By most appearances, Cleveland Commons, Central Oregon’s newest permanent supportive housing facility, was built for someone like Shawn Snyder.
A retired professional rock climber and an SUV-dweller before the lifestyle became socially acceptable, Snyder, 55, has lived his life mostly on his own terms. He’s also been a divisive personality in the climbing community, banned from Smith Rock State Park for three years, stemming from convictions in 2021. Since then, a passion for high-end, remote-control cars has helped him temper his rage problem. And, for a decade, arborist work has satisfied his climbing itch while putting money in the bank.
Snyder’s life changed on Sept. 3, 2024, when he plummeted from a 75-foot ponderosa in Bend. Somehow, he survived, but he was rendered without an income, with a traumatic brain injury and in need of surgeries to repair a shattered pelvis and three fractures to his skull. Snyder holed up in a motel, which drained his savings. His case worker at Deschutes County Behavioral Health found him a room at Bethlehem Inn’s high-barrier shelter in Bend.
Snyder was in denial that a homeless shelter is somewhere he’d end up. Yet, after settling in, Snyder was impressed by how clean and well-run he found the place.
“The people there really care,” he said. “They were constantly making sure things were running smoothly. It was a great place for people to get back on their feet and re-enter society.”
During the winter of 2024, Snyder regained his mobility enough to resume driving his SUV. He made a habit of driving Bethlehem Inn residents to doctor appointments and other errands. When Snyder learned that his ban from Smith Rock was lifted to coincide with the end of his probation, he was ecstatic. He took several Bethlehem Inn residents on their first guided visit through the park.
Around this time, Snyder noticed some of his Bethlehem Inn neighbors were being moved into supportive housing at the Old Mill Apartments. By March, it was Snyder’s turn for a move. His DCBH counselor secured him a place at Cleveland Commons, the first permanent supportive housing complex built east of the Cascade Range, just off Southeast Reed Market Road.
There, Shepherd’s House Ministries, as the building operator and service provider, is contracted to provide chronically homeless residents with wraparound services, such as peer support and case management. (Folks aren’t required to participate, however.) Other onsite services are provided by a dizzying list of providers that include Central Oregon FUSE and Mosaic Community Health. Housing Works (formerly known as the Central Oregon Region Housing Authority), and NeighborImpact co-own Cleveland Commons in a 51/49 respective split. The two nonprofits formed an LLC called Housing Impact PSH, which appears on contract agreements. Some of the residents I talked to, however, say these services are not being offered, or are being provided in a selective manner.
A part-time nurse, 24/7 front desk and security staff — the latter two hired by Shepherd’s House Ministries — are intended to keep an even keel. The wrap-around services cost $47 each day per resident, according to a press release. Cascade Property Management, based in Tigard, had taken over day-to-day operations from the now-defunct Epic Property Management, by March 1.
Snyder recalled visiting Cleveland Commons for the first time. As he made his way across the parking lot, pacing himself with his cane, Snyder felt overcome by emotions. He’d soon walk into a new 606-square-foot, single-room apartment — all his own.
“A 55-year-old man, I was in tears,” he said. “I’d already had surgery, and I was going to have more. But I was going to have a place to heal.”
Cleveland Commons is home to 33 studio and single-bedroom apartments. Its construction cost $10.8 million, funded by a permanent supportive housing grant from Oregon Housing and Community Services, with a portion going toward support services. The City of Bend contributed a $700,000 loan, while Deschutes County contributed $2 million from its American Rescue Plan Act funds. Its estimated annual program budget is about $632,000. Residents sign a conventional rental agreement with a property management company. Most contribute roughly a third of their income toward rent as part of the supportive housing model.
Without the ability to work, and preparing for upcoming surgeries, Snyder would live rent-free for a year, after which his rent would kick in at $1,000 per month. Snyder said he appreciated the support, yet he was never given an answer about which program, exactly, was covering his rent. Even more strangely, Snyder says he was never given a lease to sign.
“It was almost like hush-hush,” Snyder said. “Every time I asked, I was never able to get to the bottom of it, so I have no idea.”
No one, not Shepherd’s House Ministries, nor Cascade Property Management, could tell us whether a lease, signed by Snyder, ever existed.
