By Janet Unruh, WENA Board Member
Note: The name of Sara's former employer has been changed.
The humane approach
When Sara led a site remediation team to evict homeless camp residents and remove the debris, she believed she was doing necessary work. Less than a year later, she had quit that job, and was instead helping the people she had once evicted.
The encampment was in the Thousand Acres Park, a forested area northeast of Troutdale on the Sandy River Delta, not far from the Wilkes East neighborhood. The park includes 50 acres of land owned by the Oregon Department of State Lands (DSL), next to 1,500 acres owned by the U.S. Forest Service.
The residents had been living in camps on the DSL land—some of them, for as long as 25 years. In 2025, DSL decided to evict them. It was necessary because, according to DSL, the land is not suitable for habitation because of wildfire risk, flooding, and environmental degradation. So, in June 2025, DSL sent hazmat contractors to force the residents out and clean up the area.
This brute-force approach failed because the camp residents and their sympathizers erected barriers and trenches, and fought the contractors. Several activists were pepper-sprayed, including one who was there to video the proceedings. The governor suspended the cleanup efforts while the incident was being investigated.
DSL then decided to take a more humane approach. They hired Egret Site Remediation, Inc. (ESR) because it was a company that would work with the residents to gain their trust and persuade them to pack up and leave.
Sara (last name withheld) worked for ESR. She told me she believed camps should be removed because of biohazards, human waste, unsafe living conditions, and environmental damage. But she also believes removals should be carried out with dignity, transparency, and respect for the people affected.
Sara had worked on several large cleanups before she led the cleanup crew at Thousand Acres. However, Thousand Acres turned out to be different from other cleanups because people had lived there in the woods for many years and they had an established community that they regarded as family. Thus, the humanity of the situation was much more emotional than the other cleanups.
What can I do to help?
I met Sara on NextDoor after the camps at Thousand Acres had been removed. At that point, she had resigned from ESR because of a change in the company culture. When she began working for ESR, part of the company’s mission was to bring an empathetic approach to the work, and to do so they hired people who have lived experience. But over time, management became less humane and more profit-oriented.
Sara herself had had a tough life, and she had a gift for defusing tense situations. This was to serve her well.
Sara had connections in the activist community, and before she began the work on Thousand Acres, she contacted someone she knew, and he got a few of the residents to agree to meet with her. Then, when she went in to the camps, she attended a “council meeting” of the residents. These meetings were held every two weeks to coordinate efforts, discuss problems, and help each other.
At the meeting, Sara told them, “Listen, somebody's going to clean this place up. And I'm telling you guys, I have a couple of weeks to convince you guys that you want it to be me and the company that I represent, because other people would be coming in here and spraying you with mace.” She told them other people wouldn’t care about their things. Other people wouldn’t hold value to their property. Other people, like the contractors that came last time, would come in with a chip on their shoulder. They would be nervous and scared because of what they heard about how the residents fought back in June. They would come in ready to tear down homes. Only they would not view them as homes. She told them, “We’re not like that. We’re respectful.” Then she said, “What can I do to help?”
As one resident told KATU, "I mean, she's a good person. She has a shitty job to do. Nowhere are you ever gonna go throw people out of their homes and be received well. She's done a hell of a job of getting our respect and understanding, and she has got a thing to do, so she's going to do it.”
Winning trust
Sara organized weekly meetings with people at the camps, and they cooperated with her. They showed her some camps that had been abandoned and the ESR team cleaned those up first. Then, she began working with the residents, helping them sort their things, get packed up, and throw away trash.
Sara got to know the residents. Her background was like theirs and they respected that. The experience of working with the residents of Thousand Acres affected her much more deeply than anything she had done for ESR until then. As time went on, she began to feel like a mercenary who betrayed her people. She felt empathy for them; so much so that she called them “her tribe.”
During this time, Sara began to have conflicts with others on the ESR management team. She felt that the company culture had become harsher in its approach to cleaning up camps. It was not the same company that she had respected in the past. After several escalating disagreements, she accepted a mutual separation with severance—which she hasn’t received.
Sara’s husband had been terminated from ESR because of conflicts with management earlier in the year.
Eviction day
From August until late in September, while Sara worked with the residents to help them pack up, social workers tried to find housing for them. Residents knew they had to leave, and the cleanup efforts moved along, but no deadline had been given.
Suddenly, on September 26, DSL announced that the residents had to vacate immediately. Legal notices were posted informing residents that the area would be closed on October 1st—five days later. By that time, some residents had been placed in housing—about 14 people—but 35 others had turned down temporary housing that offered bunk beds and no privacy. They had nowhere to go.
The task of packing up and moving on short notice was overwhelming, and there was a sense of panic. Sara and her husband both have trucks, and they had already been helping residents move their belongings to storage, but they sped up their efforts, even making trips from the camps to storage at night. Still, they couldn’t help everyone, and many ran out of time.
On October 1, 2025, DSL, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, and more than 100 law enforcement officers, carried out the closure of the Thousand Acres encampment. They allowed Sara to go in and give everyone a one-hour warning. It was a cold, rainy day. The remaining 35 residents gathered up what they could and left the place that had been their home.
When the officers swept the camp sites, residents’ possessions were transported to a warehouse. Residents were told to get their belongings in a month. But the rules required an address for the delivery of belongings. Sara offered her address for deliveries, but that wasn’t acceptable. Because of this, most of the former residents lost their belongings. When this happens to homeless people, they often lose their medications, IDs, papers needed for social services, contact information for friends and family, letters, photos, and keepsakes. There was no follow up from the Homeless Services Department. All outreach ended.
I won’t let them fail
“We’ve just been running from one place to the next. ‘You can’t be here, you can’t be here, you can’t be here,’ [they say]. Well, where can we be? That’s the question no one seems to be able to answer,” said one of the former residents. There were no good options, only the streets.
And then, quietly, many returned to Thousand Acres. Only this time, they encamped on Forest Service land, which is outside DSL’s jurisdiction, and therefore they aren’t threatened by another DSL eviction. Sara knows where they are and continues to visit them—not to prepare them for eviction, but to collaborate on plans for the future.
Why did the former residents return? Sara put it this way: that pain brought them together, and no matter what their stories may have been, they were welcomed into the family. Once again, they live together and help each other—and this is more important than shelter and a normal life. For them, Thousand Acres is a place to heal.
And what about Sara? Over the course of less than a year, Sara quit a job that she had believed was beneficial to society, and became an advocate for the Thousand Acres residents. Today, Sara and her husband operate their own cleanup company, but they no longer remove homeless encampments.
Sara told me she has no regrets and believes that everything happened for a reason. She believes the Thousand Acres residents could live on land somewhere legally and govern themselves. Right now, she doesn’t see how they can get there, but she believes it’s possible and she has confidence in them.
“I won’t let them fail,” she told me.
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