Home

Imagine waking up in your own apartment after five years without a place to call home – that is Mikel’s story. To honor Mikel’s identity, we will use gender neutral pronouns (xe/xem/xyrs) in sharing xyr incredible journey.

Mental health has been a challenge for Mikel since childhood, especially when it came to finding the right care. “I definitely have been getting mental health treatment for a long time, I guess since I was a kid,” xe explained, “I had all these internal struggles that nobody was aware of. The times when I had voices telling me to be suicidal, then I could get more treatment, but it was just to make me not suicidal; they didn’t really fix the problems.”

Mikel became unhoused when xe felt xe had to leave xyr apartment due to a dispute with a neighbor leading to the loss of safety in xyr own home and the threat of eviction. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning, xe found xemself living in a state of instability, facing a lack of housing options and financial resources, “the pandemic was starting, so it was a hard time to be homeless because the library was closed, and all the bathrooms were locked, so that was really difficult. Then I was trying to find places to live, and I couldn’t find anywhere that would rent to me because I didn’t have enough money. I found some Airbnbs that were cheaper than rental places, so I stayed in Airbnbs, and it was nice to be inside sometimes,” said Mikel.

Mikel eventually was able to purchase a vehicle, which became xyr safe haven, “I had been homeless for four years before living in my car; the car was actually an improvement, it felt like such a luxury, being able to park at the park and have my own spot and not have to be in the grass or uncomfortable.”

Shortly after this win for Mikel, a prior incident caught up to xem, and xe were arrested and then jailed for three months. Mikel was then mandated to the Oregon State Hospital (OSH) where xe received psychiatric treatment. Xe had mixed feelings about being mandated. Xe genuinely wanted to get treatment, but the experience was very intense. Mikel stated, “it felt like it was good to go there (at OSH), but I also didn’t quite fit in. I didn’t need to be locked up because I liked being there, and I thought it would have been nice to go check on my car or leave for the weekend sometimes. Having to be escorted everywhere seemed like a little too much for me,” xe explained, “it felt like at the hospital, they were trying to make me fit for trial, but I wanted to not suffer as much, so I was trying to get that out of being there.”

After spending four months at OSH, Mikel was referred to ShelterCare’s Birch program, where xe found the support xe needed, “I remember it was like a dream come true in terms of having people work with me where I was living because I’d often felt really bad before, I think catatonic is the word. I couldn’t really move, and I wished I didn’t have to go to appointments,” xe explained, “it felt like having an advocate who would reach out to me instead of not really being present. The staff were there most days, in person. Just having someone there, so if I thought of something, I could talk to them, kept me from feeling alone.” 

ShelterCare’s Birch program is a partnership with Lane County Court’s 370 (Aid and Assist) program to provide shelter and supportive services to individuals who have mental health symptoms and are unable to participate in their own legal defense. The Birch Program has three group homes where individuals live and receive services so that they can engage in the Aid and Assist program. After successfully completing the Birch Program, participants graduate into a six-month step-down program, Birch II, to help them transition into their own stable housing in the community.

While Mikel was staying at a Birch house, xe told us xe found a sense of community and belonging, “it was really cool they let me stay in the women’s house. That meant a lot to me because I’m not necessarily a man, so I felt like it was a nice balance after being in jail around all these men for a while,” xe said, “it was cool to be around other people that were working through what I was too.” Some of Mikel’s favorite activities that the staff put on to foster this sense of community were hikes, grocery trips, potting plants, tie-dying, and cooking groups.

Thanks to the help of our Birch staff, Mikel was able to reach stability, and xyr charges were dropped. Xe then moved onto the Birch 2 step-down program for three months while looking for permanent housing. A unit opened up at one of the complexes ShelterCare manages, and xe were able to move into another place where xe found community, “I feel like it’s a great fit, not just because it’s affordable, but other people there have been homeless or have disabilities, so it feels like that’s relatable.”

Mikel has since gone back to college, where xe only have about a year left to finish xyr degree in neuroscience, “this is a thing I could do for myself to understand more about what I’m going through, and help others too,” xe told us, “I’ve been trying to think past getting a degree and what I’m going to actually do. I like research, but I really like applying it in real life.”

