Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: From Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. This is behind the message in this podcast. We take you behind what we teach here at Westside. I'm Ben Fleming.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: And I'm Evan Earwicker.
We have a special episode today, Ben.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Extra special, extra special.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: So we hosted a conversation a little while ago with two guests that you're about to hear from.
One is the executive director of an organization locally here that works with unhoused people homeless, getting them into permanent housing.
His organization is called Mountain View Community Development. He's also a good friend and pastor. We'll talk about him in a second. But then the other guest is the mayor of the city of Bend, Melanie Keebler. That's right.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah. What a cool conversation this was. We're introducing the fact that we are partnering with all of these organizations, so the city of Ben as well as Mountain View Community Development to jump into the safe parking program through housing people ourselves here on the property. Which is. It's just a really cool big move. Feel like it's a real Jesus thing. And then even more so to have the conversation with Melanie and with Rick identifying the fact that it's not always necessarily the church that has to find these things and create programs from the ground up, but instead look for people that are already doing an incredible work and then partner with them.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And I know we made the conscious decision to wait until now to go public with the plan. Not because it's been last minute, we've been talking about this for months, but we wanted people to be able to see what we're talking about. I think whenever solutions to the housing crisis come up, working with the homeless and working to shelter people, I think some of the worst case expressions of that, you know, dispersed camping, all the trouble that comes along with from, you know, we've had fires in the area that have started in homeless encampments that are unmanaged and just kind of a free for all. I know some people think of that when you start talking about, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna shelter people on site. So we wanted to wait to be able to show what we're talking about with these micro shelters that we're. We're announcing today.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah, safe parking, temporary housing, all these things, people can use their imaginations to conjure up whatever experience that they've had. And so we wanted to wait till this was a vir. A completed project. So now you can listen to this podcast which hopefully will explain a lot of these vocabulary words and details that we're talking about.
And it's at the place where, if you're listening to this podcast, you can actually come out of the property and check out what's going on. It's a really beautiful, safe, clean, awesome site for people to be able to come and live for a certain amount of time, get their feedback underneath them, and then go find jobs and more permanent housing from there.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And our process from the beginning, it's probably been a year actually, since we've been talking about the potential of some partnership here on our site.
But we do this with the support of the council. Our denomination has been involved all the way up to our national office of that. And so we're doing this very thoughtfully. And this is in no way just an idea that we just came up with. We've been really prayerful and considering this for a long time. So we're excited to roll it out today. And we could talk for a long time, but we already did. So let's cut to that conversation with both Rick Russell and Mel. Melanie Keebler.
All right, well, today we have a couple special guests with us on the podcast and we're grateful you're both here. We have, from the city of Bend, our mayor, Melanie Keebler. Thank you so much for coming out.
I don't know how often you're doing church podcasts in your normal week.
[00:03:51] Speaker C: I think this is my first one.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: So thanks very much. We're grateful for that. This is great.
And our friend Rick Russell from Mountain View Community Development, you are the executive director of Mountain View and I do.
[00:04:04] Speaker D: The church podcast circuit. So this is. I can't even count how many.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: That sounds exhausting, to be honest. I don't know.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: It's quite a cottage industry, I think. Rick, you've actually spoken here at Westside. People might remember from a few years back.
[00:04:17] Speaker D: It has been several years, but yes, that's true.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You keep asking, but holding on.
[00:04:22] Speaker D: Haven't been invited back in quite a few years, though. I noticed.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: That'S your thing. Once you speak, once it's all over. The reason we're meeting and talking today is something we're excited about and that's been in the works for I don't know how long we' been talking about this, Rick.
[00:04:37] Speaker D: I have emails going back to last fall, but I know there were conversations prior to that.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
And what it is is something that we're announcing this week, which is through the Safe Parking program in the city.
We're rolling out three micro shelters, these micro homes for people coming out of Homelessness on their pathway towards stable long term housing. And we're really excited about that. So maybe, Rick, you can start by just kind of giving us a.
Where did this all start as far as Mountain View Community Development?
Rollout of a solution. One of probably many solutions that are needed for what we're facing in our housing challenges in central Oregon.
[00:05:17] Speaker D: Yeah, well, just a brief definition of what we're talking about. This is safe parking. So this is creating safe, legal, sanitary places for people who are unhoused to be and then pairing them with a case manager to work toward housing stability. So we can do that primarily in two forms.
A lot of folks are in cars or RVs.
And then a new tool that we have are micro shelters. Sometimes they're called pods, but those are small garden shed size structures. They're not very big.
Eight feet by 12ft, that's less than 100 square feet.
They have power, so they have heating and cooling, but they don't have internal plumbing. So we still use porta potties and tools like that.
This will be our 10th location where we're setting up a site.
It will be our second site in Bend. So we've been primarily in Redmond.
The first site we opened over three years ago at my church. So I'm a pastor.
We started this in our own parking lot.
We heard about this from some folks in Salem who had started this. And safe parking is not unique to Oregon. They're safe parking programs all over the country now, but relatively new.
And as a pastor, it was like, well, I could do that, you know, a couple parking spaces. And that seemed easy enough. And so then we went to the VFW and asked if they would be willing to do it too. And they were like, sure. And so from there we just said, okay, I think this is going to be a thing. This is a necessary tool for homelessness response. Let's just see how many other partners we can find who will say yes to this. And so it just kind of keeps growing and has been quite successful.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Can you describe the success, Melanie? What's the impact been of having this program in central Oregon for as long as it's been? I gotta believe that we've had enough repetition at it to see how it's changing the area in the city. So can you describe that?
