It took months for Pendleton city staff to negotiate a tentative settlement to resolve a lawsuit over the city’s homelessness policies. Ultimately, it took only three hours of public pressure before it unraveled.

The Pendleton City Council voted 5-3 on Monday to reject the settlement, and plaintiffs said Tuesday that they will move forward with the lawsuit after the city’s own attorney said Pendleton was likely to lose in court.

The city will have a tight turnaround time to pivot to a defense, with the city currently required to respond to the lawsuit by Wednesday.

Hundreds of residents packed the main hall of the Pendleton Convention Center to watch the city council meeting, and hours of debate showed that the issue of homelessness in Pendleton is far from a settled matter.

Defending the settlement

On behalf of five unhoused residents, the Oregon Law Center and Legal Aid Services of Oregon filed a lawsuit in state court last October. They alleged that the rules around public sleeping were unfair, hard to follow and left them few places to sleep at night.

Rather than defend the lawsuit in court, city staff opted to open settlement negotiations with the plaintiffs’ attorneys last year. City manager Robb Corbett and Chad Jacobs, the city’s hired legal counsel, defended the approach in front of a skeptical audience.

Jacobs said state law was not on the city’s side, and negotiating the settlement would allow the city to avoid costly litigation and allow city officials to focus on addressing homelessness directly.

The proposed settlement would have expanded the resting period in designated areas from eight hours in the evening to 24 hours. The city’s current ordinance outlines where people can sleep outside between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. while banning them from sleeping on streets, sidewalks, alleys and other public rights-of-way. The council amended it in 2025 to ban sleeping in public facilities or buildings, which included benches at bus stops.

Additionally, the city would have waived fines for violations of the city’s existing resting ordinance and set aside $120,000 for expanded sheltering and day center services.

While data is scant, there has been an uptick in visible homelessness in recent years. There is a seasonal warming station and temporary housing for unhoused residents, but permanent, affordable housing is in short supply.

Corbett referenced Grants Pass, the Southern Oregon town that defended its homelessness enforcement policies all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. While the city won that case, Corbett said Grants Pass was subsequently sued under state law and entered into a settlement.

Jacobs said if a state court rules against Pendleton in the lawsuit, it could cost the city more than $250,000, money that would come out of the city’s general fund rather than the city’s liability insurance.

“I’m telling you, based on how this has played out in other jurisdictions, the city is likely going to lose,” he said. “How I define a win is something that improves the community and something that makes this a better situation.”

Jacobs delivered his arguments to an unreceptive audience, with some members occasionally heckling him as he spoke.

‘Who’s protecting us?’

When the city council opened up the floor to public comment, Patrick Gregg was the first person at the microphone.

A local attorney, Gregg is a leader for Neighbors for a Better Pendleton, a community group that advocates for stricter homelessness enforcement. The group rallied residents to a city council meeting last year to urge the council to adopt its proposed policies, which include banning new social services from the downtown area and increasing the city’s capacity to incarcerate unhoused people convicted of crimes.

Standing before the council nearly a year later, Gregg said the settlement was the opposite of what Neighbors for a Better Pendleton wanted. He added that the money set aside for homelessness services would just be the tip of the iceberg.

“Let me be as clear as I can,” he said. “This is going to be a multi-million dollar settlement over the course of its time. Take it to the bank.”

The people who spoke after Gregg mostly agreed with him. They urged the council to delay a decision until the public had more time to digest the settlement or go back to the table to renegotiate the agreement. But more often than not, they wanted the council to scrap the settlement entirely so the city could fight the lawsuit in court.

“All of this seems designed to protect the city,” resident John Norman said. “So who’s protecting us?

In an echo of last year’s meeting, the complaints about homelessness were met with a smaller opposition that defended unhoused residents.

Karen Power told the council that she taught in public schools for more than 30 years. When she heard unhoused residents referred to as “those people,” she remembered them as her former students.

“To keep saying, ‘Just fight it, fight it;’ it’s not a solution,” she said.

Before they voted on the settlement, every councilor made a statement. Councilor John Thomas said he would not only vote against the settlement but he would be in favor of the city joining a class action lawsuit against Gov. Tina Kotek for the state’s homelessness laws.

The city’s recent election – where a slate backed by Neighbors for a Better Pendleton won four seats – also had an effect on the council’s vote. Councilor Sean Butler noted that he had lost his race to a challenger endorsed by Neighbors for a Better Pendleton, and since the group was against the settlement, he would vote against it too. The newly elected candidates won’t take office until January.

Councilor Carole Innes, who volunteers to feed unhoused and hungry residents, was one of three councilors who voted for the settlement. She said many of the complaints weren’t relevant to legal questions surrounding the city’s resting ordinance.

“I believe in the rule of law,” she said.

The crowd had thinned significantly by the time the council voted three hours into the meeting, but its members still received a hearty applause when they voted to reject the settlement.

The Oregon Law Center was less enthusiastic in its response.

“It is dismaying that Pendleton City Council chose to reject a settlement that would have improved conditions for people experiencing homelessness,” Oregon Law Center legal fellow Allison Nasson said in a statement. “The real issue here is that Pendleton’s policies punish homeless people with fines, jail time, or banishment for activities that other citizens can safely do. The five women in this case have suffered because of those policies, and will be moving forward with their claims in court.”

Even with the settlement scuttled, the city’s homelessness policies could still be forced to get more lenient.

The plaintiffs filed an injunction to suspend the city’s public sleeping policies until the issue could be litigated, but a hearing was postponed while both sides negotiated the settlement. A hearing for a judge to consider the injunction has not yet been scheduled.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/30/pendleton-city-council-rejects-homelessness-settlement/