The first of two Dusk to Dawn homeless camps approved by the Eugene City Council will open Friday at the St. Vincent de Paul service station.
The site will provide a heated MASH-style tent that can accommodate up to 20 people. There will also be bathrooms and places to wash up. The other location will be in the parking lot of Lane County Behavioral Health and is only for car camping.
Michael Kinneson is with the City of Eugene. He acknowledges this is a stop-gap measure.
Kinneson: “Ideally, we want people to be in more stable housing, long-term housing situations. So these are all considered interim, kind of pilot programs until we get there and we have the beds in our community.”
The Dusk to Dawn program allows homeless people to stay at the city-approved locations between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m.
The tent at the service station and the car camping site will be managed and staffed by St. Vincent de Paul. The pilot program is funded by the Lane County Human Rights Commission and will sunset at the end of March 2016.