Xe told us about a project xe have already created to make mental healthcare more accessible, “it’s called the Cool Line, which is like a warm line, but automated. You have a little script for it. I set it up with a number, and you could call it and press one of the numbers on a phone tree, and based on what kind of support you needed, you would get that messaging. I always thought I could be an entrepreneur in the mental health field.”

Mikel expressed the gratitude xe have for the ShelterCare Birch team, “they just cared about my life and helping me. After all those years I’d been by myself, it was cool to have all this support. It really made me feel a lot better,” xe said. Your donation will help our compassionate Birch staff continue providing support to individuals like Mikel, so they can gain their wellness and independence. Will you change a life with us by donating today?

Lee, a ShelterCare program participant, shared his success story with us about how ShelterCare Medical Respite (SMR) changed his life. We are excited to share his inspiring story with you now.

“I got hit by a car walking across the street and ended up in the hospital. I was homeless. I had no place to go. I was staying in a tent in Florence,” Lee explained. Lee’s injury was severe, too severe to recover on the street. “The doctor who did my surgery asked me if they released me, where I would go, and I told them I was going to go to a tent. With the injury that I had, I probably would have lost my foot. My ankle was fractured and broken. They put a whole bunch of screws in it. After the surgery, I wasn’t allowed to put any weight on it for three months. Getting in and out of a tent was not a viable solution with a wheelchair,“ Lee explained.

Lee is not someone who has been chronically unhoused. He first experienced homelessness at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when he moved to Oregon to be close to his family. “My dad lived on the coast, and when the pandemic hit, I was in Washington state. They were talking about making it really difficult to travel between states, so I quit my job and moved here.” Lee quickly discovered the low rental vacancy rate in the area, “I thought I would just be able to move into a place. I’d lived here 30 years ago, and there were rooms to rent and things like that. That wasn’t the case at all.” According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the rental vacancy rate in Lane County was only about 2% at that time.

This period of homelessness was a difficult time in Lee’s life: “after three and a half years, I was pretty rough around the edges,” he explained. Then things got even worse: “one moment I’m walking across the street, and the next thing I know I’m hit by a car and I’m in an ambulance,” he said. He needed help more than ever.

He told us about how it felt talking with his medical team before being referred to SMR. He remembers saying, “I don’t care where you send me or what I have to do, but I really don’t have any place to go.”

Lee was able to stay at SMR for the entire time he was in a wheelchair. “I was there from January through May, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am. It’s hard for me to walk still. It was nice to have a roof over my head. It was nice to not have to worry about meals. It was nice to be out of the tent. I was grateful to have a place I could go into, lock the door, rest, and not have to survive,” he said.

ShelterCare Medical Respite is an 18-bed facility that provides safe, emergency shelter for people who are experiencing homelessness and have recently been discharged from the hospital after an acute medical episode, yet still require limited care. This year, in partnership with Kaiser Permanente, SMR became one of the first 12 programs in the country to be certified by The National Institute for Medical Respite Care!

While Lee was staying at SMR, he reflected on his career in healthcare and social services and the burnout he experienced, “when I first started working with individuals who were developmentally disabled, we had three staff to five or six clients, all in wheelchairs, and all needing a lot of care,” he explained, “toward the end, I was working one to five. That’s how you burn somebody out. I lost a lot of faith in human beings at that time.” Lee told us about how being in such a supportive environment when he was the one in need was more than just physically healing for him: “Over the past six months, my compassion has gone up because someone helped me when I really freaking needed it and was there for me,” he said.

Esther is SMR’s Lead Service Coordinator; she told us how seeing Lee’s progress was her favorite part of working with him, “even with everything Lee had been through, he was able to maintain that focus on that positive goal, and it made it easy for us to help him get there. I feel that we got to see more of a full process with him than we do for a lot of other people that we work with. During his time there, he was able to make so much progress that he was able to move, not to another shelter, not to a sober living house, but to his own independent apartment on his own two feet, standing, not in a wheelchair.”

Not only is Lee able to walk and is living in his own apartment, but he also got a stable job doing phone surveys, which has allowed him to continue focusing on healing, start to make his apartment his own, and begin to think about his goals for the future. “I’ve been able to take a couple of paychecks and get stuff for the apartment that I didn’t have, like a fan, a blender, and I’ve got a couple of pieces of furniture now that I feel like are mine. The next thing for me is continuing to focus on working. I like the job I’m doing. I’m about three months out from when I’m going to have my leg X-rayed again, and at that point, I think it will be completely healed! I’m working toward buying a car or electric bike,” he said.