[00:07:21] Speaker C: Yeah, when I stepped into office in 2021, we didn't even have a permanent emergency shelter. So we were real behind on our just stabilization response for folks who were unhoused. And this was a key part of the solution that we came upon and do some code changes, had to have some rowdy meetings, but put it in place that we have the right rules and regulations to allow this to happen.
And we've seen our faith community stepping up. A lot of the reason being folks have land and space and parking spots to use.
And we've seen what this does is it helps people move, move through to more permanent housing so they're not stuck in a situation where they're living out of their car or living in an unstable situation. That makes it very hard for them to connect to services or to connect to case managers. When they have a stable living situation where it's safe and sanitary and they've got a consistent person coming around to talk with them, much more likely to move on to permanent housing. And that's what we've seen with this program. So that's why we want to keep pushing to expand it. We're really proud to have even more spots opening this year. We've got about six sites across the city, and this is just a key resource that we need to keep pushing for.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: So is that kind of the centerpiece of the idea is it gives people the opportunity to settle in or develop some kind of routine in life, and then that's kind of the trigger that enables turnaround or being able to get out of a difficult situation, find a job. Is that kind of the idea, the gist of the program?
[00:08:45] Speaker D: Yeah, I.
When you think about just some basic brain science, right, when you're in survival mode, you're literally thinking out of that amygdala space of your brain, right? We sometimes call it lizard brain, right? It's fight or flight.
When folks are able to calm, when they feel like they're safe, they're not just on high alert all the time.
They can move to that prefrontal cortex thinking, right? Executive functioning, planning. Where could I be in a week, in a month, in six months from now?
That isn't unique to homelessness. That's. Every human being is wired this way.
And so if you're wondering, well, why can't someone who's unhoused get their life together and go get a job? And why can't they do all these different things? When you're in survival mode, you're just responding to what's in front of you.
And we find what people who are unhoused are looking for first is safety.
They just want to be safe.
And so people do that in different ways. Whether that's getting into an RV in the first place. Sometimes that's why people scatter into the woods or they put geographic distance between them and other people.
And so when you create a place of safety, then you've created sort of a playground where you can begin to think about longer term planning.
And maybe that's accessing healthcare again, maybe that is employment, maybe that's accessing food resources.
In our program, all case management is housing focused. So folks can have a number of goals, but we will require and ask people to have a housing goal and to work toward that.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: What is the average stay in your sites that participants are staying in these shelters or on the safe parking sites?
[00:10:40] Speaker D: Yeah, great question. Four to six months, in some cases faster. The bottleneck really is people are ready to move on to something faster than that. It's just the availability of something that they can afford. So the next bottleneck is maybe it's subsidized housing with our housing authority or some other form of subsidized housing.
In some cases we have had people able to go back to more full time employment and get into market rate housing.
That's quite a leap. Right. When you've got to put $5,000 down to get into an apartment and the rent's going to be $2,300 a month or whatever, but it takes a few months, but people get there.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
Melanie, maybe you can speak to what the difference is between what people may be familiar with with, you know, unmanaged homeless camps and what that looks like versus what we're talking about here with safe parking. I think whenever this is brought up, if you don't know what the difference is, you might assume that we're opening our whole property up to whoever wants to drop in. Can you describe the differences or either one of you describe the differences?
[00:11:51] Speaker C: Yeah, well, that's an important, important reason. The city, you know, has a regulatory role here and put some codes in place for everyone to be predictable on what's happening at these sites, you know, and what's required and the basics required to make sure that we have safety. But one of the big reasons, you know, I was a huge proponent of this when we were bringing it up was this is a way to promote safety and security and to not have those conditions that you see out on the street. Right. Where it's completely unmanaged and folks are in survival mode and there's no one, there's no Rick to call if there's a problem. Right. It's a police response.
It's a response that's not efficient or actually helping the problem. Right. So that's the great thing about this program is you have providers, you have case managers, you have rules and regulations around how the site operates. We've got absolutely no issues. But if there ever were an issue with a site not being in compliance with our code, we would say, okay, you can't have the site anymore. Obviously that hasn't happened.
But there's ways to make sure we're getting the basic level of safety and security in these places and that we're providing the services that folks need.
So really, that's part of the rule is we set up the rules in the ground and then we have folks like you all and Rick coming in and saying, okay, we're willing to do this and to make it happen, which is great.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: So to continue down that road, what is for somebody listening to this podcast, and maybe they live in the neighborhood or on this side, you know, there seems to be a misunderstanding around different projects like this because of what you were describing and different unmanaged places. So how. How do you guys respond or what is the best response for people when it comes to concern from the community or neighbors?
[00:13:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll start and I'll throw it to you, Rick. But what I like to tell people is, like, if you don't like to see folks living outside, surviving outside visibly in our city in an unmanaged way, we need more of this. We need more of this managed resource. So, Rick, go ahead.
[00:13:42] Speaker D: Yeah, well, sometimes people make the mistake of thinking if we're bringing a new safe parking site to a business, maybe near their neighborhood or to a church, that we are bringing. There's an image of, you know, trash and fear and crime and, you know, are we bringing that to our neighborhood? And absolutely not.
Most of our locations, once they get set up and we've gone through that neighbor notification process, most folks don't even realize that it's operating near them. They're very quietly operating.
We have a couple of locations on a very. On the main highway in Redmond where thousands of cars drive by every day. And I'll ask people, they'll ask where we operate, and I'll tell them a couple of our locations, and they'll say, oh, I drive that every day. And I had no idea.
