Redmond-area homeless camp cleanup comes at a cost
A Deschutes County Jail inmate crew was out working east of Redmond Wednesday, starting to clean up what’s left of a homeless camp that’s been there for several years.
Earlier this week, the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office handed out official eviction notices to roughly three-dozen people still living on the land between East Antler Avenue and Highway 126.
Now it’s up to the Redmond School District, Deschutes County and the Central Oregon Irrigation District, who own the property, to clean up the hundreds of acres of land.
Shon Rae, deputy managing director of COID, said the cleanup might be a long process.
“The visual stuff we’ll get cleaned up, and then there’s inevitably going to be hazardous-type waste we’re going to have to clean up as well,” Rae said. “There’s no bathrooms out there, so those are things we’ll need to look at trying to get cleaned up.”
A fence has been set up just off Antler Avenue, and anything found by cleanup crews that looks to be of value will be kept inside for 30 days, or until someone comes to claim it.
According to the irrigation district, the same goes for vehicles worth over $500.
No arrests or citations have yet to be handed out, and the sheriff’s office says it will keep trying to help people leave the area before any such actions.
“One day at a time — the cleanup’s going to take some time,” Rae said. “We hope to have everyone off by early next week, and then there’s a whole process of towing vehicles that are left behind and what we do with those. And it’s expensive for us too.”
COID expects to spend between $100,000 and $200,000 cleaning up the land.
They’ve set up a fence bordering the land, where anything found that appears to be of value will be kept for 30 days or until someone claims it.
So far, no arrests or citations have been handed out, and the Sheriff’s Office hopes the transition remains smooth.
“I think it’s gone smoothly,” Rae said. “It’s been a year in the making, hard to move them out. But at some point, we need to get our property back and get it cleaned up.”
Everyone living on the land is expected to be out by next week.