“You can tell that the individuals who work there (SMR) have had experiences in their lives that have brought them out of the woodwork to help others. It was a good place for me to go and rest, and that’s really what I needed,” said Lee. Your donation will help our compassionate staff, like Esther, continue providing support to individuals like Lee, who need a safe place to heal from a traumatic medical event. Will you change a life with us by donating today?

Recently, we talked with Immanuel, a program participant in ShelterCare’s Birch program, about his journey through the justice system and mental illness. We are excited to share his success story with you.

Immanuel explained how undiagnosed and untreated mental illness has been the main contributor to his homelessness, “I’ve been homeless for a long time, for years now. Something that’s really contributed to my not having a place to be stable is not knowing that I was dealing with mental health concerns before I was diagnosed, and being off my medications, where talking to the stars is more important than anything else.”

Parts of life that come easily to many are made very difficult by untreated mental illness, “I’ve struggled with housing throughout my life, due to inability to keep a job,” Immanuel said. He experiences co-occurring disorders, which add layers of difficulty to many day-to-day tasks. “I have an early childhood diagnosis of ADHD, so I’ve been living with that for a while, then 10 years ago, they diagnosed me with bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder, then, most recently, I’ve been diagnosed with autism as well. So I deal with a group of disorders that can make it really difficult to manage my day-to-day life,” he explained.

Immanuel has been experiencing symptoms and doing what he could to manage them himself, with no support, since he was a kid: “When my mother met my stepdad, she kind of abandoned me at the house for like six months. I’ve been getting into trouble since then, when I was 15 years old. I have an extremely long criminal history that is a reflection of me dealing with mental health without the proper outlets. It’s kind of unsettling to see that if I would have gotten help like this earlier in life, I wouldn’t have such a lengthy criminal history. When I started getting in trouble, I started messing with drugs to self-medicate.”

The cycle of being in and out of hospitals and jails started at a young age for Immanuel and was difficult for him to break, “Normally, what happens is I’ll be stabilized for like a month or two, stop taking my meds, make a poor decision in the community, go to jail, then get out. It’s a very vicious cycle that I’ve gone through, but between the ShelterCare program and the ACT team, I’m working on breaking the cycle,” he said.

ShelterCare’s Birch program serves those who have been deemed unable to advocate for themselves in court due to a mental illness, so participants are required to receive behavioral health treatment while in the program. One organization we partner with for these services is Laurel Hill, which runs Assertive Community Treatment (ACT).

Immanuel receives multiple layers of support this way, including a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) to prescribe medications, nurse, mental health therapist, substance abuse specialist, employment specialist, housing specialist, case managers and, “I have like three Peer Support Specialists because I have two from the ACT team and one from the ShelterCare team,” he said.

Sometimes individuals in our programs need a couple of chances to become stable, but it is worth it when it finally sticks. “This is actually my second time in the program. The first time, I was sent to the hospital, and then I was released from the hospital back to the jail and ShelterCare took me out of jail and put me into the Birch program, where I lived for a little while. I got my own apartment, and then I had a couple weeks off my medication again and messed up and went back to the hospital, back to jail, and now I’m in the Birch program again,” explained Immanuel.

He explained how important it has been for him to learn about his mental health conditions and receive treatment, “I’ve been dealing with mental health conditions my whole life, I’m just recently starting to become more aware of them and finding more ways to manage them. Zelima helps a lot with helping me stay on top of my medications and appointments.”

Zelima is the Lead Case Manager in ShelterCare’s Birch program. She told us about Immanuel’s progress through the program, “Immanuel has amazing insight into all his things, which is pretty rare, and is very independent, so we aren’t doing a whole lot, just getting through the program and finding a way to make sure it sticks. That’s our big goal, as well as finding housing and making habits to stay the course,” she said.

Immanuel is the most stable he has ever been. “This is the first time I’ve been stable for a year, so I’m feeling pretty good about it, and I’m just trying to maintain that at this point. My goals for the future are to find housing, which I’m pretty optimistic about,” he said. Since our interview with Immanuel, we received an update that he moved into his own apartment!

