This year, state lawmakers in at least three states—Oklahoma, Florida and Kentucky—have passed laws banning public camping.
The laws followed a legislative push from conservative think tank Cicero Institute, which has lobbied for similar laws passed in Texas and Georgia.
But homeless service providers like Meghan Mueller, CEO of the Homeless Alliance in Oklahoma City, have said these laws dehumanize unsheltered people and aren’t a solution to homelessness.
“In fact,” she said, “bills like this can actually make it harder to end homelessness.”
Mueller and other homeless service providers told Streetlight that after people are arrested on camping ban charges, they’ll be “right back where they were before the arrest.”
“Only now,” Mueller said, “they have fines and charges that will make it that much harder for social service agencies, such as the Homeless Alliance, to intervene and connect them to housing.”
Service providers and other advocates have said giving unsheltered people fines and jail time will make it harder for them to get housing later. Camping bans also make it harder for outreach workers to find people who were previously living in cleared camps, sometimes causing their clients to miss housing opportunities.
“The lack of affordable housing is what is driving homelessness, and laws like this that criminalize homelessness don’t do anything to address that root cause,” said Sabine Brown, a senior policy analyst focused on housing at the Oklahoma Policy Institute in Tulsa. “Unfortunately, as we see rents getting higher and we see a bigger disconnect between housing costs and wages, this is going to continue to get worse.”
Camping ban bills in three other states didn’t pass
Local and state laws like these have fallen under the shadow of a Supreme Court case about whether camping and sleeping bans violate the constitution. Some communities have paused efforts to pass new camping bans until the Supreme Court makes a ruling in the case.
The new state laws draw from Cicero Institute’s model legislation on camping bans, which the organization says aims to “fix bad incentives, hold service agencies accountable for results and get the homeless the help they need instead of doubling down on failure.”
The model legislation says it’s based on a 2022 Missouri camping ban, which Cicero lobbied for. The bill had initially focused on reducing requirements for county financial statements, but its final version included a ban on sleeping and camping on state land.
[ Read more: Lack of shelter beds emerges as key issue in Supreme Court camping ban case ]
Last year, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled the law violated the state constitution, which requires bills to only cover one subject and to clearly state that topic in their titles.
This year, Cicero-influenced bills were also introduced in Iowa, Wisconsin and Kansas, but didn’t pass.
Oklahoma’s camping ban is expected to make housing unsheltered people harder in a tight market
Oklahoma’s camping ban, which became law in late April, makes camping on state property a misdemeanor with a fine of up to $50 or up to 15 days in jail.
Service providers often say fines and even minor criminal charges pose barriers to housing. In tight housing markets like Oklahoma City’s, Mueller said, that effect is heightened.
“There are enough people in the market who need units that landlords are not desperate to rent their properties,” she said. “They can be quite selective, and oftentimes what that means for our clients is that they’re getting either completely priced out of the market or they’re left out of the market because of those barriers, such as (misdemeanors or felonies) on their records.”
Under Oklahoma’s law, police can’t cite someone on a first offense unless they refuse assistance from an officer. The law says that assistance might include transportation to a shelter, food pantry or another place where they can get help.
It’s not clear yet what assistance police will offer, and the Oklahoma City Police Department didn’t provide an interview or information on how officers will enforce the law by press time.
[ Read more: Homeless shelters don’t have enough beds in many communities ]
David Delgado, chief collaboration officer for the Homeless Alliance, expressed concerns about police transports to shelter, during which unsheltered people are handcuffed, he said.
“That is just a situation that could further traumatize someone and just dehumanize their already difficult living situation,” he said.
A city-run program called Key to Home has an encampment rehousing initiative that Delgado said has housed about 130 people so far. The program sends outreach workers from local service organizations to camps to connect them with resources and housing. After that effort is complete, the camp is cleared.
“Instead of these punitive measures and sending police out who are ill-equipped to deal with the situations that people who are experiencing homelessness are dealing with,” Delgado said, “the right approach is … to not just displace people further or move them down the road, but actually solve their situation and get them into permanent and supportive housing, where they’ll have access to case managers and community resources so that they can sustain themselves.”
Kentucky’s law allows residents to use force to defend their property against campers
Kentucky’s camping ban is part of a detailed criminal justice package that became law in mid-May after Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed it and state lawmakers overrode the veto.
The law, which goes into effect in July, makes it a class B misdemeanor to camp on streets, sidewalks and other places, like cemeteries. Police can’t charge people on their first offense unless they refuse to stop camping.
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The camping ban “creates this unending cycle of incarceration, being unhoused, being fined and it also just doesn’t make any sense,” said Kungu Njuguna, a policy strategist for the ACLU of Kentucky. “If someone is unhoused, it’s likely due to a lack of financial resources. Why are we fining people we know to be chronically unhoused? How does that help them get housing and prevent people from sleeping on the streets?”
