STATE
Blue Mountain Eagle
A12
Wednesday, February 2, 2022
Meet Central Oregon’s houseless community
The Bulletin
H
omelessness in Central Oregon was scarcely noticeable as
recently as fi ve years ago. Today, no one can ignore that there
are hundreds of people without a house to call their home. Below
HOW TO HELP
For suggestions on how to help the region’s
residents experiencing homelessness,
contact the Homeless Leadership Coalition
by email at info@cohomeless.org.
are three stories from a new, yearlong reporting project by The Bulletin
newspaper that attempts to put a face on the issue by taking a close look
at some of the individuals experiencing homelessness in the region.
Redmond woman forced to unlearn bias
Fluke had a lot of physical issues she
wanted to heal, so she took time away
from working for much of 2021 with
the help of expanded unemployment
benefi ts.
When those expired in September,
she made a new plan, this time to take
her talents and abilities to Arizona with
a friend.
But once again, her plans changed
when the friend she planned to go with
“fl ipped a switch,” and the move was
off .
So, Fluke took to the road. She spent
days and nights “wrestling” with herself
at a rest area on U.S. Highway 97 over-
looking the Crooked River, trying to fi g-
ure out how to keep trying. She wanted
to be a “giver,” but it felt like every
door she tested — jobs, family, friends
— closed.
Then, the cold came.
In early November, she drove to
Redmond, reading about the warming
shelter online and making it her tempo-
rary respite.
“I just know that I’m supposed to be
here, even if I don’t know where I’m
going,” Fluke said. “As far as I’m con-
cerned, it’s better than I could do on my
own right now.”
Now, she goes to the shelter early
By ZACK DEMARS
The Bulletin
REDMOND — Heather Fluke
used to tell homeless people to move
along as part of her job.
Working for the city of Salem’s
parks department at the time, Fluke,
now 47, wondered why the people she
cleared out of parks until 2016 didn’t
just go get jobs.
She’s had a change of heart since
then. Now homeless herself after suf-
fering injuries, lost jobs and scuttled
plans, Fluke has come “full circle,”
spending most nights this winter at
Redmond’s Winter Shelter after return-
ing to Central Oregon this fall.
“You just don’t understand until
you’re in it, and I didn’t,” Fluke told
The Bulletin last week as evening tem-
peratures approached freezing. “I don’t
know if I can put it into words yet
because I’m just in the middle of it. It’s
humbling.”
Fluke is from Salem, but this year
isn’t her fi rst in Redmond. She lived
in the city two decades ago for a few
years, she said.
Prior to becoming homeless, Fluke
had a job, a house and a plan — but
over time, those things fell away one
Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin
Heather Fluke, 47, organizes her belongings at the Redmond warming shelter
at Mountain View Fellowship Church on Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022.
by one.
After she worked for the city of
Salem and just before the onset of the
COVID-19 pandemic, Fluke had a job
in merchandising for Home Depot. It
was a good job: She traveled for work,
and she could aff ord a new truck and to
rent a house.
But when a novel coronavirus turned
the world upside down, it touched her
life, too. Travelling to Home Depots
across the region was suddenly much
more diffi cult and retail sales were sud-
denly much less common.
“I didn’t know what was going to
happen, and I ended up losing a good
job,” Fluke remembered. “Merchandis-
ing was not important after that because
of COVID, and they wouldn’t travel
and everything was shut down.”
each night, off ering to sweep or oth-
erwise help prepare for the two dozen
guests that sleep there each night.
Fluke wants to work — she did
another short spell at Home Depot, but
a prior meniscus injury she didn’t get
physical therapy for made it a challenge
to stand for hours at a time.
“My knee wasn’t ready for me to be
on my legs for four hours. So I switched
gears just to focus on getting healthy
and building up my legs so that I can
do something — what, I’m not sure,”
Fluke said. “I have goals of doing some-
thing, but I go to therapy three days a
week right now, until I can feel like I can
keep up a job, especially because a lot of
jobs here are on your feet.”
Wanting to hold a job while being
homeless forced Fluke to overcome
the common misconception that those
experiencing homelessness don’t have a
desire to work. She’s also learned about
the invisible struggles many face and
the mental health services needed to
overcome them.
“When you’re working and you
have everything you need, you don’t
realize how much of this is people are
fi ghting their demons on a daily basis,”
Fluke said. “You can’t just give them a
tent and a blanket and say, ‘go there.’”
