BEND — A day after Deschutes County staff praised their plan to offer drinking water, restrooms and dumpsters for homeless campers living in Juniper Ridge, they decided to suspend those services to the estimated 200 people who call it home.

The county cited safety concerns after a vendor trying to service the toilets was allegedly threatened by a man who lived within the dust and juniper-filled area along U.S. Highway 97, according to an email obtained by The Bulletin. The county placed the toilets there in mid-September.

“We acknowledge and apologize for our delayed communications, as we have been discussing ways to service these sanitation stations and address safety to the vendors,” said a Wednesday email from the county to service providers. “We are working to develop a plan to mitigate safety concerns and resume services.”

Deschutes County Commissioner Patti Adair said the incident illustrates the need for armed security guards to escort contractors and employees within Juniper Ridge. The security guards are expected to begin patrolling the area twice daily with regular reports back to the county as soon as next week.

“It’s definitely difficult times,” Adair said.

Law enforcement officials never located the man who allegedly threatened the vendor, Sgt. Jason Wall, a Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, said Wednesday.

Deschutes County’s plan on pause

People living within the 1,500-acre area said the drinking-water tanks have been empty for days, leaving many to go back to service providers for basic necessities — namely, drinkable water.

Deputy County Administrator Erik Kropp acknowledged Wednesday that ceasing trash collection and servicing portable toilets while leaving them onsite will mean more work later. But he said a new plan to resume services doesn’t exist yet.

At a joint meeting between Deschutes County commissioners and the Bend City Council on Tuesday, Kropp said the county’s contractors have collected around 225,000 pounds, or about 133 cubic yards, of waste from Juniper Ridge since mid-August.

They’ve been able to clean up many of the abandoned or burned camps.

The water, toilet and dumpster services have been able to mitigate the county’s initial concerns with people living on county and city land, Kropp said. Those initial concerns were first made public in June and commissioners approved a remediation plan shortly thereafter.

The plan’s goal is to ultimately get people to leave the land.

“The way I look at it, there’s a number of code violations, and we’re addressing many of them, but we won’t be able to address all of them until people are no longer living there,” Kropp told The Bulletin.

However, the area hasn’t seen fewer people since the plan began. It’s actually seen more.

Stacey Ray is a 61-year-old woman who lived out of her car and a tent on Hunnell Road until she was able to secure a tiny home in Bend temporarily. Roughly two months ago, she moved to Juniper Ridge where she lives in a camper.

Ray frequently used the drinking water and toilets the county provided, and the dumpsters helped to keep her trailer and surroundings more tidy. But no longer.

“Water’s empty and toilets are a mess,” she said.

She said things have progressively gotten worse in Juniper Ridge.

In the roughly two months she has lived there, she’s heard bullets whiz by her head, she was recently shot with what she thinks was a BB, and she’s often surrounded by drug use and overdoses.

Ray, who works five days a week at a local gas station, said she gets nightmares because of it.

“I go to work, I come in and go straight to bed,” she said. “It gets a little spooky out here at night.”

Her current living conditions, compounded with what she sees as unjust treatment of the impoverished from local officials and residents and the rise in drug use, have pushed Ray to consider moving away from her family to California.

“I haven’t seen the good parts of Bend yet,” Ray said. “If I had more money I’d probably see better.”

Juniper Ridge has been the subject of scrutiny this year as many people have moved there following repeated homeless encampment cleanups within the city of Bend. The county and the city have been in talks to create a managed camp for people who are homeless and without shelter, but there hasn’t been much movement in recent months.