QuickTake:

The 3,500-square-foot center will help people experiencing homelessness build employment skills and earn income. 

Transitional shelter program Everyone Village announced plans to renovate a 3,500-square-foot building across the street from its west Eugene property into a Workforce Development Center. 

The announcement was made Saturday, Sept. 19, during the organization’s Everyone Festival, a music festival at its site at 3825 Janisse St., according to a news release from Everyone Village.

It is the nonprofit’s first expansion in its four-and-a-half-year history and will provide space for its growing workforce development programs, helping people experiencing homelessness build employment skills, earn income and stabilize.

“Of all the amazing things that have come out of the Everyone Village story, one of the fastest-growing and most successful has been our workforce development programs,” Gabe Piechowicz, Everyone Village founder and executive director, said in the release.

Everyone Village partners with the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative to operate a bottle redemption center, where village residents work. 

“The new center represents a significant expansion of that work, creating a space specifically focused on employment and the support systems that can help people maintain stability after leaving homelessness,” the release states. 

The organization said it will begin building renovations next month, with residents starting to use the space as improvements begin. 

The expansion comes as Everyone Village plans to build a microvillage with affordable permanent housing at its property, which currently has more than 70 tiny homes as well as 10 units for people who are recovering from hospital stays.