On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed cities and states to ban camping and sleeping in public. Since the landmark City of Grants Pass v. Johnson decision, over a hundred localities have passed ordinances banning homeless people from camping or sleeping in public, according to the National Homeless Law Center.
Several states, including Kentucky, Florida and Georgia, have signed statewide bans into law. North Carolina could have been next; but two days before the Supreme Court ruling’s anniversary, the legislation proposing such a ban quietly died.
Last month, House Bill 781 won the state House’s approval in a 69-42 vote that had several legislators cross party lines. But after the Senate received the bill, it sat on it until adjourning on Thursday, without even assigning it to a committee.
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For the remainder of the year, the Senate will only consider policy bills related to the budget, elections or disaster recovery, per their adjournment resolution. That effectively spells the end for HB78 — at least for this session. But policies that don’t quite make it across the finish line often return in future sessions, so it may not be the last time North Carolina lawmakers see a proposed public camping and sleeping ban.
If it does make a resurgence, several advocates and municipalities told Carolina Public Press one particular aspect of the bill is unlikely to work: a provision allowing local governments to designate a property meeting certain criteria as a temporary public camping and sleeping area for people who are homeless to stay.
‘Criminalizing homelessness’ or offering guidance?
In 2023, nine out of every 10,000 North Carolinians experienced homelessness, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. In 2024, the number of people experiencing homelessness rose 19%, according to a Department of Housing & Urban Development report.
Some areas, like Buncombe and Mecklenburg counties, have higher rates of homelessness.
North Carolina city managers and local law enforcement need help to address the growing homelessness problem, state Rep. Brian Biggs, R-Randolph, said in May when explaining House Bill 781 to fellow lawmakers.
It doesn’t “criminalize homelessness,” he said, but rather offers some beginning direction for local governments to respond.
If passed, the bill would have prohibited people from setting up tents or bedding, storing personal belongings or otherwise sleeping outdoors. Camping for recreational purposes would not have been impacted.
Under the proposal, local governments might have been sued if they allowed people to “regularly engage” in public camping or sleeping. However, each local government would have been allowed to create a temporary designated zone for people to publicly camp and sleep, as long as each area met certain criteria.
Designated zones would have had to include access to clean restrooms and running water, be safe and secure, provide access to behavioral health services, including substance abuse and mental health treatment, ban drug or alcohol use on the property, and be located in a place away from residential areas that wouldn’t negatively impact the property value of nearby property.
There was no state funding attached to the bill restricting camping and creating the designated areas restrictions.
Alyce Knaflich, founding director of a women veterans home in Asheville, doesn’t see how local governments could pay for all of this, especially considering all the rules designated zones would have needed to follow.
“I have a problem with how they’re going to arrange this,” she said. “With all the expense of making this happen, why aren’t we just providing a place, a residence to live?”
Biggs said municipalities could divert the money they’re already spending on street cleaning and emergency services related to homelessness to pay for a designated zone.
“This is not an Ozempic shot,” Biggs said. “You’re not going to lose 100 pounds taking this. It’s not going to be a fix-all, but it is guidance and gives framework for cities moving forward of how to deal with this.”
What people on the ground say about camping ban
If you want to address homelessness in any meaningful way, you’ve got to start with affordable housing, said LaTonya Agard, executive director of the North Carolina coalition to End Homelessness.
Agard is a proponent of the Housing First method, which puts people experiencing homelessness in a safe, secure, affordable place to live first, and then addresses any underlying needs.
Many people don’t realize that housing people experiencing homelessness is often less expensive than the costs associated with homelessness, like increased hospital visits and emergency services, she said.
“People on the other end of the spectrum may say that Housing First is just a black hole where we’re throwing away money, (that) it doesn’t work,” Agard said. “It’s a shame to say that when we’ve not funded it properly.”
House Bill 781’s provision allowing local governments to create designated zones for homeless people camping seems silly to Agard. Why put millions of dollars into a temporary fix when that money could be put toward permanent solutions?
Regardless, the bill’s rules make it nearly impossible to find a space for a designated zone in the first place, she said. The area can’t be near residential property or reduce the value of commercial property, so it would have to be on the outskirts somewhere. But, it also has to be close enough to required behavioral health services, which tend to be concentrated in city centers near commercial and residential properties.
Municipalities would have to find staff, including security, to oversee the property.
The bill’s language about restrictions on these designated camping areas also perpetuates harmful stereotypes about people experiencing homelessness, Agard said.
“Having this location where people can live be a place that is not going to decrease value or make people feel unsafe or be unsafe for children, there’s an inherent bias there that really feeds into this idea that this is a group of people that need to be out of the way because they’re unsafe,” she said.
Some North Carolina local governments are not pleased with the proposal either.
In a statement to Carolina Public Press, Mecklenburg County declared its opposition to the bill, on grounds that it “would create an administrative and financial burden on local government given the requirements to provide security, sanitation, behavioral health services, and to ensure residents are not in possession of illegal substances or alcohol.”
The City of Durham’s leaders have not yet conducted any discussions to identify potential properties where a designated zone could be, but plan to strengthen their local homeless response system over the next six months, according to a statement.
Many people are one crisis away from experiencing homelessness, Knaflich said. The programs designed to help often don’t until people have already fallen off the cliff, she added.
“Everyone that becomes homeless isn’t because of drugs, alcohol or a mental health crisis,” she said. “The biggest thing is they’re financially strapped. A crisis happens medically or their car breaks down. They can’t afford to get a $5,000 transmission replaced so they don’t have a car and they can’t get to work.”
Knaflich said while the solution is clear, politicians don’t seem to understand it.
“All they see is people sleeping on the street or hanging out on the street,” she said. “They don’t know what caused that.”
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