Law enforcement officers with the U.S. Forest Service rolled through China Hat Road in the Deschutes National Forest southeast of Bend this week, visiting RVs, trailers and cars, letting people know of the agency’s plans to close the area in a little more than three months.

The plan — a 34,000 acre vegetation management program to mitigate wildfire — will result in closure and removal of one of the region’s largest homeless camps, the latest of several recent actions by local governments to address growing homelessness on public lands outside of Bend and Redmond.

The plan will, if all goes accordingly, address an issue simmering under the purview of local and federal officials for years.

Yet very few people living in the forest know where they will go next.

Nonprofit service providers and outreach groups have been doing regular outreach in the area for several years, providing survival resources like propane, food, clothes and water. Case managers help people connect to housing, shelter, and medical and other services. That work will continue over the next few months in preparation for the closure.

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The Forest Service — which plans to enforce the closure starting May 1 with charges that could result in up to $5,000 fines and year in prison — is working with local governments and nonprofits to “best prepare people living in unauthorized encampments in the project area,” the agency said in a news release.

“This is not going to be a perfect process at all,” said Megan Perkins, a Bend City Councilor and board member with the Coordinated Houseless Response Office, an intergovernmental group that has facilitated conversations about camping on China Hat Road for months. “This is not going to be a clean process. We are going to have some people who are choosing to move to another forested area in Central Oregon. The best that we can hope for is that we can get as many people as possible into some form of stable housing situation.”

A simmering problem

Outreach workers and volunteers estimate 100 to 200 people live scattered throughout the woods along several miles of China Hat Road, some just a few hundred yards from the asphalt and others much farther away, out of sight.

Some have lived in the RVs and camps off of China Hat Road for weeks. Others have lived there for months, a few years, and even longer — but numbers grew during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, along with general homelessness numbers across Central Oregon.

“A lot of people have lived out there for many many years,” Perkins said. “It’s going to be a really big effort. I’d be lying if I wasn’t saying I was a little bit concerned.”

On Forest Service land, dispersed camping outside of a developed campground is limited to 14 days at a time. According to Deschutes National Forest spokesperson Kaitlyn Webb, that limit has been enforced in the past, including issuing notices of violation, but a citation does not necessarily result in someone being removed.

According to previous reporting by The Bulletin, the Forest Service last attempted to remove campers in 2022 after getting pressure from nearby property owners, but the effort was ineffective.

Planning for the Cabin Butte Vegetation Management Project began in 2017, Webb said. Forest work in areas where people aren’t camping began in 2023.

Meanwhile, as homelessness grew, it grabbed the attention of federal officials across several agencies, resulting in a roundtable discussion with local leaders in June focused on solutions to the problem.

“The Deschutes National Forest has been collaborating with city and county partners to find community-driven solutions for the unhoused individuals in the China Hat area for several years, however we are not the lead for addressing homelessness and houselessness in our communities,” Webb said in an email. “We strive to be a good partner by coordinating with those that are.”

Officials with Bend and Deschutes County said the effort will be aided by a pot of funds dedicated to breaking down barriers for people to get housing. Service providers and case managers use the coordinated entry intake system to figure out who needs what resources and how to connect them.

However, the China Hat removal plan comes without direct grant funding to boost outreach work. As service providers and campers prepare for the closure at China Hat, a similar effort is underway north of Bend at Juniper Ridge, where the city and county aim to close hundreds of acres of public land and consolidate camping to a temporary “safe stay” area of 40 acres by May. The city and county awarded $1.1 million in December among a handful of service providers to swell outreach in the next few months.

A similar round of grants did not accompany the China Hat closure plan.

Shelter capacity growing, but still a challenge

The landscape of shelter and low-income housing services in Bend is quickly growing, said Amy Fraley, the city’s shelter coordinator. The city has more than 200 low-barrier shelter beds and about 500 total beds. Occupancy hovers between 80% to 90%.

Recently, a pair of permanent supportive housing projects added more than 100 units for chronically homeless people, some of whom transferred out of emergency shelter, Fraley said. The city is in the process of adding new safe parking sites and anticipates more projects to come online later this year.

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But finding a place for people displaced at China Hat still presents a huge challenge because many people live off of very minimal incomes, said Nicole Merritt, director of operations with Shepherd’s House, a homeless outreach nonprofit and the county’s largest shelter bed provider.

“The absence of supportive housing or capacity at shelters often means that when people are moved from one location, they simply end up in another encampment, moving from one crisis to the next,” Merritt said in an email.

Next move uncertain

Ryan and Sophie Magee, who moved into an RV off of China Hat Road a few months ago, said they don’t know where they will go when the forest land closes. They became homeless, they said, after a bank foreclosed on their rental house of five years because the landlord failed to make mortgage payments. The RV they found for free on Facebook Marketplace was in disrepair and dirty when they got it, but the couple has been working to make it habitable.

Having a roof during the winter is still much better than a tent, they said.

Their 10-year-old son is living with relatives in Bend until the couple can get back on their feet.

“It keeps getting harder and harder and harder,” said Ryan Magee, a tattoo artist.

Jared Davidson, who works a seasonal job as a landscaper, has lived in an RV at China Hat for three years, along with a handful of relatives and friends. He acknowledged the camp has become a mess, but that’s after years living without trash service. He has a working car, but his RVs are unreliable.

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He said he anticipates a “giant influx of campers and tents in town” after the closure.

Rich Strachan, who has lived in an RV off of China Hat Road for a year with his dog, Elsa, said he isn’t too worried about where he’ll go next — probably to another forest area nearby. Strachan, who is disabled, said he has lived in and around Bend since the 90s, including in a trailer near the Bend Whitewater Park.

“I live day by day,” he said.

But many people are “deeply concerned” about what is going to happen to them, and some service providers are expressing the same, said Chuck Hemingway, an outreach volunteer and advocate. For those with running vehicles, parking on the streets of Bend comes with added stress of complying with the city’s code for vehicle camping, which was recently updated to a 24-hour limit. China Hat had become one of the last places where people without homes were living relatively undisturbed.

“The concern is, well, gee, where do I go?” Hemingway said.

As a result of the China Hat closure, people will likely relocate to other public lands including the temporary safe stay area at Juniper Ridge, said Deputy County Administrator Erik Kropp. While the city and county are pouring in extra resources there, plans are to close the area in two years. The county is not regulating the comings and goings of the area, but it’s not intended to be a long-term solution for additional people, Kropp said.