The Bend City Council unanimously approved a new policy on campsite removals for camps in City right of ways at its meeting June 2. The Council tailored the conversation to one of the City’s most visible camps, on Emerson Avenue. On Monday social service providers received the notice to engage with camp residents to prepare for the camp’s removal.
The policy sets benchmarks for declaring a camp unsafe, and the process for removing them. Fire hazards, accumulation of trash, calls for police service, public urination and impeding on roadways could all be cited as reasons for deeming a camp unsafe, according to the new policy. The City will give at least two weeks’ notice to residents, and coordinate with service providers before removing a camp, and they must store any confiscated property for at least 30 days for retrieval.
The City Council’s input on the policy made it specific to Emerson until the policy can be further analyzed, to coordinate with St. Charles Medical Center and Mosaic Medical to ensure COVID safety, a longer notice given to residents and to explore using American Rescue Plan Act funds for a managed camp.
The policy was met with criticism from people who work with the camps. Eleven people called in for public comment during the June 2 meeting to oppose the camp’s removal. Some said the City’s new criteria didn’t apply to the camp on Emerson because the area offers resources for people there.
“The camp at Emerson is actually one of the locations where we have trash collection and restrooms at no cost to the City, so you cannot justify the eviction for those reasons,” said Eric Garrity, who volunteers with Street Kitchen Collective distributing food to camps, during public comment.
Others argued evicting camps is contrary to advice given by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The decision to move these individuals from their home without a proper plan is cruel,” Kay Vincent, a member of Bend’s Human Rights and Equity Commission, commented during the work session. “The CDC guidelines clearly state that houseless camps should not be moved. Not only is it a public health concern but an individual concern as their providers will not know where they will go which will disrupt the care that they’re receiving.”
The camp is the most diverse camp in the city, Vincent alleged, and their needs can’t be met by the newly opened Shepherd’s House shelter nearby on Second Street, which will not be housing people between 7am-6pm.
The Council set a goal of attracting 500 additional beds for houseless people, during its most recent goal setting, but at the time of the camp’s removal, Bend’s shelters don’t have the capacity to house them, nor do they have designated safe camping sites.
“With this heat wave it creates another concern that these human beings will be forced to move in extreme conditions. Being outside right now is already uncomfortable. Imagine having to move every single item that you own on foot across town,” Vincent said.
The Council set a goal of attracting 500 additional beds for houseless people, during its most recent goal setting, but at the time of the camp’s removal, Bend’s shelters don’t have the capacity to house them, nor do they have designated safe camping sites.
“Until we are able to walk on to Emerson and say we’re closing Emerson, but we have these three locations that have been designated safe camping where you can go, what we will be doing, and it’s happening already, is we are pushing people back to China Hat, back to Hunnell, people are going right back into areas right by people’s residential neighborhoods,” said Stacey Witte, founder and director of the houseless nonprofit REACH.
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Bend City Councilor Anthony Broadman said he’s received a lot of input requesting more aggressive action in camp removal. Creating a policy was necessary, he said, so that both housed and houseless populations can be aware of the removal process as the houseless population steadily grows in Bend. The rate has gone up by double digits for several years in a row, according to the Point In Time Homeless Count from the Homeless Leadership Coalition.
“I don’t think it’s fair to staff, I don’t think it’s fair to campers, I don’t think it’s fair to the housed community to not have a policy about how we’re going to deal with this,” Broadman said during the meeting. “This is a dress rehearsal for problems we’re having in other areas of our community. You saw the 13% number of homelessness increase, that’s the same number as the year before.”
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Very good article. Thank you.
Of course, no one truly desires to live in an exposed location on a public street. But, when offered no other choice, that’s what it comes down to.
Before the pandemic suddenly shut down sidewalk democracy last spring, I was able to spend a short time circulating a petition opposed to the then imminent evictions at Juniper Ridge (also conducted in violation of CDC guidelines). After only 4 hours work I was blessed with 100 easily obtained signatures from the usual crop of compassionate, imaginative Bendites. In signing, they acknowledged the futility of sweeps and evictions and supported the petition’s call for a City-supported safe, managed transitional housing facility with wrap-around services.