In his veto message, Beshear said the package includes “some good parts,” like requiring firearms used in murders to be destroyed. But, he said, the measure is an “unwieldy bill that would criminalize homelessness and significantly increase incarceration costs without any additional appropriation.”
The law allows local governments to identify places “separate from any area frequently used for public purposes” for a temporary camp for unsheltered people. The law says the campsites should provide access to water and bathroom facilities, like portable toilets.
Unlike other state camping bans reviewed by Streetlight, Kentucky’s says physical force to prevent unlawful camping on a person’s property is justifiable if the camper has been told to leave and has used or threatened force against the property owner.
However, Njuguna said this part of the ban isn’t a significant change to Kentucky law, which already allows self-defense if someone is protecting their home.
“The fear that we have is that might provoke people to take action that they otherwise wouldn’t,” Njuguna said.
Florida’s law creates guidelines for county-run campsites
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an anti-camping bill into law in March. The law, which goes into effect in October, essentially bans camping on public property. But it does so by requiring counties and cities to not allow such camps unless the site has been designated by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF). The law allows counties to create camps for unsheltered people on county or city property and creates guidelines for the camps, which can stay open for up to a year.
[ Read more: A record number of renters can’t afford housing, a new study finds ]
The law makes DCF responsible for approving and inspecting the camps. To get a camp certified, a county must prove that it doesn’t have enough shelter capacity to serve people experiencing homelessness and that the camp won’t negatively affect property values or security of residential and commercial properties in the county. The camp can’t be next to residential properties or “negatively affect the safety of children.”
Camp residents must have access to running water, bathrooms, mental health and substance use treatment resources—but those standards aren’t required for fiscally constrained counties that can show complying with those requirements would cause them financial hardship. In Florida, fiscally constrained counties are in rural areas and have low tax revenue.
Starting next year, under Florida’s anti-camping law, residents, business owners and the Attorney General can sue counties or cities that allow camping and sleeping on public property. If the party suing prevails, the court may require the county to pay their court costs, attorney fees and other expenses related to the lawsuit.
Martha Are, CEO of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, has concerns that moving unsheltered people, including domestic violence survivors, youth and families with children, to a single, publicly known campsite could create safety issues.
“If it is known a community has a location that has that many vulnerable people in one site, then predators will make their way to that site, and so you run a high risk of revictimization of people,” she said.
Are said her organization’s leadership council passed a resolution saying it wouldn’t spend its continuum of care funding on camps.
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With the city of Orlando, Homeless Services Network of Central Florida is in the beginning stages of developing a new emergency shelter. Are said they’re currently looking for a location for the shelter.
“However, finding a shelter (location) like that would still be easier than finding a location for an encampment that meets the legislative requirements,” she said, adding that developing a campsite can be more expensive than building a shelter if the site doesn’t have access to infrastructure like running water or electric service.
Camping bans arrive during a time of strained shelters and an affordable housing shortage
Many communities have fewer shelter beds available than the number of people who need them, complicating the idea that unsheltered people just need incentives, like camping bans, to get help.
Brown and Oklahoma service providers have expressed concerns that the state’s law doesn’t have stronger requirements to help people before fining and jailing unsheltered people.
“While it might sound like a good idea to some to connect folks to resources through a law like this, the fact is we don’t have enough resources for folks,” Brown said.
Emergency shelters in Oklahoma City and Tulsa often run at full capacity.
[ Read more: Why debt can make it harder to find housing in Oklahoma ]
A recent Streetlight analysis of last year’s point-in-time count data estimates Oklahoma City had about 200 unsheltered people for whom no year-round shelter beds were available. In Tulsa and Tulsa County, there were an estimated 350 people for whom no beds were open.
“We do not have enough beds in our city or state for everyone who’s experiencing homelessness at any given time,” Mueller said. “If every single person in Oklahoma City experiencing homelessness showed up at the Homeless Alliance and said, ‘I want to come indoors. Give me a bed,’ we couldn’t do it because they don’t exist. … The notion that there are places for people to go and they’re just not willing to access those resources is inherently false.”
Read the new state camping bans
- Florida’s law (goes into effect in October)
- Kentucky’s law (goes into effect in July)
- Oklahoma’s law (goes into effect in November)
- Cicero Institute’s model legislation that influenced the laws
Connect with resources mentioned in this story
- In Oklahoma City: Learn more about the Homeless Alliance, how to get help and how to get involved
- Learn more about the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, how to get help and how to get involved
- Learn more about the ACLU of Kentucky and how to get involved
Contact Streetlight editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@streetlightnews.org. Follow her reporting by joining our newsletter.
Streetlight, previously BigIfTrue.org, is a nonprofit news site based in Oklahoma City. Our mission is to report stories that envision a more equitable world and energize our readers to improve their communities. Donate to support our work here.
