A reporter spends the night in Ashland’s ‘severe weather shelter’
Editor’s note: Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne covers city government, including its ongoing efforts to find ways to shape policies around homelessness. For better insight into the issue, Rothborne spent a night in early December in the shelter when it was operated by Jobs with Justice in Calvin Hall at First Presbyterian Church of Ashland. At the first of the year, Rogue Retreat began operating the shelter at 2200 Ashland St. Rothborne’s identity was known only to the shelter host and one or two others at the shelter, so names in this narrative have been changed to protect individuals’ privacy.
By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news
7 p.m. — It was cold and dark when I parked outside Ashland’s severe weather shelter. I locked my wallet in the glove box, collected my blankets and backpack and walked down a long breezeway to the doors. I stepped inside and was immediately cautioned — the final night after a string of continuous shelter nights is usually the worst.
“When our guests get some rest, they get restless. Everyone here is showing signs of PTSD,” Jason Houk explained.
As organizers with nonprofit Jobs with Justice under contract with the city, Jason and Vanessa Houk had been managing the shelter in Calvin Hall of the First Presbyterian Church for eight consecutive nights. Jason had accepted my request to stay overnight that Thursday after Thanksgiving.
In an ancient T-shirt, a coat three sizes too big and no make-up, I told him I didn’t want to do a normal story, just to be a fly on the wall. He said OK and went back to work. Turning to Vanessa at a folding table by the door, I signed my name on a numbered sheet and asked her to go over the rules.
She made deliberate eye contact, advising me that in this space we treat each other with kindness, dignity and respect. I am not to have weapons in the shelter or use substances. She did not make eye contact when she said there is no sexual activity permitted in the shelter.
We ignored a verbal exchange in a corner of the room, even as its volume escalated.
“Why are you glaring at me?”
“You have to stop talking to me. You’re bullying me.”
“I’m the one in the corner.”
“You have to stop.”
Pets are welcome, but must be under control at all times, Vanessa said. I am asked to walk all the way off the property to smoke, and must be a good neighbor and pick up any butts.
Lights will be dimmed at 9 p.m. for “quiet time.” At 9:45, there will be a last call for those who smoke. After 10 p.m., the doors are locked. Going out means no coming back in until 5 a.m.
Turning from the table by the entrance, I found myself in a large open room with around 20 guests, all strangers to me, almost all men. In a plastic tub nearby were rolls of blue, notebook-thick foam sleeping mats. I remembered what I usually forget — what a luxury it is to ignore being the owner of a petite woman’s body. Now, standing with an armful of blankets, I didn’t know where to go.
Vanessa came to my shoulder. Against the wall is good, she said. People fill in the middle of the room later.
“I always tell people to put a chair between their mat and the one next to them if they feel vulnerable,” she said.
I unrolled my mat against a back wall, directly across from the entry door, where a volunteer couldn’t help but see me. I could see the entire room. The nearest man was in the far corner to my left. To my right was a walkway where no one could lie down. I looked around at the three or four other women there; they seemed at ease.

8 p.m.
National numbers
Homelessness nationwide jumped 18.1% in 2024, according to a federal tally annouced Dec. 27 as reported by the Associated Press. Federal officials said the spike was driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country, according to the AP report. The tally, taken in January 2024, found more than 770,000 people counted as homeless, including 150,000 children, a 33% jump from the the prior year. The jump followed a 12% increase in 2023, blamed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Human Development on soaring rents and the end of pandemic assistance. The numbers represent 23 of every 10,000 people in the U.S. Overall numbers are up 33% over the last four years.
Local data
Homelessness funding
The city of Ashland assigned $1,611,000 in the current two-year budget to homelessness issues, including the severe weather shelter.
Housing
• Oregon is fourth in the nation in failing to produce enough housing, behind California, Colorado and Utah. Oregon is currently behind by 140,000 housing units and needs to produce over 400,000 homes in the next 20 years to keep up with demand
• 49% of Jackson County renters spend 30% or more of their income on rent
• 24% are severely rent-burdened, spending 50% or more of their income on rent
• Between 2017 and 2022, homelessness in Oregon grew 63%; Jackson County grew 132% in Jackson County
• Between 230 and 320 people are homeless in Ashland
• The 2023 Federal Point in Time count showed 13.6% of homelessness people in Jackson County were under the age of 18; another 8% were between the ages of 18 and 24. Data over the past five years shows a growing percentage of females, from 27.7% in 2019 to 34.7% in 2023
• 8.6% of people were over the age of 65
• 17.3% between the ages of 55 and 64
— Data from the city’s homelessness services assessment report
Local mortality and substance abuse
The state requires the category of “domicile unknown” in its death records. As of December 2024, 18 people have died while homeless in Jackson County, 443 statewide.
Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara stated he was not aware of exposure related deaths in Ashland, but he was aware of four people who have overdosed in the Albertson’s parking lot in recent years.
In 2023, statewide 1,416 people died of an opioid overdose, while preliminary data for 2024 shows 392 opioid overdoses and 843 fentanyl overdoses statewide.
Seventy-four percent of unintentional overdose deaths occurred in Clackamas, Jackson, Lane,
Marion, Multnomah, and Washington counties. Jackson County is identified as a “high intensity drug trafficking area” by the OHA.
— Information from the Oregon Health Authority website and Ashland Police Department
Shelter terms and conditions
As dictated by a 2022 city of Ashland resolution
“Ashland is in an area that has four distinct seasons, all of which can exhibit extreme
conditions due to severe weather events that can be hazardous to persons without access
to adequate heating, cooling, sheltering or air quality resources. … Ashland will facilitate the provision of protective or emergency shelter within available resources.”
Temperature thresholds for opening a severe weather shelter
• Cold weather: 32 degrees or below considering such factors as wind chill, precipitation, number of days’ duration or instances where the National Weather Service issues a Weather Warning.
• Heat: 98 degrees or above depending upon other factors such as humidity, UV index, and overnight lows or in instances where the National Weather Service issues an Extreme Heat warning
• Smoke: Air quality index of 150 or above
• Shelter may also be opened due to “any combination of weather conditions, community circumstances including interruption of electric or essential city services, which, at the discretion of the City Manager, or their designee, make conditions hazardous to human life without adequate shelter.”
History
Ashland City Council first approved a resolution establishing policies and conditions for the severe weather shelter in 2007. This resolution stated that Pioneer Hall or other available city-owned buildings might be used and temporary shelters would be staffed by trained community volunteers organized by nonprofits or “private community members.”
In 2007 two Ashland citizens — Ruth Coulthard and Barbie Breneiser — began offering emergency winter shelters at the Presbyterian Church. In the winter of 2009, they hosted Sunday night shelters and Emergency Shelters from December to February.
Shelter operations data
Under the contract with Southern Oregon Jobs With Justice, the city spent $2,200 per night of shelter, including staffing, supplies, cleaning, snacks for guests, and rent and utilities at Calvin Hall.
— Information from Emergency Management Coordinator Kelly Burns
Walking out of the kitchen with an armful of boxes, Ruby Nichol stopped to find me on my mat with a book. Nichol was in an Ashland.news story about training for shelter volunteers.
“You’re staying the night? I hope you’re prepared, there hasn’t been a dull moment. That’s a good place to put a mat.”
“Thanks. What’s happened?”
“We’ve had three people go to the hospital,” Nichol said.
She responded to my facial expression.
“I’m homeless too, but I got my van, I’m warm. My kids are grown, my guy died, I got the time. And these people are my friends and if they’re not my friends they’re going to be my friends, dangit,” she said as she returned to the kitchen.
A stench came from nowhere and became everything. Turning my eyes over my shoulder to search for its owner, I found a new neighbor had laid his mat within arm’s reach. What was the source of this smell? I searched my memory; it smelled like abscesses I’ve treated in cats. The smell of infection that’s wept and dried and is still weeping — is distinctive.
He moved to a table across from me, facing me without looking at me. He was middle-aged and short. He wore a little hat with the bill pulled low and a Fair Isle sweater. His hands nervously held one another in his lap. After a while he tilted his head back and revealed a bright red swelling near the eye.
Somehow, in the structure of his polite face, he looked like he could be an English teacher. He wore the expression of someone with something terribly important to say but can’t find the words. He looked down again. The hat hid his face.
I turned my head toward my neighbor in the far corner. He wore a long coat and was one of many with a pronounced limp. He was sitting on his mat passing his hands over his head in an obsessive way. He rocked back and forth and winced and drew in breath as if in pain.