And they're just much quieter than people imagine they're going to be, because as the mayor said, this is. We're not bringing unmanaged camping to a church parking lot.
We are bringing a very organized, structured alternative to that where there's accountability and the presence of staff and things like security. Cameras and fencing, and we just don't see the issues that people imagine, you know, unsafe things happening. And it just has not been the case over the last three years over multiple sites.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: And we're hoping that things might even get a little quieter around here. We have bottle rockets go off in the middle of the night, and neighbors get a hold of us, and people spinning donuts in the gravel. And when it snows, it's pretty fun out here, actually.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Rick, say what happened when you came to talk to our council and share kind of the plan.
What happened?
[00:15:29] Speaker D: This is hilarious to me, because when we first started hosting safe parking at our church parking lot, and we have a gravel parking lot in the back, and that was early in the days where I would go and meet with people who are coming into the program.
And I went back to meet this gentleman and introduced myself, and he said, oh, you're the pastor here.
He said, well, I'm really glad to be in safe parking, but last night, there were some teenagers doing donuts in your parking lot. And I told them, I don't think you guys should be here. And I was like, all right. I got, like, nighttime security back here, Because, I mean, in church parking lots, people come in late at night, and they do all sorts of things. We would find beer bottles and marijuana packaging, and people do unholy things in church parking lots. Kind of goes with the territory.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: You're such a dork.
[00:16:22] Speaker D: That was church language cleaned up.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:24] Speaker D: Okay, we'll do the unedited version later.
So I came to westside to meet with the council, and I got here just a few minutes early, and I looked out in the gravel area to the west of the building, and there was somebody out there at a pickup track doing donuts in your parking lot. And I got a little video of it and got to share it with your council in real time. Yeah.
So I gave that guy 20 bucks, and he drove away.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Unanimous yes from the council.
[00:16:56] Speaker D: We tell people that your church, your business, your neighborhood is safer when it has safe parking than when it doesn't, because there's the presence of people here.
And one of our biggest advocates is an industrial business owner who had all sorts of stuff going on around his business and late at night in the parking lot, and he now has safe parking in his parking lot, and he's one of our biggest fans because his employees feel safer because they come in at various shifts and times of the day and night, and they feel like their property is safer for having hosted safe parking. So it's true.
This church property will be safer for having hosted safe parking than it was when it didn't.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: And for those that are maybe concerned, this will attract unmanaged camping in the area that's built into the ordinance. Is that right?
[00:17:48] Speaker C: Yeah. No. We heard early on from service providers when we were setting up, you know, and increasing our shelter space that having unmanaged camping right near shelters is very detrimental to the shelters doing their work. They don't. They don't see that as positive or helpful for their mission and trying to get people out of homelessness. So that's the same thing with safe parking. We actually have a buffer zone around any kind of shelter that unmanaged camping of any kind is not allowed for that purpose. So that really does help as well. Just create that atmosphere that we want to create of safety and security.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
All this kind of brings up what sometimes can be the attitude of this is great. The solutions are happening to a problem that we all know is here. Can somebody else's neighborhood be the ones that deal with that? Can somebody else find the solutions and leave us alone?
I'd love both your responses, both from the city's perspective, but then also Rick, as a pastor, kind of from the Christian perspective as well, like why I think we would agree we can't. That can't be our response. But what does the city say to that?
[00:18:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I think part of, as policymakers, when we stepped into the role, you know, after the 2020 election and there was kind of a new wave of folks on council saying, hey, we want to do something about this and we want to lead on, it was the recognition that we needed to step up ourselves to show the community what needed to be done. But then at some point the community's got to come along with us because this is not an issue that just city government, government can solve. We've done a lot of work to try to collaborate with the county and the state level.
Federally, it's going to take all of us in the different levels of government, but it's going to take community members too.
You know, we fund our shelter work, but all these organizations always have private donors and other funding sources that they rely on as well.
And the attitude of sort of not here, it really doesn't help us find the solutions that are actually going to help reduce the problem that everyone doesn't want to see or have in our society anymore. And by doing this sort of smaller scale solution that can be scattered around the city, it's actually much safer and better than having just one big Area where everyone together. Right.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: A giant warehouse and housing hundreds in a single location. This shares that need, and it just.
[00:20:03] Speaker C: It's safer and it's more humane. And these are people. These are our neighbors and community members we're talking about. Right. And helping them in this situation helps our entire city be a better place. Right. So why shouldn't we all contribute to that however we can?
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And what did you share with your church back when you started this in Redmond? What's the rationale of why this is important as faith leaders, but as churches to embrace this?
[00:20:29] Speaker D: I think, in a word, for us, it's always been the word wholeness that draws on that Hebrew word shalom. You know, peace, that sense that God's desire for every human being has been.
It is spiritual, but it's physical. It's your housing, it's your education, it's your sense of safety, it's your sense of opportunity. It's ecological, it's economical. Like that sense of wholeness that is described particularly in the Hebrew scriptures, it's holistic. And so we can't just tend to people spiritually while ignoring people's physical realities right outside of our doorsteps.
I find it fascinating, interesting, that word shalom, it's the name of our capital city of our state, right? Salem. Shalom. Holy.
And yet we see the pain, the suffering that exists right around our own community. And I think we've got to do something. We have to respond.
And I think the mayor said something really insightful earlier, which is that churches tend to own a lot of property. We don't think about that. And a lot of churches that I know are kind of cash poor, right? They're like, we need those Sunday offerings for the pastor to get paid and to keep things lights on and all those kinds of things.
