We’ll at least hand this to the Deschutes County and City of Bend officials who have worked these last several months to come up with a plan for the houseless individuals camping at Juniper Ridge: They’re doing something. But is that something more of a stopgap than an actual solution?
After several fires cropped up there this summer, neighbors in the area were justifiably concerned and wanted their governments to do something to mitigate the risk. The status quo was not tenable. A joint agreement between the City and the County now aims to shut down most of Juniper Ridge to unsanctioned camping by the end of May, creating a “Safe Stay” area for vehicle-only camping on the portion of Juniper Ridge between the railroad tracks and Highway 97. The Temporary Safe Stay Area will be roughly 40 acres in the first year and be reduced to 20 acres the second year. After that, the plan is to eliminate this facility all together.
It should be clear this is far from a lasting solution.
County and City officials finally settled on that agreement last month, in hopes of securing funds that remain out there under the American Rescue Plan Act. But even as they inked that deal, staff members from the two entities disagreed on their interpretation of the law around the siting of emergency shelter facilities. This clash between staffers is nothing new.
County staff believe the plan won’t be approved by state officials, because the land they’ve identified for the Temporary Safe Stay Area is zoned Exclusive Farm Use, County Commissioner Phil Chang told the Source Weekly. City staffers see it otherwise – citing Section 6 of the emergency shelter bill, 2021’s HB 2006, that says, “Any political subdivision may allow any public or private entity to allow overnight camping by homeless individuals living in vehicles on the property of the entity.”
(Editor’s note: the language of the bill has been updated to a more recent version of the bill, which expanded the entities allowed to host overnight camping to more than religious institutions.)
So that’s one area of concern that could stand in the way of any action at all being taken on Juniper Ridge.
Another concern: the interpretation made by the City under that section of the bill allows only for camping in vehicles. But visit the current residents of Juniper Ridge and you’re likely to find people living in various means of shelter — tents, DIY cabins and so on. When the land is cleared this spring and local officials tell people they must leave or go live in the Temporary Safe Stay Area, how many people will even be eligible to go there, without an RV or other vehicle?
So even if we manage to overcome the land-use hurdles that Chang is concerned about, there will be people who are displaced by this move.
And even with interventions from the case managers planned to work at the site, will there be anywhere else for the non-vehicle dwellers to go? It sounds a whole lot like another round of whack-a-mole that will see as-yet-unaddressed public lands, like China Hat, increase in population.
And even if the people without vehicles are by some miracle secured into housing, there’s still the temporary nature of this plan. It’s only for two years. Then, as the joint agreement stipulates, the Safe Stay Area will be closed. The ARPA funds that will hopefully fund this temporary Safe Stay Area will be spent, with no easy funding source, like that pandemic-era pot of money, readily available to fund a more permanent sanctioned camping area. Are we going to magically solve homelessness in these two years, so that when we close that area, no one else will be displaced?
Bend badly needs a sanctioned camp that allows for camping of many types. We’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that Redmond, with a far smaller population, is nearing completion of its own sanctioned camp — also a joint agreement between city and Deschutes County officials. In light of that, it’s even more frustrating to see such temporary progress happening a little farther south.
These are the many questions and the half-step solutions we currently face. The status quo of continuing to allow unsanctioned camping at Juniper Ridge is a health and safety issue that has the potential to affect the entire community. But this current solution is tenuous — and temporary — at best.
This article appears in Source Weekly November 7, 2024.
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You will always have homelessness if our county and city dont work together to address the root cause for these folks and that is mental health and addiction issues. This low barrier model is not addressing the root cause and continues a turn style which is not solving anything and costing tax payers a fortune. We absolutely need a high barrier medical facility which can address mental health and issues with a work stay program in place, reeducation and social wrap around services once the root cause is addressed. No one should be allowed to live like this on public lands and US Forests as its inhumane and disruptive and dangerous (fires, destruction of land, wildlife etc.) to our communities.