Several months after Deschutes County decided to shut down a housing program for clients of Adult Parole and Probation on SE Wilson Avenue, youth services nonprofit J Bar J will acquire the property to operate a youth housing program.
The eastside triplex will become a long-term housing program for young people and families, helping provide opportunities for a population that often experiences barriers to housing. The organization has yet to announce an official opening date.
In December 2023, Deschutes County approved the purchase of the property to provide housing for clients of Adult Parole and Probation, men with sex offense convictions that traditionally have trouble finding housing. The local Multi-Agency Coordination group facilitated the purchase of the house last year through funding from House Bill 5019, aimed at preventing homelessness.
After the announcement, neighbors and community members raised concerns about the location and the notification process, and started a petition to sell, relocate or repurpose the property.
Following months of discussion, Deschutes County Commissioners voted 2-1 to relocate the housing program. A month later, they decided to discontinue the program all together.
To find another project that would be suitable for the property, Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, through the MAC group, published a Request for Proposals, seeking applications for a rapid rehousing or transitional living program. In August, COIC awarded the contract to J Bar J for its proposed youth housing project.
“We want to be able to find housing options for everybody, especially people who are hard to house,” said Eliza Wilson, director of runaway and homeless youth programs for J Bar J. While some community members shared concern about having people on probation, or who possibly had minor restrictions, in the neighborhood, Wilson recalled that some individuals brought up the possibility of housing families and youth during public comment for the Adult Parole and Probation house.
“Hopefully the community will feel like they were listened to with this,” she said.
According to Wilson, J Bar J has already informed neighbors about the new plan by dropping off letters and flyers about the program.
The housing project will serve youth ages 16-24, to help offer a pathway to housing, allowing each person to live at the house for up to three years. Additionally, one of the units will be for a youth family – a parent or parents under the age of 25 and their children.
The population the house will serve are people who are often going to school or working in Bend, but need assistance when it comes to renting. A lack of affordable homes and family support can add a number of additional barriers for young people looking to become housed in the region.
Many of the young people J Bar J serves, who would otherwise be able to live on their own, don’t have the support to help them take that next step, said Wilson.
“For young people, there are a lot of barriers to housing, even if you have the best circumstances,’ said Wilson. “The only real way to ensure that youth don’t experience homelessness is if they are housed. So, that was the passion behind applying for this project…wanting to provide resources to youth that otherwise maybe would be unhoused.”
Most landlords, Wilson said, will not accept a person who’s never rented, which is the case for every youth that they serve. J Bar J and Cascade Family Center will be the leaseholders, meaning they can move people in without requiring a co-signer, and give them necessary rental history to help with future housing.
“What it’s doing, really, is giving them a chance at a normal life, that otherwise would be very difficult,” said Wilson.
Housing Works, the local housing authority for Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson counties, offers a number of vouchers for people in need of housing and rental assistance. One program offers vouchers for youths ages 18 to 24 who have exited foster care and need housing.
Lesly González, director of housing services at Housing Works, noted that even with vouchers, its often hard for youths to find housing. Having no previous rental history, not enough money for a security deposit and no one to help co-sign a lease can all make finding and affording housing even more difficult.
“We need more affordable housing, that’s really the bottom line. I think the rents are just becoming incredibly expensive in Central Oregon,” said González.
The goal for J Bar J is to help bridge those gaps and decrease youth experiencing homelessness.
In addition to supporting young people with rent to help them gain better jobs and be able to move out on their own, J Bar J will offer case management. A case manager will be there every day to meet and work with young people on goal planning, to help move them toward more permanent situations and prevent homelessness.
This article appears in Source Weekly September 18, 2024.
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Love this.
Excited to see that this property is still going to be used to help those that are underserved in the community. As the former house manager when this property was first being utilized to house Free On The Outside tenants, I wish things had worked out in the first place, and that the Deschutes County Parole and Probation and Free On The Outside hadn’t screwed me, and effectively made me homeless by misappropriating $28k that was meant to be given to me in order to help me avoid becoming homeless. Unfortunately, Free On The Outside instead kept that money, and refused to distribute it to me, and now I am living in a broken down trailer in my friend’s backyard.
Unfortunately, this continues the pattern of Economic Segregation in Bend that has been facilitated for years by City of Bend, Deschutes County, COIC, and their selected Houseless Service Providers. This neighborhood in Bend, Larkspur, specifically the area around the Vince Genna Stadium, is already home to 7 facilities for the housing challenged! Geographically concentrating poverty in this manner is a failed model for helping to lift people out of extreme poverty. Instead, it exacerbates the factors that often lead to extreme and generational poverty. Think Old Town in Portland, the Tenderloin in SF, and Skid Row in LA as examples of what’s being established east of the Parkway in central Bend. While it’s a politically expedient model for elected’s wanting to tout a rapid increase in shelter bed numbers, it’s a long-term detriment to established close-in east side working class family neighborhoods and the long-term health of the city as a whole. (Please also remember that 3 existing long-term renters were removed from this triplex to make way for a shelter when COIC provided money to the County to purchase it in Fall of 2023.) You can see maps of existing and proposed facilities for the houseless on EastsideVotes.org: https://www.eastsidevotes.org/economic-seg… .