Issue #47 November 2022
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A community meeting in progress. |
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Community Supported Shelters
CSS's Monthly eNewsletter for Volunteers, Advocates, & Donors
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It’s all about gratitude.
In November, we are reminded to be thankful and grateful for who and what we have in our lives. However, it has always puzzled me why this idea is not acknowledged all year long. Being grateful is a mindset and that means it can be taught. We all can change our mindset and sometimes that means focusing on the seemingly small things.
Look around you…what do you see? Perhaps you see rain falling, or birds flying by, or someone walking their dog. Now take note of how seeing those things makes you feel at that moment. That feeling of joy you get from seeing something so common can be a part of gratitude. Now think about something that you love doing. Feeling thankful for each day you get to live is gratitude. Consider that you have been through something challenging, but you made it through. The appreciation of overcoming a difficult situation is gratitude. Think about the people you trust and can call on when you are in need. Simply saying ‘thank you’ to them is showing gratitude.
I am incredibly grateful for our community of caring, dedicated supporters, people like:
- Jim Schmidt, our long-time Hut Crew leader (who’s decided to take a much-deserved break from building after nine years, thousands of volunteer hours, and close to 200 Huts!),
- Heaps of gratitude are owed to Steve Downey and Guy Maynard for their willingness to share their time and talent with the Development Team, and
- The CSS Board of Directors (Devin Jenkins, Fred Pitts, Laurie Hauber, and our two newest members Donna Jackson and Harvey Blustain) who work tirelessly to guide CSS and plan for the future.
I am thankful to work with a team who goes above and beyond each day for our clients. I am humbled by the generosity of our donors and volunteers. I am overwhelmed, sometimes to the point of tears, by the small acts of kindness I see every day.
Gratitude is not a holiday, nor does it have to be expressed in the form of big gestures. It is a mindset about how we see the world and the things that happen to us. It is valuing the little things that we enjoy and the challenges that life can bring. Even more importantly, gratitude is about cherishing those around us who care about us and give so much of themselves to enrich our lives. Maya Angelou said it best, “This is a wonderful day. I have not seen this one before.” Carry this message in every relationship, interaction, and day to remind you to be grateful.
With heartfelt thanks,
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Camp Meetings, Building Community |
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Camp meetings are an integral part of life in Safe Spot Communities. |
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“The community experience is very intense,” says Morgan Chamness, who has been a member of the Westmoreland Safe Spot Community for six months. “There's no getting away from it. If you live in an apartment building or a neighborhood or something, you can always just lock your door and try to ignore your neighbors. But here, there's no ignoring it.”
When CSS first proposed camps of transitional dwellings for the unhoused in 2013, it incorporated the unique idea to go beyond “warehousing” people coming off the street to actively engender a sense of supportive, intentional community as a fundamental tool to help unhoused people rebuild their lives.
“In an intentional community you don’t hide as much, you’re more in the open,” CSS co-founder Erik de Buhr said at that time. “It’s a healthy way to live. So we’re trying to make that experience the foundation for trying to do this camp project. I don’t know [if it will work]. Time will tell. We’re scared as hell.”
Fourteen communities and 262 Huts later, that foundation has endured and its keystone is regular community meetings. But like so much of the CSS program, meetings continue to evolve with both the challenges and rewards of community building.
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All the camps have weekly meetings. Three service teams divide responsibilities for eight Safe Spot Communities (11-18 Huts) and six micro-sites (1 - 6 Huts). The team Facilitator leads the community meetings and is the primary link between the camps and CSS headquarters. Each team also has a Service Navigator, who helps community members with access to services and attends meetings every few weeks, and two Support Workers, who spend time in the camps to build trusting relationships with clients.
Meetings usually begin with check-ins, with each person describing how things are going for them, with the facilitator often asking for some positive or reflective observations like “say something nice about somebody else in this room” or “tell us what you like or don’t like about fall.” Then the Facilitator will run through a list of announcements about services from CSS (“laundry service is temporarily suspended until a new person is hired; anybody interested should apply at the office”); about upcoming events at the camp (“work party next week; be there or let me know why you can’t make it”); about the status of maintenance issues (“front screens for the Huts are in the works and should be here soon”).
