A Eugene organization dedicated to helping the unhoused marks its 10th anniversary this year. Community Supported Shelters (CSS) has also reinvented itself due to the pandemic.
The non-profit runs housing sites that are essentially villages of Conestoga Huts. CSS’ Director of Philanthropy, Heather Quaas-Annsa, told KLCC that things really took off over the last two years.
“We went from having five sites to over 14 sites,” she said. “We have 146 huts that we can house people in at any given time.”
Quaas-Annsa says the pandemic drove this growth.
“You can't exactly pack people in like sardines during COVID. You're just going to have super-spreader cases all over the place. And so the city and the county came to CSS and asked them to build additional shelters. So we added nine shelters that are being funded by the city of Eugene now.”
Additionally, the executive director role has been replaced by three co-directors, to make operations more manageable.
Fundraising and sustainability remain important to CSS as well.
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