James Miller stands in the doorway of his outdoor shelter unit at Central Oregon Villages’ Dean Swift annex in Bend. 06/10/25 (Dean Guernsey/The Bulletin)

James Michael Miller lives in a 96-square-foot wooden manufactured shelter in a parking lot in Bend.

He has five neighbors with similar shelters in the same lot. But he can appreciate the privacy of having quarters to call his own after spending the past five years living in a congregate homeless shelter with dozens of other people.

“I can lock the doors, be by myself, play my guitar and write,” Miller said.

Miller’s abode — he moved in last week — is part of a homeless shelter program called “safe parking.” The program, which the city of Bend has permitted since 2021, allows parking lots across the city to act as shelter sites, each hosting a few tiny shelter units or vehicles. It’s been slow to catch on, but a recent influx of funding has allowed the expansion to new sites with more on the way, bolstering what providers and most officials believe is an effective and innovative way to reduce unsheltered homelessness. 

The expansion comes as local authorities exert increased control over homeless camping on government property and public lands in Deschutes County.

Safe parking is now hosting people who were forced from a large encampment in the Deschutes National Forest south of Bend last month, the largest mass eviction of homeless people the region has ever seen.

More funding for safe parking

Miller lives at the city’s newest safe parking site, a group of six small shelter units in a gravel lot in midtown Bend. The structures used to serve as housing for a women’s recovery nonprofit, DAWN’s House, until it shut down and Central Oregon Villages, a homeless shelter provider, began running safe parking there in May.

“It’s impressive how quickly they get filled up as soon as they’re available,” said Donna Burklo, interim executive director with Central Oregon Villages. The nonprofit hopes to open four more units of safe parking in Bend by the end of the month.

Bend now has 26 total beds in the safe parking program — 10 more than last year — with an additional 19 expected to be ready in the coming months. The city has sent more than $1.4 million in awards to safe parking since November, including about $900,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act, the last of those federal dollars, and $567,000 that made its way to the city from Gov. Tina Kotek’s 2023 executive order on homelessness.

Those allocations equate to about 18% of what the city spends on homeless services, and safe parking is an even smaller portion of the hundreds of shelter beds in the city, the bulk of which are low-barrier emergency beds at congregate shelters.

Burklo said safe parking fills a niche in the system by providing extra privacy and support, as in Miller’s case.

Safe parking programs have a higher barrier for entry than larger shelters because they require sobriety and a background check.

That’s a selling point for the safe parking providers, who spend much of their time trying to convince property owners like businesses or churches to allow a few RVs or shelter pods in their parking lots.

“The person sitting in the pew next to you, you don’t know what they’re background is, but you do know that people in safe parking have passed a background check,” said Stacey Witte, director of the homeless services and safe parking provider REACH. The nonprofit started with safe parking four years ago and now runs shelter sites at four church parking lots in Bend, with two to five dwellings per site.

According to Bend City Councilor Megan Perkins, two of Bend’s safe parking sites share a property with a preschool while three are across the street from a school — and none have required any police response.

“We believe that the more service providers offering safe parking the more effective we can be at offering stable housing,” Perkins said.

Witte said she has expanded the program methodically so she can make sure it’s done right and maintains community support. Church parking lots are often the best place to put safe parking, although congregations can be resistant or express concerns, Witte said.

If they can find more churches, “we would be more than happy to expand,” she said.

County approves land for shelter

To churches and other potential hosts who might be concerned about safety risks, Rick Russell, a safe parking provider in Redmond, would have this to say: property owners who host safe parking sites are less likely to have unwanted activity than those that don’t.

Before the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday, he told a story of safe parking residents quelling late-night driving antics at a church parking lot in Redmond.  Both Bend and Redmond have rules against homeless camping within 500 feet of any safe parking site.

The board eventually voted Wednesday 2-1 to move forward with Russell’s proposal to set up a safe parking site on part of the county’s public safety campus in north Bend off of U.S. Highway 20. The campus includes the sheriff’s office, the adult jail, juvenile division, parole office and the 911 office. The board’s final approval next week would allow Mountain View Community Development, the safe parking provider led by Russell, to set up six small shelter units on the southern edge of the campus, near the Bend Animal Hospital and another homeless shelter site, the 15-unit Central Oregon Veterans Village.

The project is part of Mountain View Community Development’s planned safe parking expansion into Bend. Russell said the city has provided enough funding for at least 20 units, but he hopes to hit 30 or 40. Other sites include a city owned lot, a church and a private residential lot.

Safe parking on the county property likely would not have been possible without the support of County Commissioner Patti Adair, who first suggested the site.

“We’ve done it on (county) land in Redmond, and it’s worked out really well,” Adair said in an interview.

People who live in safe parking must agree to a list of rules, including to work with a case manager whose goal is to help the person find housing. According to Russell, his program served 129 people in 2024, about one-third of whom successfully transitioned from homelessness into permanent housing. On the other hand, 37 people dropped out. The rest are waiting for affordable housing to become available.

Adair has clashed with Commissioner Phil Chang on how to address homeless encampments on county land, with Chang arguing sweeps are futile without a more robust system of shelters and supportive housing. They found common ground Wednesday over safe parking.

But Commissioner Tony DeBone voted against the new site on county land. He expressed a concern that the project did not have a sunset date and would only sink the county deeper into a cycle of committing resources to a never-ending homelessness crisis.

“Obviously we want to help people that need help, but it doesn’t feel right to keep offering,” he said during the meeting. “We’re stabilizing somebody so they can sit there and wait for something to happen around them instead of making something happen for themselves.”

Funding for safe parking in Bend must be spent by the end of 2026. The city hasn’t yet identified another funding source for the program, said Brook O’Keefe, shelter coordinator with the city of Bend.

Miller, the safe parking resident, said he can stay at his new shelter for up to 18 months. But he’s not optimistic about getting into permanent housing after that. He is unable to work after an accident during his former job as a lawnmower left him with a herniated disk and a broken bone. The 61-year-old lives off of social security and money from playing guitar on the street in downtown Bend. After paying his monthly bill to shower at a fitness center, he has only a few hundred dollars left each month.

“It’s hard to really rent anything in Oregon for that,” he said.