‘We can protect our homes’: Commissioner Phil Chang says Forest Service project off China Hat Road is necessary

(Update: Adding video, poll, comments from Commissioner Phil Chang)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ)-- Deschutes County Commissioner Phil Chang says the Forest Service closure of a large area including along China Hat Road is necessary: "It leaves all of those residents, both in the city and outside of the city, way more vulnerable to high-severity fire, destroying their homes and threatening their lives. 

The Cabin Butte Vegetation Management Project would close 34,600 acres for at least a year for tree thinning and vegetation burning and removal.

"By doing these fuel treatments, we can protect our homes regardless of the ignition source," Chang told KTVZ News Friday.

 In an email shared with KTVZ News, Eric Garrity and Chuck Hemingway, the two local homeless advocates trying to pause the closure of China Hat Road, provided updates to county commissioners and the Bend City Council.

Documents obtained by KTVZ News also show possible legal action from the National Homelessness Law Center to end the Forest Service's plans.

The closure includes one of the Bend area's largest homeless encampments off China Hat Road, giving hundreds of homeless a May 1 deadline to move out.

Garrity writes in the email, "I don't know what Bend would look like if the Trump administration's plans are implemented, but I hope that the City of Bend and Deschutes County will join our efforts to protect our most vulnerable community members and our precious forests."

Garrity references President Donald Trump's recent order to reopen logging in national forests, including in Oregon, saying it would cause "significant and irreparable harm on our local community. "

Another document shows Forest Supervisor Holly Jewkes responding to Garrity and Hemingway's letter to end the project, saying, "The unauthorized encampments within the Cabin Butte Project area are not a legal use of public lands. And the unauthorized encampments do not change the purpose and need of the project."

But Chang says the federal agency is not to blame: "The Forest Service is a land management agency. It doesn't really have the tools to create transitional housing or shelter for people."

Instead, Chang criticized the county's and city of Bend's lack of action to find solutions for the homeless living in the area. 

"I am sympathetic to the idea that we should have created more alternative places for people to go and pathways out of homelessness before we implement this project," he said. "The reality is that we didn't, and we need to implement this work at this moment."

Campers on China Hat Road have shared the same message. Many of the hundreds in the area still don't know where to go.

Chang told KTVZ News he's heard fear from residents in and around cities across the county that the China Hat campers will soon move closer, bringing large encampments to their areas.

Some of the affected homeless said they plan to move to Juniper Ridge, Bend's other large encampment just north of the city. However, the city and county have agreed first move and limit to "temporary safe stay areas" this spring, then close the entire permanently in a year, forcing more homeless to move.