‘What’s the room number?’
Permanent Supportive Housing like Cleveland Commons represents a graduation from temporary, sometimes chaotic low- or high-barrier shelters to something much more permanent. PSHs often serve as stepping stones — or sometimes ends unto themselves, where leases can be renewed again and again.
Like any other lease, however, violating a PSH’s lease conditions can trigger an eviction. Such is Snyder’s fate, handed down to him on Aug. 21 following an incident with another resident. That Snyder never signed a lease doesn’t matter; under state law, his occupancy is month-to-month, according to an online legal source.
When Cascade Property Management taped an eviction notice to Snyder’s door, he wasn’t home. He and several Cleveland Commons residents were talking to me at the Source office about the problems they saw at the PSH complex.
In what would be the first of several long interviews, Snyder and his neighbors, Tina and Edward Wines, gathered with me outside around a patio table. Snyder walks with a cane yet sits with straight posture. He’s tidy, buttoning his flannel shirt to the collar. His trucker cap looks brand-new even though he wears it every day. Tina, 57, who would speak up later in the interview, was breathing oxygen she carted around in a tank. Coughing fits disrupt her speech. Edward Wines, with nods of his chin, affirmed what the two had to tell me, yet he was there for support more than anything.
During our initial two-hour conversation, Snyder and Tina Wines told me about the whirlwind events they said turned living at the Cleveland Commons into a maelstrom.
They described a new air ventilation that pumped dusty air into their apartments, a laissez-faire drug culture among residents — and even an SHM staffer — and selective enforcement of regulations regarding guest parking and intra-resident conflicts. A designated quiet time went away, they said, along with pet and guest restrictions. The 15-spot parking lot became clogged with junked vehicles, some owned by guests and seemingly inoperable. Wines described voicing these concerns verbally and in writing to onsite Shepherd’s House Ministries staff and to Cascade Property Management.
Still, Snyder, Tina and Edward appreciated an open-door policy in which residents would pop in and out of each other’s apartments, socializing and making meals together. When Snyder was away, he rarely locked his door — Cleveland Commons felt that safe of a place, he said.
Snyder described how, sometime in March, one of his high-end remote control cars, which he valued at more than $2,000, went missing from his apartment. On a separate occasion, his prescription drugs — which include oxycodone and oxycontin — went missing from his bathroom. Snyder said he reported both instances to Bend Police and SHM.
Snyder began locking his doors. Yet he retained his neighborliness, giving folks rides around town and chatting in the common areas.
In recovery from opioid addiction with two years of abstinence, Tina Wines shared an experience that shook her to the core. As she was sitting in her apartment, visiting with a resident, the person told her that someone on the floor above them had a supply of fentanyl.
“For one split second, I thought, ‘What’s the room number?’” Wines said, wiping away tears. “It took me to a really dark place. But I didn’t let myself go there. I know that’s in my past. I don’t say I’m in recovery for fentanyl; I say I survived fentanyl. Knowing that, why would [SHM] place me in Cleveland Commons? That’s like throwing me to the lion’s den. I can’t be around all these drugs.”
‘Dog bites back’
When Snyder returned home after talking to me, he found a 24-hour emergency eviction taped to his door by Cascade Property Management. He returned to the Source office to give me a copy:
“You are hereby notified that your tenancy will terminate at 11:59 pm on the vacate date set forth above, based on the following acts and/or omissions:
*On Aug. 3, 2025, at approximately 8 pm, you retrieved a chainsaw from your vehicle in the property parking lot, started the chainsaw, and while wielding the running chainsaw, yelled death threats at a resident including, ‘Let’s go for a walk, I’ll cut you up in little pieces.’
*On Aug. 15, 2025, at approximately 12:15 am, law enforcement responded to the premises and arrested you for the above-described conduct.”
During our interview a couple hours prior, Snyder told me about the chainsaw incident. He’d been cleaning out his SUV’s cargo space. Doing so meant removing his arborist tools, which include the chainsaw, an axe and other things so he could shake out a rug. Snyder alleges that, in passing, Mark Jenkins, a Cleveland Commons resident the Source is naming because his name has has appeared in court documents, called him a “chump bitch.” Snyder then tripped on his tools. Incorrectly thinking Jenkins had shoved him, Snyder started the chainsaw. [Speaking by phone, Jenkins denied all allegations and accounts supplied by Snyder and Wines. “They’re liars,” he said.]
