From One Forest to Another: A Homeless Sweep Changes Little

After federal officials began a sweep of a vast forest in Oregon, most of the people who had used the woods as a last refuge had left. But they didn’t go far.

With nowhere else to go, many drove their aging R.V.s to a different forest just a few dozen miles away. Advocates for the homeless estimate that there had been 100 to 200 people living in the original encampment on the outskirts of Bend, Ore., a town that has been transformed by an influx of wealthy newcomers.

The cost of housing is now out of reach for many in Bend. In recent years, the town has increased the number of beds in shelters, but has not been able to meet the demand. The chasm between rich and poor has widened so much that it even swallowed up a former mayor: He died homeless after being discovered with frostbite in a tent in a Walmart parking lot.

“I honestly don’t know what to do,” said Andrew Tomlinson, 41, who had been living in the encampment. “I have nowhere to put our R.V. If we leave it, it will be towed, and everything we own is in there.” Mr. Tomlinson said he was unable to work after a heart attack four years ago. He has two stents in his heart and edema in his legs — the wounds have broken the skin, requiring him to apply daily bandages.

Hours before the eviction order went into effect at 12:01 a.m. on May 1, an aid group delivered a new battery to Mr. Tomlinson and his companion, allowing them to turn on their decades-old Newmar Dutch R.V.

A notice that had been taped to the door of Mr. Tomlinson’s 40-foot rig warned that he would be fined $5,000 and face up to a year in jail if he stayed inside the forest past the deadline. As the clock ticked down to midnight, he and his partner piloted the teetering R.V. down a logging road south of Bend, past a gate that has since been barricaded shut, and out of the forest. Mr. Tomlinson and his longtime companion — both convenience store workers from Wyoming who moved to Oregon and fell on hard times after Mr. Tomlinson’s heart attack — drove initially to a nearby plot of land, only to be chased away by a sheriff’s deputy.

They then drove up and down a highway east of Bend, finally pulling into a parking lot near a bike trail outside a different forest, part of the Oregon Badlands Wilderness area.

Reached by phone, Mr. Tomlinson broke into tears, before explaining that they were almost out of gas and water. “I am sure the sheriff will be visiting us soon,” he said.

The sweep of the homeless encampment known as “China Hat” was described by the National Homelessness Law Center as “the largest eviction of a homeless camp in recent history.” It removed at least 100 people, and possibly as many as 200.

The U.S. Forest Service, which had been planning for the removal for years, started leafleting the forest weeks ago, warning of the steep fines and possible imprisonment of those caught trespassing. Forestry and county officials say that the area stretching over thousands of acres of ponderosa pines and pastel-colored desert grasses needs to be thinned to reduce the risk of wildfires. It had also become an eye sore, with trash spilling out of decrepit campers. Reports of violence and drug use emerged, discouraging joggers from running in the public area.

But with shelters at capacity and the average price of a home in Bend now almost $800,000, the forest eviction is not a solution to the homelessness crisis, say local officials and advocates for the poor. The recent action is little more than “a can kicked down the road,” said one advocate, Graham J. Pruss.

Interviews with the displaced people as well as aid workers revealed that around 20 of the campers and dilapidated R.V.s had moved just outside the police line, parking on one side of the logging road, still in the boundaries of the Deschutes National Forest. A majority of the others had moved to a forest of juniper trees north of Bend that the homeless call “Dirt World.”

On the afternoon of the China Hat closure, Mr. Pruss, an anthropologist who studies people living in vehicles, was among the only people allowed back into the forest, escorted by law enforcement officials to check on those left behind. Fewer than two dozen people were still inside the federal forest, he said, and all of them were struggling to get out.

“The people we met inside were physically disabled, unable to move their fifth-wheel trailers or inoperable R.V.s,” he wrote in the reader comments section of a New York Times article about the removal on Thursday. “They were terrified, confused, hungry and running low on water. They wanted desperately to leave, but they didn’t know how.”

Two days after the closure, a Forest Service spokeswoman, Kaitlyn Webb, confirmed that only two people remained inside and officials were working with them on vacating. No one had been issued a citation, she wrote in a text.

Ms. Webb also said that any property of value left in the closure area would be impounded for safekeeping for 90 days. “Individuals may reclaim impounded property if they can show proof of ownership,” she wrote.

Sweeps like this have become more frequent since the Supreme Court ruled last year — in a case concerning Grants Pass, Ore., a 3½-hour drive from Bend — that cities can impose fines and jail time on people sleeping in cars, in public streets and on public land, even if there are no shelter beds available.

The result has been a shuffling of people from one location to another. “They were moved from neighborhood to neighborhood, onto county land and into this national forest,” Mr. Pruss said of the people at China Hat.

“They are now being displaced to protect that forest, but few are stepping forward to provide the space they need to exist,” he said. “This community has nowhere to go but the next public area.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.