News

NEWS Multiple Motels

The City purchased the Rainbow Motel and plans to convert it into temporary housing

By Jack Harvel

The Bend City Council authorized the purchase of the Rainbow Motel at its regular meeting Jan. 19, saying the property has potential as a temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness as well as longer-term goals. It’s the second motel the City is converting into a shelter after receiving $2.97 million in state grant funding to convert the Bend Value Inn in July.

The City Council is aiming to add 500 new shelter beds by 2023 to augment the 280 beds currently available year-round. General funds paid for the Rainbow Motel so it could eventually be used as something other than transitional housing.

“Buying the motel is an opportunistic public investment that can meet a variety of short-term and long-term community needs, including but not limited to an immediate need for transitional shelter, as well as future possible site for city hall, affordable housing, a civic plaza or other public uses,” City Councilor Megan Perkins said in an update on housing strategies.

The motel will be operated as a low-barrier shelter by a nonprofit selected through a competitive process. The motel is expected to open its doors in late spring or early summer, will have 40 to 60 shelter beds and will be used for two to three years before it’s transitioned to a different use.

The motel cost $4.55 million and sits on just over an acre of land in Bend’s Central District on Franklin Avenue. It’s just blocks away from the Second Street emergency shelter operated by Shepherd’s House— Bend’s low-barrier overnight shelter with 90 beds, and near a growing encampment on Second Street.

The Rainbow Motel will likely open sooner than the Bend Value Inn on Division Street. The City purchased the Bend Value Inn with Project Turnkey Funding, a state grant for renovating motels into temporary shelters.

“It will be a low-barrier shelter with a 28-room capacity. A contract with NeighborImpact is being developed to operate it. The earliest possible use of this facility would be this winter, with renovations occurring in summer 2022,” Councilor Perkins said of the Bend Value Inn space.

The City had an open house planned for Jan. 25 to share plans for the remodel and a timeline to complete the improvements. Converting motels are just part of the Council’s goal to increase shelter capacity. At its regular meeting Jan. 19, it reported that they’ve met or are on track to achieve

Jack Harvel

The Rainbow Motel on Franklin is the City’s second motel-turned-shelter purchase. Its sale was confirmed at the City Council’s regular meeting on Jan. 19 for $4.55 million.

86% of goals. An online dashboard tracking each goals’ progress shows one goal is completed, three need attention, 11 haven’t been started and 68 are on target.

Bend’s Recovery Strategy and Impact Officer Carolyn Eagan said the City doubled the number of available shelter beds in town over the last 18 months. The annual Point in Time Count for 2021 estimated that there were about 1,100 houseless people in Bend, a number that’s consistently ticked up 10-12% each year over the past several years.

Reawaken America Tour

Too Woke to Reawake

A tour featuring prominent vaccine and election-skeptic speakers moves to Salem after community backlash

By Jack Harvel

What do a retired general who believes in QAnon, a self-proclaimed prophet and a convicted felon who served as an advisor to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign have in common? None will be in Redmond on April 1 and 2, as previously planned.

The Reawaken America Tour booked two days in early April at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds and Expo Center featuring over 40 speakers from the right-wing media sphere, including former Trump employees Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. Stone, a campaign advisor to Trump in 2015, and Flynn, a national security advisor in the Trump White House, both were convicted on felony charges during Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged interference in the 2020 election and pardoned by the former president.

The event moved to the River Church in Salem after the tour was asked to sign a contract addendum agreeing to follow mask mandates. The host of the tour, Clay Clark, said the decision to move the event was due to a preference to perform in churches, but a ticket salesperson for the event told the Source that the tour was moving to avoid mask mandates. The River Church pastor Lew Wooten has been critical of mask and vaccine mandates, and in September 2021 helped organize a statewide work walkout in protest of them.

Emails obtained by the Source revealed Troy Smith, a planner for the event, claimed he’d been assured by Deschutes County’s two Republican commissioners that mask-mandates wouldn’t be enforced, and that the Sheriff’s Office would deal with potential disruptions. Commissioner Tony DeBone said he spoke with event organizers but never gave any assurances mandates could be skirted, which Commissioner Patti Adair echoed in a text message to The Bulletin.

The tickets cost $250, but discounts were offered to anyone who asked under “scholarship” pricing. Clark said the event will not distribute refunds or transfers, which ticket salespeople again contradicted, stating they could be transferred to any events that haven’t sold out. Clark defended the no refunds, no transfer policy to KTVZ, “Because I’m in charge. I’m a capitalist,” but added he’d offer refunds to people who didn’t understand the policy.

NEWS Hospitality Jobs are Back

Deschutes County is employing more hospitality workers than it did pre-pandemic, according to newest monthly estimate

By Jack Harvel

The Oregon Employment Department reported that accommodation and food services are employing nearly as many people as they were pre-pandemic in seasonally adjusted models. Deschutes County added 2,140 jobs total in December, and unemployment dropped to 4.3%, just 1% above a record-setting 3.3% low before the pandemic.

The leisure and hospitality sector is up from 2019 levels in the most recent monthly estimate, after being devastated during the initial surge of COVID-19 and again when the Delta variant started to spread.

“The industry lost a little momentum last winter with another wave of the virus but quickly rebounded again in the spring and summer of 2021. The most recent monthly estimate for Deschutes County’s accommodation and food services in November 2021 has employment levels up 2% above 2019 levels,” Damon Runberg, a regional economist for the Oregon Employment Department, wrote in a press release.

The numbers may indicate a change in consumer preferences as they adapted to the pandemic. Food carts grew by more than 120% compared to pre-pandemic numbers, from 101 jobs to 185. Full-service restaurants are still trending below pre-pandemic levels by about 600 jobs or 12.7%.

