An aerial view of Desert Streams Church at the corner of 27th Street, left, and Bear Creek Road in 2022.

Small, individual shelters that can be set up in less than an hour and offer safe, temporary housing will soon be on the corner of 27th Street and Bear Creek Road after the Bend City Council approved an innovative solution to shelter Bend’s unhoused population.

The city believes the Pallet shelters, which have been used throughout the Pacific Northwest, are a way to increase the number of available shelter beds and help ease city’s growing homelessness crisis. Each one is about the size of a backyard garden shed and has a 9-foot-high ceiling.

In a unanimous vote Wednesday, City Council awarded a three-year contract to Central Oregon Villages with $1.45 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to assist. The council set a goal in 2021 to create 500 available shelter beds in the city. Currently, Bend has only 382 shelter beds for 785 unhoused people, according to the Homeless Leadership Coalition’s annual Point In Time Count.

“Considering what we were doing, we weren’t reinventing the wheel but we were moving forward with a new concept,” said Jim Porter, former Bend Police chief and the president of Central Oregon Villages, a young nonprofit that began last year to provide safe places to live for those experiencing homelessness.

“I’ve always believed that you need to give back,” Porter said.

Porter said the shipment of Pallet shelters is scheduled to arrive by the end of the year and Central Oregon Villages hopes to have them ready for use in the first quarter of 2023.

The new housing, which will be located on Desert Streams Church property, will consist of up to 20 Pallet structures, portable toilets and water stations and a mobile shower truck. Meals will be delivered at least once a day. Entry for women and children will be the first priority, but the housing will be open to individuals who don’t use drugs and alcohol, pass a criminal background check and participate in a case management program with Central Oregon Villages.

“To be a guest of this shelter, people will have to be engaged in case management,” said Amy Fraley, the city’s program manager for houselessness services. “We would expect people to be in this program during which they are working toward more permanent housing for at least six months.”

Porter and others at the nonprofit embarked on education efforts throughout the surrounding Larkspur neighborhood to ensure transparency in establishing the shelters. Earlier in the process, the city heard complaints from neighbors about its location.

They knocked on over 200 doors, hosted open houses for discussion, and attended Larkspur Neighborhood Association meetings, said Fraley. The nonprofit incorporated neighborhood concerns, established requirements for entry, like passing a criminal background check, to prevent those with harmful sexual histories from residing there, and they incorporated additional security protocols. Fraley said they also changed the fencing type to fit the aesthetics of the Larkspur neighborhood.

“I think this is a testament that you can respond to concerns from neighborhoods and neighbors and businesses and still keep the integrity of what you’re trying to do,” said Councilor Megan Perkins at the meeting Wednesday.