Housing Voices

18/07/2026

18/07/2026

Title: Bre Irish Was Once Unhoused Herself — And It Changed How She Sees This Work | HV09 Short17

Bre Irish opens up about her own family's housing insecurity in high school, and how years later, working in the U.S. Senate, colleagues reacted to her story with disbelief and awe — "you need to write a book" — while she sat there thinking her experience barely touched what so many Oregonians actually go through.

Marty Fulford and Shawn Collins connect that moment to a bigger problem: policymakers and neighbors who've never been close to housing insecurity end up making decisions from inside a bubble. Shawn shares his own version of that same bubble breaking — being pulled into volunteering at the South Corvallis Food Bank by his wife and seeing a level of need he hadn't known existed just blocks from his own life.

Both land on the same practical answer: volunteering isn't just charity, it's how people escape the bubble — whether that's serving a meal, doing street outreach, or simply showing up enough times to see the humanity Shawn says the shelter system too often keeps hidden from view.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/TqEKTz0E2Q4

18/07/2026

Title: "Cap Equity Growth in Housing" — The Unpopular Idea Shawn Collins Won't Back Down From | HV09 Short16

Asked the classic "magic wand" question, Shawn Collins doesn't reach for a simple fix. He points to structural change — including a suggestion he once made publicly that made him "enormously unpopular": capping equity growth in housing, because current homeowners, himself included, have every incentive to want prices to keep climbing.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish connect it to the bigger picture — a K-shaped economy where people with money keep getting richer and people without it keep falling further behind, with no profit incentive anywhere in the system for helping the people at the bottom. Bre calls it what it is: there's no market fix for a problem the market is currently profiting from.

It's a rare moment of a service provider naming the uncomfortable structural truth out loud — that some of what keeps shelters full isn't broken systems, it's systems working exactly as designed for the people who already own homes.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/TqEKTz0E2Q4

17/07/2026

Title: Unity Shelter's Success Rate Dropped from 50% to 30% — Here's Why | HV09 Short15

Shawn Collins gives the blunt numbers: in a strong year, half of the people who come through Unity Shelter's transitional housing program move into permanent housing. Last year that number dropped to about 30%, not because people are trying less, but because there's simply less housing supply and less rent assistance available than there used to be.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish press on what's actually bottlenecking the pipeline, and Shawn lays it out: 34 micro-shelter units built and full, another eight built and sitting empty because there's nowhere to put them, and an average stay that's climbed from six months to nine or ten as the market tightens.

The math is stark — Unity Shelter has literally built more capacity than the community has found space to place, which means the limiting factor on getting people housed isn't willpower or program design, it's land and political will.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/TqEKTz0E2Q4

17/07/2026

Title: He Lost His Teeth to Addiction and Homelessness. Now He's Housed, Working, and Reconnected with His Kids | HV09 Short14

Shawn Collins shares one of Unity Shelter's clearest success stories: a man who came into the Safe Camp two or three years ago, addicted to opiates and the first person to ever be fully upfront with Shawn about using. He was clear from day one about what he wanted — to reconnect with his kids, to work again, to be housed.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish light up hearing how it turned out: housed, employed, mostly clean, reconnected with family, and recently spotted by a staff member just living his life on a walk near their house. Marty and Bre both linger on the small, human detail Shawn adds almost as an aside — the man lost most of his teeth while he was unhoused and now has dentures, a quiet reminder of what the body pays for years on the street.

It's the story Shawn says the whole team holds onto — proof that the enormous effort of getting someone from Safe Camp to a stable, connected life actually pays off, even when it takes years to get there.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/TqEKTz0E2Q4

16/07/2026

Title: Getting Housed Is the Beginning, Not the End — And That's the Part Nobody Plans For | HV09 Short13

Shawn Collins describes what happens after someone finally moves into an apartment after years unhoused: they're often surrounded by neighbors who've never experienced anything like what they've been through, isolated from the community they built in shelter, and quietly terrified even as everyone around them assumes they should just be relieved.

Marty Fulford and Bre Irish draw out just how thin the aftercare safety net really is — Shawn calls it a genuine weak spot in the system, one that's poorly understood and can take anywhere from six months to a lifetime to stabilize. Bre names the feeling directly: it's dehumanizing to lose housing once, let alone multiple times.

It's a reminder that a lease signed isn't a problem solved — without ongoing connection and support, the isolation that helped cause homelessness in the first place can just as easily bring someone right back to it.

Hosted by Marty Fulford and Bre Irish | Housing Voices
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/TqEKTz0E2Q4