Master plan due for delivery to City Council by mid-November
By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news
The ad hoc committee created to shape the future of the 2200 Ashland St. property spent the last two weeks folding public opinion into its steadily evolving recommendations as the committee prepares to bring a master plan to Ashland City Council by mid-November.
At the Unitarian Universalist Church Oct. 9, the committee held a public forum to both draw attention to its online survey and seek additional in-person comment prior to finalizing its recommendations.

The evening event was largely structured around a presentation from a handful of committee members seated on the stage of the church and reading with varying fidelity from a script provided for them and obtained by Ashland.news. Each section of the script summarized details about the property itself and what services are or are not being considered based on prior committee discussion and ending with the prompt “(pause for questions).”

Mayor Tonya Graham opened the meeting, sketching out the significance of what the building could offer.

Oregon is estimated to be 140,000 units short of meeting housing needs. Human services providers are noticing an increasing number of seniors pushed to the streets by socio-economic factors, she said.
“These are people’s mothers and fathers, their grandmothers, their grandfathers. Who worked, who provided for their families, who did the things they were supposed to do and now this housing market has pushed them onto the street,” Graham said.
The city purchased the 2200 Ashland St. building with state grant funds and, with the state as a partner, the city has obligations, the mayor said, but it intends to try to serve everyone.

“Obviously what happens at this site has to be homeless services, we have to do that. We can also do some other things that are for the general community. … We want something that is good for people trying to get on their feet. Also good for the neighborhood. We want to build something that is beautiful, functional and helpful,” she said.
Committee member Jason Houk, in reading his portion of the presentation, described the potential services at the building as “high barrier,” as in offered by invitation or appointment to higher functioning members of Ashland’s homeless population — individuals who, with a little of the right kind of assistance, could become self-sufficient.

In the presentation, the property was also determined to, by necessity, serve as the city’s severe weather shelter and one of a few public buildings to be activated as part of the city’s emergency plan, if needed. The city could seek to find a provider to serve as a tenant and, through a lease, provide the city with some income, while fulfilling the obligation to provide homelessness services, Graham said.
Committee Member Alison Wildman stated during her time that the building would not have tent camping, car camping, low barrier or congregate shelter, walk up services, permanent pallet houses, resource center, day center, urban rest stop, or become a maker space.

Comments and questions garnered from the Oct. 9 event were combined with the survey during the committee’s most recent meeting Wednesday to tally up which ideas for the property hit the elusive “win-win” mark Graham described to the audience a week prior.
Matthew McMilan, a committee member with lived experience of homelessness, produced a notebook and stated he took notes that evening, including circling and underlining points brought up multiple times.

“I have circled ‘pissed off that the building was purchased in the first place,’” he said.
Money, fencing, security and “do more,” were all also present in his notes.
Jan Calvin, the committee’s facilitator, asked McMilan what he thought the public meant the city needs to do more of. He believed the intended meaning was “do more of everything.”


Calvin explained she structured the survey so it could be referenced like a grad- point average. In the copy obtained by Ashland.news, a management steering committee to guide the property’s use was roughly a B +. Subsections of the management recommendations — such as residential stays of 18 to 24 months — were closer to a B -.
But McMilan argued that, from his experience, longer timelines were necessary to get people truly stable. With his cane leaning against the table beside him, he stated he was “going on two years and two months” waiting on disability. Debbie Niesewander, another committee member and homeless advocate, stated it was obvious the six months allotted at other shelters isn’t enough.

Graham said that, after the ad hoc completed its master plan and dissolved, council and the city manager would consider the resulting recommendations and create a management advisory committee (MAC) for the site. The MAC would include a diverse group to represent the neighbors, homeless advocates, and other knowledgeable stakeholders. Rather than making potentially arbitrary distinctions every six or 12 months, the MAC could be tasked with creating flexible systems to best use the property to its necessary purpose while trying to protect all those affected.
She reminded the group “winter is bearing down on us,” and that the most pressing question was, will the city use its pallet houses on the property in the coming weeks, and for which populations?

