Earlier this week, North Carolina’s House State and Local Government Committee advanced a bill that would regulate where homeless people are allowed to sleep. House Bill 781 is similar to bills that state lawmakers have passed around the country as America’s homelessness crisis has spiraled out of control over the last decade.
So-called “camping ban” bills restrict unregulated homeless camps that appear in parks, sidewalks, abandoned lots, or other areas, requiring homeless individuals to accept beds in shelters or designated sites in which they are permitted to camp. Such policies are in line with the public’s firm, bipartisan support for regulating camping. In a 2024 poll of voters in North Carolina, more than 80% of Democrats and Republicans said that it is more compassionate for homeless people to sleep in designated camping areas than to be left to sleep on the street wherever they choose.
Despite this, many activist groups strongly opposed the bill in the committee hearing, claiming that the bill criminalizes homelessness, creates “concentration camps,” and could even kill veterans and homeless people. Finally, opponents of camping bans claim that the only reason people are homeless is because of housing costs, and thus, the only way to solve homelessness is through more affordable housing. These claims are unfounded and deceptive.
First, the available evidence from other states that have passed similar bills indicates that regulating street camping does not lead to mass incarceration of homeless people.
In fact, camping bans hardly lead to arrests at all.
In the six months following the enactment of Kentucky’s camping ban last year, data from the administrative office of the courts show that there were fewer than 250 unique interactions with law enforcement that led to citations, and only 19 people who were charged with misdemeanors. All of those were for refusing to comply with law enforcement’s directives or a separate second violation of the camping prohibition.
With 1,700 homeless Kentuckians living on the street, those misdemeanor charges represent roughly 1% of the state’s unsheltered population, and one-third of 1% of the total homeless population in Kentucky.
Another common claim from activists is that those homeless people who are charged under this policy will be saddled with criminal records that will further push them to the margins of society. But a large number of homeless people already have criminal records: a study from the University of California at San Francisco found that nearly eight in 10 homeless people have been to jail and about one in three have been to prison for felony offenses.
In North Carolina, that number is much higher. According to a recent report, as many as 67% of unsheltered homeless people living on the street and more than one in four of all homeless people in the state are registered sex offenders. Though these proportions are inflated by the likely undercounting of unsheltered homeless by the Point in Time Count.
To put the alarming number of homeless sex offenders in perspective, North Carolina’s unsheltered population consists of only 14% families, 4% elderly, 3% veterans, and 3% survivors of domestic violence, according to data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The few people who do get charged with misdemeanor violations for unauthorized street camping and have no other criminal background are unlikely to be affected by the record. An experimental study of landlord responses to criminal records found that 88% of landlords offered housing to people with misdemeanor charges.
The stakes of leaving people on the street are much higher than the minimal collateral consequences of misdemeanor charges. Contrary to activist Chris Nobblitt’s claims in his testimony to the legislature that “this bill will kill,” the evidence suggests that it is the act of leaving people to live on the street that is more likely to lead to death. An NIH-funded study of age-adjusted homeless mortality found that unsheltered homeless people were three times as likely to die as sheltered homeless people, and 10 times more likely to die than the general population. A recent report from Utah found that the leading cause of death for homeless people was drug overdose, another prevalent issue that cannot be responsibly addressed while letting people sleep on the street.
Finally, the bedrock of activists’ opposition to camping regulations is that they believe housing is both the cause and solution to homelessness. The main evidence against this claim in North Carolina is that homelessness is actually down 4% compared to 2015, when fair market rent in Wake County was less than half what it is today.
What has changed over the last decade is how many homeless people are living on the street. That number has increased by 86% since 2015. The increase in homeless people living on the street has coincided with less emphasis on clearing street encampments and the loss of thousands of units in transitional housing programs, which often provide treatment for behavioral health and aim to graduate clients to independence with intensive support. The low barrier, subsidized housing and unregulated camping policies supported by organizations like the NC Coalition to End Homelessness are exactly what has landed North Carolina in the crisis currently unfolding on its streets.
North Carolina should join the ranks of states that are shunning the unserious positions staked out by activists and aligning with the public’s calls for a more assertive and compassionate approach to addressing homelessness.