“You” sits in the skylighted yurt at the center of his shelter site, sanding down the limb of a tree. The limb is nearly as tall as he is, and outside other walking sticks of its like stand upright in a potting vase.
“I try to catch them already on the ground because I don’t like to damage nature,” You says. “This particular one here is cherry. People say, ‘How is it cherry? It’s not red.’ See, it’s just like us humans. We have layers.”
You lost his housing in late 2024, having come to Eugene for a seasonal job laying asphalt. He was living with his employer, he says, but when the job ended, he had to leave.
“If you don’t got nowhere to lay your head, if your head don’t rest, you can’t think straight,” You says.
You was one of the first residents to move into Rainbow Corner, a six-unit transitional housing site created by SquareOne Villages, HIV Alliance and the city of Eugene. The microcommunity serves unhoused clients of HIV Alliance.
Eugene Weekly is using pseudonyms in this story to protect the residents who fear discrimination and retaliation.
“Some people have a house but still don’t have a home,” You says. “Some people say, ‘Well, where’s the roof?’ My roof was the sky when I was homeless.” Now sleeping under the roof of his Pallet shelter, You says he finally has peace of mind.
Rainbow Corner began as a conversation between SquareOne Villages’ community relations director, Amanda Dellinger, and HIV Alliance’s development director, Brooks McLain, in January 2024. According to Dellinger, HIV Alliance was immediately on board.
“It felt invigorating,” Dellinger says. “It felt like, yes, we can do this and make a difference for a really important community here.”
Dan Bryant, public advocacy director of SquareOne Villages, says the affordable housing nonprofit had excess funds from a Trillium Community Health Plan grant, which designated the funds be used to operate an unhoused shelter community. According to Bryant, HIV Alliance was the perfect choice.
“They serve clientele that are very vulnerable, and particularly folks who tend to suffer at much higher rates from homelessness than other populations,” he says. “I just had this hunch that they were serving a large number of unhoused people.”
HIV Alliance provides care to clients who are impacted by or are at risk for HIV, with services including behavioral health management, needle exchange, medical case management and more. Around 49 percent of people utilizing the HIV Alliance clinical services are unhoused.
All Rainbow Corner residents must be engaged in HIV Alliance services to qualify for their Pallet shelter, Dellinger says, and all six units were filled before the site opened in early April.
Rainbow Corner has a kitchen and one-and-a-half bathrooms — constructed by SquareOne Villages carpenters — as well as a central yurt that serves as a meeting space and a community hangout for residents. The six Pallet shelters — as well as the Pallet building serving as the site manager’s office — were donated by SquareOne’s Opportunity Village.
HIV Alliance executive director Renee Yandel says the nonprofit and SquareOne Villages have a memorandum of understanding — a non-binding agreement to collaborate on a project — with the city of Eugene to use the property where Rainbow Corner is located.
EW isn’t reporting Rainbow Corner’s address for the safety and security of residents.
Bryant says he proposed that vacant city property designated for affordable housing be used as shelter sites until building begins, which can take years. Eventually, Rainbow Corner will have to move, but there is no current expectation of when.
“I don’t make any predictions,” he says, “but at least part of the property is being put to good use in the meantime.”
Rainbow Corner, although falling under the Eugene municipal code camping ordinance, serves a similar purpose to a Safe Sleep Site: It provides a guaranteed space for unhoused residents to return every day and night.
“When people are feeling a little safer, a little warmer, they’re getting better sleep,” Yandel says, “they can really prioritize some different things than the basic needs, than the ‘Where am I going to put my sleeping bag tonight?’”
Taylor Christianson, the site manager for Rainbow Corner, says that two of the residents have already had job interviews since moving to the site, and one has started GED courses.
“That really shows how important a night’s sleep is, when you can safely go somewhere,” he says. “It’s taken for granted by so many, but you take that away and people really suffer.”
“Jim,” another resident at Rainbow Corner, has been unhoused in Eugene for five years, and she estimates that she got about a month of sleep in that time.
“Staying up was kind of a priority,” she says, “but you start losing it.”
Now in a quieter, safer space, Jim says she’s sleeping better than ever.
Although the residents have no turnaround time set for moving out, according to Yandel, the housing is not meant to be permanent, and residents are eager to gain independence.
“What I miss more than anything is working,” You says. “It’s a feeling of self-worth. If someone tries to give you something, I’d really rather earn my own shit.”
The gated microcommunity has no set hours or curfew, which Yandel says gives residents the freedom to make their own choices.
“They can feel really disempowered generally, because they don’t have a lot of choice about where they can be,” she says. “They’re constantly being told to move, how they can be, when they can take a shower, when they can eat, what they can eat. So we’re trying to give them some choice and help them kind of get used to making choices about their surroundings and then being accountable for them.”
Jim, who says she has maintained her sobriety since moving into Rainbow Corner, spends her time off site skateboarding, taking care of her dog — which lives at Rainbow Corner with her — and visiting her mother.
“My mom’s homeless, so I take care of her,” she says. “I hang out with people here, too. They’re pretty cool people.”
The freedom for residents to come and go as they please doesn’t mean they’re not checking in with site management and HIV Alliance personnel.
“I want to make sure to dialogue with them, like ‘Hey, are you doing OK? I see you walking around the place at two o’clock,’” Christianson says. “So it’s a quick conversation of ‘Are you doing alright?’ And usually it’s just restlessness.”
According to Bryant, although some locals expressed unspecific “not in my backyard” apprehensions prior to the construction of the microvillage, SquareOne Villages has received no complaints since residents moved in. Bryant says this is largely due to the residents themselves.
“They want to be good neighbors,” Bryant says. “They want to live in a neighborhood that’s peaceful. They basically want the same thing that all the neighbors want, and that’s the key to the success.”
Christianson, who is on site five days a week, has seen Rainbow Corner residents taking care of the neighborhood first hand.
“The residents themselves have taken great pride in the place,” Christianson says. “There’ve been so many residents coming to me and saying, ‘Well, hey, can I use the weed whacker on the outside area and get that cleaned up? Hey, can I have the hedge trimmers to get all these blackberry bushes down?’ And the pride that they’re taking in, it was so above and beyond what I was even expecting.”
Christianson adds, “I think everything just shows how well this idea does work. When everyone’s on board with it, it can create great change.”
Visit HIVAlliance.org or call 541-342-5088 for more information on HIV Alliance, 1195 City View Street. Visit SquareOneVillages.org or call 541-525-0501 for more information on SquareOne Villages, 272 West 11th Avenue.