The group faced their lowest grade on use of the pallet houses, a C with a divisive clutch of anonymous comments.
“Pallet House Village sounds like a huge messy mess to me. I would need more clarification about what this would look like.”
“Use those pallet houses. Serve food, put in lockers. Do something with this tax-paid white elephant”
“No villages in Ashland please. Let Medford take the lead.”
“Ugly, even if temporary.”
The group determined to use the pallet houses, with an estimated definition of “temporary” based on the idea of a winter ’24-25 season, but with some flexibility allotted for the to-be-formed MAC on the exit strategy for the pallet houses from the property. The group also decided to house seniors and medically fragile adults.

Public comments from the survey reflected divisions over who to serve, incudinig potentially:
“Those without substance abuse. Seniors, disabled, vulnerable women and those willing to seriously look for work.”
- “Only the truly mentally ill”
- “If addicted, willing to receive services and assistance to get and stay clean. People who are safe, because it’s too close to schools, and residential areas with children. Zero sex offenders.”
- “If used as a shelter, I’d like to see houseless families using it as a transition space. Absolutely no one with a criminal history or active addiction. This would really affect the surrounding neighborhoods.”
More info
For more information on the history of the building and its purchase, review previous reporting by Ashland.news or the city’s page for the property.
Members of the public looking to weigh in on the building’s future can participate in public comment at committee meetings held at 2200 Ashland St. the first and third Wednesday of the month. More information about the committee is available through its webpage.
The gist
Facts and information about 2200 Ashland St. from the script given to committee members to read at the meeting:
Property details
1.2 acre lot, fully fenced with security gates, parking area and grass fields adjoining areas as part of the property. Bordered by railroad tracks with single family homes on either side. Additionally facing the Ashland Street overpass.
5,333 square-foot-building with two exterior doors, garage, two restrooms, small kitchen, 10 smaller rooms, one large room and two large open interior spaces.
Building uses
Definitive yes: Severe weather shelter and one of multiple locations to be utilized in the city’s emergency management plan.
Definitive no: tent camping, car camping, low barrier or congregate shelter, walk up services, permanent pallet houses, resource center, day center, urban rest stop, or become a maker space.
Considered: transitional housing, bridge housing or housing for those waiting to fulfill a housing voucher, offices for aligned organizations offering some form of homelessness services either through direct fluent services or not. Showers, laundry and day storage services are also being considered. Any services accessed would be by appointment or invitation.
Timeline
Ad Hoc meeting next Oct. 30 to iron out those details and again on Nov. 12. The plan will come to the council for review at its Monday, Nov. 18, study session and Tuesday, Nov. 19, council business meeting, according to city of Ashland look ahead.
A suggestion to include children was quickly dropped as Wildman remembered the low-barrier severe weather shelter operated on the same site requires no screening for substance abuse, mental illness, or criminal history. Avram stated this would mean bathrooms outside the building because children could not enter to use the bathrooms with an unscreened population in the severe weather shelter.
“I think the 7-year-old gets far higher priority over the sexual predator who I’m sorry just doesn’t get to be here,” said Trina Sanford.
“Those two things don’t jive. The severe weather shelter’s going to have anybody and everybody and here we are crafting this beautiful sweet little world outside,” Wildman said.
Niesewander stated other providers in Medford are working to cover families, and Ashland could focus on seniors and the medically fragile. Allowing for “self-selecting couples,” the pallet houses could keep between 12 and 24 people out of the cold, Calvin said.
On Oct. 9, after comments about addiction and who needs which services and complaints about the cost of the building and the secrecy of its purchase had all been pressed and repeated, a woman in the back of the church asked to speak. She stood in front of the last windows as the last of the day’s light closed out on the meeting that would continue into the dark.
The woman said all her children went through Ashland’s school district and she, as a longtime resident, felt “our town is dying, in like a scary bad way.” she wasn’t willing to allow that to happen, she said.
“I just want this to work, I want it to be humanity-led. I am tired of the nitpicking over garbage and good people and bad people who may or may not be drug addicts and broad brushing homeless people as fire starters, like stop it already. We need a place to feed people, we need them to be clean, we need them to have their laundry done, we need them to be sheltered, and then we need them to get well and that’s it. And we have to put that first, the humanity part first,” she said.
Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].
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