Throughout our meetings, Snyder has recited a kind of mantra: “How many times can you kick the dog and kick the dog before the dog bites back?”
Regardless, the eviction was in motion. A clause details how a resident who protests the eviction may present a defense at a court hearing.
“Persons with disabilities have the right to request reasonable accommodations to participate in the hearing process,” the notice read.
Snyder had a 10-day window to discuss the eviction with Cascade Property Management, and to initiate his legal recourse. In the meantime, he was required to vacate his apartment by Aug. 26 — in five days.
Snyder worried about the Sept. 12 surgery to remove metal pins from his pelvis.
“I can’t just go from surgery back into my car, man,” he said. “I can’t be moving around like that. Cleveland Commons was supposed to be a place for me to heal.”
Snyder stared at the eviction notice.
“Is this thing even legit, or are they just messing with me?” he said. “I seriously only learned to read when I was 30. These things make no sense to me.”
I told him the eviction seemed legit.
Even so, I had a lot to catch up on myself.
A public invitation: ‘My door is open’
Three days after the chainsaw incident, on Aug. 6, Snyder took his grievances about Cleveland Commons to the Deschutes County Board of County Commissioners. During a three-minute public comment, Snyder alleged that active drug addicts and alcoholics were “destroying” what Cleveland Commons had set out to achieve. Despite the many nonprofits offering wrap-around services, Snyder alleged the situation was, “a shit show.”
“My door is open to any taxpayer here who would like to come to Cleveland Commons and see for yourselves the nonsense that is going on daily,” Snyder said.
The commissioners thanked Snyder for his comment. Commissioner Phil Chang encouraged Snyder to document and report to management specific instances of rules being violated — in writing.
“And ‘cc’ us so we can follow up,” Chang told him.
I decided to take Snyder up on the invitation. I visited him at Cleveland Commons on the evening of Aug. 25 — the day before the eviction date.
Cast in a golden-hour glow, Snyder stood outside, noodling a remote control car up and over the landscaping boulders near the facility’s parking lot. Tina and Edward Wines, sitting nearby in the dog park with their Australian Shepherd, waved hello. Snyder shook my hand and thanked me for coming.
Walking gingerly with a cane, Snyder led me to the front desk, where a Shepherd’s House Ministries employee asked for my name. She didn’t enter it in a database. On the opposite side of the entrance, the Cascade Property Management window was closed; their operating hours are Monday through Friday, 8 am to 5 pm. (Cascade employs a full-time maintenance worker. Their front desk employee is there on a part-time basis.)
“Cascade only has someone here like five hours a week,” Snyder said. “Whenever I bring something up to them about the building, they’re always on their way out to a different property across town.”
We walked through the brightly painted hallway, past a communal kitchen, bulletin board and a courtyard.
“People ransacked the kitchen for small appliances,” Snyder said. “[An SHM director] was embarrassed when he saw all that had been taken.”
Snyder unlocked his apartment with a keyless fob. He’d taped a No Trespassing sign, along with a handwritten notice that complied with the contestation clause in his eviction notice: “According to ORS 105.135 and ORS 105.137, I am entitled to a fair hearing to contest this eviction before any final judgement or enforcement action…is issued.”
At the note’s bottom, he’d written: “Go away!”
Snyder told me that his ground-floor apartment had been broken into just the night before. For the second time, he said, his prescription drugs were stolen. He ushered me to his bedroom, where a small, knee-high window had been pried open. Dirt, tracked in by the alleged burglar, is visible in photos I snapped of the interior window ledge.
“All I need is a place of my own for about six months so I could heal,” said Snyder, throwing his hands up. “Then, I’m outta here.”
We settled into his apartment, which he keeps fastidiously organized. The walls were lined with shelves housing more than 20 remote control cars and a dozen matching Patagonia duffel bags.
