05/27/2026
Kristie had every reason to be bitter. She became disabled and was homeless for 14 years. But if you talk to her for very long, you can’t help but be inspired by how positive and resilient she is.
“When I first started, I’d never experienced any of this before,” she said. “It’s really made me grow as a person.”
Today she’s in her own home because of the generosity of anonymous donor.
In 2012, Kristie tore her shoulder in three places at the hospital she was working at. At the same time, she left her husband and moved back to Central Oregon with her youngest daughter to be near her son and grandson.
She’d had arthritis since she was in sixth grade, but she never let it get her down. She hunted, fished, and gardened.
It took seven years for her to qualify for disability, despite the injury and having rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease, asthma, COPD, and emphysema.
She lived with family for awhile, but she wound up living in her car.
During the first nights, she would google “safe place to park.” She hunkered down as someone with a flashlight walked around her vehicle, “which was terrifying to me,” she said. “I was sobbing.”
She learned about REACH’s safe parking program and stayed there for a few months.
“At least I had a heater,” she said. She would cook using an electric skillet, and she had coffee in the morning because the host church let participants use their electricity.
“I did that for a few months,” she said. “People have just been so kind.”
She was getting her mail at a church on Bond Street in Bend, and someone there told her about MVCD’s microshelters at Westside Church.
How did it feel to move into a microshelter?
“A relief. So grateful,” she said. “My old body's not doing so great, so sleeping in a bed was really helpful to me. Having the bed and the four walls and security was a blessing.”
She got to know Collin, her case manager. “He’s been so amazing. They all have. Wonderful people. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,” she said. “He didn't care when I'd bother him, always checking on me, easy to talk to. I've been shy my whole life. It takes me awhile to connect with people, but it just clicked with Collin. I could talk to him about anything, and he would help me with anything.”
But housing was elusive. She had applied for more than 20 low-income apartments but was told it could be as many as five years on a waitlist.
Then she got a call from Collin. An anonymous donor had an ADU he wanted to offer. At no cost.
“I couldn't believe it when I got the phone call. And I'd been praying and praying, trying to get my life back in order.”
Jenny Goffrier from Trailhead Property Management knew about MVCD from Westside Church.
A tenant had moved out of a property, and the owner “asked if I knew of anyone in the community that we could donate the space to. It is really remarkable. We work with 200 owners, and it’s just not very often you get someone who’s willing to do something like this for the community.”
“I’m so grateful for this little place,” Kristie said. “I love it. I have a bathroom —” she laughed —“a shower. It was hard getting a shower and doing laundry living in your car. I love the whole thing. It’s so peaceful. I have flowers.”
She’s planning to add a vegetable garden and a small yard for her grandkids to play in.
Her plans impressed Jenny.
“You never know how things like this are going to go,” she said. She’s been burned a few times, but she stays optimistic, a quality she shares with Kristie. “It doesn’t mean you don’t keep trying.”
Kristie has a message for other people who are in difficult circumstances. “Just don't give up. Use all the resources that are available to you, and you’ve got to think positive, you know. I don't think I would have made it if I was negative all the time. I always tried to stay positive.”
She also has a message for the man who donated her new home.
“I am so grateful and appreciative of what he's done for me, and I promise I'll take good care of it. That's not even enough to thank him for how grateful I am for this opportunity. He's given me the opportunity to have my own home, to have my grandkids come visit, my kids. You can't do that at the other places. I thank him from the bottom of my heart.
“Now I can get my life in order,” she said, tearing up. “I can live a good life. I can accomplish the things I want to accomplish. And I'm going to make it look nice with the new grass and the new flowers so that he's proud of the little place here.”
Jenny hopes the property owner’s generosity will inspire others.
“I think in our line of work, we usually just hear the bad. We hear from tenants when they're unhappy and we hear from the community about how high rents are. We're not all bad people. Most of our owners care about the community and want to help the community … I hope that it encourages more people to do something like this.
“At the end of the day we're all in this together,” she said. “We can all agree that we want to help.”
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