{"id":179802,"date":"2021-11-10T16:25:55","date_gmt":"2021-11-11T00:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eugeneweekly.com\/?p=184637"},"modified":"2021-11-10T16:30:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-11T00:30:12","slug":"hard-days-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/10\/hard-days-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Hard Days\u2019 Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, St. Vincent de Paul Executive Director Terry McDonald says he had no idea that new housing units would be delivered for the nonprofit on Nov. 10 that could be used as transitional housing for the homeless.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But about two days ago, McDonald received a phone call from Mindy Rex, owner of Boise-based Pacific Housing Partners, which does modular housing construction for immediate housing needs, such as wildfire recovery.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The housing pods, manufactured in Boise, arrived in Eugene, weeks before winter. The sudden agreement between St. Vinnies and Pacific Housing Partners is a creative solution for the region\u2019s lack of transitional housing units for the homeless, McDonald says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And the new housing units in Eugene are \u2014 in some ways \u2014 thanks to Portland.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFortunately for the city of Eugene, the city of Portland wasn\u2019t particularly interested in finding a place to put them to demonstrate them,\u201d he says. \u201cThe day before yesterday, she called me and said, \u2018Terry how \u2018bout it?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Bring \u2018em down, I\u2019ll find a place for them.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Before moving to Boise, Rex says she lived in Portland, where she worked with providing affordable housing financing at the Network for Oregon Affordable Housing nonprofit and later with Wells Fargo.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rex says she initially offered the module units to Portland because the homelessness crisis is so severe there. The city of Portland never responded to her offer. \u201cMy goal is to make sure we\u2019re housing people this winter,\u201d she adds, so she called McDonald. \u201cHe is guaranteed to make good use of them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

McDonald says he acted immediately because there are thousands of people experiencing homelessness right now and the winter season is weeks away. \u201cHow many people are going to be subject to bad inclement weather, living in tents outside? A lot,\u201d he adds. \u201cWhen this opportunity came out and the cost was free, why not make a run at it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

McDonald says the city of Eugene allowed St. Vinnies to have the pods at 4th and Garfield, which isn\u2019t a designated Safe Sleep Site. Before the units can be occupied, St. Vinnies has to connect the site to sewage, water and electricity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He says when choosing the initial tenants for the pod housing, the nonprofit has staff who will locate individuals who meet the criteria of stability and the potential to move out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe best thing that happens is that you get people off the street into something that is warm and dry,\u201d McDonald says. \u201cThat\u2019s a win for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rex says her company is offering St. Vinnie\u2019s the housing pod units for free through winter, but neither McDonald or Rex talked about long-term rent costs yet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The housing pods with the common space won\u2019t be permanent supportive housing, he says. But it will serve as transitional housing. \u201cIt gets people stabilized and safe but not permanent,\u201d he adds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Rendering of the housing units and common-space pod. Courtesy of Pacific Housing Partners<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to the two housing units, the sites will have a common-space pod, which includes a kitchen, bathroom and a washer and dryer. The common-space pod also has a serving window that Rex says could be used by a St. Vinnie\u2019s worker, for example, if COVID precautions made it impossible for tenants to use the common space for themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rex says the common-space pod unit costs about $100,000 to manufacture. She didn\u2019t provide a number for the six-unit dorm-style housing units, saying it cost more than the common space pod. The company\u2019s pods, such as the common space pod, could also be used as an accessory dwelling unit, she says, which could address the larger housing crisis in the Pacific Northwest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The pods are similar to traditional stick-built housing, Rex says. The units have two-by-six walls and siding and are durable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Each housing unit in the building has six individual bedrooms with space for a single bed. The pod building has two bathrooms. \u201cIt\u2019s better than a wet tent,\u201d Rex says of the size of the bedroom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
The outside of the housing pod.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 4th and Garfield site should have units for 12 individuals with the two pods.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Addressing homelessness will take creativity like what Pacific Housing Partners does with its housing units, McDonald says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cComing up with solutions today will require more creativity and that\u2019s what I like about this. It\u2019s a creative answer that the private sector came up with,\u201d he adds. \u201cIf it works, find a way to get it rolled out to get more of these units out.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

St. Vinnie\u2019s Egan Warming Center has two new-volunteer orientations scheduled for Nov. 18 and 23 both 6:30 to 8 pm via Zoom.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, St. Vincent de Paul Executive Director Terry McDonald says he had no idea that new housing units would be delivered for the nonprofit \u2026 Continue reading\u00a0\u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,101,105,2],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-179802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-ew-extra","category-homelessness","category-news","tag-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}