‘I just cannot wait’: Joy Community to welcome homeless senior residents by summer

Published 11:00 am Wednesday, April 16, 2025

By BUFFY POLLOCK / Rogue Valley Times

After a harsh winter and other delays, opening of tiny home village along Biddle Road in Medford is within reach

A tiny home village for homeless seniors will welcome its first 10 residents this summer to rows of colorful homes, a cascading waterfall and space to grow produce and share meals with neighbors.

Construction crews were on site last week in Medford running water lines and working to complete needed site work for Set Free Christian Fellowship’s long-awaited Joy Community.

Soon-to-be resident Fern Gaston-Rush, 66, flashed a wide grin as she surveyed the site and peeked inside a home with a full-size bed and muted teal-colored cabinets one recent afternoon.
Daydreaming about cooking meals on her two-burner stove and “having house plants again,” Gaston-Rush said, “I think it’s just fabulous, I can’t wait. … I just cannot wait.”

Work to install waterlines for the Joy Community tiny home village was underway last week at the Biddle Road site in Medford. Buffy Pollock photo

Two years in the making, the little village, tucked adjacent to the long-vacant meat packing plant at 2811 Biddle Road (near Camping World), was the vision of Set Free Christian Fellowship pastor Chad McComas, who founded Rogue Retreat and has been a homeless advocate for decades.

McComas announced plans in February 2023 for the multi-phase community, which he said was born out of a growing regional trend — mirroring a national trend — of abandoned and homeless seniors.

By some counts, senior homelessness could triple by 2030. Joy Community, at its core, was planned as a place for abandoned and forgotten seniors without other options, such as family, to fall back on. 

McComas hoped to open by late 2024, with residents spending Christmas in their new homes, but approval process delays and harsh winter weather postponed site work. 

McComas said homes should now be occupied by June. Six of the first 10 homes include a bathroom, while occupants of four “microhomes” will share a community restroom and shower house.

The project, to date, has raised over $500,000 with $100,000 still needed to cover ADA-compliant restrooms, a community center, final site preparation and one final “microhome,” McComas said, noting, “We’ll start with the nine, but we are determined to find a way to get the tenth.”

Looking at the nine homes already on site, Gason-Rush said she could hardly wait to call one her own. Retired from a career in television and multimedia, now working as a sometimes substitute teacher, she came to Southern Oregon from Victorville, California, to find affordable housing and found herself living in her car and, eventually, a local shelter.
The prospect of a roof over her head again, she said, “gives me hope.”

“I’m just daydreaming about how to set things up. … “It has a little fold-down table, and I can roll around and relax in the bed and not be afraid to fall off,” she said. “I’m so happy.”

Stephen Branton, a longtime homeless man known as “Ghost,” is one of the first 10 homeless seniors who will move into the soon-to-open Joy Community, a tiny home village created by Medford’s Set Free Ministries. Buffy Pollock photo

Another soon-to-be resident of the village, 74-year-old Stephen Branton, known to friends as “Ghost,” became homeless over a dozen years ago after losing his family — his parents passed away, his wife was murdered, and his daughter died from health issues.

Branton walked away from a jewelry and bead business, using alcohol to cope with his losses. His nickname came from a near-death experience after being given fentanyl-laced whiskey.

In his 70s and having lost much of his sight after being attacked “by bum bashers” while camping near Empire Lake, Branton said age and blindness caused by the attack make it “harder to keep living outside.”

With help from Medford police — who pulled Ghost off the streets 16 months ago — as well as from staff at the Crossings urban campground, his probation officer and friends at Set Free Christian Fellowship, Branton quit drinking to “get a new perspective.”

“I was messed up. I had broken my collarbone after I fell down. It was raining and cold … all I had was a pair of Levis and my boots. They drove me to the Kelly shelter, fed me, got me clothed and stuff and took me to the campground,” he recalled this week.

A former campground manager named Alex, Branton said, offered some tough love.

“I’d been kicked out of there four times for being drunk and rowdy. She said, ‘All right, this is the last time.’ So, I stayed. I finally realized, it’s really terrible out there. I’ve known so many people who are dead now. I realized that I really did have some people who cared about me.”
Cheryl Ames, a 76-year-old retired apartment complex manager, said she was excited to be part of the new community. A retired hair stylist who cuts hair at St. Vincent dePaul and at Set Free outreach events, Ames became homeless after leaving a 32-year marriage.

Cheryl Ames, a retired hair stylist who found herself homeless last year after a divorce, signs up to help volunteer at the new tiny home village — Joy Community — where she hopes to soon make her “forever home.” Buffy Pollock photo

Initially living in her car, voluntary repossession left her relying on a shelter bed and using a three-wheel bike to get around.

“I want to be a big part of it, you know, help decorate. … I’m willing to do whatever they need to help make it all happen. I feel very blessed,” she said.

“I can’t wait to plant flowers and just make it feel like home.”

Set Free Christian Fellowship board member Steven Dahlin, at the open house, said offering stability to seniors was “something really beautiful.” A former paramedic, Dahlin said he witnessed firsthand the growing number of homeless seniors and said he hoped to see the larger community embrace the tiny home village.

“There is a lot of wonderful scripture in the Bible about how God really loves the widow and wants us to take care of them. We knew, when we started talking about this, that God would be involved,” he said.

“What I love about this program is that it’s no longer transitional. This is a place where all these wonderful people can come and just finally be home. No more going from here to there, getting bumped around. … It’s like a final destination.”

McComas said residents will pay rent, based on income and the size of their tiny home. Monthly village operating expenses of about $18,000 will primarily be covered through community sponsorships, grants and donations.

For more info, or to donate, visit setfreeservices.org. Donations can be mailed to: Joy Community, 1032 W Main, Medford, Oregon 97501

Reach reporter Buffy Pollock at 458-488-2029 or buffy.pollock@rv-times.com. Follow her on Twitter @orwritergal.

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