Vitriolic exchanges were growing audibly louder. Tension became tangible through the space as more pairs of voices became louder.
Vanessa walked toward it all without apparent concern. Her words as she met each pair were too soft to carry, but each grew quieter until she went on to the next, an effect like walking through a building and turning off one light after another.
Nichol passed my mat again.
“Vanessa is just diffusing conflict,” I said.
“Yeah. She’ll do that all night,” Nichol said as she opened a package of Theraflu. “I have to keep my immune system up, being in here.”
“That makes me concerned for mine.”
“Yeah. Wash your hands. A lot.”
I asked how the reused sleeping mats are cleaned. Nichol said disinfectant and scrubbing is part of a routine after guests leave.
“It’s so hard to get them to go in the morning. It’s so cold and a lot of them don’t have coats. We give them coats and they come back the next day without the coat,” Nichol said.
“What happens to the coat?” I asked.
“They lose it. Some of them are mentally — or they have physical problems. They have to carry everything on their backs, it’s hard. That’s why you see so many of them with carts.”
I smelled coffee. Drawn irresistibly to the percolator, I watched my cup fill with muddied water. Nichol said two of three percolators are broken but the church relies on donations for such things.
People lined up for dinner. I was unsure if I should have any. By the round tables in the center of the room a man started playing the guitar. He was good. Limping by in his long coat, my neighbor in the corner turned a concerned eye to me.
“Aren’t you going to get some dinner?” he said.
Standing in line granted relief from the odor for a moment. But it mysteriously returned. Again I put my eyes over my shoulder and again found the English teacher, standing close behind me with the same expression and nervous clasped hands.
The man with the guitar started playing “Stairway to Heaven.” I didn’t look down at the lyrics printed on my shirt, but thought, “Our shadows, taller than our souls,” at the moment someone near the guitar sang those words.
The woman who was part of the ongoing bullying argument stood with her arms crossed at the end of the counter. She insisted she was mistreated by everyone. Eventually Vanessa cajoled her away. A young man behind the counter asked how my evening was and what I’d like to eat.
I was given a choice from what appeared to be a fridge raid of dinner party leftovers. A deli sandwich cut into slices, a dish of chili in Pyrex sweating under a broken cover of aluminum foil. A slow cooker pot of soup. A quinoa salad, a plate with a few pieces of fried chicken.
I took my plate to an empty table near the others to see what they would do. I sat facing the back of the man with the guitar. Easily he played and teased everyone around him. He was almost young with a loud, proud voice and a steady eye.
The smell returned. There he was, sitting behind my shoulder. Either of us could have reached out and touched the other without fully extending an arm, but still he said nothing. I searched for a subtle way to turn my nose to protect his feelings but prevent involuntary gagging. I ate slowly. The man with the guitar turned to face me.
“Hi, I’m Andy, what’s your name?”
I told him and was informed it’s a nice name. A gray-haired man next to him in a red beanie turned, greeted me, and said he “did lots of drugs in the ’60s.” Andy handed him the guitar.
“We have a pretty girl watching us, we got to play something good,” Andy said.
The man in the beanie started playing “Love Me Two Times,” looking over his shoulder into my eyes. The guitar was passed back to Andy, who was talking to someone else. The man in the beanie launched into speaking without provocation or breaking eye contact. He had watery blue eyes like my grandfather’s.
“I’ve been the grand marshal since I’ve been out here on the street. I used to be 200 pounds, now I’m 150, I lost a lot of weight. And my spine, it’s hard carrying everything. … That’s a delta force fire, all those tires and semi truck-tires too piled up sky high near Grants Pass and it burned for such a long time. They’re supposed to recycle the rubber, makes good roads, recycled rubber does. The Democrats did that, and that’s why Trump won,” he said.
Eventually he stood up, the red beanie and watery blue eyes high above me. He said it was nice to meet me, then looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.
“You’re staying here tonight?” he asked.
Yes, I said. He furrowed his brow then shrugged.
“OK … well,” he said as he put his hands in a praying position, bowed and walked away.
Across from Andy sat a man in his 50s with sandy hair. He stared at me. I heard the others call him Marcus.
“What’s your name, sweet darlin’?” he said.
In the time it takes to fix a substantive glare at an opponent, Andy spoke.
