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‘I lost it all’: Residents of Oregon homeless camp say Forest Service blew off calls, appointments to reclaim lost property
- Homelessness: Real Stories, Real Solutions
- 3 hours ago
- 16 min read
Former residents of one of Oregon’s largest homeless encampments say they lost cars, work tools, irreplaceable family photos and other items.
By DANIELLE DAWSON and DAVID DUDLEY / InvestigateWest and FORJournalism Lab
On the day last year the U.S. Forest Service evicted hundreds of homeless people from national forest land just outside Bend, Oregon, Chris Walston was in the hospital.
Walston had been living in a sprawling encampment in the Deschutes National Forest — known by its residents and locals as “China Hat” after the access road that runs through the area — since 2023 with his brother after a series of medical emergencies left them unhoused. Walston, 54, had been diagnosed with heart failure.
Even though they didn’t know where they’d go next, they tried to prepare for the Forest Service’s eviction deadline of May 1. But Walston’s condition landed him back in the hospital, forcing him to leave behind an RV that served as his home, two trailers full of belongings and tools he used in his work as a roofer, and a houseboat he had been fixing up in the hopes of having it “on the lake before I died.”
Walston was told by Forest Service law enforcement that he had 90 days after the closure to call a hotline created for China Hat campers and arrange to retrieve his vehicles. For nearly two and a half weeks, Walston says he and his brother called repeatedly — at least 15 times — before they finally got a person on the phone.
When they eventually got access to their old campsite, rangers only gave them an hour to gather their belongings. But their vehicles needed repairs before they could be driven out, and Walston was still sick.
"It wasn't nearly enough time," he said. "Before we could finish, the officers told us it was time to go, we were wasting their time. … I lost it all.”
Walston was one of many who left behind belongings as the Forest Service cleared out the far-reaching China Hat encampment south of Bend — a community of trailers, makeshift structures and tents dotted across hundreds of acres of forestland. InvestigateWest and the Homelessness: Real Stories, Real Solutions FORJournalism lab, a program under the nonprofit known as the Fund for Oregon Rural Journalism, spoke to more than two dozen people who recounted difficulties trying to reclaim their items after the closure.
Lost items and policy
More than 100 vehicles — from RVs to work trucks and trailers — and an untold number of other personal effects, like clothes, camping gear, medications, strollers, irreplaceable family photos and loved ones’ ashes, were left by people in the rush to leave.
Under Forest Service policy, its law enforcement officers are required to provide detailed notice when taking personal property and give people ample opportunity to get back anything that was seized. But residents recounted a perfunctory process to reclaim these personal belongings, marked by unanswered phone calls, appointments to pick up items that never happened or were cut short, and blanket denials to get back “small items.” Some of the more dilapidated vehicles were discarded before the 90-day window closed, a contractor involved in the cleanup said.
The Forest Service appears to have fallen short of these rules and constitutional obligations to give China Hat residents a “reasonable” opportunity to retrieve their belongings, according to at least three property law experts who spoke to FORJournalism and InvestigateWest, though ultimately any such determination would be up to a judge.
“The government’s duty is: If you’re going to take it, protect it and make sure the person who owns it knows that you’re going to get rid of it if they don’t come and get it,” said Michelle Burrows, a Portland-based civil rights attorney who specializes in property and forfeiture cases. “They had a duty to make sure that they weren’t creating any impediments for these folks to get their property back.”
The China Hat closure is possibly the largest encampment sweep to date on forestland, according to the National Homelessness Law Center, an advocacy organization that monitors law enforcement actions against unhoused people. It underscores the challenges facing public land managers in confronting the homelessness crisis: Over the past decade, stewards have seen a rise in people living on public lands, fueled in part by restrictive policies on sleeping outdoors that have pushed unhoused people away from cities and toward wilderness spaces — spillover that they have acknowledged being ill-equipped to handle.
A representative for the Deschutes National Forest declined an interview request for this story. In an email, public affairs officer Kaitlyn Webb said that law enforcement officers began notifying China Hat campers in person about the closure three months in advance. Officers did not provide advance instructions about abandoned items because the Forest Service expected “that individuals would take all items of value with them when they left the area before the closure went into effect,” Webb said.
The Forest Service received more than 30 requests to a hotline and email inbox for the closure, she said, although “only a handful” included “viable contact information” or proof of ownership and could be followed up on. Forest Service officers escorted a number of individuals they were in contact with back to the area to retrieve belongings in the days after the closure. She did not say how many individuals the agency helped reunite with their belongings.