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Spotlight On Our Volunteers and Staff |
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Alexander Holmes and UCare at CSS |
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Alexander Holmes RN, MSN and Kathy Kernan, FNP at the UCare Clinic. |
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Nearly 10 years ago PeaceHealth and a handful of committed employees recognizing the need to address mental and behavioral health issues among access-challenged members of our community created the Unified Care Clinic. Unified Care Clinic, also known as UCare, now provides mental and general health-care service to over 800 clients from their office at the Hilyard Street PeaceHealth facility in Eugene. Originally funded by PeaceHealth, the clinic is now mainly supported through grants and numbers over two dozen employees including nurses, physicians, psychiatrists, counselors, and office staff. The clinic still operates as part of PeaceHealth and receives its continued support.
Alexander Holmes RN, MSN, is one of the original Ucare employees who has empowered this growth. Alexander, who grew up in Dexter and is a University of Oregon undergraduate, received his nursing degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In a recent conversation he explained the services Ucare provides and how its team has been working in partnership with the CSS community.
“What we do is inverted integrated primary care,” Alexander explained. “We are a behavioral health clinic primarily so we have psychiatrists and counselors, predominantly, but we [also] have Kathy who does primary care within the behavioral health setting.” Team members Kathy Kernan, FNP-C, and Angela Brady, FNP-C, are nurse practitioners and provide the primary health-care element to qualifying CSS residents. The target demographic Ucare serves are people who have run out of all other health-care options. “We are the last stop gap before someone is either permanently hospitalized or has to go to mandatory treatment. We have a particular focus on people who have barriers to treatment because of being unhoused.”
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Giving Gratitude to Our Supporters |
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CSS would like to thank everyone who came out to our Oakshire Inspires event and raised a pint for a cause, and local honky tonk band The Backpedalers for setting the mood with such great tunes!
You helped us raise over $1,100 at this event, and we were so glad to spend such a fun evening with you.
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Firewood and Firewood Rounds |
CSS is again building capacity to collect firewood from people's wood lots. We can once again get crews out to wood lots to collect downed wood to supply firewood for the camps.
If you have firewood for pickup (including downed wood for collection), please contact headquarters by calling 541-683-0836 Monday through Friday between 1 pm and 4 pm.
Split and seasoned firewood can also be dropped off to our Grant Street headquarters (please call ahead).
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Did you know you can support CSS by donating $0.05 to our organization for every bottle and can you redeem? We now have a registered non-profit account with BottleDrop that makes it easy to give when you recycle! Here’s how:
Get blue bags from CSS
- Pick up a blue BottleDrop bag with our CSS barcode and label from our office at 1160 Grant Street on weekdays 1-4 pm. Each bag is printed with easy to follow instructions and a label and barcode that will make sure your containers are counted towards our account.
Fill your bags
- Fill blue bags with Oregon 10-cent deposit containers (typical bottles and cans). Plastic, aluminum, and glass can all go in the same bag. Keep your bags under a 20 lb weight limit, and please make sure that no trash is inside.
Return your bags
- You can return up to 15 blue bags daily at any BottleDrop Redemption Center or BottleDrop Express. Or, return your filled bags to our office at 1160 Grant Street and we can drop them off at a BottleDrop Redemption Center for you. Since the bags are labeled with the CSS barcode, the $0.05 for each can you collected will be donated to CSS!
Please note: Many of our clients use BottleDrop as a source or personal/supplemental income, and it’s not our intention to interfere with their own collection efforts!
If you already have your own BottleDrop green bag account, you can also donate your online account balance directly to CSS. Visit this page and search for Community Supported Shelters.
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Help the Egan Warming Center!
Current cold weather shelter sites have been activated, and the Egan Warming Center is actively looking for volunteers- as well as space for additional shelter site locations. Visit their volunteer page for more information.
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Support Worker
This position serves the CSS mission by routinely visiting CSS Safe Spot Communities, building trusting relationships and modeling positive social skills with new/existing clients. The position’s main purpose is to set a social tone that is aligned with organizational values and expectations, while helping program participants transition from street life to community life.
If interested in this position, please email a resume and cover letter to our Personnel Manager, Caiti Morrell at caiti.csseuegene@gmail.com.
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Community Supported Shelters is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
(EIN #: 46-2377054). All donations made to CSS are tax-deductible.
Thank you for your ongoing support!
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