{"id":530352,"date":"2022-08-30T07:42:15","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T14:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=530352"},"modified":"2025-05-08T18:02:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T01:02:50","slug":"talent-transitional-housing","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/talent-transitional-housing","title":{"rendered":"Fire Destroyed an Oregon Town\u20143D Tools Helped Carve Out a Measure of Hope"},"author":671,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1271,289932,481142,471971],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[478722,478452,478422],"esri_blog_department":[478242,492402],"class_list":["post-530352","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-housing","tag-recovery","tag-transitional-housing","tag-wildfire","esri-blog-category-housing","esri-blog-category-smart-planning","esri-blog-category-wildfire","esri_blog_department-public-safety","esri_blog_department-urban-planning"],"acf":{"video_source":"","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"Planners in Talent, Oregon, used 3D visualization tools to build transitional housing for families left homeless by the Almeda Fire.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"Planners in Talent, Oregon, used 3D visualization tools to work with diverse stakeholders to build transitional housing for victims of the Almeda fire.\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Following the Almeda Drive Fire, community leaders united to build some of the nation\u2019s first locally-driven transitional housing for victims.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>3D tools helped planners consider scenarios and weigh the best options.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The project includes plans for evolving the temporary housing into affordable apartment units.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the first day the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-online\/mapping\/mapping-the-almeda-drive-fire\/\">Almeda Drive Fire<\/a> tore through southern Oregon\u2019s Rogue Valley in 2020, it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/photography\/2020\/09\/17\/amp-stories\/inside-scorched-towns-talent-phoenix-ore\/\">obliterated<\/a> huge swaths of the neighboring towns of Talent and Phoenix. Thousands were left homeless.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many were low-income families, including a high percentage of undocumented first-generation immigrants. Their resident status made them ineligible for post-disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal sources.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIn both Talent and Phoenix, the fire disproportionately impacted those community members,\u201d said Nikki Hart-Brinkley, an expert in geographic information systems (GIS) who mapped where displaced people were finding housing for the Rogue Valley Council of Governments. \u201cMany of them lived in trailer parks, which were heavily affected. They couldn\u2019t just go ahead and request a FEMA trailer.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Talent, city officials and community leaders wanted to map a path to keep families who had called Talent home. With cutting-edge GIS tools as a guide, they built one of the nation\u2019s only locally driven, master planned, transitional housing sites.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Rebuilding For the Present and Future<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Talent Urban Renewal Agency (TURA) purchased a four-acre plot of land between Route 99, the major thoroughfare for motorists passing through town, and Talent Avenue, the city\u2019s central street. The town had planned to develop it into the <a href=\"https:\/\/the-gateway-to-talent-talent.hub.arcgis.com\/\">Gateway Redevelopment Project<\/a>, a combination of residential development and local businesses, as a way to attract more traffic from the highway. When the fire hit, the Gateway location was still mostly vacant. Because the lot was on the edge of Almeda\u2019s burned zone (the fire, after leapfrogging Route 99, had mysteriously halted at Talent Avenue), it remained largely intact.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Officials from the Phoenix-Talent School District approached TURA and Talent\u2019s city council with the idea of repurposing Gateway to build transitional housing. Nobody wanted the schoolchildren to have to start fresh in a new school with people they didn\u2019t know after they had lost so much in the fire.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[530392,530402,530422]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The effort grew to include aid from state agencies, private companies, and nonprofits. \u201cThey all started to think about ways to bring families back to Talent,\u201d said Chad McCombs, executive director of Rogue Retreat, a local nonprofit involved with the effort.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Besides its novel attempt to fund, construct, and manage post-disaster relief without federal recourse, what made the Gateway repurposing daunting was the scope of its ambition. The idea was not merely to confront the immediate present\u2014but also to find a solution that could evolve over time.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cA lot of communities have emergency management planning, but they don\u2019t really confront the question of how they\u2019re going to recover,\u201d said Jon Legarza, the head of Healthy Sustainable Communities, a consulting firm that worked on plans for the Gateway. \u201cWhere are we going to put people? How are we going to build back and how long will that take?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>From the Ground Up<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To create the project, planners relied heavily on GIS. Hart-Brinkley helped the city use existing LiDAR data to build a 3D base map of the Gateway site.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That map provided a realistic interface for testing various possible scenarios for the site. The planners could execute a proposal virtually, adding structures to the GIS and examining the results from all angles. They could examine its pros and cons, and then tweak it or even tear it down and start over.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[531422,531432,531442,531452,531462]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This contextual awareness was key. Building the site was more than just an isolated design problem. The 3D environment allowed TURA to see how a plan would interface with zoning and land use laws.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYou have to have water, sewer, and electricity for each and every unit,\u201d Hart-Brinkley said. \u201cThat stuff doesn\u2019t just happen to be there.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In December 2021, just over a year after the fire, Gateway was reborn as the Talent Gateway Transitional Housing Project. The site, managed by Rogue Retreat, features semi-permanent trailers that provide <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rThNIN4OXiM&amp;t=5s\">homes for 53 families<\/a>, with preference given to those with children attending schools in the district.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Ongoing Transition<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With GIS as a guide for visually extrapolating the site\u2019s evolution, Gateway\u2019s designers forged a plan with four phases. Beginning with the 53 trailers of transitional housing, Gateway will undergo its own transition.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the next few years, permanent affordable housing will replace some of the trailers. This mix will evolve into a site with 90 affordable apartments.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":531552,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":"https:\/\/the-gateway-to-talent-talent.hub.arcgis.com"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drafting the plan has involved input from groups as varied as Talent Maker City (a nonprofit makerspace focused on science and technology learning), the Talent Public Arts Committee, and the Talent Urban Forestry Committee. Cloud-based GIS has provided a common meeting ground for monitoring progress, fostering this kind of multi-stakeholder collaboration.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This communication involves the entire Talent community. A GIS-based informational site keeps the public <a href=\"https:\/\/talent-urban-renewal-agency-boundary-talent.hub.arcgis.com\/\">updated<\/a> on Gateway\u2019s progress and gives community members a forum for input.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Creative Destruction<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Talent\u2019s planning department is adapting GIS to ponder changes to the city\u2019s zoning ordinances, to help speed the recovery of downtown.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As climate change increasingly guarantees a yearlong wildfire season in western North America, this collaborative ability allows communities to ponder proactive rebuilding scenarios. \u201cWhere GIS becomes really powerful for cities is helping identify future recovery sites, and communicating these ideas to city or county leadership,\u201d Legarza said.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GIS, Hart-Brinkley explained, allows municipalities to anticipate future destruction by preemptively\u2014and virtually\u2014creating it.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe can go in and visualize the destruction of entire city blocks,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can determine that if, say, the entire northwest quadrant of Talent is gone, we\u2019ll need to house 900 families\u2014and we can do site selection analysis ahead of time.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For now, Talent has found a way to offer relief for 53 families. Both in its conception and its construction, Gateway is a blueprint for the future.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe knew when we purchased the property and started working with the community to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=doT3LriMUKs\">create a vision<\/a> here that it was a very special place,\u201d Darby Ayers-Flood, Talent\u2019s mayor, said during the groundbreaking ceremony. \u201cWe had no way of knowing how special this place would become.\u201d<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learn more about how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/urban-community-planning\/overview\">GIS is applied to urban and community planning<\/a>.<\/p>"}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>3D Tools Help Planners Provide Hope After Talent, Oregon Burned<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" 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