“Ha! That’s what you’re going to do? You’re going to be hitting on women like that?” Andy said, his tone the perfect tension between the twin traps of permissiveness and antagonism.
“I’m not hitting on women, I’m too old,” Marcus said while still looking at me.
Andy turned to me and smiled, asking if I knew how to play guitar, adding that there are many musicians there. He talked about his friends and their music and asked if I was having a good night. I told him I was.
A Christmas fairy arrived. It was Ashland’s own Grandma Boom, Janai Mestrovitch, in costume. She moved through the room, tapping all the guests with her wand and handing out little gifts. Following her was a woman with two cameras. Andy took some convincing, but finally consented to have his picture taken because it was for a story for the New York Times.
I realized too late the Christmas Fairy and the New York Times were headed for Ashland.news. A few steps into an attempted escape, the Christmas Fairy called out after the retreating figure in black.
“Ma’am? Ma’am, do you have a Christmas wish?”
I turned and Nichol was by my side from somewhere, telling them who I was. I hushed her politely as possible as the Christmas Fairy and the New York Times stepped closer.
“I’m the city government reporter. I’ve been writing about the shelter for a long time, I wanted to see it for myself. They’re here to seek shelter, I don’t want them to feel watched or judged so I’m doing it like this,” I told them quietly.
The Christmas Fairy insisted I was cute. That opinion has caused problems, I said, returning to my mat and my book. Nichol came and sat by me.
“So you don’t want anyone to know who you are?”
“I’d prefer it. I think I’ll get a better story that way.”
“Well you certainly look the part.”
I lifted up my arms to show the armpits were tattered rags — the shirt too sacred to trash as it is vintage Led Zeppelin — and laughed as I realized it took so little for a generous soul and a colleague to see me as just another homeless person.
Nichol tells me she was homeless before, then moved into a two-bedroom apartment with the love of her life. He was found dead on the train tracks five years ago and she is again homeless. It’s hard to go back to being housed after living outside, she said.
“You get used to the sights, the sounds, the smells. You hear the crickets and you know it’s 4:30 in the morning. You hear that truck go by, OK, it’s 5:30. You don’t need a watch anymore. Inside, you can’t open the windows all the time. I get sick from the recirculated air.”
I asked if it’s overwhelming — the sudden expansion and alteration of space. It is, she said. In the tight confines of a tent or a van all is known and visible. She didn’t know what to do with an apartment.
Homeless people often experience random violence, she said, sharing stories of people hit with water balloons or rocks while they slept.
“When you become unhoused, housed friends stop talking to you one by one. They don’t talk with you, they talk at you, and they come to you with pity, you know, they say things like ‘are you warm enough?’” she said.
Eventually it is difficult to talk to anyone but those who are or have been unhoused, she said, and returned to the kitchen.
9 p.m.
The lights went half off. Last smoke was announced. I got a few pages into my book before Jason came to sit by my mat. A Christmas tree against the wall was twinkling over his shoulder. Everyone had eaten, everyone was talking. No one was fighting.
“Sorry you came on a quiet night,” he said.
I asked if he could confirm three people went to the hospital over the preceding shelter nights.
“Unfortunately we had a fentanyl overdose, or a suspected fentanyl overdose. A family came in. They were all highly intoxicated. The guy was unresponsive and paramedics had to come,” he said.
Another guest had wounds consistent with active addiction and was infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria; that was a little scary, Jason said. He missed the pandemic’s super-availability of disinfectant. A couple other infections, one on a woman’s hand, another on a man’s foot, he said.

“So that’s four that went to the hospital?” I asked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.
“Do you sleep while you’re doing this?”
“Uh — no? The best sleep I get is something like airplane sleep. I’m existentially not here, but I feel like I can’t — I have to be aware of anything ….”
“Why do you want to do this?”
He laughed off the question, saying it was just willpower after all his work to get the city contract. But he wasn’t finished talking about trouble. Police routinely bring people who are usually trouble in some form, he said. They come without bedding or proper clothing but usually with behavioral problems.
The previous night the Ashland Police Department asked to refer someone from the Talent Police Department. Houk asked for information and was told there was none. The woman arrived and began preaching the Gospel at increasing volumes. When she would not relent, she was sent into the night. In the morning she returned and told Vanessa,“You’re right, God did want me to be quiet.”