I think that is a solution most of us can get behind. In his July 2020 ruling that expanded protections for unhoused people, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Clarke cited several examples of successful programs developed by partnerships of governments, service providers, and mental health experts. CAHOOTS in Eugene provides “immediate stabilization in cases of urgent medical need or psychological crisis. A similar program in Miami, FL, reduced the number of people in jail by 49%, saving $12 million per year. Judge Clarke also mentions Hope Village in Medford, which now boasts a 62% success rate. Even with vehement objections from neighboring businesses and property owners, the City of Medford was determined not to duck the issue, but found a new location.
Programs such as these benefit the community by reducing public spending for jails, mental health interventions, and medical treatment, not to mention improving the lives of otherwise vulnerable people. I cant think of a more worthy investment of public funds. And, of course, we now have access to ARPA funds dedicated to helping our unhoused neighbors.
Not right of ways, but rights of way. You are welcome.
The recent passage of House Bill 3115 and Bend’s City Council consideration of closing of Minnesota Ave. downtown should provide plenty of “public” camping close to services. /s
So go ahead and hate me for saying this but we have had a flood of migrant workers entering our borders for decades to find work but our own native born citizen’s can’t hold a job. Many of which are either hooked on drugs, been abused, or suffer from mental health issues yet we can’t figure out a way to house and treat them? Most people didn’t just lose a job and become houseless by choice, they lost faith in the system and gave up hope.
We need to be looking at the work ethic and lifestyle of the migrant worker and applauding those who escape the squalor of their homeland for a better life in the USA as a beacon of hope. How do they find shelter and opportunity? By networking and living together in a group to be able to work toward a better future instead of independantly fighting the system. And as an employer, corporate rules need to be more relaxed so you can take a chance on hiring someone without a permanent address, but also still adhearing to OSHA rules. Treat the houseless like migrant workers and give them a chance and the tools to work their way up and out of the streets. Giving those with the ability to work a free ride is not helping anyone.
HikerJ43, you are perpetuating the pernicious fallacy that the houseless “deserve” to be because they’re lazy, addicts or without ambition.
You need an education on the causes of homelessness, and why the lack of family and social network, and the financial resources most of us enjoy, lock the housing insecure into a spiral of unemployment, houselessness and despair from which, try as they might, they cannot escape.
There are so many more, and more nuanced and complicated, reasons a person loses their housing and/or lives on the streets. Your post reveals a simplistic and incomplete understanding of all of it, and to simply say, “Pull yourself together” is not just ignorant, it’s supremely unkind and unhelpful.
As someone with a decade of service as a United Way Housing & Financial Stability councilperson, who has participated in 20 Pount-in-Time surveys with every single houseless person in my city, and who sees the numbers and statistics every year on who and why folks lose their places to live, let me enlighten you: Almost no one chooses to be on the streets. And it is not just a matter if not having a job, or not getting paid enough. And yes, there are indeed programs and policies in place in almost every city to assist folks without permanent addresses, mobile phones, job readiness skills, proper work clothes, transportation, to connect with employers, find and keep jobs. There are organizations and programs, both non-profit private and publicly administered, which educate employers and support them in ways which allow them to hire folks without permanent housing, or the skills and economic benefits we are privileged to have. The fact is, they are not enough. Funding does not nearly meet the need. And rising home prices in EVERY city and mid-size town, especially in a place like Bend where the economic disparity between incomers, tourists and blue-collar and hourly wage residents could not be starker.
Unless Bend, Redmond and Central Oregon gets serious about its affordable housing policies, gets serious about sustainable economic development which provides real job opportunity, and dams the tide of investment home owners who are artificially inflating prices to the point formerly middle class families are, the problem of folks losing their homes THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN will overwhelm us all.