Priced out of housing in Sisters Rent hike puts
By BRENNA VISSER
The Bulletin
SISTERS — Adrian Palmer hates the
word homeless.
Until last Thanksgiving, the word had not
entered her orbit — she and her three chil-
dren were living in her boyfriend’s Red-
mond home.
That changed when her boyfriend, Buddy
Blair, let the house go in a divorce settle-
Dean Guernsey/The Bulletin
ment. Since Palmer works as the kitchen
manager at the Sno Cap Drive In in Sisters, Adrian Palmer lives in the forest near Sisters.
she and her boyfriend tried to fi nd a rental
her job, but still encounters barriers to fi nd-
they could aff ord there.
They couldn’t fi nd one before they had ing housing. Palmer and her boyfriend each
to leave Redmond. That’s when the 38-year- have poor credit that makes renting or buy-
old and her three kids — 19, 17 and 4 — had ing a home diffi cult, she said.
to come to terms with the word homeless.
And fi nding a three-bedroom rental
Palmer, her three children and her boy- for a family of fi ve in the area on her bud-
friend now live in a trailer in the woods out- get, which she says is between $1,500 and
side of Sisters.
$1,750 a month, seems impossible in the Sis-
“It’s rough being out there,” Palmer said. ters area.
“I can’t (aff ord to) live in the Sisters area, but
“The pricing of rentals is freaking crazy,”
that’s where I work, that’s where my kids go she said.
to school, that’s where my youngest goes to
The average rent, according to the hous-
daycare.”
ing site Zumper.com, is about $1,195 a
Palmer was born in Bend and has lived month.
the majority of her life in Central Oregon.
Rent in Sisters can vary wildly, from
She has worked making the ice cream for $800 to more than $2,200 a month, said
the Sister’s icon for two and a half years, she Judy Trego, the executive director of Sisters
said.
Area Chamber of Commerce. The problem
Palmer said she feels fi nancially stable in is there is very little actually for rent in Sis-
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REDMOND — The Red-
mond apartment John Breen
shared with his wife and son fi t
the family’s budget. Then the
landlord raised the rent and their
home went from aff ordable to
unaff ordable. An increase from
$965 a month to $1,050 a month
was all it took for the 79-year
old and his family to be home-
less for the fi rst time.
“We lost our apartment
because it got to be too high for
us — it’s supposed to be low-in-
come housing, but it’s not,”
Breen said.
That was fi ve months ago.
They’ve been trying to fi nd a
new place to live ever since.
“Me and my wife have been
together 28 years and this is
the fi rst time we’ve ever been
homeless,” Breen said.
Breen is a retired Walmart
employee, and his wife worked
for an area motel until she got
injured. When the rent went up
at their apartment, they tried to
fi nd rent assistance . The non-
profi t they contacted for help
told the family they made too
much to qualify .
“How much is too much?
By the time you cover the rent
and the electricity and all the
other stuff , you’ve pretty much
used up your money,” Breen
said.
When that didn’t work, the
family moved their belongings
into a Bend storage unit and
started living out of the family’s
station wagon.
“(We) went from a big place
to a little car,” Breen said.
When the weather got colder,
they found their way to the Red-
mond Winter Shelter, where
they’ve been staying. They’re
hoping to fi nd new housing in
the next few weeks — but they
aren’t having an easy time.
“We’re looking around right
now. The cheapest one we found
was $1,800 a month and there’s
no way we can aff ord that,”
Breen said. “That’s a robbery.”
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ters, she said.
“I think realistically it’s more like $2,500
to rent a place in Sisters all the way up to
over $3,000,” Trego said. “So yes, it’s been
very diffi cult for families in the community
to piece that together.”
Palmer also fi nds herself in a frustrating
predicament: Not making enough money at
her job to aff ord local rentals, but making too
much to qualify for social service programs
that are geared toward housing low-income
families, she said.
“What do you call low income? What
do you call regular income?” Palmer said.
“Because even with both me and my boy-
friend both having jobs, we can’t aff ord a
$3,000 a month payment.”
One thing people who have not been
homeless may not understand is how being
homeless costs money, too, Palmer said. She
still has to pay bills, like car payments, and
other costs like propane for cooking and gas
for the generator for their trailer, Palmer said.
“It’s not as easy as what some people
would think it is,” she said.
Palmer said looking toward the future
she hopes to fi x up her bad credit in a bid to
have a better shot at getting into housing, but
for now, she feels stuck.
“I’d love to be able to have a two-in-
come household with six fi gures,” she
said. “But that’s not realistic in everyone’s
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