Arlen Rexius, co-president of the landscaping company Rexius, invited Gabe Piechowicz to speak with him in August about Piechowicz’s idea for a safe sleep site. They entered a gate to Rexius’ 4 acre piece of ground that would become Everyone Village, a sheltered community for people without housing.
“He gave me the keys, and he said, ‘Don’t screw it up, kid,’” Piechowicz said. “That was the beginning of Everyone Village.”
The Eugene City Council officially approved Everyone Village as a safe sleep site at its Sept. 29 work session. Eugene mayor Lucy Vinis announced in a July 1 conference that the city received over $3 million from the state for safe sleep sites and $250,000 for temporary camping sites. Part of that money will fund sanitation and hygiene services as well as 24/7 staffing for Everyone Village, according to the village’s website.
Piechowicz said Everyone Village will receive additional funding from donations and Lane County. Community partnerships will help provide support services for residents, he said.
Although they have only just begun clearing debris from the site, Piechowicz said he and co-founder Heather Sielicki hope to welcome 30 residents by the end of fall. By next summer, the village will have space for 60 to 80 residents.
Everyone Village will host a community filled with various dwellings — including tiny houses, micro-shelters and RVs. The group is working with the local nonprofit Carry It Forward to supply prototypes of tiny houses, Sielicki said.
Their first available prototype sits on wheels, fits into a parking spot and plugs into a standard outlet for power. “It really just provides a basic, warm, safe and dry place for someone,” Sielicki said. Everyone Village is also collaborating with an architect to create an Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant model of this tiny house.
Connected Lane County, a nonprofit that serves underrepresented youth, is also working with Everyone Village to build tiny houses for the site, Sielicki said. The nonprofit hires and teaches youth with barriers to employment to construct tiny houses with Carry It Forward builders.
Everyone Village staff are conducting outreach by asking people without housing if they would like to trade in their tent for a tiny home and live in the village when it opens, Piechowicz said.
Everyone Village will also work with community partners to provide assorted services to residents. The co-founders are looking to create partnerships with PeaceHealth, HIV-Alliance and Chrysalis to have drug and alcohol treatment on site, Piechowicz said. They are also looking for a community partner to provide mental health counseling.
Lane County will fund case management, but Everyone Village has to find a provider, Piechowicz said. The village is also looking to incorporate art and spirituality services into the village.
Piechowicz said the village’s workforce development program, which includes bicycle repair and mushroom farming, differentiates it from other models in the community. “We want to help those that are ready to start a career path out of the village,” he said.
The co-founders are using current and former students of the University of Oregon’s Department of Landscape Architecture to design Everyone Village in an environmentally-friendly and sustainable way, Sielicki said.
“There’s so many areas that we need to address at one time,” Sielicki said, “We see climate change and homelessness as some of the major battles of our lifetime.”
Sara Loquist, a first-year PhD student in the department working with Everyone Village, said this includes using sustainable building products, having less concrete and more green space, creating an urban farm and recycling. Loquist said she hopes her work with the village can be replicated for similar housing projects.
Sielicki said she is excited about the local community collaborating on creating Everyone Village. “I have been involved in this work for years, and I’ve just never seen so much enthusiasm and so much energy,” she said.
Piechowicz said he thinks Eugene will be blessed by the project. “We’ll create a village and a space where some of the folks that we call neighbors who are hurting the most will actually start to write their own stories where they see themselves flourishing and contributing back to our greater community,” he said.
