Deschutes County earmarked $1.5 million for a managed homeless camp Wednesday, but what form the site will take, where it will be located and when it will open aren’t yet known.

County commissioners approved the funds in a 2-1 decision Wednesday morning. Commissioner Phil Chang voted in opposition because he wanted to allocate more money, $2 million, instead.

A handful of properties could potentially host a managed camp, according to public records. Possible properties range from hundreds of acres of rural land to tiny parking lots within the urban growth boundaries of Bend and Redmond. Officials have yet to whittle down where a camp could be located, but private property is also a possibility.

“We need managed camps. We need more than one,” Commissioner Patti Adair said at the meeting.

A managed camp could take many different forms depending on land zoning, funding and space constraints. It could be an overnight or transitional safe parking site for people living in their vehicles. It could be a sanctioned camping site with hygiene facilities, case management services, supervision or security. It could also be a variation of the aforementioned.

Chang said Wednesday he’d like to see a camp with on-site services in addition to resources that offer people pathways out of homelessness.

“I don’t want us to just be investing in warehousing people,” he said.

Focused on three areas

Commissioners are focused on addressing three areas of the county where homelessness has boomed: Juniper Ridge north of Bend, forestland near China Hat Road south of Bend and county owned property east of Redmond.

All three are publicly owned land. All three are large-scale homeless encampments. And all three are under the county’s purview because they’re outside of the UGBs for Bend and Redmond.

Deschutes County made plans in August to remove people from county and city-owned land in Juniper Ridge, where an estimated 200 people are living. The plan was to enforce a new camping code which was passed a month earlier. The code restricts how long and under what circumstances people can camp outside of cities.

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But officials and legal counsel realized the county was, and still is, caught in a Catch-22 situation. People are living on land under the county’s jurisdiction, but the county cannot enforce its own homelessness code because of a court case in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which led the county to put enforcement of its code on hold until April.

The 2018 court case, Martin v. Boise, bars governments within the 9th Circuit — Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — from enforcing certain restrictions on sleeping in public if shelter beds are unavailable. A related case was recently accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court, Johnson v. Grants Pass, that could affect how Deschutes County enforces its homelessness rules, David Doyle, the county’s legal counsel wrote in an email.

“The county’s interpretation of the Martin and the Grants Pass decisions essentially provide that government cannot criminalize homelessness when there is no alternative place for homeless folks to go,” Doyle said.

More than 1,000 don’t have shelter

In Deschutes County, there simply aren’t enough shelter beds to accommodate the number of people experiencing homelessness.

Nearly 1,500 people in Deschutes County and its cities are homeless on a given night, according to the 2023 Point in Time Count. The vast majority of them, more than 1,000 people, don’t have shelter.

Central Oregon also has one of the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness among unaccompanied youth and families in the United States, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

While the county is investing funds early for planning a future managed camp, the project is a multijurisdictional effort garnering input from the cities of Bend and Redmond, the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council and the governor’s office.

Bend is hoping to receive $3.6 million this legislative session to continue funding its existing shelters, but some could also be diverted toward a managed camp, said Eric King, Bend city manager.

The last time the city of Bend and Deschutes County attempted to create a managed campsite, progress devolved after major pushback from neighbors of the site.

King said things are different this time.

“I think there’s just a lot more investment on the front end to ensure success,” he said.

Funds from federal American Rescue Plan

The funding approved by commissioners Wednesday comes from a federal pandemic-era program, the American Rescue Plan Act. Deschutes County received more than $38 million from the federal program beginning in 2021.

The money for a managed camp is fairly unrestricted on the county’s end. Commissioners declined to put any parameters on what the money can be used for besides some form of a managed camp. However, because the funds come from the federal program, certain eligibility and reporting requirements apply. Plus it’s one-time funding; governments will have to worry about funding continued operations of a managed camp later.

The $1.5 million is being allocated to the Coordinated Houseless Response Office, which is a 3-year effort to address homelessness in Deschutes County as crafted by the Legislature under House Bill 4123 in 2022. The office and its committees will lead the process in soliciting proposals for creating a camp.

COIC is currently assuming oversight of the office after slightly more than one year under Deschutes County’s guidance. During that time, the office lost its first and only director after just months in the role.