“This makes sense with fewer people wanting to eat indoors. We also see that coffee shops have done well too (snack and nonalcoholic beverages). Bars and other drinking places are basically back to pre-pandemic levels,” Runberg said.

The numbers seem at odds with how hard it is for restaurants to return to full employment. Quit rates for the leisure

Courtesy of the Oregon Employment Department

It’s taken time, but Central Oregon is inching back to pre-pandemic levels of unemployment.

and hospitality industry remained above 5% from July to November, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. November tied with September for a record-breaking quit rate of 3%.

“The total number of job ads in the accommodation and food services industry are up 96% from pre-COVID levels, yet employment is only down around 5%. This is a good sign that businesses are hiring, but they are trying to do it at a much faster pace than the labor force is growing,” Runberg said. “These elevated levels of hiring demand give significant hope for a full employment recovery in 2022 but also means we will likely continue to see a very tight labor market in this sector.”

Monthly employment estimates can be tricky and more detailed reports based on payroll tax records will eventually give a more precise measure of employment in Central Oregon.

“If instead we focused on the lagging but far more accurate payroll tax records, we see that the recovery may be running just a little slower than initially estimated through September 2021,” Runberg said. “These recently released payroll records reveal that restaurant and hotel employment was running around 5% below 2019 levels as of September, whereas those monthly estimates through September were showing employment levels down only 3.7%.”

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Noticias en Español Una entrevista con el nuevo coordinador del programa Vámonos Outside, Wesley Heredia

Por / By Nicole Vulcan Traducido por / Translated by Jéssica Sánchez-Millar

Afinales de 2021, Vámonos Outside— la organización local sin fines de lucro que tiene la misión de unir, involucrar e inspirar a la comunidad y a las familias Latinx/as a participar en actividades al aire libre—anunció que había contratado un nuevo coordinador del programa, Wesley Heredia, para ayudar a conectarse con la comunidad y para continuar con la misión del grupo.

The Source Weekly se puso en contacto con Heredia para platicar sobre el nuevo puesto. La siguiente entrevista ha sido ligeramente editada para su clareza.

Source Weekly: Comparta un poco sobre su experiencia.

Wesley Heredia: Me consideraría un educador de actividades al aire libre. He estado trabajando tras la industria como un guía instructor o educador como por unos 8 años y he trabajado por todo el oeste, desde de Colorado a Utah hasta Nevada, California, Oregon y Washington.

Mi experiencia principal ha sido en vínculo exterior como instructor, comenzando en Colorado, de ahí en California. Y ahora aquí, fuera de Redmond. He enseñado educación ambiental. He dado clases en el colegio. Y por último, también he sido instructor de snowboard en Mt. Bachelor durante cuatro temporadas.

Soy Mexicano Estadounidense y no crecimos— la primera parte de mi vida crecí en el centro de la ciudad de L.A. (Los Ángeles) y de verdad no tenía esas áreas verdes. No fuimos al bosque. No fuimos al desierto. Ni siquiera fuimos tanto a la playa. Al vivir en el centro de la ciudad, estas como atorado en el centro. Una vez que nos mudamos a Oregon, cuando tenía 12 años, desde ese entonces hay más áreas verdes.

SW: Comparte un poquito sobre Vámonos Outside

WH: Vámonos Outside es un programa que se lleva a cabo al aire libre, el cual está enfocado en servir al Latino, principalmente a la población Latina aquí en el Centro de Oregon y también para las personas de color.

SW: ¿Por qué es tan importante este programa para ti?

WH: Me es importante porque me llega, es algo que traigo muy dentro, porque mientras crecía no había nada de esto que llevará a la gente afuera o que los incorporara a la vida al aire libre. Tuve que luchar para meterme en donde pudiera encontrarlo.

Así que. ¿por qué es importante para mí? Porque puedo aportar lo que sé, llevar mi cultura, llevar mi experiencia como persona que creció como Mexicano Estadounidense, pero también llevar mi experiencia como persona de color que trabaja en la industria al aire libre y que la ve con perspectivas diferentes y que trata de combinar lo mejor de ambos mundos, de un grupo de personas que se han sentido desatendidas y que se sienten no vistas en muchos otros espacios. Así que estamos tratando de traerlos a la luz con tan solo proporcionar un puente hacia los espacios al aire libre.

SW: Recientemente ha llevado a cabo unos eventos, comparta un poco de los recientes eventos que han tenido y cuéntenos cómo les fue.

WH: Creo que el primer evento que ayudamos a arrancar fue uno llamado Jugamos Afuera coparticipando con Campfire Central Oregon. La idea era sacar a los niños de primaria durante el aprendizaje a distancia, sacarlos al aire libre y llevarlos a un parque en el que pudieran jugar y pasar el tiempo en áreas verdes. Muy a menudo, muchos niños que forman parte de la comunidad Latina, el ir a la escuela y estar en la escuela es probablemente el único espacio que tienen para jugar afuera bajo la supervisión de un adulto. Y cuando no tenían clases, estaban metidos en su casa, jugando dentro de sus hogares.

Los llevábamos al parque, a una caminata de corta distancia y jugábamos, les dábamos una botana y luego los acompañabamos de regreso a sus casas. Lo hicimos durante dos otoños. Y en el invierno, los llevamos a deslizarse sobre la nieve y a caminar sobre nieve, y en otras temporadas del año los llevamos a hacer caminatas. También los llevamos al gimnasio de escalada. Y de verdad que les encanta tan solo saltar por todos lados y también escalar las paredes. Así que, la idea es sacarlos de la casa y llevarlos a practicar nuevas actividades.