Hand-painted murals line the road leading into Talent, Oregon. Designed by local students, they urge passersby to “stay strong together” and “rise from the ashes.”
The paintings hang on the fence surrounding Gateway Transitional Housing Project, a temporary village of RVs that helped bring dozens of students in the Phoenix-Talent School District back home after the Almeda Fire.
The project, which closed in August, housed 53 school district families at its peak.
Students were scattered
The September 2020 wildfire destroyed thousands of homes in southern Oregon. Nearly 700 Phoenix-Talent students lost theirs, forcing hundreds of families to scatter throughout the Rogue Valley and beyond.
Families were staying at the homes of friends and relatives. Some were packed into single hotel rooms and cramped cars outside district boundaries. Others moved into trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Phoenix-Talent superintendent Brent Barry said he reached out to families days after the fire to figure out how far they’d had to move.
“They really scattered around all of the Rogue Valley,” Barry said. The distance meant students and families weren’t able to connect with their peers, he added.
Even though classes were online because of the pandemic, district leaders knew busing would become an issue once they returned to in-person classes.
Talent Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood said some Rogue Valley locals who hadn’t lost their homes donated their own camping trailers and RVs.
“The community really banded together for the purpose of wanting to maintain as much of our pre-fire community as we possibly could,” she said.
Limited space in local RV parks forced some families to park their trailers more than a 40-minute drive from the nearest Phoenix-Talent school. Barry said some moved their RVs multiple times.
Those with federal assistance weren’t any more stable. The FEMA trailers had a looming expiration date. Residents needed to vacate by March 15, 2022, or start paying nearly $1,700 in rent each month.
There was nowhere secure for many families to regain their footing.
A gateway back into Talent
Barry and Ayers-Flood began brainstorming, determined to find a solution.
“We wanted to make sure that children had a stable place to put their head down at night, and a place where a meal could be prepared,” Ayers-Flood said. “There were a lot of hotel rooms that were occupied, but you couldn’t cook dinner there.”
They landed on an idea: Create an RV site in Talent.
The Talent Urban Renewal Agency, chaired by Ayers-Flood, owned a vacant 4.2-acre lot in the middle of town on the corner of South Pacific Highway and West Valley View Road. It had been slated for the Gateway Redevelopment Project, a mixed-use commercial and residential project.
The site was still empty. Even better, it was within walking distance of two schools.
TURA asked the state for $1.7 million to install electricity, sewer and water and pave sidewalks and roads. Oregon Housing and Community Services came through, splitting the amount between a $1 million grant and a $700,000 loan. It also spent another $1.7 million to buy 53 new RVs for the project.
Rogue Retreat managed the site early on.
Other funding came from state and local partners. ACCESS, a Medford nonprofit, took over site management in February 2023.
“We know what they went through,” Barry said. “We know they were just struggling for meals every day, struggling for a warm place to sleep every day. To have something that came to fruition with infrastructure and space and support? It was just great to see.”
A community united in resilience
The first family moved into the Gateway Project in October 2021, one year after the Almeda Fire. All 53 spots were filled by the following spring.
“When you lose everything, having something that is uniquely yours, that you get to make your own, even if it’s a small garden, goes a long way,” said Cory Sherman, real estate manager for ACCESS.
She worked on the little things to ensure residents felt at home. ACCESS added a community garden, a play area and wooden stairs outside each RV to increase accessibility.
The school district chipped in, too.
“We put a bus stop there even though it’s technically within a mile,” Barry said. “We still drove the bus through there, and a bunch of kids hopped on and took them to school.”
Ayers-Flood said seeing those kids get on the bus made her weep in joy.
“To me, it was a sign we were on the right track,” she said.
Closing the gate
Gateway was never meant to be permanent. The transitional housing project wrapped up in August.
Since ACCESS took over management, 86 households lived at the site. Nearly three-quarters moved into permanent housing, with the help of the nonprofit.
For the families still living in Gateway, ACCESS offered help relocating their RVs.
TURA intends to move forward with plans to develop the site.
Melanie Doshier, the chief program officer of ACCESS, said she is proud of what the Gateway Project accomplished, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.
“To say it’s a blueprint, I think, would be a far stretch because all disasters impact differently,” Doshier said. “What’s the area median income? What is the household dynamic? Who’s impacted is all going to influence what is needed after a horrific disaster like this.”
Still, in Talent, the model worked.
“It’s people. It’s resources. It’s people with resources, and they just show up and they want to support,” Ayers-Flood said. “It is an extraordinary thing that, when there’s a disaster, people that you wouldn’t otherwise engage with extend a helping hand.”