“I was a sponsored climber for a long time, man,” he said. We thumbed through climbing magazine profiles about him, published in the ‘90s. He passed me a laminated permit, issued to him by Joshua Tree National Park, authorizing him to drill bolts in the establishment of new climbing routes — the first such permit for anyone, he said.
Other artifacts from Snyder’s climbing days are less illustrious. He told me about his one-man mission to regulate at Smith Rock State Park that began in 2004. He took on a custodial role of removing climbing bolts and abandoned lines and reassigning gear that climbers had stashed under rock shelves to garbage cans.
“This is God’s temple and they’re trashing it,” he said.
The Source tracked the Smith Rock drama, profiling Snyder in September 2020. Sitting with me, Snyder shared videos he’d taken on his phone of the numerous confrontations with groups of Smith Rock climbers he accused of drilling sloppy and unsafe bolts. Snyder’s tone, depending on the topic, ranged from conversational to vehement. In one video, he sounds like a madman.
“I will go to war on you motherf*ckers!” he says.
“I will beat the shit out of all you guys,” he says in another. “I will go to prison for the rest of my life and be happy that I shut this shit down.”
In a clip Snyder took May 30, 2021, he swings a hammer at the face of another rock climber — in front of the man’s teenage son — missing him by an inch. Snyder was subsequently convicted of unlawful use of a weapon, menacing and two attempts to commit a class B felony. He was sentenced to 60 months’ probation. He also received an initial five-year ban from Smith Rock, and four restraining orders.
Why did he take things so far? Snyder spoke of a spiritual moment he experienced in 2001. He was traversing a 800-foot high line he’d installed between two rock pillars when he was struck by a divine message: Defend the sanctity of rock climbing and ensure that the natural wonders found in Yosemite, Joshua Tree and Smith Rock are treated like deities.
The Bolt Wars ensued.
“I used to have blinders on,” Snyder said. “If I had an issue with something you’re doing, I wasn’t able to focus on anything but that. But since that time, I’ve come to appreciate that I have to think about everyone in the periphery; if one person will be affected, then I don’t act.”
A feel-good experience
Given the voluminous videos of climber confrontations I saw, I realized that compulsive documentation, especially of confrontations, is something Snyder has long done. That continued at Cleveland Commons.
On July 22, Snyder recorded an interaction with an alleged SHM counselor. In the video, Snyder is chatting with a woman who appears to be in her early 30s outside Cleveland Commons. The counselor tries to persuade him to take ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drug that contains DMT.
“It’s an experience where you’re just relaxed after. You feel good,” she says. Her eyelids are heavy, her speech is slurred.
Snyder declines, telling her that psychedelics wouldn’t be good for someone with a traumatic brain injury.
“I’m willing to be there for you,” she says. “I make it. …I have some in the car if you want to see it. I’ll go get it.”
Things ramped up on July 29. That’s when, according to the Deschutes County District Attorney’s Office, Cleveland Commons resident Cindy Lynn Byrd, 53, and a neighbor of Snyder and the Wineses, died. Snyder and several neighbors believe it was a drug overdose.
District Attorney Steve Gunnels instead told me by email that Byrd had been in poor health; she died of natural causes. In hearing this, Snyder balked — he said he and others witnessed “lots of syringes” in the garbage hauled out from Byrd’s apartment. They weren’t certain whether Byrd’s medical condition required intravenous injections.
In the following days, the onsite counselor who offered Snyder ayahuasca was fired, according to several Cleveland Commons residents. Yet since then, Snyder and Wines said they could hear the former counselor’s voice on phone calls with residents who put her on speakerphone while sitting in the common areas. Snyder and Wines were concerned she was continuing to offer residents drugs, as she had to Snyder.
Nicole Merritt, the director of public programs at Shepherd’s House Ministries, declined via email to comment on this story, giving no further details about the death, the alleged drug-dealing and accusations of intimidation and selective policy enforcement. In an email, Merritt did provide data regarding 1,455 documented “touch points” between tenants and SHM staff that “model and teach pro-social skills.”
