County recognizes Kris McAlister for a decade of service

Presenter: Lane County’s Poverty and Homelessness Board recognizes Kris McAlister for 10 years of service on the board, elevating the voices of those with lived experience. At the Feb. 19 all member meeting, Kris McAlister:

Kris McAlister: My name is Kris McAlister and I’ve had the honor to live and be born in this county. For the majority of my life I have been either homeless or experienced homelessness, and that gave me a skill set we often call ‘lived experience.’ And so I call it character building.

But that said, I just wanted to use this moment to share as both someone who has represented some of the hardest times in my life while on the streets in services, that some of the people in this room help keep me alive. Some of the people who’ve known me since I was a youth and have helped keep building on positive and creative ways to engage and have it not just be one person’s reality, but multiple people’s solutions.

I also want to just thank Amanda Borta for helping bring advisory committees such as LEAGUE forward after we the body created it. I’m very proud of that acronym, the Lived Experience Advisory Group for Unhoused Engagement. Here all week (laughs).

That said, we’ve been able to explore a lot of diverse needs across multiple jurisdictions, but there comes a cost to people who do share their personal trauma and their personal experiences. And this goes beyond just the people who receive services, but also those who provide them.

We as a community need to make sure that we uplift all of the people living through the experiences of sometimes serving under executive order, federal order, or the removal of federal protections; folks without the meds, without the services they need, and then we often find that there is silence when our people are blamed for bigger social ills.

Unhoused people did not create homelessness. Unhoused people did not create drug use. Unhoused people did not create no place for them to heal after they had a surgery and lost their home.

This goes with the same providers who put all of their efforts in to make sure that our community cannot leave anybody behind. And so I just would like to implore anybody with lived experience, whether you are a vendor or whether you are a person suffering or having suffered homelessness or experienced one of your close ones suffering homelessness—to ask questions.

These bodies are here to put your truth into action, and if it doesn’t work, to be able to help work it out.

And I would just like to just summarize that we are an example in this nation and in this world. Some of our ideas from this body have echoed all the way through to Canberra, Australia, to Poland, because they see us, they hear us, it gets translated, and YouTube is a beautiful thing.

Some of the decisions from this lived experience will not always be supported by the government institutions. However, some of them will, and sometimes it just takes voicing why it means something to you.

Lived experience brought transparency to these meetings, which is why we have the honor to be able to see our people here online as well as be able to have the committee members understand that this is not behind an opaque situation, but is more transparent than almost any other government agency like what we do.

So I just want to say thank you for allowing there to be more lived experience. 

But I also ask as an advisory committee that you take care of your advisory people, you take care of your lived experience. Because when things go bad or when things are accepted and then not acted the way that the lived experience people felt it could, we bear a bigger burden.

We bear sometimes survivor guilt and we bear the need to implore more, and sometimes it can affect our mental health. So I appreciate you allowing me to come here as a representative of this board for a long time. I am proud of the work that we do and I will probably see you all in a little bit.

Presenter: Chair of the Lane County Poverty and Homelessness Board, Shawn Murphy:

Shawn Murphy (Lane County Poverty and Homelessness Board, chair): Kris has been a member since 2026. He served as a PHB co-chair as well. He was pivotal in the creation of LEAGUE and ensuring the voices of lived experience were present on the board. 

He diligently engaged, still engages with stakeholders, but particularly in strengthening the Egan Warming Shelter capacity and supports, and was instrumental in saving lives during the ice storm of January, 2024 in Eugene and Springfield and Cottage Grove.

This is an acknowledgement for all of us, for all the work that you have done and your advocacy for individuals with lived experience and your curiosity and your questioning. 

So, I just want to say I have admired your bravery, and just to throw it all out there to say this is what it is. I want to learn more and to take that information and as you said before, what we can’t build in the government as of yet, you don’t stop. And you go out in the community and you have found a way to work with others to make things happen. 

And I think that is a foundational component of how you change the whole entire structure. ‘Cause sometimes it takes the individuals who are willing to step out on the limb to do things that other people thought were not possible or could not yield the results.

And then you’re able to bring along those folks as you see and show that yes, this is possible and that this has been successful. And that’s one of the things that I have admired about you the whole time I’ve known you on the PHB, is if I think it can happen and people with lived experience can happen, I’ll show the naysayers it can happen.

And I think that’s why things end up on YouTube sometimes. So I want to appreciate you and I see Mayor Knudson has her hand up.

Presenter: Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson:

Kaarin Knudson (Eugene, mayor): Thank you, Chair. Very appreciated, and thank you for those words. And, Kris, I just wanted to say in my official capacity as mayor, but also in speaking for our community, to express my appreciation for 10 years of service with this board.

From 2016 until 2026, you have been present and dedicated, determined, and also focused on solutions and finding ways to work with people and improve life experiences and opportunities for people across our community.

And I just wanted to express my appreciation for the fact that even in your encouragement to others as you are stepping off of your term of engagement with the Poverty and Homelessness Board, so much of what you were saying is so representative of the contributions that you have made to this community.

And I think it does take time to work for lasting change, but as you’re describing the international influence and the ways in which work here has been an example to others, that comes through the determination and the dedication of our community continuing to show up and work towards solutions and those are beneficial to us locally.

