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NEWS Hunnell Camp Scheduled for Closure

Bend is closing its largest houseless camp. Service providers hope it provides a roadmap for providing “surge support” for future crises

By Jack Harvel

Jack Harvel

The campsite at Hunnell Road is made up of RVs, cars and tents. The City estimated there were about 65 individual camps at the site this winter — but by March it’ll dwindle to zero.

On Dec. 28 the City of Bend declared the campsite on Hunnell Road was unsafe and would be removed in March. It’s the largest campsite for people living outside of typical homes in Bend, and at peak residency in the summer there were over 100 camps on the road. That number shrank to about 65 over the winter.

Victoria McKenzie, who has lived there for about four months, said the cold is the toughest part of living on the road, just above the amount of thievery. She’s living in a trailer that she can’t move because her car broke down. The trailer is too old to be admitted to an RV park in the rare case there’s a vacant spot in one, she said. She’s not sure where she’ll go between now and the closure.

“I don’t have [a plan]. I just keep looking for opportunities and when one arises, I’ll take that opportunity,” McKenzie said. “I’m signed up for everything, but that doesn’t say anything. It’s already been a year since I signed up for Section 8 and nothing's transpired with that.”

McKenzie also hasn’t had luck signing up for safe parking programs or the tiny-home villages in the area. She hopes a part-time job will increase her eligibility in supportive housing programs, or that it could supplement her Social Security payments enough to get into longer-term housing.

“Moving is terrible. Always having to move, you can’t become stable. Any anthropologist will let you know that if a person is not stable for six months or longer, they’re not going to progress, they’re not going to be productive,” she said.

The City declared the campsite unsafe after conducting an assessment between Aug. 15 and Nov. 15, 2022. It concluded that vehicles and personal property are intruding on the roadway, that there are environmental impacts related to vehicles and reports of fire and a large number of calls for service to the area. Some 33 people were arrested in the 218 times police were called to the area in the three-month period.

“We've just seen a huge demand for our public safety services, which is just not sustainable. And when you talk about some of the threats to both life and property with fire and some of the criminal occurrences there, we just feel like we need to create a safer environment for everyone,” said City Manager Eric King. “We’re trying to provide some support systems to help make that happen in a way that really meets people where they're at, because everyone has different needs. And there's no one solution, unfortunately, that's going to solve everyone's problems.”

The City said the assessment was partially driven by Deschutes County and the Oregon Department of Transportation’s construction projects in the area, and the camp is expected to be closed before the construction begins. Current City code authorizes camp removals only after it is deemed unsafe after an analysis, though once the camp is swept, newer code that more strictly regulates where camps can be and when they can be removed will be active. King said the City issued a three-month timeline so service providers had more time to work with the people living on Hunnell.

“As soon as we had a pretty clear understanding from the County on their project proposal, we were starting to see the level of public health and safety issues just continue to increase,” King said. “We felt like more time is better, to be able to help support individuals and moving to a more secure and safe place.”

The relatively new Coordinated Houseless Response Office will help to organize governments, nonprofits and Deschutes County Behavioral Health to assist people relocating and offer services for people living on the road. Deschutes County is one of eight counties in Oregon that developed a coordinated office under House Bill 4123 with the goal of leveraging all available resources in a county to better address houselessness. Over the next three months it will be conducting “surge support” on Hunnell Road in what it hopes can be a blueprint for future camp dispersals.

“[Surge support] includes a needs assessment for individual clients determining what their plans and goals are and any resources that they may need in terms of accessing care, getting into rehab facilities, towing vehicles, repairing vehicles, medical attention. The idea is that we have a coordinated response to outreach and assessment and a surge of resources across partners,” said Cheyenne Purrington, executive director of the Coordinated Houseless Response Office.

Purrington said the goal is to get people into shelter or long-term housing, but notes not everyone will take advantage of those options. She said her office will work on alternatives for people who aren’t interested in traditional shelter options, such as reunification with family or alternative parking spaces.

“We are working with the county to identify potential parcels that can be utilized for variations of safe parking. We are looking at a range of development opportunities for tiny homes, upgraded RVs. The City has made available a series of shelter beds both in congregate and non-congregate settings at the Navigation Center and the Rainbow Motel,” Purrington said.

The Joint Office is conducting “surge support” at other smaller and more disjointed camps around the county, including doing outreach at an encampment north of the Redmond Airport that the Federal Aviation Administration said must be cleared for safety reasons, and at two parcels near Redmond that the Department of State Lands refuses to sell to the county until it removes encampments.

“When we think about how the homeless response system works, it wasn't really designed or built with intention,” Purrington said. “Our goal is to create a system that performs well, is designed and responsive to the needs that we have here locally and is able to respond urgently as a humanitarian crisis, which is what homelessness is, but also plan for long-term development of affordable and supportive housing, development of programs, investing in provider capacity. So that our local communities are able to respond and implement and create programs that are effective.”

