QuickTake:

Nightingale Hosted Shelters in Eugene are upgraded and now offer water, sewer and electric service at the site that serves homeless people.

Michael Goetz lives in a hut at Nightingale Hosted Shelters, after spending about four years homeless in California and Oregon. 

When the 20 huts reopen in Eugene, its occupants will have basic amenities like electricity and running water in shower houses and a communal kitchen they didn’t previously have.

Located on city-owned property at Hilyard Street and 34th Avenue, the nonprofit’s shelters and infrastructure recently received an upgrade. In addition to power and water, residents will have access to showers and an enclosed full kitchen. 

The improvements will make a drastic difference in the lives of people who shelter there. For example, they’ll be able to store food in refrigerators around the clock.

“We all feel incredibly fortunate,” Goetz, 66, said. “This is sort of the state-of-the-art camp right now.”

The changes came through a combination of efforts, including two local government agencies, nonprofit organizations and community members who chipped in. 

“This whole effort has been driven by the spirit of community,” said Norma Grier, the treasurer and past president of Nightingale Hosted Shelters. “There’s businesses in our neighborhood that have hired people that are at Nightingale. There are folks in our neighborhood that regularly help do home-cooked meals and laundry.”

The improvements are wide-ranging. They include two shower houses, each one with a shower, sink and toilet. 

Before those additions, residents relied on portable toilets and handwashing stations. Each hut will have electric outlets.

The enclosed kitchen will have hot and cold running water along with an electric stove and oven. It will replace a tent kitchen with a generator-powered fridge that operates for just five hours a day.

“The new kitchen will ensure people will have the ability to cook food with ease to store it safely,” Grier said.

Most of the huts at Nightingale Hosted Shelters are closed as the work wraps up on the improvements. Grier expects the shelters to reopen later in May. The nonprofit Community Supported Shelters operates the Nightingale site.

The city of Eugene and Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) worked with Nightingale Hosted Shelters in a way that meshed with other ongoing work. 

First, the utility gained easements across city-owned property adjacent to Nightingale’s huts so the agency could stage equipment for installation of water and electric facilities for the Hilyard water transmission main project.  That project connects new water storage tanks to a water transmission system near 33rd Avenue and makes upgrades along almost a mile of existing drinking water pipe. 

That saved the agency money by allowing it to route pipelines across city property instead of ripping up an intersection at 34th and Hilyard intersections, which would have higher costs for pavement and traffic control. 

As a result, EWEB and the city of Eugene worked together to install water, electric and sewer infrastructure at the Nightingale shelters. EWEB’s improvements were made possible through cost savings achieved by routing the pipeline across city property, the utility said in a news release.

Other community partners helped fund the work. Grants and donations to Nightingale provided $128,400 for the infrastructure improvements. 

Grants covered about $70,000 of the project. Grants came from organizations that included the city of Eugene, Oregon Community Foundation, McKay Family Foundation, Emerald Valley Rotary, First Congregational Church and Eugene’s Women for Good.

Nightingale raised the remaining $58,400 from hundreds of individual donors, Grier said. 

For people like Goetz, the investment will provide comfort as they live in a transitional space that is between life in the streets and permanent shelter. 

Goetz isn’t sure how long he’ll be there as he seeks housing.

“I’m on housing lists everywhere,” he said. “It could be anywhere from a couple months to six months.”

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.