But churches and faith organizations around our community and around this country actually own a lot of property.
And it kind of, in some cases, can sit there vacant for large chunks of time. And so this is one way in this program that churches can bring that resource. They may not be able to do everything around homelessness, but they can bring some property that they have to, and we can backfill that with, you know, the city's doing its part with building out those ordinances and the policies and service providers, like our organization can bring the skill set of case management, and we each bring our piece of the puzzle, and it works.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Is that part of the challenge, Melanie, is the.
I mean, even just the value of property in our area specifically. Right. I'm sure, there's lots of brilliant ideas that people, people have brought up to you or around the city council.
But the sticking point always has to be, well, but not don't put it there because that would cost. Or that's valued at. I mean that's got to be a huge thing for you guys.
[00:22:54] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, yeah. This was a couple years ago that we finally just had to make a map of all of our city owned properties. Right. And just show how few there were.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:03] Speaker C: And what. And how they were. We had leveraged everything we possibly could that was any kind of a reasonable area.
I don't know if you heard of the old KOA campground north of Bend. Why don't you just buy that? And it's like, well, that is a five million dollar piece of property probably. Right. And we don't have the funds to just sort of buy. Buy private property.
[00:23:20] Speaker D: What about the old Costco parking lot? I've heard that one so many times actually.
[00:23:23] Speaker C: I've been by there the day I'm like something should happen here like a farmer's market or something. It's just like so apparent. It's sad now, but yeah. And it's a huge, the huge issue. The other reason this really connects to, to city government work is that this is the high rate of homelessness, especially on the west coast, is driven by high housing prices. Right. And it's driven by the fact we have these really high land values and high prices for rent and homes. And that is the number one factor that people cite when they're asked every time we do the count every year why they are experiencing homelessness. So it makes it very difficult to cite the solutions again. Why having this sort of smaller, more lower cost startup solution is a way that we were just like, we just got to start getting our foot in the door and getting some, some more types of housing out there.
We also were really lucky to open permanent supportive housing in Bend, which is our first ever. But that was a process that took many years. Right. To get to there.
So until we can get more of those built, what else can we do with the land that. With the scarce land we have available to make it possible for people to move out of homelessness.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: And Rick, have you seen, especially the Christian community around you go through this, a little bit of an evolutionary process that I experienced myself over the last several years of all the excuses. Right. Well, we could do this and we could help but you know, safety and we have kids, we run Neighbor Impact, runs a preschool out of Here, and you know, here's xyz. And then you come into the picture and go, well, here's how it works. Here's why it's safe. Here's the background checks and the process that we go through. And, and what's interesting to me is it really is a push, especially for the Christian that believes that we believe, that believe that Jesus functioned how he functioned. Because it brought me to the point in my life where I was like, okay, well, maybe I'm not actually afraid of something happening. Maybe I'm just afraid of poverty. And that's the thing that's keeping this at arm's length. And that is a really scary place to be. As someone that claims they follow Jesus, right? Where all of a sudden I understand that I'm not actually being cautious. I'm being afraid of caring for the people that Jesus cares for.
[00:25:26] Speaker D: So our church went through this probably seven or eight or nine years ago.
Safe parking was actually easy for us to say yes to. That's only because many years before that, Shepherd's house had come to us and said, hey, there's no shelter in Redmond of any kind. You all have a gym.
What if we did a winter shelter? Would you be willing to host it for one month?
And that's when our church leadership went through all the what abouts. Well, what about the kids? What about safety? What about sanitation? What will our neighbors say? What happens if something gets broken? Who's going to pay for it? All the what abouts and decided reluctantly to say yes to that one month opportunity.
But then people started volunteering and bringing meals and playing games of UNO with folks who came into the shelter. And all of a sudden homelessness was not a problem.
It was names and faces and stories that they knew.
Everything we did from that point forward was an easy yes, even though the complexity of the program or the budget, you know, grew.
But yes, I think every property owner, church is included, go through that, all the what abouts and, and you should do due diligence, right? Like, of course, what about the insurance liability costs?
Yes, of course. And I'm glad to have that conversation with every property owner because we have sorted through all sorts of scenarios and I think we have a valid comprehensive program that works in just about any setting, including churches that have preschool or schools nearby. There are other safe parking locations that have schools across the street from them, and these are very safely operating. I also would remind you that many of these safe parking sites have families with kids in them who go to those schools.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: One question that came up with our denomination about the safety of having people staying on our property and saying, you know, is that okay, we have kids programs here? Well, we're also a church that is open to the public and we're not checking people at the doors. We're not doing background checks. We have strangers coming in all the time by design. That's what we do every week.
So logically, actually when we talk about, you know, people that are known, have gone through a process, have applied, are now case managed by caseworkers that are working out of this facility.
The nature of people coming in off the street is very different from the participants that will be living in these spaces. And so some of those things, they sound scary until you realize, oh, actually this is how it is.
[00:28:10] Speaker D: I have a question for you.
So one of the major hesitations of almost every property owner that we've approached with this are concerned about what the neighbors will say because everybody wants to have good relationships with their neighbors.
I've been, I've. That's got to be a concern for you.
You all are the pastors here.
How are you going to manage that?
What are you thinking about when you think about your neighbors and what they might say?
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we're, I mean, we're expectant to hear something, right?
[00:28:43] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Every change that we've made outside has been met with some kind of comment, usually for the neighbors.