Webb said the temporary closure is necessary to ensure public safety, noting workers would be operating heavy machinery, felling trees and conducting prescribed burns as part of a long-planned forest restoration effort.
But former China Hat residents say they felt ignored throughout the process, leaving them without the things they relied on to survive. And it comes as many are staring down yet another move: Juniper Ridge, a sanctioned campground run by Deschutes County and the city of Bend, where many people relocated to from China Hat, is due to shutter by June 2027.
"[The Forest Service] said things were going to be done with compassion, but they weren't working with people to help them get their stuff back,” said Mandy Bryant, a former China Hat resident who unsuccessfully sued to delay the closure before it went into effect. She still wants the Forest Service held accountable for those who didn’t get a fair shot at retrieving their belongings.
"I think it's safe to say that the Forest Service never had any intention of keeping their word to protect these things, or to treat us like people,” she continued. "The 'China Hatters' are human beings who deserve to be treated with basic dignity."
‘Barriers and hurdles’
Once a small timber town, Bend is now one of the fastest-growing — and most expensive — cities in Oregon. Housing prices in the region have skyrocketed over the last two decades, with the median price of a single-family home increasing by nearly 75%. That’s only been exacerbated by an influx of wealthy urbanites who moved to the area for its outdoor recreation during the coronavirus pandemic.
Priced out of housing, some locals fell into homelessness. Between 2017 and 2025, the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness across Central Oregon more than doubled — from at least 778 to 2,108, according to the Homeless Leadership Coalition.
Advocates and service providers said there were only a dozen homeless people camping in the China Hat area 10 years ago. But by January 2025, when the Forest Service announced the closure, they estimated that number had swelled to 200 to 400 people.
The Forest Service had been trying to clear the area for many years, citing concern for the forest’s health and complaints from nearby residents about trespassing, drug use and wildfire risk. The agency’s last major attempt to remove people had been in 2022, when rangers cited people for overstaying the permitted 14-day camping window. No charges were ultimately brought by prosecutors due to a lack of resources.
Rangers and law enforcement started making the rounds through China Hat in January 2025, talking to residents and handing out leaflets listing potential shelter options in town. They taped flyers about the closure to the doors of RVs and campers, and pinned laminated ones to trees. The notices said the Forest Service would be removing them from the area come May for a project that involved cutting down trees and conducting prescribed burns.
People tried to prepare for the move, cleaning their camps, sorting out trash and fixing cars so they could be driven out. Other vehicles, some of which were “inherited” already in disrepair, were towed. Hoping to buy a little more time for people to figure out where they could go, a handful of campers and advocates sued in April 2025 to delay the closure, but a judge denied the request.
Even with all this work, many still ended up leaving things behind. For some like Walston, health problems prevented them from moving all of their belongings before the deadline. Others told FORJournalism and InvestigateWest they couldn’t afford vehicle repairs or updating their registration, meaning they could not drive their vehicles out. There were also people who felt it would be risky to start moving without knowing where they could go after China Hat.
Josh Robichaud lost drawings he created, a stereo system and yard tools in the move, among other things. Penny Gartner left behind her RV and a treehouse built by a companion of hers. Richard Owens lost a generator, paint sprayers and other tools he relied on to earn a living as a painter, and eventually his job. Now with Juniper Ridge also set to close next year, Owens feels like he is running out of options.
"I want to get me and my girlfriend out of here, but it feels like we're being shunned. It makes it that much harder to get the help we need," Owens said.
People who tried to retrieve their property said they encountered significant hurdles. The two dozen people FORJournalism and InvestigateWest spoke to each shared a similar experience: They called the hotline number given to them before the closure repeatedly, but only reached the voicemail inbox, not a person. When they left a message, former residents say their calls were not returned.
Sean Graham said he made an appointment to pick up his RV, generators and work trailers worth an estimated $5,500, but Forest Service officers never showed. “I went out there and waited for hours before I gave up,” he said.
After multiple unsuccessful phone calls, Adam Davenport showed up to the gate blocking off the encampment, pleading with the rangers to be let back inside. For him, it was urgent: His dog, which ran off the day of the closure, was somewhere in the forest. One of the officers obliged, saying it was his “lucky day,” according to Davenport.
