Ashland Mayor Julie Akins hugs Audrey inside a school bus-turned-home, courtesy of the Bus Project. [Andy Atkinson / Mail Tribune]
Audrey, with her children Glory Grace and Leo, cut the ribbon Friday at Talent Middle School for its new home, a converted school bus. [Andy Atkinson / Mail Tribune]
In 2020, a multitude of tragedies multiplied like the folds of a crumpled sheet of paper — COVID-19, the Almeda fire, homelessness — and then social programs began to buckle under the pressure.
“Our family fell through the cracks, there was a void,” said Audrey, a single mother who lost her home to the Almeda fire and was caught in the folds of that crumpled page.
For the past two years, Audrey, a victim of domestic violence who asked that her last name not be used, lived like a real mama bear, always on the move and permanently vigilant as she carried her babies in and out of various types of deserts: refuges. , couch-surfing and camping.
She said the shelters filled up quickly, there was virtually no help from overworked social workers and there are too few homes for too many people at too high a cost.
She believes that because she does not have a substance abuse problem or mental health disorder, it was harder for her to get help.
“Women like me, we call it the upper part of the lower part, it’s hard for us. I feel like a lot of women and children fell through the cracks,” she said.
On Friday, a local nonprofit called the Bus Project presented Audrey with the keys to a new home: a skoolie.
This school bus was refurbished to function as a home. The remodeling work was carried out by hundreds of students from six local schools under the direction of qualified instructors.
The Bus Project, a collaboration of the Southern Oregon Educational Services District, Rogue Workforce Partnership, Talent Maker City, Project Youth Plus of Grants Pass, Southern Oregon Regional Development and the Skoolie Foundation, works to meet the dual needs of ‘housing and the small number of qualified tradesmen. .
The groups are using grant money from the Oregon Community Foundation and donations of cash or materials from local businesses to turn school buses donated by the Ashland School District into homes for the homeless and, in the process , offer new career paths for the next generation of students.
Students from Phoenix High School, Ashland High School, Eagle Point High School, South Medford High School and Armadillo Technical Institute had the opportunity to work on the skoolie. Talent Middle School students also helped, but mostly worked on design and painting.
Piper Tamler, an instructor at Talent Maker City, said workshop classes have been insufficient and often unavailable to high school students, reducing the number of qualified professionals.
“We need traders so much, and as a teenager getting your hands on it a little bit is how you get into it,” Tamler said.
She said her students first came to her nervously. Months of distance learning left them clueless as to how to interact with her and each other. Tamler said most of them approached the skoolie project with no prior experience in carpentry, electrical, plumbing or any other skill set the project required.
“I just feel like it was really healing for them, in general, to work on something and help somebody, especially with this fire that they experienced,” Tamler said.
When the Bus Project introduced the skoolie to Audrey, she was seeing its new home for the first time, she said.
She was overwhelmed with gratitude, especially for the permanence of her new home. He said a skoolie felt like the only way to avoid being rent-burdened in an apartment and possibly dependent on social programs. And those payments never lead to actual ownership, he said. This skoolie is his.
He struggled to explain the importance of having a locked door, walls and a bathroom that was always accessible. This is a renewed dignity, he said.
At the shelters, she and her children shared space with people suffering from mental health and substance abuse crises, she said. Other homeless single mothers like her have secret campsites in the woods, she explained, where they sleep to prevent their children from sharing the suffering of these populations.
There was also couch surfing at the homes of friends and family, which was always limited in time, he said, and inconvenient.
She and her children have gone from last place to first place, she said, and that comes with guilt.
“Right now, right now, there are single mothers out there in the secret campsites in the woods. They’re invisible, they don’t look homeless because they’re working. But they’re out there,” she said.
Audrey achieved first place through a combination of hard work, the generosity of others and luck.
Last winter he heard the warming shelter in Ashland might not open due to a lack of volunteers. She raised her hand and said, “You can’t say there are no volunteers, I’m a volunteer.”
Ashland Mayor Julie Akins also volunteered at the shelter. The two women began talking, and Akins was surprised that Audrey volunteered there when she herself was homeless. Akins took the information from the woman and kept thinking about her.
The Skoolie Foundation was created by Akins after traveling the West Coast interviewing homeless people.
During his tour, he said, he came to understand that those displaced by the economy or weather want a home they can take with them as they escape fires or follow the changing job market.
With a phone call, Akins confirmed that Audrey was one of those people who thought of a skoolie as “a dream come true.”
Akins connected Audrey with the opportunity to write an essay and be chosen to receive the donated bus.
“This is a 30-year-old house. This thing is stable; you can live in this as long as you want,” Akins said.
Karla Clark, program director of the College and Careers for All program with the Southern Oregon Education Service District, said more buses are coming.
The Ashland School District donated three more last year, and the Bus Project and its members are working on all of them for future recipients.
Contact Mail Tribune reporter Morgan Rothborne at mrothborne@rosebudmedia.com or 541-776-4487. Follow her on Twitter @MRothborne.
