PENDLETON — While the agenda gave the discussion the dry title of “Use of public right of way for overnight stay,” the Pendleton City Council used their Aug. 11 workshop to return to one of the city’s most contentious pre-pandemic issues — homelessness.

The council deliberated definitions and terminology, but the city seems headed toward allowing homeless people to sleep in some public spaces under a restricted set of conditions.

A year ago, the council passed an ordinance banning slumber in public buildings or on public benches, but refrained from approving a more sweeping prohibition on camping in public while they studied the issue further.

The city formed an ad hoc committee on homelessness, but the council’s self-imposed 90-day deadline came and went without further action. An idea to create a city-sanctioned homeless campsite fizzled once the city’s insurance company disapproved of the concept.

But in light of two federal court rulings, the city council is reconsidering a ban on camping within city limits.

In 2018, a federal court ruled that the city of Boise, Idaho, couldn’t prohibit people from sleeping outdoors without providing an alternative. More recently, the courts ruled that the city of Grants Pass was violating its homeless residents’ Eighth Amendment rights by fining them for sleeping in public spaces.

City Manager Robb Corbett said the city could still ban urban camping in public spaces if it differentiated between “camping” and “resting.”

Under the city’s definitions, “camping” is establishing a tent or some other temporary structure with the intent of living there.

But the city’s proposal would still allow homeless people to “rest” in public right-of-ways like sidewalks, paths and parking lots, provided they do it in a set time period during the night and remove all of their belongings and waste once that time period ends.

“If someone is going to lay their head down and rest on their public right-of-way, it’s legal within a certain amount of time, but they can’t establish a campsite on public rights-of-way,” Corbett said.

While homeless people have tended to congregate and sleep in the city’s parks, especially those near the Umatilla River, Corbett said the intent was to prohibit sleeping in parks, including the Pendleton River Parkway.

Councilor Carole Innes worried that the designated sleeping period of midnight to 6 a.m. in the draft was too stringent, especially in the winter time when the sun sets early.

While Councilor Becky Marks reminded Innes that the Pendleton Warming Station was supposed to serve the homeless during the winter, Innes said the warming station is facing its own set of challenges.

Run by the nonprofit Neighbor 2 Neighbor Pendleton, the warming station has often acted as a support beam for Pendleton’s homeless service infrastructure, offering the local homeless population a safe place to sleep during the cold winter months.

But like many other services, the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing the warming station’s ability to operate.

Neighbor 2 Neighbor Executive Director Dwight Johnson said the cold weather season often pushes the warming station’s Southeast Court Avenue facility’s 28-bed capacity.

But the pandemic’s resiliency means the warming station will have to cut its capacity and also threatens Neighbor 2 Neighbor’s small pool of volunteers, many of whom are older or have underlying conditions.

Johnson said he’s working with the Community Action Program of East Central Oregon to find funding to rent hotel rooms for overflow lodgers, but he worries about the cost and whether the warming station will have enough volunteers to operate.

Johnson hopes to have an operational plan in place by the time the warming station opens in November and wants to avoid closing the warming station without an alternative for the people they serve.

“We don’t want people to stay out in the cold,” he said.