Beth Deming comments on the new vehicle camping code Thursday in Bend.  

The Bend City Council approved a change to its code around camping in the public right-of-way Wednesday evening, shortening the length of time people living in their vehicles can park in one place.

The council will have to approve a second reading of the ordinance before it becomes official.

The rule-tightening comes after ramped up enforcement on vehicle camping this summer, with the city council seeking to align rules for tents and vehicles amid opposition from homeless advocates and a city subcommittee.

City councilors vowed to work on increasing safe parking options, which are in short supply.

“There’s never a perfect or a good time to do this,” said Councilor Megan Perkins. She said would not have been comfortable voting for a stricter code a few years ago, before hundreds of shelter beds were added to the city’s capacity.

“We could keep delaying and waiting for more outdoor spots and more shelters, but I worry about the impact to our neighborhoods when we do have a proliferation of vehicles staying for a lengthy time. We need to balance the needs, safety and dignity for all of us, housed and unhoused.

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Rules for camping

In 2022 the city adopted a code regulating the time, place and manner in which people are allowed to camp. It prohibits camping in one place for more than 24 hours, in residential zones, near the river, near shelters, within a certain density of other camps and outside of a certain footprint. Tents must move at least 600 feet. Under the amendments, vehicles must move 1,500 feet.

In either case, state law requires the city to provide a 72-hour notice to leave after violating the 24-hour rule, effectively giving campers four days to stay in one spot before enforcement could occur.

Even then, campers aren’t being evicted the minute that clock runs out, due to the coordination it takes to organize city staff, contractors and others involved in enforcement, said Ian Leitheiser, an attorney with the city of Bend.

“Getting everybody coordinated to the right place at the right time so we can have the right resources to a particular situation is not something that happens at the drop of a hat,” he said.

According to Leitheiser, city staff have found difficulty in applying and communicating two different sets of rules for camping in tents and camping in vehicles. The new code also more clearly defines vehicle camping by giving the city’s health and safety officers a list of indicators: daily activities like eating, sleeping, or bathing; trash accumulation; cooking items; bedding; urination or defecation near a vehicle; obscuring windows or “other indication that a vehicle is being used for more than transportation.”

Since Aug. 1, the city of Bend has issued notices to move for vehicle camping 49 times. One resulted in a vehicle being towed to a city storage space.

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David Abbas, director of the city’s transportation and mobility department, which is responsible for rights-of-way, said staff prioritizes vehicles with the most public health and safety issues, such as leaky tanks, garbage or hazardous materials.

Abbas said he doesn’t think the code change will lead to a measurable bump in the city issuing notices to move.

For vehicles or other camps, the city has not issued any fines or citations.

Effects on those who are homeless

Beth Deming, who has been homeless for about 10 years in Central Oregon following an injury that put her out of work, said the city’s code against living in vehicles and tents has added stress to her life.

She said she was living in a trailer on First Street in the Bend Central District for three months this summer before getting the notice to move. Then she moved to a tent further south along the Bend Parkway, but said her belongings were removed by the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Now she’s sleeping in a truck on her friend’s property in Deschutes River Woods.

“They’re pushing me around like I’m a cow or a sheep, and they’re not giving me any pasture to hang out in for any time without me moving my stuff around again,” she said.

Mike Werner, who has been homeless in Bend for five years, said he has been able to stay out of sight in the same place under a tarp in the Central District neighborhood. He said he will probably move into a shelter when the cold weather sets in.

“All these laws have changed to make it harder for homeless people to do anything successful,” said Mike Werner. “I don’t know where else to go.”

There are 523 shelter beds in the city of Bend, 213 of which are low-barrier, according to city data. About 959 people are homeless in Bend on any given day, according to a 2024 count. This year’s count showed a decline in homelessness in Bend from 2023, but an increase in the county as a whole.

Justin Gottlieb, a homeless advocate and former homeless person, told the city council Wednesday that his first step to getting out of homelessness was not by renting an apartment, but living out of a car while he worked.

Other options

On Monday, a city council-appointed subcommittee, the Human Rights and Equity Commission, officially opposed chopping the vehicle camping limit from three days to 24 hours, and instead suggested raising the allowed tent camping time to three days in order to align the codes.

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A motion made by councilor Barb Campbell Wednesday to adopt that recommendation, among several other attempts to alter the code change, died without support of others on the council.

“We could align them so that our policy is less cruel for people in tents, or we could align them so our policy is more cruel for people in RVs,” she said. “I don’t think that’s what we should do.

Councilor Mike Riley, who supported a stricter code, said the city has made “incredible progress” on providing shelter beds, but there is a lot of work still to do.

“While this is a difficult vote, it’s a difficult thing to do, I think it’s the right thing to do because it helps our community move in the right direction about clear expectations.”

Perkins said she hopes safe parking sites will triple by the end of next year, while safe parking providers have said they are optimistic about increasing Bend’s supply, which is only about a dozen parking spaces.

Meanwhile, major changes are on the horizon at Juniper Ridge, a large vehicle and tent camping area just outside the Bend city limits. Last month the city, along with Deschutes County, took cohesive action to close 1,000 acres in the area to camping and designate 170 acres as a “safe stay” area. They hope to have that in place by the end of May 2025.