Deschutes County's recently designated camping area sits between U.S. Highway 97 and SE Third Street, south of Murphy Road, in Bend.  

The city of Bend postponed a March 16 removal of homeless camps on Hunnell Road on Wednesday after Deschutes County commissioners approved a designated camping area on the south side of the city just days before.

The sweep on Hunnell Road will happen eventually. But the city will wait to remove people and property from Hunnell Road until the county-approved site near U.S. Highway 97 and Murphy Road is complete and a service provider is selected to support the camping area, City Manager Eric King said at a Bend City Council meeting Wednesday.

A new date for the Hunnell Road sweep will likely be made later this month once a clear timeline for the designated camping area is available, King told The Bulletin on Thursday.

The county estimated in December that 80 to 100 people were living in tents, campers and make-shift shelters on Hunnell Road. That number has dropped in recent weeks, however.

King also cited new information from the county’s road department as part of the city’s reasoning to postpone the sweep.

Because of potential private development in the near future and already-underway state highway construction that neighbors the portion of Hunnell Road where homeless people live, Chris Doty, the director of the county road department, said plans have changed.

The county won’t need to use that portion of Hunnell Road for its own road improvement project, he said.

“We’ve always characterized the access during construction as a ‘nice to have,’ not necessarily a ‘must have,’” Doty said.

Much of Hunnell Road, which stretches outside of Bend’s city limits, is unpaved. The county is currently making improvements on the road, but it no longer needs to use part of it to move large trucks and machinery.

“It’ll be, most likely, the development activity or possibly the state’s project that will result in the need to use Hunnell as a transportation route for businesses or construction activity,” Doty said.

The county’s construction has been on both the city’s and county’s radar since 2017, Doty said. Early last month, county road staff and the city began discussing the county’s construction plans and impending private development, he said.

It’s been a known project since before the first tent peg was in the ground on Hunnell Road, Doty said.

Monday, the Deschutes County Commission gave preliminary approval for a designated camping area located on the south side of Bend, where U.S. Highway 97 and SE Third Street intersect.

What followed was a request from Commissioner Phil Chang that the commissioners implore the city to delay the March 16 sweep and a joint letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, a local mutual aid group, the Bend Equity Project and lawyer Thaddeus Betz.

The letter was made public on Tuesday. It encouraged the city of Bend to cease enforcement of the city’s camping code, which went into effect on Wednesday, March 1, after the City Council approved it last year. It regulates when, where and how people can camp in public.

“We urge Bend to halt the implementation of the Anti-Camping Code, repeal it, and take considerable time to understand and account for the impact any new regulation would have on people living outside with nowhere to go.

In addition to inviting statutory liability, the Anti-Camping Code also invites constitutional liability as cruel and unusual punishment and an excessive fine, both proscribed by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the letter said.

The city still intends to implement the code as written, King said Wednesday.

“The City will still implement the camping code city-wide starting this month, but due to the unique circumstances at Hunnell Road, we’re not using it for a blanket closure of Hunnell Road. We will, however, rely on the code’s regulations pertaining to camping ‘manner’ to create a cleaner and safer environment there,” King said in a statement Wednesday.

In the short term, the delayed closure of Hunnell Road means service providers get to continue visiting and helping people who live there, Eric Garrity, a member of the Bend Equity Project, the mutual aid group that signed onto the joint letter to the city, told The Bulletin in an email.

He and others visit Hunnell Road every week to serve people meals.

“A lot of the people we serve food to have grown quite fond of the breakfast casserole, in addition to a few other staples like chicken noodle soup and spaghetti and meatballs that we prepare fairly regularly, and I am glad we will be able to continue to serve that to the folks we have grown quite close to over the past year,” he said.

However, all concerns outlined in the letter still stand, Garrity said. He worries the code will be impossible to comply with, especially since surrounding local, state and federal jurisdictions have their own restrictions, he said.

“My fear is that this impossible situation could potentially result in citations or criminal charges under the camping code for many of our most at-risk community members and neighbors,” Garrity said.

Supported campingThe designated camping area on the southern side of town will use a supported model, which requires a nonprofit to operate the area, according to plans from the joint county-city Coordinated Homelessness Response Office.

Thirteen members of the public spoke during the City Council’s visitors section Wednesday night, mostly in opposition to the supported camp area concept on the south side of Bend.

Many were frustrated with the lack of opportunities for public involvement before the decision was made. Others, who were residents near the designated camping area, expressed their compassion for people experiencing homelessness, but also their discomfort with them being located so close to their homes.

Many cited crime and safety issues that occurred on Hunnell Road, which, in addition to county road projects, was used as a primary rationale for the city’s now-postponed sweep.

Central Oregon Villages was named by city and county staff Monday as an early contender to operate the supported camping area. However, the nonprofit’s board of directors had not even broached the possibility of operating the camping area.

The board still hadn’t made a decision as of Thursday, said Nicky Merritt, the executive director of the nonprofit.