For those of you not living in Bend, listening to this podcast, the west side of Bend is not, you know, the most loosey goosey area or neighborhood. Right. There's people have standards and ideals.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Yeah. It's expensive neighborhood. Northwest crossing.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: Of course.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. So we're, we're ready for comments or even frustrations or curiosities or fears from people. I think the conclusion that we have drawn because that will use some of our energy and resource in order to respond to those things. It will.
The conclusion that we have drawn is that it's worth that use of resources in order to accomplish something that we believe casts a good vision for our church. We're not ignorant enough to believe that we're solving the unhoused crisis in the area. We know this is a very small drop in the bucket compared to what's happening in Oregon. What's happening in Central, Central Oregon. We believe the vision which creates discipleship for our church is important so that we might view the world in a more Jesus centered way.
And we believe, yeah, it is worth it for the, the handful of people that will come through the program.
So I don't know that I have a perfect response. I'm going to take that ad hoc as they kind of come in case by case. But we're ready to have that conversation. I think we can do it with a lot of generosity and empathy for what people are experiencing and we can do a good job with it.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think for our neighborhood and maybe neighbors are listening to this to find out what we're doing.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: But to see these shelters, these micro homes on site, I think will be a lot less fear inducing than maybe hearing that we're stepping into housing solutions and to see it on site. And we're quite lucky. I think we have a secondary tax slot that we purchased in, I think 09 that's kind of sandwiched between this power plant that's directly behind you guys and the edge of the property which goes down a hill. So it is a corner of the property that not everybody would have access to a spot like this. But we think it will offer some great privacy for the participants as well as not being right in the, you know, in the middle of the neighborhood or backing up to the homes that kind of ring our property on the other side. So I do hope the neighbors check this out and really vet what we're doing and hopefully have a compassionate lens as they're doing that. Because I think what they'll find is that we're doing everything we can to also be good neighbors. Because we care about that. Of course we care about that.
[00:31:26] Speaker D: And I would extend the time and resources that we have as an organization. If people want to tour what these sites look like, sites that have been operating for a while, I'm always glad to do that. I thought it was really generous of the mayor. On the way in, she said she could personally sit down and have dinner with any of the neighbors that wanted to hear a lengthy explanation for why.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: Your tax dollars at work.
[00:31:47] Speaker C: No, but what I'll say about this is because, you know, this program has matured a bit. We have, as you would say, the data we have, the experience from all the other providers who have provided this around town to show that once you put this solution on the ground with the right management, it is not unsafe. Right. It is more safe, as Rick talked about. And you are actually moving people into better situations and helping with the problem.
And so this is a thing that just from my experience as a policymaker, as a decision maker in the city government, people, when they don't know exactly what the thing is, they will go to the worst possible conclusion. Right.
And there are a lot of valid fears and concerns. There are some that are maybe not completely valid, but there's a lot of valid fears and concerns. And a lot of time it's just hearing those out and talking about the ways you're going to mitigate those. Right. And that's exactly what you all have talked about doing and what this podcast is part of as well. Right. It's just getting information out there with specificity, because if you don't specify, people will just speculate. Right. And a lot of times, once people see concrete solutions on the ground, they can understand more. Okay. Oh, okay, this is going to work or it's not so bad. Right.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: That's really important, and that's lent itself to the timing. The reason we haven't announced it to the whole church months in advance is because we want it to.
To control the narrative, not to spin it just our way. But we wanted to have all the things, the. The questions already answered. Well, what is it going to look like? Safe parking. They're parking out here. And, you know, I know that happens at some sites. Well, we're doing it a little bit differently, and I understand that the language might be confusing or you might have had experience with whatever. We wanted everything to be as settled and complete and finished as possible before we announced to kind of lend credence to the reality of the situation and not just everyone's imaginations, which I. I've seen you interact with people in city council meetings and others sometimes. So much of the fear just comes from being like, oh, you don't. You don't understand the program or you haven't seen it actually in place.
[00:33:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: And I can empathize with all the thoughts that might be running through your head, but this is what actually looks like. This is what it's going to be like.
[00:33:57] Speaker C: Yeah. It's just really smart to get all your ducks in a row and especially have a provider like Rick that can answer a lot of these questions. And that was something that we didn't do correctly. Early on, we were looking at a small city site that we thought we could leverage for some sort of managed solution. And that information came out. We ended up talking about it publicly, but we didn't have a provider to say, hey, here's the person who's going to. We said, well, we'll put out for a contract. We'll get a provider, that there will be a provider. But there was no face or name to say, okay, this person's gonna manage it, and they can answer your questions. And that's really important to have, so I think that's the right way to do it.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And for us having Mountain View community development, Rick, your staff here on site.
Again, not every site's gonna have that kind of proximity for the caseworkers to the site, but it's amazing that we have that and can offer that.
[00:34:48] Speaker D: Yeah. So we haven't even talked about that yet, but. So not only is west side church going to be a host site for safe parking and three micro shelters, but our staff to this point has always been in Redmond. And we recognize we need a bend team and we needed space for them to operate out of. And so we are going to be operating out of this building. We're going to have a team initially of four folks, case managers, peer support, administrative help.
And that will probably grow as additional sites come online.
I think our organization in total has a few more than 15 folks working for it. Peer support specialists and peer wellness specialists.
But yeah, there are going to be staff on site right here.
And grateful to Westside Church for hosting that office space, being a partner.
I was thinking back to the churches around this community that are hosting something similar to this. And it's very common that they also have a preschool, a head start.
And when you. When you start to think about the commonality there, it's that these are churches that have an especially strong feeling that they.
