Egan Warming Centers wrap up 12 consecutive nights of service

Presenter Officials thank Egan Warming Centers as they wrap up a record streak of 12 consecutive nights of service. At the Human Services Commission Jan. 26, the housing manager for Lane County’s Human Services Division, Kate Budd:

Kate Budd (Lane County, Human Services Division, housing manager) Enormous kudos to St. Vincent de Paul, who has just completed the longest ongoing series of open Egan Warming Shelter nights in history. Very impressive. 

And so they have been just moving mountains in order to provide sheltering options for folks, you know, creating no-barrier opportunities and really just meeting the need of our community over and over and over again. So, Bill and Bethany, thank you so much for being here today and for providing such an enormously needed support in our community.

Speaker From St. Vincent de Paul, Bill Barnard:

Bill Barnard (St. Vincent de Paul, director of operations) Absolutely, thank you. Thank you, everybody, for having me. As Kate noted, we wrapped up and closed out this morning after 12 days. It has definitely been a doozy under this model, and I’ll apologize if I stagger a little bit. I’m operating a little bit behind the curve sleepwise still, but, it was amazing. It was amazing overall.

We, as you know, we operated three primary sites this season, which is less than half of what we traditionally do, based on the funding we had available. But doing so, we operated at higher numbers during that time period than we ever have before than with the full capacity, if we were in the five to seven site range. 

So over the course of this activation, 1,098 unique individuals, and that’s not counting last night’s data. That’s not in yet. So 1,098 over this activation, unique check-ins, way larger than normal, by about 30% over the same time period, which is pretty great. 

So yes, as we absolutely know with the three sites this year under a different model, we are to prevent death or serious cold weather injury and we have low barrier access. Everybody is able to utilize this shelter. 

Volunteers and staff come together in a really unique way. Volunteer counts were up this time around, which was great. We’ve had a lot of impromptu trainings as soon as we get a lot of social exposure for people that want to sign up, kind of on a whim. And didn’t take the time to do our normal kind of two- or three-time-monthly trainings, we jumped in and handled those kind of a couple times a week at some points, early on, just to make sure that we were getting as many people in the pipeline as possible. 

We at times, this activation had 499 people between three sites, which blows away any previous numbers. That necessitated a pretty large shift this weekend. And credit to the county team, [confirming spelling] and so many people that jumped in on a whim and at a moment’s notice to help us pivot. 

We doubled our fairgrounds footprint this weekend and went from operating just in the auditorium to jumping into the Wheeler Pavilion as well and just making that a dedicated sleeping area. The numbers we were seeing just made us get into a place where we couldn’t really operate safely with the amount of people we had. We had to expand that footprint, which is challenging because obviously our costs go up dramatically at that at that point with with rent and whatnot at the fairgrounds. But it was necessary to accommodate as many folks as possible because, as you know, Egan does not turn people away. 

We housed six families over the course of this activation—families with children—in hotels, to make sure that, again, we keep with that program that nobody gets turned away and that everybody has access to shelter. 

Most recently, last night, a mother with five kids showed up at our Springfield site asking for help. And we obviously don’t allow children in those sites, so we provided hotel space for her through last night for that activation. 

Guests know Egan is activated, obviously, through social media. Word of mouth is huge amongst our guests and clients and we update that on Shelter Finder as well. (We were) real big this time around on email blast, text blast, phone calls, website, and social media. All of that was updated day-of and moment to moment to make sure we were getting as much information out as possible. 

We always, always emphasize that all of the Egan sites are pet-friendly and we have crates available, as well as other services for pets, food, and whatnot to make sure that they’re taken care of as well.

Our volunteer process has been working really well. Like I mentioned, we’re doing a lot of onboarding and as-needed trainings to make sure we get people through the pipeline as quickly as possible. 

Our volunteer coordinator was working into the wee hours as well to make sure we kept those communications up and, and, in real time. Bethany and I both stayed on the social media as well to make sure we were answering questions? 

Actually, at some points we were doing transportation requests via Facebook. So there’d be a group of folks that would be at a particular site, or rather at a random place in town that couldn’t arrange transport after LTD was shut down and they would just reach out on Facebook. We’d coordinate transit and get them picked up with the shuttle buses that usually ran between, you know, 1 and 1:30 a.m., depending on the evening. 

