When Sam Engel became the new CEO and executive director of Rogue Retreat, he joined an organization recovering from a period of upheaval and uncertainty.

“It has been a rough year, and we’ve learned a lot,” said Engel, who stepped into the role in late January.

The nonprofit provides shelter and other services for hundreds of people every day in Jackson County. Its mission is to help people stabilize their lives and find a path out of homelessness — through treatment for addiction and mental illness, transitional housing and other steps that may lead to permanent housing.

The organization recently reached full case-management staffing for the first time since the middle of last year. Additional case managers may come on board, he said.

“Case management really is the core of the work that we do,” he said.

This year Rogue Retreat plans to move two temporary homeless campgrounds on Biddle Road to a permanent location on West McAndrews Road.

The organization also hopes to complete the renovation of The Redwood Inn on Riverside Avenue.

That project was funded by Project Turnkey, a state grant program aimed at converting vacant motels and hotels into shelters for people who are homeless or displaced by fires.

In the last year, Rogue Retreat’s footprint shrank.

Its management of a shelter in Ashland, as well as of a shelter and transitional housing village in Grants Pass, was passed on to other agencies.

Rogue Retreat is also in the process of handing off management of the Talent Gateway Transitional Housing Project for victims of the 2020 Almeda Fire to other service providers.

“We’re in a good place to move forward,” Engel said. “We’re in a good place to grow and learn.”

Engel came from AllCare Health, where he focused on the social determinants of health and equity. He has also directed the Josephine County Food Bank.

Rogue Retreat’s former executive director, Chad McComas, was deposed last summer from the nonprofit, which he founded about a quarter-century ago.

While pastor of Set Free Ministry in Medford, McComas had allowed a Christian group to hand out pamphlets promoting gay conversion therapy at the church.

Activist groups condemned the materials.

A third-party investigation did not find that McComas or Rogue Retreat, which shared staff with Set Free Ministry, had engaged in any discrimination against staff or homeless people coming to Rogue Retreat for help.

A city of Medford report confirmed the ministry was associated with gay conversion therapy but did not recommend pulling city money from the organization.

Engel said Rogue Retreat follows best practices for nondiscrimination, strives to be inclusive and seeks feedback from guests, staff and the community.

McComas was ultimately let go because of Rogue Retreat’s financial struggles. A $2 million deficit threatened to sink the organization. Engel said one of his colleagues remarked, “‘Our hearts exceeded our wallets.’”

Last fall, an interim leadership team — led by Bill Ihle, the CEO and executive director of Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Southern Oregon — was brought in. In February, Ihle told Medford City Council in a letter that the organization had “returned to financial stability.”

Ihle wrote that his team’s

“primary focus was to assess the overall condition of the agency, to make difficult decisions about which programs to keep, and to refocus our attention on the core services that Rogue Retreat delivered to assist the Medford/Jackson County area.

“We exited out of the regional efforts and excess office space, and focused our attention on delivering excellent services to those who are in need locally,” Ihle wrote.

He said the team, which included four certified public accountants, “have now put in place multiple financial safeguards, created new internal financial programs, and attended to the urgent financial needs of the agency.”

In addition, Rogue Retreat’s board of directors “now receive(s) monthly financial statements” that are discussed in detail, Ihle wrote.

In an email to the Rogue Valley Times, Ihle said, “Rogue Retreat was too big to fail.”

Engel said, “The biggest thing is, we want to continue doing a good job of what we had done such a good job at for the last 25 years, which is to earn the community’s trust through the good work that we do.”

During Engel’s first week on the job, he attended site meetings at Rogue Retreat’s various shelters and learned what was going on in the lives of the guests.

One person had earned at least

a 3.0 GPA in the college they

were attending while living in the shelter.

Another was celebrating a milestone in their sobriety.

Someone else had reconnected with a loved one, while another had gotten to visit their pet who had been placed in foster care. Wins big and small.

“The level of celebration that was met with in the room was fantastic,” Engel said.