That their faith, that their internal faith should have an external expression that should show up in concern for the community. So that's creating new childcare spaces. And you all have done that. And now it's focusing on the unhoused community. And I know Westside has done that around food insecurity and providing food resources in partnership with neighbor impact. And so this is really like a reflection of your values, the church's values. I mean, you look at those other churches around town, Nativity Lutheran, Ben Nazarene, Ben Church, the Unitarian Fellowship, here you can see the commonality of expressing those internal values externally for the good of the community. And I think that's incredible.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: We've talked about it to the church how in the ministry of Jesus, his whole theme is that it's good news for the poor. And whenever we cease to actually engage, interact with, care about real people who are in poverty, I think we've lost the lead, we've lost Jesus in the mix. And then what are we if we fail in that very basic, most basic of Christian virtue, which is like, we care about the poor, we care about those in poverty, and not just in general terms of the poor. But people, families, kids, parents. And so how we interact, I guess, and how we funnel our time and energy and resources into that, I think it doesn't matter a little bit. I think it's like the whole deal.
It's the whole deal.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: The temptation would be for a church in our location with our heritage or whatever would be to become a country club church. It's still a lot of work to do that, but to just kind of pull away from the real need and insulate ourselves from the rest of the city or whatnot. It's tempting to be able to do that. But of course, the work of Jesus is a lot better than that. I gotta believe, Melanie, that, like, you're having to manage so many. The larger conversation. I'm thinking about how many meetings Evan and I have been in just about this project.
Three pods.
Again, a drop in the bucket, comparatively.
How's your. How's your home?
I guess right now when it comes to continuing to help with people like this, because I think you share the same heart of we're not just trying to solve a problem, we're trying to care for people.
[00:38:33] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: So how do you feel with regard to hope of being able to find solutions in the future?
[00:38:41] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I think. I think I'm still very hopeful and I think I'm really excited to see this year that we're expanding state parking. We sort of got it going. We got over the hump of. Of getting it started and kind of moving past a lot of those community fears and mitigating those and pretty steady for a while, and we need to be increasing it. So this is a great thing in my mind and just continues to show that there's folks in this community, lots of folks in this community that really care and they want to do actual tangible things to help. Right. Even with a really complex and big problem, it can also just be overwhelming and just say, look, it's too much. Like, I can't really, I'm a drop in the bucket. Why should I try? Right? So to see people still saying, look, we're still going to try, even if we don't solve it all, we are going to help some people. And that's because this is a people issue. Even just a little bit, you will help one or two people, that's worth it, right?
So the more that we can just keep creating that platform and I'm hoping just keep snowballing, right, the more people join up and say, hey, it worked out for us in our situation, it can work for you too.
And you know, getting businesses and not just churches, but businesses and other places too, to see the value of this and how they can help. I think it's amazing still. So I've still, I've still. My hope meter is still full on this one.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Good.
[00:39:57] Speaker C: Especially.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: And I would just say this, anybody who has a business or property or another church considering this from the beginning, I came more from it at the angle of all the things that will probably be no's that will be the reason that this is just not going to work out. From insurance like we talked about, to just the realities of what is even available on our property. To do this to, you know, our denomination and all the structures that have to say yes. And at every step of the way, it's been a wow, that's a great idea. Yes, yes, yes. Insurance is like, oh, so we already cover Mountain View community development, so we can coordinate with that. And the nomination was like, this is an amazing program that the city and.
[00:40:43] Speaker D: What'S wrong with them? They're supposed to be more skeptical.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: I know I'm the skeptic now. And everyone else is like, yeah, sounds good to us. When can you start?
So I was just so surprised, I guess, by not only the need for people to step into being part of solutions, but the willingness of all the structures around us that we would assume are going to be the ones that say no, actually are very interested in also being part of the solution here.
[00:41:13] Speaker D: When we first started this, our church did this. It was an easy ask for us because we were already hosting a shelter in our building that's even more. That's not just in your parking lot. They're coming in the doors every night, seven nights a week.
And then we went to the VFW hall and they were like, yeah, we serve veterans and of course we'll do this. And I thought, oh, this is going to be so easy. I'm just going to go to like service clubs and businesses. Everybody's going to say yes. And then we announced the site.
Well, we hadn't quite announced the site. This was in the city of Redmond and sort of kind of leaked before we could do appropriate neighbor notification.
And oh, man, it's. It didn't happen. It melted down in a city council meeting and pitchforks and torches. And I was told by someone who had been around the city decades that that was the most contentious city council meeting they'd ever seen in the history of Redmond. And I was really proud to be associated with it.
But then we realized, oh, this could be really hard. And there was a lot of public resistance.
But then we added another site and then another one, and then organizations in Bend, Central Oregon Villages Reach. There's some great organizations around our region and the winds are now at our back on this. The public by and large supports this kind of program. We can feel it.
And it's exciting to see because every site gets a little bit easier to open, a little bit less reticence and bit, a little, a little more openness.
And we tangibly feel that when we go and talk with partners about a new site. So yeah, if there are folks who are listening who own vacant property or own a business or whatever, we'd love to hear from them.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great to hear. How do people get into the program? Is there a waiting list? Are these people that are referred to Mountain View Community Development from other organizations speak to how people get into this program?
[00:43:13] Speaker D: Yeah, folks sign up through our website.
Most of the folks that we encounter have a personal device, a phone. Right. They can access the Internet. And so most folks, they fill out a form on our website and they get referred there by a number of sources. Sometimes it's law enforcement, sometimes it's kind of word on the street. You know, there are informal networks that exist among unhoused folks in our community.