I told him several volunteers appeared to be, or had identified as, homeless. Jason said it’s his model — bring people on the street into volunteer positions. Larger nonprofits do it differently, he said, keeping firm demarcations between clients and staff.
He also doesn’t limit his work to working hours. He did not understand how the obvious need could be deferred to Monday to Friday, 9-5. Asked again why he wants to do this, he cocked his head. I realized he didn’t understand the question and explained I was asking why he does this work.
“Why? The community has supported us. … I feel a debt to this community. And I feel a kinship to the folks that are struggling,” he said.
Twice Jason and Vanessa almost became homeless themselves, but remained housed thanks to community support.
But it also goes back to his childhood.
“When I was very young I figured out there were two sides in life, and I knew which side I wanted to be on,” he said.
Vanessa came and asked Jason to come talk with her and led him away by the hand. I returned to page nine of “The Discovery of the Individual: 1050-1200,” by Colin Morris: “Combined with this rather technical meaning of “humane letters,” the word humanism also carries a more general significance. It expresses a sympathy with, and delight in, mankind; an idea expressed in Terrance’s famous line ‘I think nothing human foreign to myself.’”

10 p.m.
The lights go out, save one harsh beacon in the kitchen. I knew the doors were locked. A vague sense of panic set in with the realization that if I left I would be locked out. I was fed and had water, bathrooms, a place to sleep, my backpack. I had no reason to leave, but no experience having my options limited in this way.
Nichol knelt down where I lay. In a low whisper, pointing to my unzipped backpack, she warned me not to trust, adding that I should always know where my boots are — better yet, shove them under the chair near my head.
The greatest variety and volume of snoring that could be imagined ensued. Jason warned me many have nightmares and cry out. Many did. Curses, moans, strange undefinable emotional sounds punctuated the night.

1 a.m.
At every chance throughout the evening I dragged my sleeping mat incrementally away from the English teacher. Even with 3 feet of distance, I could not turn from my right side without smelling wafts of decay. My ribs hurt lying on one side for so long.
“Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies …” came to mind. “Of course,” I thought.
The rhyme references a medieval practice to carry flowers near the nose during the plague. I pulled a travel vial of perfume from my bag, sprayed my sleeve and buried my face there.
3 a.m.
Deep sleep was torn apart with the sound of a chair scraping the floor. I rolled over to see who would do such a thing and found a man lit by the kitchen’s glare using the chair as a walker, a job it did poorly. Scrape by heavy scrape, a grimace on his face, he headed for the bathroom.
From my mat I could see Vanessa where she sat against the light. She never slept. She let in a new person, gave someone more soup, my neighbor in the corner asked for something sweet to drink. He winced and passed his hands over his face and neck again.
Vanessa and one of the homeless volunteers went to the man who had used the chair as a walker. He was told to leave. He did not protest, but packed up with such theatrical delay I rolled to my back to watch from the corner of my eye.
He put on one shoe slowly then inspected it slowly and took one off and put it on again and took it off again. He leaned against the wall and pretended to doze. Twice he was nudged to go. Finally he went with Vanessa and two other volunteers walking in a procession behind him through the maze of sleeping bodies to the door.

5 a.m.
We were warned and the lights came back on. The smell of coffee and breakfast came from the kitchen. I leaned up and saw the men around me stirring and sitting up and rubbing their eyes.
“How did you sleep?” asked a late-coming neighbor near my feet.
“A little, you?” I said.
He laughed. Yes, the same for him too. His puppy, Great White, staggered forward, collapsed on my lap and rolled her head back with as much resistance as a cut sunflower. She was delighted to search my hands with sharp little milk teeth. My neighbor in the corner turned to me.
“I looked over at you and thought, ‘Oh look at her, she’s just not going to get any sleep,’” he said.
A man next to him was sitting under an enormous Victorian-style hat with goggles on it. He turned to me.
“The first night is always hard,” he said, looking at me with eyes as soft as his voice.
The man with the puppy moved to sitting at the table he had slept underneath. His sandy beige combat boots were barely laced. I was surprised he would choose to wear shorts in this weather. He opened a large bag of tobacco.
“Smoke?” he said, looking over.
“I would love one.”
“Can you roll?”
“Not really.”
