Deschutes County asked the City of Redmond to pause the eviction of dozens of homeless campers from undeveloped land in a City-owned industrial park, saying the move would add chaos to an effort to remedy homelessness in the area and make way for development.
The Deschutes County Board of County Commissioners approved a letter detailing the request at a meeting March 18. That came one week after the Redmond City Council agreed to start notifying people living in tents and trailers on a 40-acre parcel in the Desert Rise industrial park, with hopes to have the camps clear by June.
The City plans to start giving notices to move this month, followed by a month of service provider outreach and follow-up reminders throughout April. The City may provide towing or gas to help with the move, and trespassing and forced removals would be a “last resort,” police said.
Redmond Mayor Ed Fitch told the Source Wednesday afternoon the City hadn’t officially received the county’s letter, but planned to discuss it at the next Council meeting March 24.
At a Feb. 23 City Council workshop, Redmond City officials stressed the urgency of clearing the camp due to public safety concerns, with police citing instances of violent crime.
“Our primary goal is not to screw the County up, it’s to protect the community,” Fitch said in a phone call.
The spat between government comes on the cusp of opening a 36-space managed homeless camp near the Redmond Airport, a nearly two-year collaboration designed as a place to go for people living on the High Desert land where a slate of industrial projects are planned.
Fitch said he’s confident the camp will be open in time for the City to close its east Redmond property.
Deputy County Administrator Erik Kropp said construction is nearly complete on the managed camp, but there is no set opening date, as the County is in the process of selecting between three organizations that applied to run it.
Redmond wants to begin marketing the remaining 56 acres of undeveloped land in the 122-acre park, located about one-and-a-half miles east of downtown along Antler Avenue. Existing businesses include manufacturers of fuel cells for racecars and planes, wooden doors, medical devices and others.
Desert Rise industrial park location
Redmond Deputy City Manager Steve Ashworth told the City Council in February he estimates the number of encampments at Desert Rise grew from 10 to about 40 in the last year. Growth in homelessness at Desert Rise follows a string of sweeps and closures on other government-owned land across the county, including by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, City of Bend and Deschutes County.
The County cleared camps from land near U.S. Highway 126 in east Redmond last year to make way for a new City road and infrastructure for the managed camp. Nearby, the County has land reserved for a project called CORE 3, an emergency and police training center.
“Potential for chaos“
Deschutes County Commissioner Phil Chang called it a “carefully choreographed dance” with people moving around and projects going forward in east Redmond.
“I appreciate the urgency of clearing about and fixing Desert Rise, but I don’t think that we need to add another layer of 40 or 50 people in motion right now to this already carefully orchestrated plan,” Chang said during Wednesday’s meeting. “The potential for chaos really increases.”
County officials estimate about 150 people are living on County land in east Redmond. County leaders fear the sweep will push more people — and cleanup costs — to the County, which owns thousands of acres in east Redmond and beyond the city limits. Outside the city along Antler Avenue the County has designated a “green zone” — undeveloped land where campers would be allowed for the time being. In areas slated for future projects, the County has introduced security patrols to keep new camps from popping up.
Ashworth, the Redmond official, acknowledged most campers would end up in the “green zone.”
“They want to push us back farther in the dirt, and I don’t think that’s right, because there’s so much that happens out here anyway,” said Winona Rule, who lives in an RV at Desert Rise next to her adult daughter, Tashina Hickman. Rule mentioned shootings and fires and a lack of support from police — safety issues she feels would only worsen if people moved farther from the city. Rule said she moved into a trailer on 11th Street in east Redmond after she was evicted from an apartment in Bend. She was pushed to Desert Rise five years ago.
According to Heather Cassaro, a spokesperson for the City, Redmond police have responded to the area on average five days a week since 2023, twice for murder cases.
Downstream problems
Last year the County identified the property east of Redmond that now includes the “green zone” as an imminent public health and safety hazard following a code enforcement complaint. The County has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars cleaning up abandoned camps in east Redmond, according to county agenda materials.
“This creates problems for us downstream,” Kropp, the deputy county administrator, told the Source on Wednesday. “People relocate, they camp. It’s future cleanup. But we’ve got to do something.”
At Wednesday’s meeting, County Administrator Nick Lelack floated the idea that the “green zone” could become the next sanctioned homeless camp in Deschutes County, similar to the Temporary Safe Stay Area at Juniper Ridge north of Bend, which is jointly funded by the City of Bend and Deschutes County. They plan to close it in 2027.
Meanwhile, the County is working to keep people off of land directly adjacent to Desert Rise — 137 acres part of a long-awaited land swap with the state. In tandem with the letter to the City, county commissioners urged the Department of State Lands to commit to completing the land swap by the end of 2026. The swap, initiated by a 2015 agreement, would result in the County receiving 140 acres near the Deschutes County Fairgrounds for future expansion. But the land agency held up the swap in 2022, refusing to inherent land with homeless encampments. The County’s letter says it has spent $200,000 on cleanup and patrols to dissuade new encampments.
A Department of State Lands spokesperson said Thursday morning the agency hadn’t officially received the letter and wasn’t prepared to respond. County commissioners said they talked about the issue with Secretary of State Tobias Read, a member of the state lands board, during his visit to Central Oregon this week.
This article appears in the Source March 26, 2026.
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I wish the county could agree to formalize managed camps as an alternative to Whack-a-Mole