Homeless in city where he was once mayor
Vortex of crises led to job loss, foreclosure, destitution
CBEND, Ore. raig Coyner, a man from one of the most prominent families in Bend, Ore., rose through a legal career to become a mayor who helped turn the town into one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities.
But by age 75, Coyner was occupying a bed at the shelter on Second Street, his house lost to foreclosure, his toes gnarled by frostbite, his belongings limited to a tub of tattered clothing and books.
Coyner had been pulled through a vortex of the same crises that were churning through many boom towns across the West: untreated mental illness, widespread addiction, soaring housing costs and a waning sense of community. After a life spent as a pillar of Bend’s civic life, Coyner had somehow reached a point of nearly total destitution, surrounded by the prosperity he had helped create.
Once a tiny timber town, Bend has undergone a striking transformation in recent decades as moneyed newcomers discovered a getaway that managed to be both trendy and a throwback to what everyone imagines smalltown America can be.
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 finally found refuge had been over capacity for months.
Coyner was born into a family committed to civic duty. 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.
By the mid-1970s, after getting drafted for a stint in the Marines, marrying his college girlfriend and getting a law degree in Portland, Coyner returned to Bend, following his father into a career as a lawyer and settling into a compact one-story home, purchased for $25,500 in the northeast corner of town.
The couple had two daughters but split up a few years later. When he and his ex-wife both remarried, he lost touch with his daughters.
In 1981, Coyner joined the City Council, and three years later, his fellow council members elected him as mayor. It was a time of tumult for the city. The global recession had gutted the timber industry. Locals feared the community was on the path to becoming a ghost town. Coyner saw it as a time to transition Bend’s economy to something that would harness the surrounding natural beauty in new ways, welcoming visitors who sought to ski, hike, camp and bike. He and fellow council members began drawing up plans to expand the sewer system and improve road capacity.
Some people were wary of such swift change, and in 1992, Coyner was ousted from the City Council by rivals seeking to rein in growth. It did not work: Over the subsequent decade, the county’s population grew faster than anywhere else in the state.
Coyner returned to his work as a defense lawyer, but his personality was changing from amiable to caustic, said Tom Crabtree, who eventually fired him after a startling outburst in the courtroom.
The problem was an emerging bipolar disorder, compounded by alcohol used to cope.
A few years after losing his job, Coyner was arrested, accused of damaging a woman’s car and resisting a police officer. The state bar suspended his license in response to complaints. In 2008, came the worst blow of all: His second wife died after an illness.
Police encounters twice led him to being placed briefly placed in psychiatric care, and he struggled to get his life back on track. But without a job, he was falling behind on his mortgage, and the bank began foreclosure proceedings in 2012.
When deputies eventually removed Coyner from the house, he crashed for a bit on a friend’s couch, slept in a truck, spent some time in an abandoned cabin. In spring 2022, he found himself camping — sometimes along a road he had helped get built, other times on the property of a group that served homeless veterans — an organization where he was once a board member.
Last fall, as overnight temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, a homeless friend found Coyner in a yellow tent near the Walmart. His shoes were soaking wet, his feet so frostbitten he was hobbling with pain when he tried to stand up. He was treated at a hospital but was back in January for an amputation surgery, which led to complications, including a stroke.
Days later, on Feb. 14, Coyner died.