Supportive permanent housing vs. high-barrier shelter
As troubling as alleged drug abuse at Cleveland Commons is, Lynne McConnell, the executive director at Housing Works, told me that there is a common misconception that supportive permanent housing facilities function in the same way that high-barrier shelters do. McConnell said agencies like hers, or those like Shepherd’s House Ministries or Cascade Property Management, don’t have heightened access to residents’ private spaces. Staffers can’t investigate rumors of prohibited drug use by letting themselves into people’s apartments. Residents live in privacy as they would in any typical apartment. At the end of our interview, McConnell said she’d speak more in-depth about Wines’ and Snyder’s situations if the two signed releases. Both said they’d sign them. But McConnell sent the subsequent email a couple days later:
“Upon reflection, I am not able to speak further about tenants. Even if it could help shed light on the situation, it could also jeopardize my ethics. I hope you are successful in finding the information you need.”
McConnell did follow up with information regarding recent maintenance to Cleveland Commons’ ventilation system, providing documentation of three inspections that include filter replacement and cleaning since Feb. 14.
Advocates for supportive permanent housing abide by a Housing First principle that doesn’t require sobriety or enrollment in mental health services for housing, according to the National League of Cities. This approach leads with the logic that homelessness and its attendant issues are often best solved by getting folks into homes, first and foremost.
Snyder encouraged me to contact his case worker at Deschutes County Behavioral Health; he’d granted her permission to speak with me. She did call me, but only to say that she won’t confirm that she is his case worker, let alone comment on Snyder, citing privacy concerns.
Deschutes County Commissioner Phil Chang was an instrumental advocate for building Cleveland Commons. In a Sept. 25 email, Chang praised Housing Works and Shepherd’s House Ministries, noting their roles in creating approximately 1,000 units of affordable housing in Deschutes County.
“It’s important that we have supportive housing to serve the hardest-to-house homeless population,” he wrote. “These are often people with acute mental health challenges or significant disabilities. Running a supportive housing facility to serve this population can be very complex and challenging. I believe that, if there have been problems with the operation of Cleveland Commons, that [Housing Impact] and Shepherd’s House are working to fix them.”
According to the operating services agreement with Housing Impact, Shepherd’s House Ministries is required to provide a variety of services to residents. They include: the early identification and intervention for behaviors that may jeopardize housing; providing crisis intervention services and assisting in the resolution of household disputes and conflict resolution as needed and when requested; assisting tenants in understanding their roles, rights and responsibilities under a tenant lease, along with support in landlord communication and lease navigation, including explaining the eviction and appeal process.
SHM is also required to develop mechanisms and structure to facilitate community input, including but not limited to: a Resident Advisory Board and other venues for resident input; and a Formal Grievance Process for residents.
Lynne McConnell said Housing Impact is pleased with Shepherd’s House Ministries’ work.
“Any new services or facility is going to have challenges,” she added. “Some of those we can anticipate, some we can’t. We believe that Shepherd’s House has identified and remedied the issues that have been presented.”
McConnell declined to comment on whether these services had been delivered to any particular residents, such as Wines and Snyder, but she said operators have to take a holistic approach to running the ship. Sometimes folks aren’t ready for their particular housing situation, whether it’s PSH or otherwise.
When I texted Wines and Snyder whether SHM had met these clauses, they were emphatic: No.
‘It all stems from prison’
Since speaking up to SHM and property management since moving into Cleveland Commons in March, Tina Wines said some residents began to think of her as a rabble-rouser. In the meantime, Tina and Snyder had deepened their friendship. Snyder empathized with Wines, saying he felt he could be her action agent when her physical ailments and nerves left her too weak to leave her apartment. Because of their friendship, Snyder said he began to receive harassing comments and cold shoulders from those to whom he’d given rides around town.
By early August, Snyder and Wines allege that rumors began to circulate that the two had gotten the ayahuasca counselor fired.
On Aug. 3, Snyder said the harassment came to a boiling point. That’s when the chainsaw came into the picture.
The day after the County Commission meeting, Snyder was sitting on a bench outside Cleveland Commons. A female resident, presumably in her 50s, approached.
He recorded her message on his phone:
“It’s been hard in prison, huh? I feel sorry for you. Getting raped and beat,” she says. “Is that why you’re trying to wreck everything? If you’re so unhappy here, why don’t you leave. Because everyone’s happy. This was a nice community. …I could go to a city councilman [sic] and talk shit about you, too, and what you’re trying to do. You’ve got this place so unhappy it’s ridiculous. And it all stems from prison. I’ve never been in prison. I’ve never done anything to warrant going to prison. But I’m not a bad person. That’s for scum, right?”
