Jon Stoneman has lived in an RV in one of Mountain View Community Development’s safe parking programs for two years. Though a safe place to park in Redmond has provided him stability, the arrangement was always meant to be temporary.

A former house painter and live-in caregiver, Stoneman, 68, became homeless when one of his clients passed away. Debilitating injuries have left him unable to work. He collects $949 per month on Social Security — not enough to pay for market-rate housing in Central Oregon. He remains on the waitlist for subsidized housing.

A supportive housing project on the horizon in Redmond would give Stoneman and others like him a permanent place to live.

Providers have sights set on opening the housing village in early 2026. The planned 60-home development will feature 400- to 600-square-foot cottages, each with its own kitchen, bathroom and laundry. Staff will provide case management and community support, mostly to formerly unhoused people. It’s the first housing of this kind in Redmond and among the first few permanent supportive housing projects in the region.

It’s also the first housing project by Mountain View Community Development. The nonprofit, which is the homeless services arm of a Redmond church, is Central Oregon’s largest provider of safe parking. The nonprofit began exploring other types of projects after Deschutes County designated a 10-acre parcel for homeless housing in east Redmond.

Mountain View Community Development Director Rick Russell said they checked out housing concepts in Portland, Eugene and Salem, but the real inspiration came from a tiny home village in Austin, Texas, which had a strong emphasis on “pulling people into relationships and pulling people into a sense of belonging in the community.”

“When you do that, people heal, and they gain stability,” Russell said. “When we saw that we thought, ‘We need that here.’”

“It’s a housing development, but I think more than that, it’s a culture we’re trying to build,” he added.

Developing the site

The supportive housing is planned to be built directly north of Oasis Village, a 15-unit transitional housing project that opened in January. Even farther to the north lies more undeveloped land where the county aims to create a designated camping area in order to remove people from hundreds of county-owned acres east of Redmond’s urban growth boundary. Unhoused camping on that land has thwarted a land swap between the county and the state.

Deschutes County kicked in $200,000 to help Mountain View Community Development with predevelopment costs.

“It’s going to be something really outstanding,” said County Commissioner Patti Adair.

Mountain View Community Development first planned to build an RV park and eventually replace it with homes, but available funding proved to be oriented toward building housing from the get-go, Russell said. The project isn’t yet fully funded, but is pursuing grants from Oregon Housing and Community Services that would pay for 80% of the $14 million project. The rest of the funding could come through other grants and donations.

Staffing and operations will likely cost another several hundred thousand dollars a year, Russell said.

“We’re confident we can find it (funding),” Russell said. “This is an exciting project to work on, and it meets a very direct need.”

People it serves

The supportive housing will serve people making under 30% of the area median income. Russell said providers are working with an increasing number of unhoused people who are over the age of 65 and living off of Social Security or disability, and this will likely serve that population.

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How homelessness became a crisis in Central Oregon

According to preliminary draft numbers of the 2025 Oregon Housing Needs Analysis, Redmond will need 1,524 housing units for people earning under 30% area median income over the course of the next 20 years. Bend will need 4,826.

“This is very unusual housing for our region, and the most challenging to build,” Lynne McConnell, executive director for Housing Works, Central Oregon’s Regional Housing Authority, said in an email.

The first project to meet the permanent supportive housing definition will open later this month on Cleveland Avenue, providing 30-plus units. Nearby, the renovated Old Mill Inn and Suites opened this fall, providing 75 units to help people transition to permanent housing.

The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs recently completed a 10-home supportive housing village, giving homes to tribal members who had been homeless for years.