Because of the broad community interest in housing and houselessness, Councilors have added a new standing agenda item to Council business meetings to provide regular updates on City Council’s work on addressing houselessness, and to engage with some of the questions and concerns Councilors are hearing.  

There are nearly 1,000 people who are experiencing houselessness in Central Oregon on any given night, including families and youth. There are people with no place to go.  

Being homeless is not a crime. Cities can’t impose sanctions on a person for being homeless. Police can address criminal issues and will do so when circumstances warrant that.  

A city’s ability to regulate sleeping in its public places is directly related to a community’s ability to provide shelter for homeless individuals who might otherwise need to use public places to sleep. When we develop more shelter beds for our unhoused community members, we can provide them a safe place to go instead of them simply moving on to another public space to sleep. 

Until there are more places for people to go, the City is limited in how it manages camps in public places.  

So here’s what we’re doing. The City is doing a lot to create safe and affordable housing options which will benefit all community members. Our Council Goal is to develop facilities and housing for 500 individuals experiencing homelessness! Some accomplishments so far are:  

• Veteran’s Village is now open as of Veterans Day! This is a huge step forward for our community.

• The hotel on Division Street that we purchased with Project Turnkey money is almost done with renovation designs and will have 30 units of transitional housing.

• Outdoor shelter sites. This is important: Every single potential outdoor shelter site is going to go through this “request for proposals” process. The request for proposals is out for service providers to tell us their vision for an outdoor shelter in Bend. Once we have responses in, we will see if there are any matches between City-owned land and the needs or vision of the service provider. Requirements for outdoor shelters will include: 

  • 24-hour management,
  • fencing,
  • outreach with surrounding neighborhoods; outreach is the role of the service provider since they will be operating, managing, creating this shelter (not the City), 
  • management plans for safety of clients and neighborhoods, 
  • restrooms, showers, food, storage, trash removal, case management and more. 
  • Again, every single potential outdoor shelter site is going to go through this process. 

• A Navigation Center; a request for proposal will go out later this week. That’s another shelter and a day resource center funded by $2.5M from the state. There’s no location identified yet but we are actively looking. 

• Changing Bend’s Development Code to increase temporary housing options. The Sounding Board to House Our Neighbors made recommendations on a package of amendments to the Bend Development Code to allow varying shelter types citywide.  Proposed amendments will go to the Planning Commission on January 10 for a work session and on January 24 for a public hearing.

• We are also going to fund a contract with REACH Out Central Oregon for mobile outreach to help those living in unsanctioned camps to help people transition out of houselessness. 

• We are providing fire prevention information, fire extinguishers, smoke detectors and safe heat sources to individuals in vehicles along Hunnell and Clausen roads. And at our last meeting, we heard about the steps the City is taking, working with service providers, to work on trash, safety issues and prepare for winter. 

This work will take more than City government. The City of Bend does not operate or manage facilities or provide social services to support people experiencing homelessness. Those are not the services we provide. We do work with, and rely on, the non-profit social or county service providers who do this type of work. 

We are working on creating a better system with a joint City/County Office on Homelessness. City and County staff are developing plans for the joint office and have our next joint meeting in January to discuss this. Representative Jason Kropf is working with the League of Oregon Cities, Association of Oregon Counties and other stakeholders to develop a legislative concept to fund five pilot City/County Joint Offices, providing each chosen program up to $1 million for 2 years of kick-start funding.  

Finally, our most urgent priority is to secure as many shelter beds, or safe places for people to sleep as possible before winter. 

While we understand some people will have concerns about the nature and locations of additional shelter options, opposing increasing shelter capacity works against the community’s wishes for a solution. Until we as a community provide more shelter options, we will continue to see unmanaged camps like those that generate concern along the Parkway offramps or Hunnell Road.  

Accommodation Information for People with Disabilities

To obtain this information in an alternate format such as Braille, large print, electronic formats, etc. please contact Anne Aurand at aaurand@bendoregon.gov or (541) 388-5573