Today, Eugene has one of the highest per capita rates of youth homelessness in the country. Many are unaccompanied minors under the age of 18, teenagers without a safe family or home.

 

Nearly 90 percent of homeless shelters in the United States do not accept unaccompanied minors under the age of 18.

 

That is systemic failure.

 

Over decades, we have built a system designed to manage homelessness through triage and short-term containment, not to prevent it and not to solve it. After COVID, its fragility became undeniable.

 

A 15 year old without a stable home life has essentially nowhere safe and stabilizing to turn.

 

We respond downstream. We fund emergency beds and temporary placements. Meanwhile, teenagers are exposed to the full dangers of the streets: exploitation, trafficking, violence, untreated addiction, chronic sleep deprivation. They live in sustained survival mode. Trauma compounds. Mental health deteriorates. Education stalls. Employment pathways vanish. We spend heavily to manage visible crisis while the root causes remain intact.

 

This is inefficient. It is expensive. And it perpetuates suffering.

 

Scorpion Creek Ranch was created as an alternative design.

 

For three and a half years, we have been building a preventive, integrated model for teenagers locked out of traditional systems. We are now ready to open our pilot, prove the model, and scale it.

 

Our framework rests on three pillars.

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• Hearth. Stable housing within consistent community.


• Health. Trauma informed care, long term relational support, and access to comprehensive medical and dental services.


• Horizon. Project based education, vocational training, and clear pathways to employment and self sufficiency.
   

Think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

 

This is not temporary stabilization. It is structural change. Intervening early reduces long term public cost and preserves human potential before it is eroded by prolonged instability. We give teenagers solid ground to stand on and to build from.

 

Most of us had that ground beneath our feet. It shaped who we became.

 

Scorpion Creek Ranch is designed as an innovative, replicable blueprint for communities nationwide. It is prevention by design, grounded in research and guided by wisdom and logic.

 

Invest in a scalable solution to a national crisis. Join me in applying what we know, strengthening our hometown community, and building a model that restores stability, dignity, possibility, and long-term health to the next generation.

 

Let’s move Eugene from having the highest per capita count of homeless youth in the country, to the town that came up with the solution.

 

We are connected by where we began. Now we have the opportunity to shape what comes next, with clarity and fierce dedication.

 

Katie Marcus Brown ’88


Founder, Scorpion Creek Ranch