Other service providers refer folks.
They fill out that form. It pings our case managers. They get right back to them. We typically have a waiting list and then we'll sit down with them and do an intake interview.
They have to make two major commitments.
People need to say, number one, I will be willing to work with a case manager once a week toward a housing goal. That's the biggest commitment we ask for. The second commitment is that they will be a good neighbor.
And under that we have another kind of list of rules. Like if I have a pet, they'll be on a leash.
I won't have visitors.
No drugs, no alcohol, no weapons. Very basic forms of being a good neighbor. And if people can say yes to those two commitments, we'll do a background check.
And if they're right for the program, then we'll get them located if they have a vehicle or if they need one of these micro shelter units.
[00:44:30] Speaker C: Rick, what's the name of the system that folks use to track data on this and to help get people on lists to get them into resources?
[00:44:38] Speaker D: Yeah, hmis Homelessness Management Information System. It's a real catchy, real fun hummus cloud based something. Yeah.
[00:44:49] Speaker C: But it's really important that folks are coming into that system. So we're tracking and making sure that we're matching folks with the right resources. And that can be a way to say, okay, this is a good safe parking candidate. Right?
[00:45:00] Speaker D: Yeah. And we can refer people to other.
Maybe they're not a great fit for our program, but they may be for another partner in the space and vice versa. So it's very common for us to get a call from someone, say, at Shepherd's house, and say, hey, we have this family and Shepherd's house are wonderful partners and we love them, work well with them, but they're often more set up for congregate shelter.
And so we sometimes find that families don't fit well in that setting, but they have an RV or something like that, and so they're a better fit for us, and vice versa. We'll find people who may be a good fit for their programs. There's a great kind of ecosystem of service providers working together, collaborating in touch with one another.
It's pretty encouraging.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
And like we're talking about feels like a drop in the bucket. We're talking three shelters here on site. But when you think about the effect of three shelters turning over every six to nine months over several years, we anticipate this going well and being here for many years. And then not only our site, but maybe others on this side of town that add to the growing number that starts to add up. Right. And over. Over a decade, we're talking hundreds of people coming through safe parking, is that right?
[00:46:21] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that's right.
[00:46:22] Speaker C: In the past few years, we feel like we have had hundreds that have gone through. Right.
[00:46:26] Speaker D: Yeah. I think we've served over 200 people in the last. We served 129. I forget 129 or 134 people. Last year, 45 of those moved on to permanent housing, another 10 to a positive destination.
That could be a family property or transitional housing or a rehab facility.
That's just our program. And you add in folks like secular villages and reach the other churches.
And the Unitarian Fellowship is hosting a site and Ben Nazarene and we can go on, but there are. Between Bend and Redmond now there are 14 sites, something like that.
[00:47:02] Speaker C: And can I say it's really important that this is not just a thing that's happening in Bend.
It's really important that it's happening in Redmond too. And you know, you were talking about the contentious council meeting. I was up in Sisters last year when they were having some very contentious council meetings around a cold weather shelter. Right. And so every Community is kind of at a different step of the journey. But the more we can show each other that here in central Oregon, this is what we're doing and it's working, the more likely we'll see more communities stepping up with this type of program. So that's another reason that every little bit counts, right?
[00:47:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: As you're right, the pioneering, the example that so many organizations have done, and we're thankful for the contentious meetings that you've had earlier. You got to get even at the point where that was one of the first things that came up was I was like, man, I got to talk to Neighbor Impact and tell them that we're even entertaining the idea of housing some. And they were like, oh, no, that's great. That's fine.
[00:47:52] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: No, we've done this, like, three times. Like, what are you worried about? Right.
[00:47:55] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:47:56] Speaker A: And here I am being like, oh, the most vulnerable of us will certainly feel some kind of fear about this. And they're just like, we've been down the road, man. Don't even worry about it.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: And we'll readily admit we're not the most courageous to say yes to this because of all these others that we've been able to ask and get some answers. And huge, huge props to the churches that went first and to the businesses that said yes before they had examples locally to run that by. And, yeah, it's great to be here, being able to point people to six, seven, eight other churches and places that are doing it.
[00:48:34] Speaker D: Well, yes. And don't discount the role that west side is playing in this. Yes, it's three micro shelters, and, yeah, our offices will be here.
But to some extent, you are putting your name and credibility behind this.
I mean, I don't.
I don't take that lightly, you know, and every business, every service organization, every church that says yes to this builds on the credibility and will make it easier for the next people down the line to get to a yes as well. So, yeah, it's three micro shelters, and it's good for those three families at a time, but this will be a signal far beyond that as well.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: And I'm proud of our church and our council for being the people that do know about this all the way to this point.
[00:49:23] Speaker C: Right.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: Been really into it and see the vision of it. I remember even in the council meeting, I can't remember exactly who it was.
They started off with a response to your pitch, Rick, like, well, you know, I have some friends, and they think this is a bad idea, and it's Scary because of whatever. And I was like, oh, no, but they're mean.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: I was like, oh, thank God.
[00:49:51] Speaker C: There is an uncomfortable element of sort of saying to some people who will give you some feedback and you say, thank you, I hear you. And we're gonna do it anyway, right? And we're gonna do it anyway because we think it's the right thing to do. And we think we can mitigate a lot of those, those things that you're, that you're scared about. But it takes some courage to do that. It's very easy to say, whoa, the room blew up. There's a lot of people here that are angry. Let's just not do it. Right. Which is not the situation you all are in. But just that element of sort of getting that pushback and being able to listen to it to make people feel heard and then explain why you're going to go ahead and go forward. That takes some courage and it takes some doing so.