He was able to grab his dog and the trailer he used to earn money delivering wood. But Davenport was forced to leave behind a 2005 Subaru Outback, 1999 Honda Accord and a motorhome, all of which needed to be towed. He was not let back inside to recover the rest.
Volunteers helped some China Hat campers retrieve their vehicles but still encountered hurdles. Chris Daggett, a construction tradesman who previously lived in China Hat for a decade, towed more than 30 RVs, trailers and cars with his pickup truck, but was eventually told by the Forest Service that he couldn’t continue because he wasn’t a certified tow truck driver. Under Oregon law, certification is not needed to help another motorist as long as the towing is “not for business purposes.”
Chuck Hemingway, an advocate working with the nonprofit Home More Network in Central Oregon, also made three attempts to help displaced China Hat campers get their vehicles back in the days after the closure. Only one was successful, and even then it took several attempts before he could reach the Forest Service.
By the beginning of August, when the 90-day grace period lapsed, 114 vehicles remained in Forest Service custody, inventory records show — 47 of which had appeared to have had a license plate or identifiable VIN or serial number. No logs were created for small items.
"Sadly, the process to recover vehicles wound up with barriers and hurdles that proved almost insurmountable," Hemingway said, "and many people lost the homes they had been living in for years."
A ‘reasonable’ opportunity
By most accounts, Forest Service officers only haphazardly followed their own impoundment regulations and guidelines after the closure of China Hat.
“It seems to me like the government was impatient with these folks,” Burrows said, a Portland attorney. “If these had been wealthy, rich people in expensive campers, they certainly would have been a lot more careful.”
Officers must give notice when impounding a vehicle, and that notice must provide details about how the owner can claim the vehicle and all items inside, according to the Forest Service's training handbook. Those belongings, which should be itemized in records and housed at a “secure” facility, can be sold or discarded only after the notice expires. The handbook also allows the agency to impound items at any time if they pose a health or safety hazard.
Former China Hat residents said flyers posted around the encampment about the closure had little information about what would happen to any property left behind and the process for claiming impounded items.
The only items logged by law enforcement officers were vehicles, records show, and the Forest Service did not take stock of property left inside vehicles or around campsites.
The agency also turned away individuals who asked to retrieve smaller items. In an email to a China Hat camper who had reached out hoping to retrieve a tent, table and shade cloth she left at her old campsite, a Forest Service staffer said that they were “unable to process requests for small items” due to the “overwhelming amount” of stuff left behind.
“I would have come got my things from my campsite right away,” the woman wrote back, adding she had called and emailed “numerous” times. “I just don't see how it's my fault that I could not reach anyone.”
Most of the vehicles the Forest Service impounded were taken to a nearby outdoor lot in the forest. According to a prospective logging contractor who toured the area and former residents, although a gate closed off China Hat Road to vehicle traffic, the area is still relatively accessible to the public and was frequently picked through by scavengers.
Residents also question whether the Forest Service took care to avoid “preventable damage” — as required by the training manual — when moving vehicles.
Shawna Roberson, who lived in China Hat for nearly five years after losing her house in a fire, left behind the fifth-wheel camper she had called home with her partner, Dwight. Inside were medications to care for her diabetes, clothes, family photos and the ashes of a beloved dog.
She had been reaching out to the Forest Service to hopefully retrieve the trailer when she came across a video posted to Youtube by a contractor hired to tow remaining vehicles, Troy’s Towing and Recovery. In the clip, which was posted about 12 days before the end of the grace period, the contractor can be seen pulling her trailer from the rear bumper, causing the trailer to flex in a way that could have broken its roofing and framing.
When reached by InvestigateWest and FORJournalism for comment, Troy Hoover, who owns the towing company, described the vehicles he towed as “crappers” with rotted out floors and unlivable conditions, adding many were dismantled and recycled on site. Hoover said he “tried to be as careful as I could.”
"It made me feel so angry," Roberson said about the video, sobbing. "I know it doesn't look pretty, but that was my home."
Webb, the Forest Service spokesperson, said the agency followed its policies for impounding and removing items. “Valuable and non-hazardous property” was stored behind two locked gates closing off China Hat Road and law enforcement regularly patrolled the area, she said.
But paired with the difficulty people had reaching the Deschutes National Forest, Burrows and two other legal experts say the agency appears to have failed to give people a fair opportunity to claim their items before they were seized and discarded.
