Pendleton declares emergency to allow first year-round homeless shelter

Resident complaints and a lawsuit have for the past year pressured the City of Pendleton to tackle homelessness. The city council responded this week by declaring an emergency.

The move opens the door for the city’s first year-round shelter. On the heels of the council’s decision, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a group of unhoused residents who alleged the city’s rules for resting or sleeping on public property violated state law.

Pendleton is only the latest community in the state to fend off legal challenges and try to get residents off the streets by supporting more sheltering services.

The council’s Tuesday declaration will allow a local nonprofit to convert its seasonal warming station into a year-round homelessness shelter. The project’s long-term viability, both financially and politically, is uncertain. Those that can’t sleep in the shelter still have to comply with the city’s rules upheld in court Wednesday.

Related: Pendleton City Council rejects homelessness settlement amid public pressure

What to do about the broader problems confronting the Eastern Oregon city, the judge noted, fell outside his authority.

“This decision, like any future decision in this case, cannot remedy the underlying societal problem of homelessness,” Umatilla County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Hill wrote in his ruling.

Even with Pendleton’s shelter becoming year-round, shelter beds of any kind are sparse across Eastern Oregon.

Umatilla County, where Pendleton is, added 76 shelter beds in recent years, about half as many as it would take to serve all the people believed to be homeless. In Grant and Harney counties, which have higher rates of homelessness, the disparity is more stark, with zero shelter beds.

A revamped shelter for a growing population

Pendleton Warming Station leaders set an ambitious goal when they opened the city’s seasonal shelter in 2011: end local homelessness within a decade.

As of last year though, the shelter recorded its highest use ever. Organizers say most guests had connections to Pendleton and many were lifelong residents.

“So much for ending homelessness in 10 years,” shelter organizer Dwight Johnson told the city council Tuesday.

Johnson is the board chair for Neighbor 2 Neighbor Pendleton, a nonprofit that has already secured a state grant to fund the shelter expansion. The group needed the council’s signoff to temporarily bypass building and fire codes.

Now the nonprofit has 90 days, and potentially up to year, to operate the shelter while it addresses code compliance issues.

Johnson said the $568,000 state grant will pay for more staff to run the 27-bed overnight facility.

Even after its expected Oct. 1 opening date, funding beyond the first year will depend on priorities in the Oregon Legislature, Johnson said. His nonprofit will also have to maintain its support from a city council that’s being overhauled in January.

Related: Pendleton wants homelessness lawsuit thrown out after tweaking city ‘resting’ rules

Four councilors-elect campaigned around taking more hardline approaches to policing homelessness. Cody Jones was a part of that slate, and at the meeting this week he questioned whether an expanded shelter would lead to results.

Pendleton’s public meetings have in recent months been dominated by residents urging officials to limit where services for homelessness can be located and increase police enforcement in the downtown area. On Tuesday though, most of the people who testified argued in favor of the shelter. Many highlighted their experiences working directly with unhoused residents or their own close brushes with homelessness.

“You do not have to invent the wheel. That’s already been done,” resident Matthew Henry said. “You merely have to replicate it and choose life, dignity, and basic humanity for those who are being denied it.”

‘We’re just trying to survive’

Approving the year-round evening shelter is not a cure-all for Pendleton officials trying to solve homelessness, and neither is a judge siding with the city in the lawsuit dismissed this week.

“We still have significant problems in our community that need resolution, and we need to continue to work toward solutions,” City Manager Robb Corbett said in a written statement about the case.

Still, he called the ruling “good news” for a city that since last year has been defending itself from claims that its rules for when and where people can sleep outside are inhumane.

After settlement negotiations failed amid public pressure, city officials repealed their original policy and replaced it with a new “sheltering” ordinance that is slightly friendlier to unhoused residents. City attorneys argued that the changes made the case “moot.”

Hill, the circuit court judge, sided with the city but still had his concerns.

He described Pendleton’s original resting ordinance as “a return to fragmentary, exclusionary practices more reminiscent of the 1700’s.” He said the old ordinance violated state law, and although he was ruling in the city’s favor because of the amendments city councilors made to it in July, the lawsuit played a role in creating change.

“The Plaintiff’s concerns have merit, and the court is concerned with whether the Defendants are merely changing horses to carry the same rider,” he wrote.

The unhoused residents who sued the city were disappointed in the ruling.

“Even though tents are banned everywhere in the city under the new rules — just like they were under the old rules — I’ll have to use one,” plaintiff Sara Shaver said in a statement. “It’s disappointing that the court didn’t do anything to help us. We’re just trying to survive.”