When she was 14, Makayla Elliot ran away from home. This time 一 the fourth time 一 marked the beginning of about five years of homelessness, spent sleeping in friends’ houses or camping on the bike path off Franklin Boulevard. 

Her mom, dealing with mental health crises and drug use, “was just really unstable,” and the two fought a lot, Elliot said. “I just didn’t feel like it was my home, so I went to go find my own home.”

In the summertime, she enjoyed the freedom of camping, but in the winter, she didn’t want to be in the streets, Elliot said. Eugene’s limited free housing stood on the other side of required paperwork and identification documents, frequent check-ins with housing providers and waitlists that were often six months or multiple years long. 

“When you’re 15, that’s a lifetime,” she said. 

Then, a few years ago, pregnant with her second child, Elliot decided “to buckle down.” She enrolled in a homeless services program, got herself on the waitlist for housing and was the first name pulled. Now, during the pandemic, the community groups she engaged with 一 like Hosea Youth Services, the nonprofit that helped her through rough patches, and the Youth Action Council, an advocacy group she helped found as she got back on her feet 一 have been restricted. 

COVID-19 has been “really hard on the homeless kids,” Elliot said. “They don’t have anywhere to go get out of the rain or get out of the cold. There’s literally nowhere.” 

Over a year of social distancing, COVID-19 outbreaks and the closing of  schools and other resources has exacerbated the challenges facing young people without housing, but community groups like Hosea and YAC continue to provide services. 

Schools closures put many at-risk students in more precarious situations. After the pandemic started, Hosea Director Brad Bills noticed an influx of younger kids 一 13, 14 and 15 year olds 一 visiting Hosea’s daytime resource center to access food, computers or laundry and shower facilities. He attributes the trend to the closure of schools, which provided a temporary refuge from home life and a place to access resources. 

“One kid told me, ‘It’s just better being out on the streets than being in that situation at home,’” Bills said. “But I think if he was going to school there might have been some resources that helped. It used to be that school at least gave him a break, gave the family a break and provided that loving teacher or counselor or coach.” 

Lack of housing options 一 already one of the biggest culprits in Eugene’s homeslessness crisis 一 has also been exacerbated by the pandemic. Homeless youth’s most urgent need is still a safe, dry place to sleep, but “all of the shelters had to cut back on the beds that they have available,” said Amanda Friese, who works at YAC’s parent organization, the 15th Night. Station 7, an emergency shelter for homeless youth, cut their beds in half to six to accommodate social distancing, she said, and the Eugene Mission had to restrict its campus after a COVID-19 outbreak in December, the Register-Guard reported. 

With fewer beds available, parks and other public places have grown more crowded. Many of Hosea’s visitors used to camp in Washington Park, Hosea intern Andrea Carranza said. “Then Covid happened and a lot more people started to camp there; there was more crime, more violence. It was more dangerous for our single ladies.”  

In the days of social distancing, community organizations have also lost many of the points of connections that they use to deliver help. 

One of the biggest barriers to providing help is that “kids don’t have a person that they feel comfortable going to and asking for help,” Friese said. “If they ever ask for help, it’s usually just once; if we can take that one time and build a relationship out of it, then we can keep connecting them to different resources.” 

YAC’s work focuses on those relationships; changing the culture around asking for help and building a human connection that can also become a bridge to tangible resources, like food, shelter and help re-enrolling in school. But with COVID-19, YAC has cut back their in-person outreach and food and clothing drives, and it’s been harder to make those connections, YAC member Alex Steele said.

“The face to face component of YAC which is being on the street, interacting with youth, building those relationships has been integral to the success,” Steele said. “Without that, it is definitely more difficult.”

Elliot misses the days when she could hug people as she and other YAC members did street outreach, passing out resources guides and free food. 

“Just something as simple as showing them with a hug that you care and you understand,” she said. 

Despite some necessary restrictions, YAC and Hosea have responded to the increased needs of young, houseless people in Eugene. 

Hosea expanded their resource center hours to 1 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and now serves two daily meals instead of one. While volunteers and guests can no longer wedge together for “that family dinner that we use to have,”  Hosea serves about 30 or 40 people per meal, with a limited number of people 一 with masks on 一 inside at once, Carranza said.

“There’s not a lot of resource centers where youth can get a meal or get clothing” as well as do laundry and access computers without being enrolled in a specific program, like they can at Hosea, she said. 

Hosea also collaborated with First Methodist Church, Lane County and United Way to build six pallet shelters 一 small shelters with beds, electricity and heat 一 for homeless youth in February. In the future, Hosea aims to be open seven days a week and offer more extensive overnight shelter, Bills said. 

YAC passes out free burritos every Friday and is working to change the perception and treatment of young houseless people in hospitals and service organizations, Steele said. The group has a critical role in helping the community understand that kids accustomed to life on the street may have different outlooks and responses to outreach, Elliot said. 

“They’ve lived a life of chaos and so they crave chaos, at least me personally,” she said. “I personally got what I call itchy feet where it’s like I couldn’t be in one place for too long, because I wasn’t used to it.” 

Now, Elliot lives in a duplex with her boyfriend, daughter and their puppy, rabbit and tortoise. Her next goal is to live in a house in Seaside with a big yard. 

“I just keep going up,” she said. “That’s what I tell myself; there’s only one place to go from here and it’s up.”