“Dealing with mental health, and not knowing you’re dealing with mental health, can be very difficult because you feel something inside of you, but you don’t know what it is until they diagnose you,” said Immanuel. Your donation will help us continue providing support to individuals like Immanuel, who are learning how to navigate the world with co-occurring mental illnesses. Will you change a life with us by donating today?

Rachel, a ShelterCare program participant, shared her story with us of her ongoing battle with homelessness and a traumatic brain injury (TBI). We are pleased to share her journey to stability with you. Rachel’s homelessness began with a life-altering trauma, “Since I am a victim of sexual assault and domestic violence, I am disabled due to a traumatic brain injury,” she shared.

Domestic violence and disabilities are common experiences among many individuals who experience homelessness. According to the Lane County Homeless by Name list, there were a total of 10,865 people who experienced homelessness in 2024; 52% (5,650 individuals) were living with a disabling condition, and 26% (2,825 individuals) were survivors of domestic violence.

There are many causes of homelessness and barriers that keep people unhoused, but the leading cause is the lack of housing availability; Rachel struggled with this barrier for years, “there was no housing available, I waited on the housing list for a really long time; at least four or five years,” she explained.

The combination of housing scarcity and Rachel’s untreated TBI kept her from reaching a stable enough place in life to maintain housing or a job, “I used to work at Nike in Accounts Payable for 5 years,” Rachel said. Rachel’s Housing Specialist, Moníca, explained how big of an impact counseling and medication have had on Rachel’s life, “One thing that’s been big is getting her medications regulated. Staying on top of that has assisted her in keeping her housing stability. It also assists with a lot of other things – she’s just vibrant and loving life right now, and things are going well; her relationship with her family is better, and she’s seen her children more these last few months.”

Getting to this point has taken time, “The Senior & Disability Services office referred me to ShelterCare years ago because of my traumatic brain injury,” Rachel explained, “then my apartment finally came up, and I was able to obtain housing through ShelterCare!”

Rachel is a participant in ShelterCare’s Supported Rental Assistance (SRA) program, which provides rental assistance for individuals with Severe and Persistent Mental Illnesses (SPMI) and who are chronically homeless, literally homeless, or imminently at risk of homelessness. The program also provides housing services to support the participant in finding and maintaining housing.

That support is a big part of what helps ShelterCare participants succeed. Moníca described what it was like being an advocate for Rachel, “This last time I moved Rachel into the unit she’s in now, she was sleeping in a park. We literally went from signing a lease, to the park, to get her things and move her into her new unit. She was really struggling at that point in her life, and it was really hard to find her housing. I advocated and advocated for her. When we were finally able to find something she could move into, it was so exciting.”

Rachel has now been in this housing for eight months, and is more stable than ever, “because of ShelterCare’s help, I went from being homeless to having identification, a place to live, a bus pass, food stamps, a certificate of citizenship because I didn’t have a birth certificate, and all of that has helped me become the person I am today,” she said. She takes great pride in her new home, “I keep my apartment spotless!” she said.

That person she is today is someone who has decided to use her experience to become a supporter and advocate for others, “I have done volunteer work serving meals to the unhoused, worked on getting donations to support veterans, and have attended the ShelterCare Participant Advisory Council,” she said.

Rachel also told us about her goals moving forward, “I would like to become an advocate for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors, stop smoking, support my son while he goes through college, and make my mom proud. I am going to take care of her in her old age.” She has also had more opportunity to invest time into her hobbies, “I love art, classical music, camping, building campfires, and creating flower arrangements!” she said.

ShelterCare follows the Housing First model, which states that having one’s basic need of housing met makes it possible for them to focus on other goals, like Rachel’s. Her biggest focus is on being there for her son, “because of ShelterCare’s help, I have become a productive member of society and am supporting my son going to college! He wants to study IT in Portland. He graduated (high school) with honors and already took some college courses in his senior year!”

“I’m really grateful for ShelterCare helping me become a productive member of society for me and my family. My whole world has changed for the better because ShelterCare has been in my life, supporting me,” said Rachel. Your donation will help us continue to provide support to people like Rachel, who face multiple barriers to housing and stability. We have a special opportunity from an anonymous community member who will be matching donations up to $25,000. Will you participate in this generous matched gift, and help us change a life like Rachel’s, by donating today?