Everyday Heroes: Andy Olshin s Cascadia Clusters and a new vision for the homeless Stuart Tomlinson, KATU Staff
He is the founder of
Cascadia Clusters, a nonprofit that trains homeless people in construction skills by building their own tiny houses.
His vision is to take disorganized, sometimes dangerous homeless camps and turn them into something much more. -
A few years back, Andy Olshin was working with houseless folks in Hazelnut Grove, on North Greeley in Portland.
Together, they turned a soggy group of tents into 22 sturdy structures, and Cascadia Clusters was born as a vehicle to create transitional housing.
“After a while we got pretty good at building these houses and we had Portland youth build from Benson High School and Congregation Beth Israel and this church and that church,” Olshin said.