He did not look up but rolled a second one. I slid it behind my ear and went to get breakfast. Sitting with a slice of frittata, I caught Nichol and asked about the expulsion in the wee hours.
“We finally caught him using. We knew from the beginning he was,” she said.
“You knew he was using and didn’t kick him out?”
“We can’t kick them out unless we catch them.”
“Because someone may look like they’re using when it’s something else?”
“Yeah, could be psychological.”
“Like Tourette’s or something?”
“Sure, or someone having a stroke. A traumatic brain injury can look like drunkenness. We’ve been trying to catch him. He probably wanted to get caught, sometimes people do. They want to get better but don’t know how. They pray to be able to stop, it’s like fighting a demon.”
“What was he using?”
“No way to know, it’s all white powder. Probably meth because he was in a bad mood.”
“Meth puts you in a bad mood?”
“Yeah. You don’t sleep. I know guys that don’t sleep for like 21 days.”
“I’ve heard homeless people sometimes use meth to stay awake because they don’t feel safe sleeping.”
“Yeah. That’s how it was first used. By the military in World War II to keep people awake so they could keep fighting,” Nichol said.

7 a.m.
Guests began to leave. In the brighter light of morning, I noticed some looked like middle-class professionals. One had a sticker on a water bottle from a university engineering program.
My neighbor in the corner sat on one end of a pew built into the wall near our mats. The English teacher was in the middle. I sat down on the other end. We were all silent. My neighbor and I held our heads turned slightly toward the man between us. He seemed to move his mouth a little once. But he left and I never heard his voice.
In the kitchen Vanessa bent down by an overflowing garbage can. She stumbled and swayed slightly but did not stop. Her face never creasing with anger, never turning up her eyes to look for help, never cursing or muttering, she bent down until she was sure everything was clean.
I walked out the doors, off the property, away from the others. Time to retrieve my wallet from the glove box and go home. It was cold enough to bite but not enough to make me shiver. But first, I slid the smoke from behind my ear.
I most recently quit a month ago. I told myself that exceptions are good sometimes. It felt that way then to have the burn at the back of the throat and watch smoke tumble out into the dark and the cold.
Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].
Related stories:
Committee cobbles together master plan for shelter structure (Nov. 18, 2024)
Speaker: Pendulum seems to be swinging back toward harsher treatment of homeless people (Nov. 19, 2024)
Ashland City Council to review 2200 master plan, update on homelessness services (Nov. 16, 2024)
City Council: Homeless Services Masterplan up for review at study session Monday (Aug. 4)
Ashland homelessness master plan includes ‘spicy’ survey responses, compassion and suggestions (July 22, 2024)
Homelessness master plan for Ashland almost complete (June 28, 2024)
U.S. Supreme Court sides with Grants Pass, allows ban on homeless people sleeping outdoors (June 28, 2024)
Oregon Democrats, homeless advocates disappointed in Supreme Court homelessness ruling (June 28, 2024)
Four years in, Ashland’s OHRA shelter has permanently housed hundreds (June 20, 2024)
Service Notice: Celebration of life for Rick Bevel (June 14, 2024)
Now that it has an alternative, city to begin enforcing public camping policy on May 26 (May 18, 2023)
Homeless man injured in fire on city night lawn dies (May 9, 2024)
U.S. Supreme Court appears to lean toward Oregon city in complex homelessness case (April 24, 2024)
Ashland residents rally for housing solidarity as Supreme Court weighs homelessness (April 22, 2024)
City staff: Help needed if city is to continue helping the homeless (April 16, 2024)
Health care insurer urges Oregon lawmakers to address homelessness crisis in rural areas (March 27, 2024)
Council Corner: Doing something about homelessness (March 23, 2024)
More demand than shelter openings for homeless: ‘There’s no rest’ (March 4, 2024)
One night lawn fire victim recovering, while others remain hospitalized (Feb. 27, 2024)
Homelessness summit shed light on the problem — and tangible solutions (Feb. 7, 2024)
Homeless campers had ‘hair on fire,’ witnesses say (Jan. 16, 2024)
New subcommittee takes aim at homelessness: ‘We’re not going to be able to solve everything’ (Jan. 14, 2024)
Ashland’s ‘night lawn’ camping area facing challenges (Dec. 11, 2023)
Oregonians express concern about homelessness and drug addiction, survey says (Oct. 9, 2023)