Q&A With Outgoing DA John Hummel

John Hummel is leaving Bend after eight years as District Attorney. He sat down with the Source to discuss his time in office and what he plans to do next

By Jack Harvel

Since moving to Bend in 1995, John Hummel has worked as a public defender, started a defense firm and served six years on the Bend City Council before being elected as District Attorney in 2014. The self-described progressive prosecutor took a different approach than many DAs, taking public stances on injustice and what he views as flaws in the legal system. Hummel declined to seek a third term, and just days before his departure he sat down with the Source Weekly for a chat about his time in office. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity, but you can listen to it in full on the Bend Don’t Break podcast.

Source Weekly: You're embarking on this new chapter of your life. I hear you recently got married, what are you excited about as this next chapter begins?

John Hummel: Number one, I'm excited to start my life with Juliana, my wife. We're moving to Portland, but it is sad to leave here. I'm moving for Juliana. So, moving for love. That way was easy, but it's still hard. I moved to Bend in 1995. I did leave for a few years; I worked overseas and in Liberia and came back and I came back because I love this place. A little piece of me is removed when I leave here, but I'm certainly happy to start my life in Portland with Juliana.

SW: You've been called a progressive prosecutor. Can you tell us if you if you accept that nomenclature, and what does that mean to you?

JH: I'll absolutely accept it. I think everyone should be progressive. I want progressive doctors and I want progressive plumbers and electricians and engineers. Progressive, to me, means you're always looking for a better way to do things. If the way we're doing it is perfect, well, you don't need anyone to be progressive, but progressive is always trying to make progress. I think it's safe to say that the way we've been doing criminal justice in our country hasn't worked. Why? Because our recidivism rate is sky high.

That means people who have committed crime and are arrested or convicted or sentenced, then they do it again. And they do it again. And they do it again. So how we're doing it isn't working. So, we need to come up with a new way. So as a progressive District Attorney, my view was, ‘Hey, let's work together as a community to figure out what we can do to provide people who commit crimes with the incentives and tools they need to be successful in the future,’ because that's good for them. And it's good for our community because there'll be less crime.

SW: Sometimes progressive prosecutors get blamed for increases in crime rates. How would you respond to that claim?

JH: I reject that. But I will say this, prosecutors can lead to an increase in crime, progressive and traditional. I mean it; here's the deal. Nine years ago when I first ran for office, I was asked, ‘Hey, if you win this race and you get elected, how can we judge whether you were successful?’ I thought about and I said, ‘Ultimately, you should judge me on whether we're a safer community because that has to be the ultimate goal.’ And so if you're a DA or a sheriff or police chief, and the crime rate goes up in your community, you should be blamed for it. Why are you in there if not to make the community more safe? Some progressive prosecutors, crime has gone up in their community, some tough on crime, traditional prosecutors, crime has gone up in their communities, and some progressives have reduced crime in their community and some tough on crime prosecutors have reduced crime, but much fewer tough-on-crime prosecutors have reduced crime than progressive prosecutors.

SW: What are the steps that you take when you're tackling something as large as reducing recidivism? So much of that seems like it would stem from environmental and cultural factors. How do you take on a goal like that?

JH: It's not to suggest anyone can do it on their own. Most of the drivers of crime are way outside the paygrade of a DA — housing, poverty, addiction, mental health. But that doesn't mean you throw up your hands and you say, what can you do about it. I convened a group of community members in Deschutes County in late 2015 called Deschutes Safe and we spent a year digging into data, and we had help from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance. And we looked at what the root drivers of recidivism were in Deschutes County. We saw clearly it was addiction issues that was the number-one driver. So, I worked with others to develop Deschutes Safe, and that diverted people from the criminal justice system into the medical system. And we saw that people who went through that program had a significantly lower recidivism rate than people who went through traditional prosecution. And then once that program got up and running and stood on its feet, then we developed other programs in the office, like our veterans intervention program and our emerging adult program.

SW: Does being a progressive prosecutor present challenges coordinating with law enforcement?

JH: Some officers are resistive to the term because of what it means to them. Cops are under attack now a lot and sometimes justifiably, sometimes not. But they'll hear anyone who comes around who has a label of ‘progressive,’ they will equate that to anti-cop, and I'm not anti-cop. So I have to spend more time developing relationships with police than maybe someone who came up through the more traditional ranks. Most elected DAs started out at a law school as a deputy district attorney, worked there 20 years, the elected DA retires, and they ascend to the position. So they already have the relationships with the cops, they came from Team Cop, so to speak. I came from Team Defense Attorney, public defender, all terms that gets many officers’ hackles up — but not all, many were supportive right away. But some weren't. I am proud that over time, I've developed relationships with many of the officers, but initially it was difficult.

SW: Looking back at your time as the DA, are there any regrets or anything you wish you would have done during your tenure?

JH: Yeah, this might come as a surprise to some people, but I stayed in my lane early. Too often, some people would say, I didn't stay in my lane. I talked earlier about going upstream to focus on the root causes of crime, which are addiction and poverty. And I worked within my office, to the greatest extent possible to address that. But I should have gone out of the office even more, and homelessness is one issue that I think about. I see that that's an issue that's increasing in Deschutes County. And I figured, that's the city councilor issue. That's county commissioner issue, and it certainly is for them, but I could have been part of that. Looking back, I regret that I should have been more of a community leader. I have a bully pulpit. I could have used it.

