Sounding Board to House Our Neighbors, a city-manager-appointed committee, recommended that Bend allow shelters in managed camps in all zoning designations except for heavy industrial.
In a press release on Monday, the committee laid out four shelter types, all currently zone restricted. They include group shelters where there’s shared sleeping areas, multi-room shelters with individual sleeping units, outdoor shelters like the proposed managed camp on Ninth Street and hardship shelters, which are RVs or mobile homes permitted for residential properties.
“Right now, for the outdoor shelter type, which is managed-camp or the tiny-home-type village with cabins, you could only have something like that in the commercial zone,” said Susanna Julber, senior project and policy manager with the City of Bend, who’s working with the committee. “We have different provisions for different shelter types city-wide, but they’re pretty restrictive.”
Currently all shelters need a conditional use permit, which requires an additional review before approval.
“The code amendment would make things a little bit easier if somebody wanted to build a shelter,” Julber said. “The City’s probably not going to be building a bunch of shelters because of this—the goal is to provide the legal framework, the regulatory framework, so if a social service provider, or other entity, maybe a private property owner… if they have a piece of land that’s zoned mixed use or something, and they wanted to put a shelter there, they could.”
The Sounding Board started meeting in April to develop recommendations on the size and type of shelters that should be allowed in a zoning district. It’s comprised of social service providers, housing advocates, and designers and representatives from the Bend Economic Advisory Committee, Neighborhood Leadership Alliance, Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, Planning Commission and the Bend City Council. Its recommendations to end the restrictive zoning of shelters everywhere except for industrial areas was primarily done out of safety concerns.
“That’s where manufacturing, flammable materials, things like that occur. So we didn’t want to have an existing heavy industrial facility have to build new firewalls or whatever they might have to do if a bunch of residents are living next door,” Julber said.
The committee also recommends all shelters and camps be: managed, include on-site parking, adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act, have toilets and trash receptacles, provide good-neighbor agreements for adjacent neighbors and residents and cannot be used for short-term rentals. Recommendations have been made but implementation will require revisions and acceptance by the planning commission. A survey will collect feedback from Bendites until Nov. 1.
“We’d really like the public to go ahead and fill that out and try and educate themselves on what the different shelter types are, and then give us meaningful feedback on those amendments through the survey,” Julber said. “Then we’ll get the sounding board back together in November, and review all the public feedback, and revise the code amendments as necessary.”
The planning commission is expected to review the changes in January. The changes will need to be approved by City Council before it can be adopted.
This article appears in Oct 13-20, 2021.
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The one issue that is never addressed is the foundation of all of this, Homeless have a drug and alcohol problem..
There are jobs all over town, in fact all over the country, there’s approximately 12 to 15 million jobs open in America right now, I see signs everywhere looking for help why aren’t these homeless people applying for jobs so they can get off the street?
Well, they have to pass a drug test first and that’s not gonna happen, Oregon will continue to enable this problem.
The only way off the street is the clean up and get a job, But why would they when they get a check every month.
Oregon became the first state to legalize drugs, all backed by George Soros, in his quest to destroy America, that’s why we have fentanyl and opioids coming across the border at a 300% increase From the last administration that sealed off the border.
Until we clamp down on hard-core drug use and ending legalization of marijuana except for medical use this problem is not going to get any better, and you’re going to have to keep increasing the shelter sizes in everybody’s neighborhood to accommodate this disaster, Which is rude to put it in peoples neighborhoods all is going to do is bring crime, and it’s going to affect everybody Home values in those areas, round them up put them out at Juniper Ridge, or further out on the 20 where there’s plenty of land, make a homeless city out there away from everybody‘s neighborhood, we don’t want them and their accumulated piles of trash in our neighborhood,
Have you ever looked at how much garbage they collect around their tents, it’s unbelievable!!!
There is 30 acres by the dump why don’t you make that a homeless campground.
Keep that riffraff out of our neighborhoods that is rude, it’s unfair, for the people who get up and go to work every day who scrimped and saved buy homes, only to have the city implement a human dumpsite for people who are not willing to work.
Increasing the density in any neighborhood will add stress. Increasing the density with individuals that need a great deal of services will exponentially increase stressors within a neighborhood. It is unreasonable to place that burden on folks who are working to pay rent/mortgage, property taxes, and generally contribute positively to the community. While the homeless do need shelter, it is better for the community if that shelter is placed the furthest distance from a functioning community.