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UCAN Offers Array of Services for Homeless Folks in Grants Pass

Beginning this Fall, UCAN began offering a variety of services to help shelter homeless folks living in the Grants Pass area. We are now the operator of a congregate shelter, a tiny home community and have opened an emergency warming center to prevent hypothermia and frostbite on very cold days.

Beginning on December 1 of 2022, UCAN took over operation of both the Grants Pass Shelter as well as the tiny home community at Foundry Village. The Grants Pass shelter is a group shelter that has around 25 beds in semi-private rooms. The shelter is a low-barrier shelter, meaning UCAN allows guests to live in the shelter with fewer barriers than are found at other shelters. Guests do not have to participate in treatment programs to reside at the shelter, but many work with staff to seek permanent housing.

Foundry Village offers eight and a half tiny homes to serve up to 17 guests, as well as a community building. The community building has a variety of amenities, including a kitchen, bathroom and showers, and laundry facilities. Moving forward, UCAN is contemplating having Foundry Village serve as more traditional transitional housing, perhaps as a place where guests from the Grants Pass shelter move to when they near finding permanent housing. We may also identify specific types of folks to serve at Foundry Village, such as homeless families, or homeless individuals with physical disabilities.

The final resource UCAN has made available to homeless folks this year is the Grants Pass emergency warming shelter. The shelter operates during particularly inclement weather, and is intended to keep local homeless residents safe and dry during such weather events. With multiple cold weather storms this winter, including several snow events, we have operated the shelter for 40 days.

We are most grateful for the tremendous effort and dedication our Grants Pass staff has shown in swiftly taking over operations of the Grants Pass Shelter and Foundry Village, as well as standing up the local emergency warming shelter. Without their dedication, the Grants Pass Shelter and Foundry Village would likely have closed in December, leaving several dozen homeless individuals on the street. Operation of the emergency warming shelter has kept well over 100 homeless folks healthy and safe.

Newsletters

Shaun Pritchard
Newsletters

Letter from the Executive Director – Fall 2023

Non-profit newsletters, including our own, often feature stories about their successes. Though my staff do an incredible job day in and day out serving hundreds of clients, staff alone cannot guarantee that clients will succeed. It takes a team, including not only staff, but also community partners and clients themselves, to successfully move past challenging issues. You can learn more here about how we all work together to change lives and improve our community.

Anne Kubisch
Newsletters

Beloved Community Member Retiring

UCAN regularly receives support from many wonderful local foundations and advised funds. But perhaps no other single foundation has had a greater impact on the programming we are able to offer than The Ford Family Foundation (TFFF). With their President and Chief Executive Officer Anne Kubisch retiring, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank both her and the Foundation for their support of our work in Douglas County. You can learn more about Anne and her wonderful support for rural Oregon here.

Working Together on the Road to Recovery
Newsletters

Working Together on the Road to Recovery

Oftentimes we have clients who just need a little help to get back on track. Maybe they need a utility bill paid for a couple of months. Sometimes though, folks need the benefit of many of our services before their lives are stable. The following story is about such a client, how we were able to help her with several UCAN services, and how she herself put in a lot of hard work to get her life back on track. Read about her terrific story of recovery here.