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A Family Builds a Hut


Feb 21, 2021

A new Conestoga Hut was recently built and placed at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Springfield to provide temporary shelter for a person without a home. But the way the Hut was built and paid for is unique in the history of Hut building in Lane County.


The idea for building the Hut came from Marcola resident Marie Wilson. Marie received her yearly holiday bonus in November last year from her employer, InfoGroup Northwest, and wanted to use the $900 she received to help lift someone out of being homeless.


A few months later, with husband Don as the builder-in-chief and the help of several of their young-adult kids, a new Conestoga Hut was constructed at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Springfield. A new resident is now living there—in a sturdy and durable shelter—someone who had been living in her van for an extended period.

“Our family believes in the idea of pay-it-forward,” Marie says. “We try to live our lives that way, and so do the kids, in their own ways.”


When Marie told her boss of her plan, InfoGroup Northwest decided to match her gift with a donation to CSS.


Marie learned of CSS and the Huts at a meeting of the Lane County Poverty and Homeless Board last year. She went home and did some internet research about CSS, including watching a few YouTube videos, and, with her husband’s input, decided they were going to build a Hut.


So, how does one go about building a Hut from scratch? First thing Marie and Don did was purchase the CSS manual, How to Build a Conestoga Hut ($39.95, through the CSS website).


“We thought that’s how everybody does it,” Marie said. Turns out Marie and Don are the first local volunteers to purchase the manual and use it to build and assemble a Hut.


“We were pretty amazed at how detailed the instructions were,” says Don. “It was all there, pictures, dimensions of each plywood section, size of screws, you name it—with a few small things we needed to tweak.”


Marie and Don spent six weeks or so in their “spare time” shopping for materials, and building and assembling the Hut sections at their home. The floor sections were constructed on site at the Seventh-day Adventist Church with a crew of family members and friends on a Saturday in early January. The next day, Don and family and a few volunteers, erected the walls and roof and added insulation. Don’s mother, Phyllis, sewed curtains for the window, and they are now in place.


Seventh-day Adventist Pastor Lutz Binus is very happy the church could offer the site for the Hut to provide temporary housing.


“Our church also participates in the Egan Warming Center program, and a few other service programs to help those in need,” Pastor Binus said. “It is part of what the Seventh-day Adventist Church does in other parts of the country.”


“We are glad to offer this space for a temporary shelter, and it is working out very well so far,” he said.


Marie and Don attended a service at the church recently and talked with the congregation about why and how they decided to build the Hut. They also offered their thanks to the congregation and Pastor Binus for providing the site.

The first resident of the new hut moved in recently. She had been on a waiting list for temporary housing through St. Vincent de Paul, the agency that places many residents in Huts at churches around Eugene and Springfield.


The Hut build project was a fun and creative challenge for Marie and Don. They each said there were a few things they might change if they were to do it again. But, “all in all it was a great experience for our family,” says Marie.


Paying it forward, as the saying goes, always seem to work out that way.

Community Court Program

04 May, 2024
Community Supported Shelters’ Roosevelt Safe Spot Community has been transformed into a shelter community aligned with the City of Eugene Community Court program. Beginning in January, people charged with minor misdemeanor offenses who have opted into the Community Court system (rather than Municipal Court) can opt into the CSS shelter program and move into one of 16 available Huts at Roosevelt.

Volunteers Boost Energy Systems at CSS Communities

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During the ice storm that brought Eugene to a standstill in January, all the batteries that stored the energy from the solar panels at CSS’s Lot 9 Community went dead, meaning no lights and no way to charge cell phones. Dave Reuter knew that because of a monitoring system he had set up to keep track of the status of the solar energy systems at eight CSS communities. Dave, a volunteer who has led an effort to upgrade and standardize the CSS power systems, and his wife Janel Erickson, who has worked with him on this project, are intrepid outdoors people. While most of us struggled to get out of our front doors, Dave and Janel loaded a couple of fresh batteries on their Flexible Flyer sled and attached Yaktrak spikes to their shoes and a rope to the sled. With Dave in front and Janel in the rear, they guided the sled the five miles from their Friendly neighborhood home to Lot 9, near Autzen Stadium.

UO Interior Design Creative Storage Collaboration

02 May, 2024
A sixty square foot area. Six feet by 10 feet of space covered by an unconventional Conestoga shaped canvas. This is the simple description of the Hut basic to all CSS communities. How can a safe, comfortable, and efficient habitat be created within this framework using common and inexpensive materials? This was the question posed by Assistant Professor Solmaz Mohammadzadeh Kive to her Architecture 484 class this winter term at the University of Oregon.

Volunteer Spotlight: Sandy and Percy

30 Apr, 2024
For the past several months, a couple of long-time donors to Community Supported Shelters have joined us for two hours a week at our main office to do whatever needs doing. While this may sound like a modest amount of time, Sandy and Percy’s consistent, constructive, and upbeat engagement demonstrates a truth that is often overlooked: big issues can be meaningfully addressed in small increments of time.

Eugene Parking Ban Opposition Testimony

12 Mar, 2024
It's not too late to share your thoughts on this proposed update. Send your written testimony to mayorcouncilandcitymanager@eugene-or.gov .

Incarceration and Homelessness: Breaking the Cycle

15 Jan, 2024
Formerly incarcerated people are almost ten times more likely to be homeless than the general population, according to a study from the Prison Policy Initiative. Jack spent 27 years in prison, from the age of 33 to 60. “It is a long time. It's an entire lifetime,” he says. At first, he thought he might never get out and continued what he calls “bad behavior.” But he saw others who participated in educational programs and were successful in getting their sentences reduced. He realized if he started “acting right,” he might get out. He especially credits a program called “Nonviolent Communication” with helping him. He started using what he learned and realized that “the person we communicate worst with is ourselves.”

From Waste to Wonder - UO's Grey Water Conservation Project

14 Jan, 2024
Lima, Peru, and Eugene, Oregon, are worlds apart in many ways. But spend some time with Kory Russel, an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, and you will learn there are communities in both places with challenges of access to sustainable and efficient water use. Kory has a photo in his office depicting a highly condensed neighborhood in Lima, a city where he and some of his students work on sustainable water projects.

New CSS Director of Community Impact: Black Burrell

13 Jan, 2024
Did you know CSS has a shared leadership model, with three directors? This November, Blake Burrell joined CSS as our new Director of Community Impact. His role supports all of our direct service staff, managing internal relationship-building, culture creation, program operation, mentoring, and conflict resolution. Read on for his introduction:

Volunteer Spotlight: Veronica Paredes

12 Jan, 2024
Veronica Paredes has been helping sew the weatherproof porch coverings ("scrims") for the Huts, recently working 26 hours to complete 34 scrims for us before the holidays.

Bike and Build Volunteers Assist in Refurbishing Huts

13 Oct, 2023
Bike and Build organization was established as a nonprofit in 2003. Its website summarizes its mission: “Bike and Build engages young adults in service-oriented cycling trips to raise awareness for the affordable housing cause. We advocate for the need for affordable housing in thousands of communities across the country.” As teams bike from town to town, they volunteer for service projects and give presentations about issues surrounding the lack of affordable housing. Since 2003 Bike and Build estimates that over 3,800 participants have biked over 11 million miles and donated over 255,000 volunteer community service hours to local organizations throughout the country.
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