Portland leaders are preparing to fork over a six-figure sum to a public interest law firm that sued the city last year over its since-abandoned daytime ban on homeless camping.

The Oregon Law Center will receive $175,000 for attorney fees as part of a proposed deal under which it will drop the suit, records show. The Portland City Council is scheduled to review the proposal Wednesday and vote on it next week.

Wednesday’s public hearing comes just two days after city officials began enforcing a scaled-back version of the ban that no longer requires all individuals to dismantle their camps from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day.

Analysts with the City Attorney’s Office and Revenue and Financial Services Bureau said they believed the hefty payout is a “prudent” compromise that staves off risk of “an adverse court award,” according to documents filed with the proposed settlement.

In November, a federal judge ordered the city to pay $609,000 in legal fees after it settled a separate lawsuit filed by high-powered attorney John DiLorenzo that alleged Portland violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by allowing homeless people to block sidewalks.

Edward Johnson, an attorney for the Oregon Law Center who handled the camping ban case, did not respond to a request for comment.

Last summer, the Portland City Council set restrictions on when and where unhoused people could place their belongings, sit or sleep, forbidding unhoused Portlanders from camping in any public place between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Violators would have faced fines of up to $100 or 30 days in jail.

But the city’s plans to enforce that ban were stopped short in November when a Multnomah County judge issued a temporary injunction until the class action lawsuit brought by the Oregon Law Center on behalf of a group of Portlanders experiencing homelessness was resolved.

With that ban tied up in court, Wheeler proposed the scaled-back ordinance that the City Council approved in May.

The new rules require people who are offered shelter to accept it or face penalties, and it directs homeless individuals without access to shelter that they must keep their camping area tidy. The ordinance scaled back the potential of a 30-day stint behind bars to just seven days and emphasizes a preference to offer offenders diversion.

Portland began enforcing those new camping restrictions Monday.

State law, passed by majority Democrats in 2020, requires cities to “ensure the most humane treatment for removal of homeless individuals from camping sites on public property,” including providing 72 hours of advance notice. It also requires that any rules limiting the time, manner or place where homeless individuals can sleep and stay warm and dry be “objectively reasonable.”

No court has been asked to weigh in on what that means precisely.

Homelessness experts, service providers and advocates say it is inhumane to criminalize homelessness when there are not enough shelter beds to accommodate all who need one.

Federal judges in the 9th Circuit, which covers Oregon and eight other nearby states, ruled that way, using cases out of Grants Pass and Boise to assert that cities can’t cite people for sleeping or existing on public property if there are not enough shelter beds to accommodate them all.

However, in a blockbuster decision Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed lower court rulings, finding that public camping restrictions issued by southern Oregon’s Grants Pass do not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Officials in Portland, including Mayor Ted Wheeler, and elsewhere have cited Oregon’s state law as the reason they must refrain for now from cracking down on homeless individuals resting or sleeping on public property — and have called for changes to the statute.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh covers Portland city government and politics, with a focus on accountability and watchdog reporting.

Reach him at 503-294-7632

Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh

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