Lighthouse Navigation Center, a homeless shelter in Bend, Ore. where former mayor Craig Coyner sought refuge, on March 21, 2023.
But as housing costs strained the budgets of Bend’s nurses, teachers and police officers, homelessness soared in the city of 100,000 people, much as it had in far larger West Coast cities. The shelter where Coyner had finally found refuge had been over capacity for months.In the early 1900s, his great-grandfather was mayor of Bend, then a newly incorporated outpost in central Oregon where timber prospectors were scooping up forestlands.
The timber mills were shutting down, but the old mill district began evolving into what today is a ritzy shopping district with an REI, a spa and a designer jewelry store. When a judge removed him from a case one day, Coyner’s startling outburst in the courtroom led Crabtree to decide it was time to terminate Coyner, who responded, he said, with a death threat.
Even then, Coyner was regularly welcoming people who had lost their housing to stay at his small house or out in the yard. But without a job, he was falling behind on his mortgage, and the bank began foreclosure proceedings in 2012. Things were not going that well between Coyner and Edwards, and in spring 2022, he moved out of the cabin and was once again on his own.