
the public on the people who
comprise the homeless popu-
lation and how they got to that
place.
“Every person that we
meet has a story, and it’s a
painful, unbelievable story of
sadness, heartache and lack
of resources to change their
life,” he said. “We’re hoping
to change policy now on how
communities deal with their
homeless populations. There’s
a responsibility for communi-
ties to make sure that services
are provided for people who
have nowhere to go.”
He sees the campaign,
which will use the data they’ve
compiled, as a critical focus
for the organization right now
because it will “paint a picture
of the possibility of a solution”
and it might change how peo-
ple view the issue, he said.
Doors for the Aug. 22 din-
ner theater performance open
at 4:30, with the show starting
at 5 p.m. Cost is $50 and din-
ner includes a steak, halibut,
vegetarian or chicken cordon
bleu.
Providence Seaside Hospi-
tal is the dinner theater spon-
sor; Ebb Tide Resort, Hi-Tide
Resort and Awakenings by the
Sea are the evening concert
sponsors.
For more information, call
503-738-4321. For informa-
tion about Helping Hands, vis-
it www.helpinghandsre-entry.
org.
Phillips Candies: New owners, same sweet treats
Phillips from Page 1A
his mother, Marguerite Blake,
got her ¿rst summer job there
at age 14. The candy shop, es-
tablished in 1897, was already
a well-established business in
the community by then.
Blake remained season-
ally employed at the shop
throughout her college years.
Even after she and her col-
lege sweetheart John Phillips
were married and moved to
Milwaukie for his job as a
middle-school teacher, the
couple continued to help out
the owners in the summer.
In 1939, the Phillipses pur-
chased the candy shop, run-
ning it as a summer business
from Memorial Day to Labor
Day so John Phillips could
continue teaching. The fami-
ly resided in a small wooden
cottage behind the shop.
World War II brought with
it some tricky situations for
the family, as for many busi-
ness owners. The store was
pro¿table as people were
making money, particularly
through war-related indus-
tries. Instead, the struggle
was to get products for can-
dy-making during a time
when sugar and other ingredi-
ents were strictly rationed.
“It wasn’t like we have to-
day, where we have all these
candy stores where you can
buy Jelly Belly candies and all
that,” Phillips said. “It was what
you made, and that was it.”
His parents struck deals
with local dairies, farmers
and producers to get the items
they needed.
Fortunately, he said, there
was no shortage of demand.
Phillips Candies would open
its door at 1 p.m. to a line of
people. Even with a limit of
two pounds per customer, the
shop would sell out within a
few hours. They would then
close the door and start mak-
ing candy for the next day.
One summer, the fami-
ly made more money than
John Phillips’s salary as a
teacher, so they decided “this
was what they ought to do,”
Phillips said. They stayed in
Seaside to run the store year-
round.
In 1947, the year Steve Phil-
lips was born, the couple tore
down the old shop and con-
structed the current building.
Throughout the years, it
was understood he would
take over the shop someday,
he said. Making candy just
seemed to be a family trait, as
his older brother, Pat, worked
many years as a plant man-
ager for See’s Candies in Los
Angeles.
“Both he and I have
business degrees with back-
grounds in food technology
from Oregon State,” Phillips
said.
Around the winter of
1974, John Phillips contract-
ed cancer, dying within four
months of being diagnosed.
While taking over the family
business was Steve Phillips’s
future plan, his father’s illness
greatly expedited the process.
“I had about six weeks to
two months to try and really
learn as much as I could. And
most of it was at home, with
him sitting on the couch or in
a chair, giving me as much
information as possible,” he
said.
Taking over the store
In the spring of 1974, Steve
Phillips bought the business
itself from his parents, and
took over the lease agreement
for the building and property
— both of which he would
later acquire.
Even after his father’s
death, his mom continued to
work at the shop until her late
80s.
“She would come in here
and work almost every day.
She just loved it,” he said.
Throughout the years, lit-
tle has changed at Phillips
Candies.
“We’ve really tried to keep
exactly the same formulas,”
Phillips said. “When some-
one comes in and says, ‘Gee,
I remember 20 years ago I
was here and got rocky road;
what’s changed?’ The answer
is ‘nothing.’ The recipe is ab-
solutely identical. Same prod-
uct line, same chocolate.”
Because tastes evolve, they
added and removed a few
products. The advent of emul-
sions replaced chemical-based
extracts and “just enhanced
the Àavor and made it so much
better,” Phillips said.
Business got a big boost
by the nearby construction
of Trendwest Resorts, now
WorldMark by Wyndham.
While the store experienced
a nice, steady growth of 3 to
5 percent every year, Phillips
said, the new resort brought
“almost a 25 percent increase
in business overnight.”
The increase remained
steady year round, and the
store was staffed by two peo-
ple instead of one during the
winter, he added.
A new era
Through
grade-school,
Phillips played in the back
while his parents were busy
running the shop. At 10, he
started taking on responsibil-
ities like washing dishes and
running the taffy wrapper. In
1974, he purchased the busi-
ness and has been operating it
ever since.
“I don’t think I had a de-
sire to ever do anything dif-
ferent,” he said.
Nevertheless, the time is
approaching for the business
to change hands. Phillips ad-
mitted he’s ready.
“Physically it’s getting
harder and harder to dump
those 80-pound batches of
candy,” he joked.“I will be
here to continue to make sure
the quality of the product re-
mains.
“I told Mark that I could
teach about 80 percent of
this operation in about six
weeks,” he added. “But the
other 20 percent is going to
take a couple years. It’s just
the facts of life.”