Bend neighbors relieved, ‘shocked’ by Deschutes County commissioners’ 2-1 vote to close sex offender housing program

(Update: Adding video, reaction from neighbors and more from commissioners)

Chang votes against ending contract with provider, selling triplex; DeBone said they still will seek new site

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- One week after voting to find a new location for a sex offender transitional housing program within a year, Deschutes County commissioners voted, again 2-1, on Wednesday to terminate the current provider's contract and close the controversial SE Bend triplex location opened a few months ago.

The item was not back on commissioners' agenda, a week after a public hearing brought out much neighbor opposition to the Wilson Avenue location for the program for paroled sex offenders who otherwise may be out on the street with less supervision.

Commissioners Tony DeBone and Chair Patti Adair voted to terminate the contract with Free on the Outside after some discussion in executive session, while again, Commissioner Phil Chang voted no.

A week earlier, he voted against DeBone's motion to find a new Bend or Redmond neighborhood to buy a parcel and build a new home for the Parole and Probation program, with better notice to all neighbors -- not because he opposed such a site, but saying it needed more financial details to assure it would happen successfully.

Neighbors of the triplex have fought for months to remove the program, and now say they are feeling relief.

"Honestly, we're shocked. We did not see this coming. We expected it to take a month before the commissioners reconvene," said one neighbor, Ryan Rudnick.

"Getting that news, I was floored," said another. "I was ecstatic and humbled at the same time. And I did ask the question, 'What's next?'"

Right now, two parolees are living at the triplex, but it's not yet decided where they or the 40 to 50 expected to go through the program in coming months will go now.

"I don't think that this reversal creates a substantial change from the status quo now," Rudnick said. "But the county has an opportunity to try again, do it right."

"Yeah, there will be people who are released from prison or jail under supervision who are very likely to become homeless again," Chang said Thursday. "And everyone will suffer from that."

The county is tight-lipped on details of its decision to terminate the program. We reached out to multiple sides of the decision Thursday and were told that the county's legal team had advised many to not discuss. But Chang shared his disapproval.

"It's really important for the public to understand the flaws in the decision process, and that it's not appropriate to try to hide that in executive sessions," he said.

DeBone says the vote was open, but no one showed up. 

"So we came out of that executive session to make this final decision, or make a decision, because it wasn't -- we weren't required to, but it kind of came down to the concept of, if we have this much opposition and we're not on the same page and this thing is not landing well, why keep going?" DeBone said.

Last week, we reported on a public hearing and the commissioners' initial decision to begin looking for alternative locations for the transitional housing. DeBone said there are many options the county is looking into, but a timeline has not yet been decided.

"It's the concept of trying to pick up a residential lot in a new neighborhood that hasn't been built yet and saying, this is going to be a future, you know, supervised parolee housing. So really getting that in place," he said.

Chang said the county might owe $1 million grant money back to the state, and that the nonprofit running the program, Free on the Outside, would not want to work with them again.

"If I was in that position, I would say the way that this went, I don't want to try again. But that's a question mark," he said.

Chang earlier told NewsChannel 21 that though his colleagues said they believed in the transitional housing project and its goals of rehabilitation and public safety, “It is not feasible to relocate the program, so it is being terminated.”

But DeBone told NewsChannel 21 that his new motion, to terminate the contract with Free on the Outside and dispose of the purchased Wilson Avenue triplex, “doesn’t stop the process of looking for another site” for the program. … We’ll always have the need for a challenging population under supervision.”

Still, he acknowledged, “We’re doing a 180.” And asked if it was due to legal or contractual issues, he said, “No – this is purely political.”

“The contracts that were put in place said we’d do this for 10 years, we’re going to have multiple level sex offenders” at the location, DeBone said, but “it turned out to be a very negative situation. It was obvious the community didn’t want this.”

Chang was not pleased.

“I am so appalled by this whole process, and the shoddy work of my fellow commissioners,” he said.