The City of Bend revisited its camping code at a Nov. 15 meeting of the Bend City Council, providing data, identifying trends and offering up suggestions for the recently implemented city code regulating, “unsanctioned camping on City rights-of-way.” Among the items discussed at the meeting, Sherri Meisel, health and safety compliance coordinator with the City of Bend, suggested a future code amendment for consideration in 2024, which would apply the requirement for all vehicles citywide to move 750 feet every three business days.
Bend City Council adopted the camping code into the City’s Comprehensive Plan and Development Code in May 2022, regulating when, where and how camping can occur in the City of Bend, imposing regulations on the use of the City’s public rights-of-way. City officials began enforcing the code in March 2023.
The proposed amendment was brought up to help clarify the requirements regarding how far people need to move their vehicles and where it applies in the City. The amendment would apply the requirement to all vehicles in Bend, whether someone is living in it or not, and specify the distance people need to move them – 750-feet, which equates to about two city blocks. The City’s traffic code already restricts vehicles to be parked on a city street for no longer than 72 hours. While that code has been in place for some time, people sleeping in vehicles reported confusion about the maximum length of stay and how far a vehicle needed to move, since those items were not detailed in the initial version of the camping code.
During the Nov. 15 meeting, the compliance coordinator, Meisel, presented the City Council with data on camping code enforcement, showing the number of monthly cases opened, notices issued, citizen service requests and abandoned vehicle and parking complaint calls for service from March to October.
The total number of cases, which are opened when a location of an encampment is identified, for both tents and vehicles, was 451 for that eight-month period. The numbers showed a large jump for June in all sections of data, when the Hunnell Road encampment removal was looming.
The data highlighted a few trends since the enforcement of the camping code, noting fewer longer-term, large tent encampments and the ability to keep campsite footprints smaller and cleaner.
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This article appears in Source Weekly November 23, 2023.
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