Homeless service providers sue Forest Service in federal court, seek order to block China Hat Road area closure

(Update: Adding video, comments by Garrity, KTVZ News Poll)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Service providers Chuck Hemingway and Eric Garrity, along with four other homeless people living off China Hat Road, have filed suit in U.S. District Court, seeking a temporary restraining order against the U.S. Forest Service to block the May 1 closure of China Hat Road, less than two weeks before the deadline.

"The Forest Service has now been served," Garrity told KTVZ News on Monday.

Dozens of homeless residents in the area filed disability discrimination complaints last month, and a detailed request to delay or cancel the Cabin Butte Vegetation Management Project and related May 1 deadline for homeless people to move out of the area for its closure.

Penny Gartner and Mandy Bryant said they are long-time residents in the forest who “are about to be displaced from our homes and lose everything we have within 40 days” if the nearly 28,000-acre Cabin Butte Vegetation Project proceeds as planned.

Garrity told us Monday, "I think at the end of the day this this action, this lawsuit is intended to make sure that the Forest Service is compliant with their own regulations. And those regulations really do have a beneficial impact and keep the entire community safer and healthier and happier."

The Forest Service announced earlier this year it would close nearly 35,000 acres south of Bend to visitors and the encampments, starting May 1, for at least a year, to ensure public safety and support critical forest restoration efforts. Many KTVZ News recently talked to said they have nowhere to go.

In the cover letter to their 81-page submission (including attachments), addressed to Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District Supervisor Holly Jewkes, the pair says the environmental documents published two years ago “failed to take into account the impact on the human environment, most importantly us.”

Below is the complaint filed with the U.S. District Court in Eugene. KTVZ News reached out to the Forest Service for any comment or statement, and has not yet heard back. We will continue to update you as we learn of new developments.