Egan relies on community volunteers to staff our shelters. We entered the longest consecutive activation in our history. Our volunteers needs are acute as fatigue sets in amongst our current pool of support. That was really big this time around. By day five or six, the regular folks that we can always count on definitely did not have the capacity to keep pushing, as you would expect. By that time, the emotional fatigue gets to be extremely heavy around those times. 

And we really had to pivot into folks that were first-time volunteers. A ton of first-timers this time around, especially the last three or four days, which was amazing to see. We have the most trouble with the overnights, you know, the 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. It’s really difficult to entice people to come stand in the cold, especially, like, for the outdoor positions at these sites between those hours. We came up with some creative solutions around that and had a big outpouring of help, in the last part of the season, which was huge. 

Laundry is and probably always will be one of the greatest challenges with this program. I really struggled to keep up. We’re utilizing laundry services on multiple properties within (St.) Vinnie’s to try to keep up. But with the number of guests we were seeing, on a nightly basis, keeping up with that number and making sure that we had blankets for every person that showed up, kept us utilized 24/7 throughout this entire activation.

We couldn’t stop laundry services at any one of the sites that were doing them, not one time, not even for a minute. But I’m proud to say that not one person that showed up asking for services did not have a blanket, which is the whole goal in that. And we met that mark. 

So, donations obviously always much appreciated and needed—unisex clothing, warm weather winter clothing specifically of any kind is huge—gloves, socks, sweats, hoodies, sweatshirts, all that sort of stuff is absolutely huge. I think right now probably the current heaviest need would be around socks, gloves, hats, beanies, that sort of thing. Doing pretty well in the zip-ups and hoodie category at the moment, thankfully.

We’ve had a huge outpouring of people, not only at our stores, but have just been showing up to the sites in the wee hours of the night with a pickup bed full of stuff left and right. And we’ve been so appreciative of that.

Presenter From St. Vincent de Paul, Bethany Cartledge:

Bethany Cartledge (St. Vincent de Paul, executive director) There’s a few key changes this year in particular. So one is the first year that we’ve used the Deployed Logix shelter at Springfield, and that has been going really well. The other thing is, as Bill called out earlier, he was able to access some additional mass care material, the material needs that we need beyond just kind of the donations that folks will bring as far as blankets, hats, gloves is really some of these—Bill, would you say they’re not necessarily industrial cots, but they’re intended for congregate shelter in, like, a Red Cross or activation setting?

Bill Barnard Yeah, they’re an industrial mass care cot that was able to mobilize for us. They actually brought us 200 of them, which was a game changer for our mobility-compromised folks. A huge portion of our guests are in wheelchairs or have really difficult times getting down low and getting back up from a mat that’s on the ground. Wheeler Pavilion is pretty much tapped out or set up exclusively with these cots currently. And it’s an absolute game-changer. We’ve never had access to anything like that before.

Bethany Cartledge So that’s something where we had previously pursued one of the Resiliency Hub grants, just because we have properties in rural locations. We’re regularly supporting tenants who are impacted from a disaster in Oakridge area. But we also knew that this is material that we would reuse on the regular. 

So if you see these opportunities come up and you let us know, they’re ones that we pursue quickly as far as securing mass care material. 

Some of the strengths I also wanted to call out ahead of questions is just that there’s a lot more unity between the volunteers and the staff that was really felt this year that was really positive, especially from some of the previous years where communication seemed to be a challenge. I think everyone has Bill and I’s cell phone and have been deploying it as necessary. And so we’ve been able to kind of problem-solve in real time with the key leads, which has been a tremendous difference.

Bill Barnard I would just add that [confirming spelling] was instrumental in organizing resources and getting me dialed in with people middle of the afternoon on Saturday. From the time we started conversating about the needs and what was going on, I think that was at 12:30, 12:45 Saturday afternoon, and I had a 40-foot trailer from Salem parked at the fairgrounds before 4:30 full of supplies, which is not only unprecedented, but beyond my wildest imagination of availability for what we’ve dealt with before. And that was just such a such an amazing asset.

Presenter The Human Services Commission thanks St. Vincent de Paul, and the Egan Warming Centers thank their volunteers after a marathon stretch of cold weather.