[00:50:26] Speaker D: I mean, Jesus was not known for being a people pleaser.
He disappointed a lot of people.
Random fact. You didn't ask this question. But I feel like this is important to get out there because one of the biggest misconceptions that we hear around the community is it's often phrased as if you build it, they will come. Meaning if you provide more services for unhoused people, more people will leave other places and come here and choose to be homeless here in our community. And we're therefore attracting people to our community.
And it's just a commonly held belief and I suppose there's some logic to that or something.
I can just tell you we have lots of data on this and it is consistent year after year, which is that 80 to 85% of the people who are unhoused in our community were last housed here.
They are members of our community, they're part of our community. But typically for economic reasons, they lost their housing. And there's some percentage, and it's around 10% or 10 to 12% who folks are sort of passing through or they're a bit more mobile and maybe transient, I don't love that word, transient. But they are physically moving, kind of migrating.
But by and large it is people who lived in Bend or they lived in Prineville or they lived in Madras. And we've seen that data year over year since we first started hosting winter shelters eight, nine years ago.
And there's new data that comes out every year and it's virtually the same number. And I don't know how many times we can say it and repeat it. There are some folks who just will choose to live to choose to believe that myth that adding services will attract people who weren't here before. And it just isn't true.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: And so helpful, I think, to stop thinking always of how do we keep people that aren't already us away from us. I mean, and to start reframing these conversations around housing as these are our neighbors. These are not some outside malicious, maleficent, maleficent, malignant. There you go, the villain from anyway.
But these are our neighbors. These are our neighbors who just with the right combination of care and assistance could actually have incredible life change. Could be in a whole different spot a year from now. Their kids could be in a totally different spot 10 years from because of some simple things that we might offer through this program.
[00:53:06] Speaker C: Especially true for youth homelessness. For youth that are homeless by themselves or with a family. The earlier we can interview and make that stint as short as possible, the less likely we're going to see issues and things going down the line. Folks who are chronically homeless, a lot of them were homeless as youth.
So that is super important to intervene as early as we can.
[00:53:25] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Can I underscore, exclamation mark all of that?
If we don't help people rebound quickly, the issues compound and it will become more complicated and more expensive and the response systems have to be much more robust in that case. So catching people early is crucial.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
So for as the program gets off and running, as we get participants here on site, how do they reach you guys at Mountain View Community Development if they have questions or concerns or want to tour a site that's already been running for some time? What's the process of getting in touch with Mountain View?
[00:54:05] Speaker D: Yeah, you can call Evan's personal cell phone. He'll relay those messages to you. What's that number again, Evan?
No, our website is fantastic. You can reach out to us. You can read more about the program there if you're interested in if you're unhoused and you need to be a part of this program, you can sign up there.
Mvcdorgon.org Mountain View Community Development mvcdorgon.org and glad to give folks tours. Glad to talk neighbors through what it looks like, how it works, how we keep it safe.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: But yeah, we're here. I would extend to during our office hours, people are welcome to come and ask to speak to the Mountain View staff that's here during office hours as opposed to maybe going and knocking on the door at the participants Come talk to. Yeah, you know, come, please come to the office. We have people here and we'd love to answer questions and.
[00:55:01] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: Or go to city hall and email.
[00:55:05] Speaker C: Is public, so there you go.
[00:55:07] Speaker D: Yeah.
If your torch is lit and you've got your pitchfork sharpened, City hall meetings or Wednesdays.
[00:55:14] Speaker C: And I'll just point to him.
[00:55:15] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:55:16] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:55:16] Speaker A: Alright. Well, man, we really appreciate your time, you guys. I know that you've clearly, even based on this conversation, a lot going on in both your lives, very involved in the community, a lot of irons in the fire. And this just means so much to us as a faith community, to us personally, to have this relationship as we walk down this. And really it gives me hope to know that all of us are on the same page. We with trying to solve this instead of trying to be a lot of different entities that are even in some cases fighting against each other in order to accomplish something that we think is right.
To be unified in such a way on this and many other things to help our community is just a big encouragement to us. So thank you.
[00:55:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And thank you, Mayor Kibler, for just your leadership, but also I think for us just finding these partnerships outside of just civic world, but that us as faith communities can partner with you in the city, it's just refreshing. And it gives us hope that when we do these projects that have connection to each other, hopefully we're painting a brighter picture for the whole community of where we can go together. And it's not this competition or that we're at, you know, some combative posture. So we're grateful for that.
[00:56:38] Speaker C: Yeah, no, we. I really appreciate Westside stepping up here and keeping this program going and expanding. It's extremely important. I do want to mention our incredible city staff who work on this as well. That's where the work gets done.
And so we have a whole housing team and we have Brooke and Carrie and Rachel and Melissa and Amy and who have been instrumental in the past few years in just making sure that we have a successful program that works so we can keep building on it.
[00:57:04] Speaker B: So.
[00:57:05] Speaker C: But really grateful to you all and everyone here for making this happen.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: And they've taken time with us to sit in meetings and tour the property and do all those things with us together.
[00:57:13] Speaker B: It's been great.
[00:57:14] Speaker A: Very involved all along the way at a deep level and we're thankful.
[00:57:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:57:18] Speaker B: All right, thanks so much.
[00:57:19] Speaker C: Thanks.
[00:57:20] Speaker D: Thanks for hosting us.