Chronicle of a tailspin
In the coming days and weeks, circumstances compounded like pieces in an advanced level of Tetris.
On Aug. 14, Bend Police officers arrived at Cleveland Commons to arrest Snyder for the chainsaw incident, according to Deschutes County 911 records.
The following day, officers returned to question Snyder about an axe in his SUV.
On Aug. 24, Deschutes County Sheriff’s deputies issued Snyder a restraining order, filed on Aug. 18 by Mark Jenkins. Despite living in the same building, Snyder has been ordered to stay 150 feet away from Jenkins. DA Gunnels explained that judges decide the stipulations of a restraining order on a case-by-case basis.
Three days later, on Aug. 27, Snyder filmed Jenkins in the hallway outside his apartment. Jenkins is yelling at someone Snyder identified as a staff member. Jenkins noticed Snyder’s filming; he reported this as a violation of the restraining order. Authorities arrived later that day to arrest Snyder. After he was let out of jail on Aug. 28, he said he was told not to return to his apartment.
Snyder holed up in his SUV with bare essentials that included a pad, a sleeping bag and a cooler. His laptop, which he needed to upload documentation to contest his eviction, was locked in his apartment. Parking near the Source on Sept. 9, Snyder showed me his spartan accommodations. He worried about the Sept. 12 surgery to remove pins from his pelvis.
“I’m not supposed to be moving around like this after I get my pins out,” he said. “I’ll need to heal but I won’t be able to.”
A friend arranged for Snyder to stay in a motel room immediately after his operation at St. Charles Medical Center. After that friend phoned PacificSource, his health insurance provider, Snyder said he received sufficient coverage to stay until Sept 30.
I visited Snyder at his hotel room on Sept. 13. A long row of pain medication lined the nearby counter.
“I’m not doing very well, man,” Snyder said, his voice faltering. “I’ve done so much work to never have these thoughts. It’s broken me again.”
He trembled as he lifted his t-shirt to show large fresh bandages on his hip and along his lower abdomen. They were saturated with blood.
“I’m in suicide mode,” Snyder said.
We talked for another hour. On Sept. 16, Snyder caught up on the mail sent to him at Cleveland Commons during his operation. He received legal notices about the eviction. One notice informed Snyder that a judge had closed the case, ruling against him, because he hadn’t uploaded his documents on time. He would have to immediately remove his property via third party.
The next day, Snyder returned to a Deschutes County Board of County Commissioners meeting to make a follow-up comment. He accused Phil Chang of plotting to have him committed for psychiatric evaluation.
“Really, Mr. Chang?” Snyder said. “Is that how you get down, sir?”
“No,” Chang said. After Snyder’s three-minute allotment, Chang clarified that, in conversation with an advocate for Snyder, he explored the idea of voluntary, civil commitment as an option for him to get support and temporary housing. Chang said he was aware that Snyder had made threats to others and may be a threat to himself. Chang also stated that he had visited Cleveland Commons since Snyder’s initial Aug. 6 invitation and discussed the improvements and staffing changes with officials from Housing Works, SHM and Central Oregon Fuse. (Chang wrote in a Sept. 19 email that he’s not received any documentation from Snyder.)
“That didn’t go so well,” Snyder texted me later that afternoon.
On Sept. 22, Tina Wines was granted a restraining order against Jenkins. In the application, she detailed most-recent instance of harassment: her adult son had come to visit her at Cleveland Commons. Jenkins, according to Wines, intercepted her son as he walked across the parking lot, threatening to fight him. Jenkins disagrees with this characterization.
The restraining order mandates Jenkins to remain 100 feet from Wines’ apartment door and to not loiter in Cleveland Commons’ shared spaces, including the front door and parking lot.
That same day, Snyder sent people in his orbit into a panic. Posting to Instagram, Snyder captioned a photo of his high-end remote control cars, displayed in a neat row:
“Looking to trade for a legal clean handgun. Anybody has one please reach out,” he wrote, punctuating it with a peace-sign emoji.