SW: I know you're moving to Portland, but what are you going to do now?

JH: There was speculation in that article that I'm running for Congress. I've been recruited in the past year to run. I'm not running for Congress because I'm moving to Portland. I don't know. I'm in a nice place where I can take a few months and just, reflect, exhale. I have two phones, always. I mean, I call one the murder phone. It's the work phone, when this thing rings bad things have happened. So I'm going to enjoy living with one phone. I'm going to take some time, but I'm not retired. I'm going to take a month or two. We’re still moving in. I got to meet the neighbors. But I'll be working in Oregon on making our community as good as possible. How do you define community? Is it Portland? Is it statewide? Oregon? I don't know. So I don't have anything locked down yet.

Courtesy John Hummel

John Hummel took a different approach to the District Attorney’s Office with a media-savvy approach and progressive priorities.

Campamento Hunnel en previsto para clausurarse

Bend está cerrando su campamento más grande para personas sin hogar. Los prestadores de servicios esperan que ofrezca una guía para otorgar “aumento de apoyo” para crisis futuras

Por / By Jack Harvel Traducido por / Translated by Jéssica Sánchez-Millar

El 28 de diciembre la ciudad de Bend anunció que el campamento ubicado en Hunnell Road era inseguro y que sería desmontado en marzo. Es el campamento más grande para las personas que viven fuera de una casa común y corriente en Bend y en el punto pico de residencia en el verano había más de 100 campamento sobre la calle. El número disminuyo en el invierno a cerca de los 65.

Victoria McKenzie dijo que el frío es la parte más dificil al vivir en la calle, un poco más arriba de los robos. Ella ha estado viviendo allí por casi cuatro meses en un remolque que no puede mover porque se descompuso su carro. Comentó que el remolque es demasiado viejo para que lo admitan en el estacionamiento de RVs en caso de que hubiera un espacio vacante. No está segura a donde irá por ahora.

“No tengo [un plan]. Sigo buscando oportunidades y cuando se prensente alguna aprovecharla,” dijo McKenzei. “Estoy registrada en todo, pero eso no significa nada. Ya ha pasado un año desde que me registre en la Sección 8 y no pasó nada.

McKenzie tampoco ha tenido suerte para registrarse en programas de estacionamiento seguro o para las aldeas de casas pequeñas de la zona. Espera que el tener un trabajo de medio tiempo aumente su posibilidad para ser elegible a un programa para el apoyo de la vivienda o que pueda suplementar sus pagos de seguro social lo suficiente para formar parte de un programa de vivienda a largo plazo.

“Mudarse es horrible. Mudarte constantamente no te ayuda a ser estable. Cualquier antropólogo te dirá que si una persona no está en una situación estable por seis meses o más, no van a progresar, no será productiva,” comento ella.

La ciudad declaró inseguro el campamento después de haber llevado a cabo una evalucación entre el 15 de agosto al 15 de noviembre. Concluyó que los vehículos y las cosas personales están obstruyendo la calle, que hay impactos ambientales relacionados a los vehículos y reportes de incendio, y un gran número de llamadas de servicio en el área. Unas 33 personas fueron arrestadas en las 218 veces que llamaron a la policía durante un periodo de tres meses.

La ciudad dijo que la evaluación fue conducida en parte por el el departamento de projectos de construcción del Ayuntamiento de Deschutes y por la Secretaría de Transporte de Oregon del área. Se espera que el campamento cierre antes de que comience la construcción.

La nueva oficina de Respuesta Coordinada para personas sin hogar ayudará a organizar a los gobiernos, las organizaciones sin fines de lucro y al departamento de Salud Conductural del Ayuntamiento del Deschutes para ayudar a la gente que se muda y para ofrecer servicios para las personas que viven en la calle. El Ayuntamiento de Deschutes es uno de ocho ayuntamientos en Oregon que crearon una oficina coordinada bajo el Proyecto de Ley 4123 de la cámara con el el objetivo de aprovechar todos los recursos disponibles en el ayuntamiento para manejar de mejor manera la falta de vivienda. En los próximos tres meses, llevara a cabo un “aumento de apoyo” en Hunnell Road en lo que se espera pueda ser un modelo para futura dispersión de campamentos.

“El [aumento de apoyo] incluye una evaluación sobre las necesidades personales de los clientes para determinar cuáles son sus planes y objetivos y cualquier recurso necesario para acceder a cuidados, ingresar a centros de rehabilitación, levantar vehiculos, reparar vehículos, atención médica. La idea es que haya una respuesta coordinada para el alcance y eveluación y para un aumento de recursos entre colaboradores,” dijo Cheyenne Purrington, directora ejecutiva de Coordinated Houseless Response Office (Oficina de Respuesta Coordinada para personas sin hogar). SOURCE_THCEndoftheSEASON.pdf 1 12/13/21 11:32 AM