A warming shelter for the homeless in La Pine will be open for more nights this winter than ever before thanks to a $5,000 grant from St. Charles Health System.
In the shelter’s first year of operation — the heavy snow year of 2016-17 — it opened on nights when the forecasted temperature was 10 degrees or lower. Last year, the shelter raised that threshold to 15 degrees and was open 58 nights — more than the previous two years combined.
“One of the nice things about the (St. Charles) money is that it didn’t have any strings attached to it. That gives us the flexibility to use it for whatever we need it for,” said Chad Carpenter, pastor at Calvary Chapel, home to the shelter. “When that came in, that’s when we decided to raise our threshold to 20 degrees. That was a deciding factor for us.”
The expanded program in La Pine is just one component of a region-wide effort to not only establish warming shelters in each of Central Oregon’s communities, but also keep them open every night throughout the coldest months of the year. This year, St. Charles awarded community benefit grants to six area shelters: $5,000 for La Pine, Sisters and Prineville and $10,000 each for Madras and Redmond. Depending on needs, money has been set aside for Bend, which just found a location for its shelter.
The effort has brought together churches, existing shelters, elected officials, volunteers from the community and local businesses, said Rick Russell, president of the Faith Based Network and pastor of two churches in Madras and Redmond.
“Redmond was doing it so well, we wondered if we could take the Redmond model and bring it to Jefferson County, and we were off and running,” he said. “There was literally a meeting at Mazatlan (in Madras) where we got the county commissioners and the chief of police and the city administrator and various pastors and other interested parties in the room and said, ‘Can we do this here?’ We walked out an hour later with a pretty strong commitment from everyone that we need to do this.
“That was in July or August,” Russell said. “By Nov. 1, we were open.”
The Redmond model Russell refers to looks like this: A shelter will be open and available to anyone who needs it from Nov. 15 to March 15. Right now, it’s at Highland Baptist Church. On Dec. 8, it will move to Mountain View Fellowship. And then Feb. 16, it will move to Redmond Christian Church. It’s run by Shepherd’s House Ministries, which operates shelters for men and women in Bend.
“Both communities have a 16-foot trailer full of mattresses and cots and a coffee maker and all the stuff they need to get going for the night,” Russell said.
In La Pine, the effort to open a shelter started on Facebook, said Chad Carpenter, the program, facilities and communications director for La Pine Park & Recreation District and president of the Board of Directors for NeighborImpact. Two days later, a shelter was open, he said.
“There was no plan,” Carpenter said. “The community was just compelled by the need. Along with Sisters, it’s a little bit colder in La Pine than the rest of the region. The snow’s a little bit deeper here. Everyone knows it’s a rough place to be homeless.”
Besides their unique locations and operations, each shelter welcomes a different population of people. In La Pine, where services are scarce, the shelter has taken in a mother and three children escaping domestic violence, Carpenter said. In Madras, they get lots of people who are just passing through town on U.S. Highway 97, Russell said.
On a recent Wednesday in Redmond, the gym at Highland Baptist Church was quiet, despite 20+ residents (including two families) who had arrived for the night. A warm dinner was served and the lights were dimmed at 9 p.m. as residents settled onto their mattresses for some sleep.
Russell said some Redmond regulars often gather in a corner of the gym for a game of “street Uno” and some camaraderie.
“If you walk into any of these environments, it will feel safe and warm and hospitable,” he said. “People are tired. They’re not looking to party, they’re looking to sleep. But somewhere there’ll be people getting to know each other, and that’s a very cool thing to see. It’s more than a shelter. There’s a sense of community.”
Supporting the shelters was an easy decision for St. Charles, said Carlos Salcedo, the health system's manager of community partnerships.
“Our vision is creating America’s healthiest community, together and this aligns perfectly with that vision,” he said. “Having a place to sleep is important, especially when it’s cold. And this whole thing is not just ‘us’ but also ‘them’ —these are all networks of people working together to try to address this problem.”
For Carpenter, the shelters are about more than just a safe, warm night of sleep. They’re about human dignity and helping others when they need help.
“I’ve done nonprofit work for a long time and you always want to give people a hand up as opposed to a handout — most people,” he said. “But I’ve come to realize that people need handouts, too. On an emergency basis, people need to come in from the cold and get warm, and that’s OK, too.”
