Superficially, the future of The Whiskey Inn doesn’t look promising. The former motel’s sign featuring a cowboy slumped against a post is turned inside out. Whatever visual evidence the empty parking lot offers is confirmed by a sign at the entrance that states the motel is “permanently closed.”
But by the end of March, the 35-room motel will be reborn as a facility that will serve the unhoused, a first of its kind in Eastern Oregon.
On Wednesday, March 10,, the Oregon Community Foundation announced it was granting the Community Action Program of East Central Oregon a $1.3 million grant to purchase the former motel and turn it into a facility that will offer temporary housing to local homeless residents.
Paula Hall, CEO of the community action program, said she was both excited and a little overwhelmed to receive the grant, which the foundation established as a part of its Operation Turnkey program.
“It’s going to be quite the undertaking,” she said.
In the short term, Hall said the program plans to run the building mainly as a shelter for the unhoused, a safe place where lodgers could socially distance themselves during the pandemic.
Once Umatilla County is able to get the pandemic under control, Hall said the building will retain some rooms as a night-to-night shelter while also dedicating other rooms to transitional housing, a place where the unhoused can live for up to two years while they search for permanent housing.
“This is not a forever home,” she said.
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