Deep in the densely forested foothills of southern Oregon, near the town of Butte Falls, Lanette and Steve Martin lived with their son and his family until last year, when a wildfire chased them away from their home. As embers the size of charcoal briquettes landed on their front deck, the retired couple and their family jumped into their cars, leaving behind five chickens and a cat. “If we’d waited another 10 minutes, we would have been engulfed in flames,” Steve Martin said.
That same day, Sept. 8, 2020, an urban fire fueled by hot, dry weather and strong winds tore through the nearby towns of Talent and Phoenix, in the Rogue Valley. Alma Alvarez, a migrant worker, was working about 15 miles away when the fire began raging toward Phoenix, where her two younger children, aged 10 and 13, were home alone. Alvarez rushed back to find the neighborhood already in flames. The family escaped with the kids’ birth certificates and their cat, but everything else was gone. That nig
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With more than $4 million in funding from the Oregon Community Foundation s Project Turnkey, the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency is poised to purchase a Salem motel and reimagine it as transitional housing for people displaced by last year s wildfires and the chronically homeless.
Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency Executive Director Jimmy Jones said the agency is looking to buy the 80-room Super 8 motel on 1288 Hawthorne Ave. NE and seeking a total of $5.95 million in funding.
The site is set to open in late summer.
“We are really excited about the possibility of expanding our ability to serve our broader community with much-needed transitional housing,” Jones said. “Funding that we’re seeking would be used to purchase and upgrade a local motel to provide appropriate support for Santiam Canyon fire survivors.”