That afternoon, Snyder drove to Smith Rock. In the parking lot, he said he was swarmed by Deschutes County Sheriff’s deputies. Snyder said he assured the deputies he wasn’t a threat to himself or anyone else, and they released him. Jason Carr, the DCSO public information officer, said he doesn’t have any record of an interaction with Snyder that week. Snyder thinks he’s lying.
With the ban from Smith Rock State Park now expired, Snyder took a long hike up Misery Ridge, eventually arriving at a ledge near Monkey Face. He let his toes droop over the edge. To experienced climbers, such precariousness is untroubling; to one in crisis, it represents an existential decision.
Snyder thought he might jump.
On Sept. 25, Snyder appeared at his arraignment for indictment at the Deschutes County Circuit Court. A woman who accompanied Snyder into the building sat next to him. She’s friendly but said she can’t say how she knows Snyder, nor what her role may be in these proceedings, because she “could lose her job.” A silver-haired man, whom Synder greeted as “Pastor Mike,” also took a seat near Snyder.
“I’d rather not meet you under these circumstances,” he said. In the hearing room, the judge informed Snyder and his attorney that the arraignment had been postponed to Nov. 5.
We left the building, regrouping outside the guard shack. Snyder had finished a roving soliloquy about how respect is earned, not automatically granted. He was mad about having to remove his mesh cap each time he appeared in court. The topic turned to his solicitation of a gun on social media. He said he appreciates his friends’ concern, but they misread the situation, he said.
I spoke up: “Shawn, you’ve told us a couple times that you’re in ‘suicide mode.’ What were we supposed to think?”
He told us that, for the first time in his life, he felt he needed a gun for protection.
Pastor Mike peered at the sky.
The anonymous woman glanced across the courthouse parking lot.
Snyder told us about the evening of Sept. 22 that took him to Smith Rock. Standing on a cliff, he’d decided he didn’t want to kill himself. He stepped away from the ledge and sat, resting his elbows on his knees, he said.
He laid down and stared at the dusk sky.
He fell asleep.
When he woke up, the sky was dark and the stars were shining.
“I meditated, I hollered, I bawled my eyes out,” Snyder said. “I talked to God.”
He glanced at each of us.
“I decided I wanted to live,” he said. “So here I am.”
Postscript: Tina and Edward Wines began moving out of Cleveland Commons on Oct. 10. They found an apartment in a different affordable housing complex in Bend. They did not ask Shepherd’s House Ministries for help with the housing hunt, nor with the move.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly listed Thrive Central Oregon as an onsite provider; the nonprofit is not associated with Cleveland Commons. The Source regrets the error.
This article appears in the Source October 16, 2025.
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i can understand where this person is comming from because on friday Oct 17, after the director of lighthouse navigation center tried to run my bike over just because i had a cart to transport my dog. after i had already had gotten premission to have my cart on the property by the assitant director for the purpose of transporting my dog. but after i have explained this to the director the director proceeded to tell me well im her boss and i say what can or cant be on the property. this isnt the only thing i have repeatedly have complained about certain staff at the lighthouse navigation center escalate situations. i could tell you things about the lighthouse that would make your blood boil they try to kick you out just for having a job. they wont put security cameras up because they allow people to steal and they dont want the staff to be held accountable for their actions. the list goes on. the remodel of the building doesnt look like it was worth what they supposedly spent on. and the previous director ran to Europe for a year right before the remodel started. Shepard’s house ministries doesnt want to help you get off the streets they want you to stay homeless so they can continue to get federal grants and funding. they have fired every staff that actually cared and wanted to help you get off the streets. long story short this place needs to be shut down.
That’s terrible what happened!
Dam right upsetting 😤
I feel for him, then to trust people.But like say trust NO one. You never know!! 🙏
God bless you 😇 and keep everything locked up. Even lock 🔐 box for your meds..
Great idea Right?❤️
I never leave anything out, Myself I’m at the Franklin Shelter!! These people are great to me!😇❤️
But you never know..
Bikes were stolen here, but that person is NO longer here!
Take Care and God bless you 🙏 💕