Ten of the 33 pallet homes that Lane County Human Services Division gave to the City of Cottage Grove in April 2022 will be returned.
The Cottage Grove City Council voted unanimously to return the 64-square-foot temporary shelters Monday night. The move came in response to a letter LCHS Division Manager Kate Budd sent to the Cottage Grove City Manager’s Office requesting the return.
That letter noted that “the pallet shelters have not been in use as shelter for months.”
“We’ve been approached by a few emergency shelter providers in the City of Eugene to see if Cottage Grove might be open to transferring ownership,” Budd told the city council at the meeting.
The idea largely received positive responses from the council before it was put to a vote.
“We’re not using them now, and the same people who gave them to us say, ‘hey, here’s somebody else that would like to use them,’ and you’re not taking all of them away from us. So it makes a lot of sense to me,” said Councilor Jim Settelmeyer.
Councilor Greg Ervin expressed his support with some trepidation about handing over the pallet shelters, though his reason did not involve their intended purpose of sheltering the unhoused.
“I would like us as a council to consider the maintenance of the other remaining shelters and preparations for having them as a quick-deploy for future natural disasters,” he said.
Five pallet shelters will go to Equitable Social Solutions for the Navigation Center campus on River Road.
The other five will go to Saint Vincent De Paul of Lane County for its Dawn to Dawn Emergency Shelter on Highway 99.
The Cottage Grove City Council has a history of tumult around the issue of homelessness, including a recall effort and a resignation.
