After three years of providing overnight shelter in teardrop campers for homeless people for $10 a night, Springfield's Revive 66 Campground is closing for good.
The campground was a project of the Gathering Tree, a nonprofit that operates the Eden Village tiny home communities for disabled and chronically unsheltered people.
At a press conference held May 2 at Eden Village I, Gathering Tree co-founder David Brown explained the campground is closing so the nonprofit can focus on building more Eden Village communities to provide permanent, supportive housing for folks experiencing chronic homelessness.
“Our mission is to build relationships and communities for our homeless friends. Our vision is to create cities where no one sleeps outside,” Brown said. “We promised our community that we would build at least 5 villages all over Springfield to address the pressing issue of homelessness in our city.
“We continue to look forward to the day that we wake up and no one is sleeping outside,” he continued, in part. “This will only happen by providing permanent housing for the poorest in our city.”
The campground, located at 3839 W. Chestnut Expressway, closed in late April to give the Gathering Tree oversight board time to decide the organization’s next steps.
Earlier this week, the Gathering Tree’s board voted unanimously to close the campground to focus on the organization's longstanding goal of ending homelessness in Springfield by building more Eden Villages.
Brown announced the Gathering Tree is launching a $5 million capital campaign to reach the goal of having five Eden Village communities throughout Springfield completed in the next five years.
Eden Village I and II are done and occupied. Eden Village III is under construction.
More money for permanent housing
Nate Schlueter, chief visionary officer for the Gathering Tree, called the decision to closed the Revive 66 to focus on building more Eden Villages a “better use of our resources.”
“We can run the campground well,” he said in a phone interview, “but what we do best, what we can be the best in the world — that is building permanent housing.”
Schlueter said the board wants to donate the property at 3839 W. Chestnut Expressway to another nonprofit organization for the purpose of providing services to the homeless or for the construction of an affordable housing project.
The Gathering Tree plans to keep 10 of approximately 70 tiny campers to be used as crisis cold weather shelters.
It’s not clear what will happen to the remaining teardrop campers.
“We’ve reached out to disaster relief organizations and things like that to see what best use of those would be,” Schlueter said, adding the Gathering Tree might sell some of the campers.
Schlueter said closing the Revive 66 Campground will save the Gathering Tree about $100,000 a year, money that can be used to create permanent housing at Eden Village communities.
Money and mission were the deciding factors for campground closure
At the press conference, Schlueter was asked if there was a specific incident that led to the campground’s closure. He responded, “absolutely not.”
“It had nothing to do with staffing. We are proud of the work our campground coordinator has done over the last several years,” he said.
Michelle Garand, vice president of Affordable Housing and Homeless Prevention with Community Partnership of the Ozarks, attended the press conference. She helped explain the definition of chronic homelessness, the population that Eden Village serves.
Community Partnership of the Ozarks operates One Door, this community’s point-of-entry for homeless services. Garand told reporters that before Eden Villages existed in Springfield, staff at One Door had little to no options for the chronically homeless.
“The chronically homeless, people that are experiencing chronic homelessness, have so many barriers to stable housing for whatever reason,” Garand said. “They are the hardest individuals to try and find housing for. And Eden Villages are doing that.”
Idea for campground came at height of COVID-19 pandemic
According to Schlueter, the Gathering Tree’s leadership came up with the idea for the Revive 66 Campground in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when there was a need for shelter options with social distancing.
Brown described the decision to create the campground as a “knee-jerk reaction to meeting the very real needs of our friends on the streets... to both keep people safe and potentially save lives in the middle of a devastating pandemic.”
At the time, it was a unique concept in that the campers could be rented for $10 a night by anyone, including homeless people.
If someone didn’t have the $10, gift cards and vouchers were sometimes available thanks to donations.
And unlike a traditional homeless shelter, IDs were not required for check-in, and pets and couples were welcome.
By all accounts, the concept was not perfect. The solar-powered campers proved difficult to heat when temperatures dipped below freezing. Staffing issues led to the campground closing on the weekends.
Soon after Revive 66 launched in late 2020, the City of Springfield committed $60,000 for 10 additional campers to be designated as crisis cold-weather shelters each year for up to 10 years.
Schlueter said the Gathering Tree will keep those 10 trailers funded by the city government and continue to offer them as crisis-cold weather shelters when overnight temperatures are predicted to dip to 32 degrees or colder.
About the Eden Village tiny home communities
Dr. David and Linda Brown, founders of Eden Village, have said for years they intend to create more tiny home communities with the hopes of making Springfield a city where “no one sleeps outside.”
Eden Village I opened in 2018, has 30 tiny homes and is located at 2801 E. Division St.
Eden Village II has 24 tiny homes and is located at 3155 W. Brower St. It opened in 2020.
Both Eden Village I and II are comprised of 400-square-foot manufactured homes, community buildings, storm shelters, fencing and security gates.
The planned-Eden Village III is located 2419 W. High St. It will be somewhat different than its predecessors in that the homes will be made from a 3D printer.
The Gathering Tree has secured the property for the planned-Eden Village IV, but has not yet disclosed its location.
Schlueter said they are still searching for a property for the planned-Eden Village V and are hoping to find something on Springfield’s southside.
The goal, Schlueter said, is to have all five Eden Village communities complete by the time David Brown turns 90 in 2029.
Gathering Tree started as drop-in center in 2010
David and Linda Brown began serving and helping Springfield’s unsheltered community in 2010 when they opened the Gathering Tree, which was then an evening drop-in center for homeless people. The location of the Gathering Tree changed a few times, but it was always in downtown Springfield.
While there, homeless people could get snacks, use the bathroom, use a computer and relax.