And when they work well, they are great examples to others. So I just wanted to thank you for these 10 years of work in our community and service and for the work and engagement also beyond because there are so many ways to be a force for good in the world, and I appreciate you and all that you’ve dedicated to Poverty and Homelessness Board. So, thank you.

Presenter: Lane County Commissioner Pat Farr.

Pat Farr: You know, Kris, there are a lot of things I could say to you about you. Most of the things I’d rather say when you weren’t here because you get embarrassed when people talk directly to your face and and point out the things that you have done. You don’t like it. And you’ve got to live with it for a minute. I’m sorry for that.

You know, I remember June 7, 2016, he sat next to me over at MLK, over at the Serbu. And you talked a little bit that day and and I spoke back and forth with you on the side. And I thought, ‘This is a man whose voice needs to be heard.’ And you did exactly that over the course of the next 10 years.

You weren’t only heard, you made people uncomfortable with the things that you said sometimes, and the discomfort that you caused created action. And it continues to do exactly that, Kris. Don’t worry about making people uncomfortable because that is how you get things done.

I think about some of the things that you and I have done together, and I think one day when you and I and Arwen Maas-Despain sat in my office and talked about all the things that could happen with Carry It Forward, which at that time was occupying a portion of Arwen’s garage.

And you were going into tents, taking soiled bedding and soiled clothes, washing them and returning in very dignified fashion, the soiled bedding to the original owner. Not just trading it, but giving them their stuff back. What a huge impact that had. That’s just symbolic of the impact that you’ve had, Kris, in our community, and that you continue to have.

You mentioned survivor guilt. You say you sit here with survivor guilt. It’s a term that I understand and there’s nothing I can do to help you with that, other than to say that as a survivor, you help others survive.

More than you can count, more than you even know, there are people who are living today because of your efforts, Kris, and that’s an ongoing, so your guilt should be minimized by the fact that you are helping and creating existing, ongoing lives for people who otherwise would have much more difficulty meeting the daily challenges.

And not just cleaning bedding. You know, Carry It Forward now occupies a pretty large space in the original space where I first met Arwen, which is Camp Lane, and you’re doing wonderful things there.

I’d like to say also that if you look up there, Metro TV is here with us. All of our meetings are filmed. They’re re-broadcast. It’s being broadcast live right now. Kris, it was his idea and he looked at me and said, ‘How do we do this?’ 

Well, that question caused me to ask that question, and then we put it in the budget for that one year. It became regular because of Kris McAlister. We’re on TV right now, so smile at the camera. Thank you, Kris. Kris, thanks for the work you have done, thanks for the work that you will do, and, I’m honored to work alongside of you and often in your shadow. Thank you, Kris.

Presenter: Kris McAlister:

Kris McAlister: Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Commissioner Farr, Mayor Knudson, and Chair Murphy for those kind words. It doesn’t come easy to speak truth to power, and I am working on my tone.

So with that being said, I just want to say that this is the second most honorable work I’ve ever done.

First being a social worker in the extremes, because when you are a social worker in a vacuum, there’s only so much that can happen. And so everybody in this group who participates, who ask questions is a hero, a heroine in my eyes, and deserves the support and the time to speak on the spot on this body.

The nine years, the first four years of those nine full years were some of the most amazing years I’ve ever spent because we not only started to change the ball here in Lane County, but it rippled all the way up through multiple states.

And having had the honor to represent what we have done with our lived experience group, of which over half of my original cohort has passed away. It matters to show the victories, but it also allows us to share with other communities about how can maybe you do it differently.

And so I had the opportunity to even go to a national council for the homeless and represent what does effective lived experience engagement look like.

And so I have a great example following in my footsteps as a youth who has lived on these streets and eight years on the streets of Eugene is not easy, but it is able to be survived with the right kind of people around you, the right type of programming from Looking Glass to Catholic Community Services to even the Scouting movement. Those are all groups that helped keep me alive and so, which allows me to share my voice with y’all.

And I will not be a stranger. I will not be leaving this work for another four years. I plan on possibly retiring in the next five. We carry heavy loads on our shoulders and take advantage of EAPs (employee assistance programs) if you got ’em.

But Madam Chair, thank you for allowing me to share this. Please know that this work is not in vain, and with it online, with it engaged in other communities, practiced even in Southern Oregon, some of the things that came from this very table, from voices like every one of you.

I would also just like to end with, I want to appreciate the staff that make this happen. From Pearl Wolfe to Regan Watjus, to James Ewell to Carly (Walker), to Amanda (Borta), to Lisa Bravo, to Leisa Craig, to Brianna (Rogers). The teams are beautiful. Lynn Oliver, Robin Scott. Your names are not forgotten by the people who are here. Alex Dreher. Mr. Ray Johnson.

It doesn’t end because you always keep coming in and you keep building up the change. So please support this group more. Please continue to look at how to expand the voice, and please, please, please be proud of what you’re doing. Thank you.

Presenter: Lane County’s Poverty and Homelessness Board recognizes Kris McAlister for a decade of service elevating the voices of those with lived experience.