Pendleton residents’ mounting frustrations with homelessness found an outlet at a city council meeting on Tuesday.

Members of a new business-backed group called Neighbors for a Better Pendleton unveiled their plan to address homelessness at the meeting. More than 150 people packed the city council chambers. Some spilled out into the hallway, their eyes glued to their phones as they followed the debate over the city’s livestream. Pendleton Mayor McKennon McDonald said it was the highest attended meeting in her 11 years on the city council.

Neighbors for a Better Pendleton had already gone on record with a proposal to make zoning changes that would limit the expansion of social services in the city’s downtown. The group put forth more ideas at the meeting, proposing a suite of policies that revolve around the incarceration and removal of certain unhoused people.

The group had plenty of support.

Several downtown business owners and residents recounted times where they dealt with break-ins, urine and feces in front of their stores and homes and public drug use, all events they attributed to people living on the streets.

But other residents disagreed with the proposed policy changes.

Christine Monahan fought through tears as she stepped to the podium.

She said she was currently living at the Promise Inn, an emergency shelter in the downtown area.

“I’m sticking up for my people, my street family,” she said. “I call them my street family because they’re there for me, they’ve helped me the times that I needed.”

She said the city should focus on building a new soup kitchen and more shelter beds.

Monahan and other residents argued that the proposals from Neighbors for a Better Pendleton would only serve to make the problems in Pendleton worse, vilifying unhoused residents and excluding them from the process.

Representing Neighbors for a Better Pendleton, local attorney Patrick Gregg said the group did not have a problem with all people experiencing homelessness or the organizations that serve them.

Gregg said his group was organized around the idea of improving Pendleton’s safety and livability. He named about a dozen prominent residents and downtown business owners who were a part of the group.

“There’s problems with sanitation, there’s problems with crime, and it’s an economic drag on the businesses that are down there,” he said.

Gregg said the city council should work toward increasing Pendleton and Umatilla County’s capacity for incarceration and the removal of unhoused people accused of crimes.

In addition to the proposed zoning change, Neighbors for a Better Pendleton wants the city and county to increase the number of beds at the Umatilla County Jail, create a program that would transport “transient offenders” to their community of origin and a “streamlined protocol” that would allow law enforcement to upgrade “repeat or high level offenses” to felonies so they would be handled by the district attorney rather than in municipal court.

Under the group’s plan, a committee including various local government officials and service providers would meet on a biweekly basis.

“With the number of voters you have in this room, it’s very clear there’s a lot of people who take this as a serious problem,” he said. “Serious problems require serious solutions.”

Some business owners who turned out in support of the proposals say they’re dealing with issues that are both unsafe and bad for business in a town that relies on tourism to support its economy.

“Once a month, I have a customer step into my shop and say, ‘I am never coming back to this dirty little hole again,’” said Richard Stapleman, a bootmaker with a store in the downtown core.

Beyond material and safety concerns, many supporters said Pendleton was taking a reputational hit because of its unhoused residents. To them, Pendleton wasn’t the same community they recognized from even a few years ago.

Jim Cheney, the owner of a Pendleton meat processing company, suggested the city find a vacant building to use as a mental hospital.

“Maybe you can do something about it, because the main thing we need to protect in this town is our image,” Cheney said.

Pendleton resident Elizabeth Lewis said up until recently, she worked as an attorney for the Eviction Defense Project, an Oregon Law Center program that offered free legal services to low-income tenants facing eviction, before the Legislature slashed its budget this year and she changed jobs. She said most of the people she worked with as an advocate were in the process of losing their homes because a layoff or disability led to a loss of income.

“The housing crisis is at its core an economic problem, and the people in our community who are unhoused are not outsiders, but people just like you and me with different financial circumstances,” she said.

Gwendolyn Alexander said she encounters many homeless residents during her job as a bus driver for the city. Her main concern was, “I get my ear talked off for 45 minutes.” After learning of Neighbors for a Better Pendleton’s efforts, she said she took an afternoon to distribute water to unhoused residents in the downtown area.

“I felt safer walking our streets downtown, talking to our homeless population than I have sitting in this room tonight,” Alexander said. “The message I have for this group is simply, be better neighbors and house the homeless.”

After three hours of testimony, Pendleton city officials did some expectation setting.

Tony Nelson, a lieutenant with the Pendleton Police Department, said police are making plenty of arrests when they can. But he added that state and federal laws mean police can’t arrest or remove unhoused people in every situation.

McDonald, the mayor, had the last word during a night when no other city councilors spoke. She didn’t commit to any of Neighbors for a Better Pendleton’s proposals, but she did promise that the city would continue to work on the issues.

“I’m not gonna have an answer for you today or tomorrow or likely next week, but it’s something that is at the forefront of the council in the months to come,” she said.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/08/21/pendleton-housing-homelessness-city-counci-politics-shelter/