Language in the newly modified House Bill 437 would implement a statewide homeless camping ban. The onus for the ban is on local jurisdictions, like counties and cities, which could not authorize or allow any person to publicly camp or sleep on any public property.
Those governments could designate a specific property to allow public camping for no longer than a year, but they’d be required to maintain it and provide security. It mirrors language at the federal level, where HUD's newest grant application for homeless services rewards jurisdictions that remove encampments.
At the committee hearing this afternoon, Republican State Senator Brian Biggs, who presented the amendment to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said $4.4 billion in existing HUD homeless assistance grants available nationally could help deal with the problem.
Asked about how to immediately deal with the unhoused before any funding comes through for shelters, Biggs said, "They’re gonna have to have a designated area. Most cities, large cities [...] they have homeless shelters, and a lot of those, hopefully they are housed, but if they don't have homeless shelters, that's when they would do the designated area."
The state follows a push from the federal level to move the unhoused from the streets into encampments. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last year pushing for those changes, which are now coming down to the state level.
The Judiciary Committee Chair asked if it was necessary to implement this ban to apply for the $4.4 billion in grants, and Biggs responded, "That is correct. The HUD secretary wants these guardrails up where they have a plan of action to move forward, and, like I said, this is just a start."
In many rural areas, there are limited or no homeless shelters available for the unhoused, and many cities have shelters that are near full or at capacity and cannot accommodate the unsheltered homeless remaining in the street. In the Wilmington area, for instance, 53% of the unhoused population was unsheltered at the last point in time count.
The bill also allows residents and business owners to sue a local government that allows camping. The bill does not come with any additional funding to local jurisdictions for added policing or services in a designated areas.
