By KENNETH LIPP/YachatsNews
NEWPORT — Once potentially deadly weather struck the region Wednesday evening, a church in downtown Newport has been letting unhoused people sleep in its sanctuary and make use of its community room, kitchen and bathrooms 24 hours a day.
It’s the first time in three years that Lincoln County’s largest city has had a communal shelter. Instead, service providers have relied on empty hotel rooms to get people out of the elements, but that wasn’t possible this week during an extraordinarily cold winter storm that produced the heaviest snowstorm in years.
Homeless service organization Grace Wins Haven used to manage a warming shelter at the Lincoln County Commons when temperatures were near freezing. The exhibit hall had a capacity of 150-200 overnight occupants, and at one point Lincoln City was providing vouchers for its unhoused to take county buses to the fairgrounds in Newport.
But that all changed in 2020 with the arrival of Covid-19. The need to avoid crowded indoor environments to reduce spread of the virus meant most homeless shelters could not operate congregate settings.
Lincoln County commissioners approved funding for hotel vouchers to house, isolate or quarantine vulnerable homeless people in Newport beginning in spring of 2020. That approach was expanded into Grace Wins Havens’ cold-weather voucher program, which took over two motels with 50 people when operational. Lincoln County contributes $18,000 a year to that program.
Hotel vouchers not always available
Newport’s voucher system is possible due to the lag in tourism during the most dangerous weather for sleeping outside. But now there’s a clash with an event designed to bring visitors and spending to the area in the off season. As it typically did before a two-year lapse during the pandemic, visitors to the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival have taken every hotel room in the city, not to mention most in neighboring communities.
But the county is preparing for a major renovation of the fairgrounds and the exhibit hall is not available. With a potentially deadly forecast — temperatures dropped below freezing for at least 12 hours overnight Wednesday and into the mid-20s overnight Thursday — Grace Wins Haven had no shelter to offer.
Grace Wins’ director Traci Flowers said she called several churches that turned her down before St. Stephen Episcopal in downtown Newport offered their facility. The church gave access to its narthex-community space with a flatscreen TV, its kitchen and the use of its sanctuary for sleeping, all open 24 hours a day. Grace Wins volunteers are cooking hot meals donated by Food Share of Lincoln County and others.
They’ve had about 50 people through the building during the days and 35 overnight, with help from about a dozen volunteers. The facility has a capacity of about 70, Flowers estimated.
“We’ll be open all day today and overnight Saturday,” Flowers said. “We can’t guarantee we’ll be open all day Saturday, because we don’t know if the weather will qualify.”
For the warming shelter to open, temperatures must reach 34 degrees if it’s otherwise clear. That threshold rises with the addition of wind and precipitation.
“If we had people out yesterday evening or even today with the bright blue sky, it could be deadly,” Flowers said Friday morning.
James and his wife, Willow, were sitting around tables with about 25 others in the church’s community room Thursday afternoon. They would otherwise have been in a tent. Volunteers were in the kitchen heating up a few dozen cans of tomato soup to serve with grilled cheese for dinner.
Flowers expects to go back to providing hotel vouchers during the next cold weather, at least for the rest of this winter.
“Ideally, we would rotate between churches,” Flowers said, but she’s just not sure enough of them would participate.
She said there are advantages to both approaches.
“This gives them access to a community, and this shows them the community cares because of the donations that come in,” Flowers said. “The hotel room gives them a place of their own for a moment, and some people will never come to a shelter.”
Flowers expressed deep gratitude to St. Stephen for opening its doors. Pastor Judith Jones said she and her congregation agreed it was the only thing they could do.
“This is the work of the church, to care for people,” Jones said. “The congregation has been entirely supportive of doing this.”
The church currently administers a Monday night takeout meal with help from five churches, which take turns preparing food. In 2017, the year Jones came to St. Stephen, they ran their own shelter in a covered area outside the building, allowing pre-approved people to sleep there and enter the building at night to use the bathroom.
That required having someone from the church stay overnight, she said, which was difficult with an aging congregation. Jones ended up being the one staying most nights, and she couldn’t keep up that pace and do her pastoral job.
“We couldn’t sustain it, but it was amazing what difference it made running it, just for a few months,” she said. “We had people who got out of homelessness and into apartments even just during that time.”
Jones said she’d like to see Newport adopt a model that has long been successful in Eugene — churches taking turns opening their doors a week at a time.
“I intend to see if I can persuade other churches to do that,” she said.
Lincoln City opened its community center to use as a warming shelter from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday.
In Yachats, the community’s first cold weather emergency center started two weeks ago and has been busy since Wednesday housing 3-5 people each night in five 8-by-8 foot heated shelters. It expected up to 10 people Friday and Saturday nights because of bitterly cold temperatues.
“We’ve not had to turn anyone away so far, said Barbara Loza-Muriera, administrative assistant at Yachats Community Presbyterian Church and a volunteer leader of the group running the shelter operations. “There have been no problems or issues. People are cold and miserable, so they just go in there and dry out and get warm.”
- Kenneth Lipp is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at KenLipp@YachatsNews.com
Yachats you are amazing for what you do for the homeless. Yes, my husband and I are in a tent. It is so cold in Newport. We have both been sick and can’t seem to get better. We didn’t just stay in the church, we both volunteered to help at St. Stephen for the time we stayed. It is still very cold here. Thank you for all you are doing to help the people. Blessings, Willow