Dan Alban, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm that has litigated numerous civil forfeiture cases, said providing notice of the closure date likely isn’t enough to satisfy due process. Given how hard it could be to reach an unhoused person after the closure, he said. If the Forest Service actually intended to facilitate the retrieval of items, it would have provided advance notice about how to do so.
Federal courts have repeatedly held in property seizure cases that due process means specifically laying out what will happen to their property and how they can reclaim it, as well as a meaningful opportunity to explain why they should get their things back. Some courts have also directed cities to take steps to ensure salvageable personal property is sorted out from waste.
“That doesn’t mean the case is decided in your favor ultimately, but if you can’t even meaningfully present your case, then what chance do you really have of having it decided in your favor,” said Alban.
He also questioned if the Forest Service’s phone hotline and email was an effective — and legally adequate — way to reach campers given that many say they never heard back.
Whether the Deschutes National Forest ran afoul of former China Hat residents’ rights will likely hinge on whether a judge believes the notice and the opportunity to claim property was unreasonable, explained James Burling, a property rights expert and senior legal counsel at the Pacific Legal Foundation.
“The government doesn’t have to marshal all the forces of the federal government to find people and find the property and give them notice, but it has to be reasonable,” Burling said. “It really comes down to whether an ordinary person, under ordinary circumstances, can retrieve the property if they want to retrieve it.”
‘Caring for the Land and Serving People’
As the housing crisis has worsened and a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowed cities to ratchet up policing of encampments, homeless encampments have increasingly cropped up outside urban areas.
Forest Service personnel have reported encountering non-recreational campers, which includes unhoused people, with growing frequency in the last few years, although it’s impossible to get an exact count, according to Lee Cerveny, a researcher at the Forest Service who has studied the topic for years. A majority of officers in the Pacific Northwest say they encounter someone at least once a month, if not once a week, a 2019 study found.
While the phenomenon of people living on public lands dates back more than a century, Cerveny says it has only been within the last few decades that more forests have begun to grapple with how responding to homelessness fits into the agency’s mission, “Caring for the Land and Serving People.”
“The Forest Service, like other agencies, is focused on land management,” she explained. “Having non-recreational campers on Forest Service land is something that is maybe new and different to some National Forests, and it’s a complex set of challenges.”
Some land managers view addressing homelessness as an “unfunded mandate,” forcing them to respond to a social problem over which they have no control and without real institutional support or guidance, according to a joint Forest Service and University of Washington survey.
Absent any additional resources or an agency-wide guidance, the survey and other research suggests management of these encampments will remain at the discretion of individual forests and focused on short-term responses, at the expense of both the ecosystem and people.
Three years before the closure of the China Hat encampment, Deschutes National Forest Supervisor Holly Jewkes stressed in a letter to local officials that her agency does “not have the expertise or resources to address such a complex social issue independently.” She also criticized operations to remove encampments from local, county and state land “without appropriate consideration” for the eventuality that people would relocate into the forest she oversees.
Webb said the Deschutes National Forest worked with community groups and local government agencies to spread the word about the closure and connect people to resources. The Forest Service is “not the lead” agency for addressing homelessness but tries to be a “good partner.”
“The Forest prioritized communication and coordination regarding the closure with city, county and non-profit partners who do have the appropriate expertise to provide services and support to our unhoused community members during this transition,” Webb said.
For some, life has remained difficult after moving out of China Hat. Walston and Roberson, like many others, ended up at Juniper Ridge, the sanctioned campsite in Bend. Brook O’Keefe, the city’s homeless services coordinator, said the number of people staying at the site rose from 112 in April 2025 to 204 in June 2025.
But when Juniper Ridge closes next year, very few know where they will go from there. Walston is still fighting heart failure. He says he tried to get on disability benefits before leaving China Hat to help make ends meet, but was denied because his “condition wasn’t severe enough.” He’s not sure where else to find the help he needs.
“The next step for me,” he said, “is the grave.”
This story is a collaboration between InvestigateWest.org, an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest, and the Homelessness: Real Stories, Real Solutions (realstoriesrealsolutions.org) journalism lab, an 18-month project to dispel the myths of homelessness funded by the Central Oregon Health Council overseen by the Fund for Oregon Rural Journalism (forjournalism.org), a nonprofit that supports journalism. Contact reporter Danielle Dawson, a Report for America corps member, at danielle@investigatewest.org and David Dudley at daviddudley@gmail.com.
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