Linda Brown has recalled many times over the years how upsetting it was for her to watch her homeless friends leave every evening, knowing they would be sleeping outside while Brown was going home to a warm bed. That’s the reason she wanted to create an affordable housing program that would also provide services and be a community for the chronically homeless.
Wicklow House is named in honor of the Irish ancestral home of the donors. Photo by (Mary Ellen Chiles)
The first major donation to the Eden Village project was $30,000 from Judy Huntsman, a now-retired real estate agent, in November of 2016. That money was used to purchase a tiny home, which sat on the Eden Village I property on Division Street for some time to serve as a model home potential donors could tour.
By August 2018, there were 31 homes and a community center on the Eden Village I property, and the first resident moved in.
The Browns closed the Gathering Tree drop-in center in 2018 to redirect resources and volunteer time to the Eden Village housing project. Eden Village II opened in 2020 on Brower Street.
Tiny home communities are ‘God’s Project’
The Browns often describe the Eden Village communities as “God’s Project.”
“Our motivation was the Gathering Tree, being able to be with our friends, learning about our friends, their stories and getting to know them,” Linda Brown said in an earlier interview. “What really started the whole thing (Eden Village) was feeling like we needed to do something besides a bandaid.”
Private donors and organizations that sponsor the homes are encouraged to get to know the person who lives in it, to stop by and have coffee from time to time and make that person a part of their family. Sponsors also get to name the home and help decorate, if they want.
Residents at all the Eden Village properties, including the planned third Eden Village, pay $325 a month in rent. That includes utilities and no deposit is required.
To qualify for a home, individuals must have been homeless in Springfield for at least a year and have some kind of income to pay rent.
Click to read Dr. David Brown's full statement about the closing of Revive 66 Campground
Hello, my name is David Brown and I am one of the Founders of The Gathering Tree.
Our mission is to build relationships and communities for our homeless friends. Our vision is to create cities where no one sleeps outside.
When Linda and I moved to Downtown Springfield in 2010, we noticed many of our neighbors were wandering the streets and homeless. We knew God was calling us to do something and we really couldn't do anything without getting to know the people living on the streets around us.
Together with a small group of friends, we started The Gathering Tree’s drop-in center to build relationships and serve our homeless brothers and sisters living in our beautiful but broken city. We met them where they were and learned a lot about the pain and suffering that comes with being homeless. Can you imagine not knowing where you will sleep tonight?
Both our understanding and perception of homelessness were completely changed. We began to understand that the most obvious root cause of homelessness is loss of a home. But the loss of a home itself doesn’t cause homelessness it’s the loss of a healthy family safety net, and not simply addiction, mental health, struggle with employment or history in the criminal justice system.
I bet if we were all honest with each other today, we could think of someone we are related to, or closely associated with, someone who has these same struggles, but they aren’t homeless because of the safety net provided to them by family and friends.
In 2016, Linda and I started to explore the idea of small, right-sized homes and what it would look like to build an intentional neighborhood to provide a community safety net for our friends on the streets. About that time, we met Nate Schlueter who had recently moved back to Missouri and had years of experience in service to and housing for the chronically homeless population.
We began dreaming about what now is Eden Village. Today, Nate functions as the Chief Visionary Officer and his wife Kelbi Schlueter manages Eden Village 1.
In August of 2018, we opened this village. In the fall of that very same year, we realized that God was calling us to house more of our friends permanently and began making plans to open a second Eden Village in Springfield. At that time it became necessary to be laser focused on permanent housing which led to the difficult choice to shut down our drop-in center. We promised our community that we would build at least 5 villages all over Springfield to address the pressing issue of homelessness in our city.
In 2020, as we were in the middle of construction on Eden Village 2, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Nate Schlueter and one of our board members, Harlan Hill, had a knee-jerk reaction to meeting the very real needs of our friends on the streets which led to scribbling on a whiteboard a pop-up concept to both keep people safe and potentially save lives in the middle of a devastating pandemic. That concept is what is today Revive 66 Campground, a non-congregant and legally licensed campground to meet people right where they’re at and provide a good night's sleep.
Since February of 2021, we have successfully provided 30,128 safe nights of sleep to the most vulnerable in our community.
On April 11, our board voted unanimously to start a capital campaign to raise a much needed $5 million for property acquisition and infrastructure so that we can complete Eden Village 3 and construct our fourth and fifth villages in the next five years.
As Linda and I, our entire staff, and our Board of Directors continue to age into this ministry, we have learned that the thing we could be the greatest in the world at is taking someone off the streets and changing not only their lives, but also their identity by helping them learn to become a good neighbor at Eden Village.
A great example of that is one of our residents who recently won Community Partnership of the Ozarks’ NOVA award for being a good neighbor in the Bissett Neighborhood, which is home to Eden Village 2. Six months earlier, he was living on the streets and couldn’t have ever been given that award and would have never introduced himself as a neighbor.
Building our fourth and fifth villages within the next five years, is “a big hairy audacious goal” that, much like our Drop-In Center shutting down, requires us to invest our time and resources to stay focused on not what we are good at, but what we are great at.
On April 29, after closing the campground a week earlier to reevaluate our mission and vision, our Board of Directors voted unanimously to shut down the Revive 66 Campground permanently. Our intent is to donate the property at 3839 W. Chestnut Expressway to a local non-profit for future homeless services or affordable housing. We are also in talks with other nonprofits to donate some of the other assets at the campground to meet community needs.
We continue to look forward to the day that we wake up and No One Is Sleeping Outside. This will only happen by providing permanent housing for the poorest in our city. If I had to give you an equation and an answer to ending homelessness it would be: HOMELESS + HOME = NEIGHBOR
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Thank you for your time.
