The criminalization of homelessness is the use of local laws to punish people for sleeping outside, sitting on sidewalks, camping in parks, living in vehicles, and asking strangers for money. After the Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, cities across the country can enforce these ordinances even when no shelter beds are available, and more than 220 new local ordinances targeting unhoused people passed in the year that followed. The Eighth Amendment shield that had blocked some of this enforcement in western states is gone. Other constitutional protections remain, and they matter more than ever.
What Grants Pass Changed
From 2018 until mid-2024, cities in the Ninth Circuit operated under Martin v. City of Boise, which held that punishing someone for sleeping outdoors on public property, when no shelter bed was available, violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.1Justia Law. Martin v City of Boise, No 15-35845 (9th Cir 2018) Cities had to count beds before they could cite people for sleeping in public.
The Supreme Court ended that framework on June 28, 2024. In a 6–3 decision, the Court held that enforcing generally applicable laws regulating public camping does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.2Justia Law. City of Grants Pass v Johnson, 603 US ___ (2024) Justice Gorsuch, writing for the majority, reasoned that the Eighth Amendment governs the kind of punishment imposed after conviction, not whether a legislature can criminalize particular conduct. The Court characterized public-camping ordinances as targeting conduct that anyone could engage in, not the status of being homeless.
The practical result is nationwide. A city can fine, cite, or arrest someone for sleeping in a park even if every shelter in town is full. The Court acknowledged that other constitutional provisions might still protect unhoused people in specific situations, but the Eighth Amendment is no longer a viable tool to block enforcement of these ordinances.2Justia Law. City of Grants Pass v Johnson, 603 US ___ (2024)
Camping Bans and Sit-Lie Laws
The most common ordinances are sit-lie laws and camping bans. Sit-lie laws prohibit sitting or lying on a public sidewalk during specified hours, often from early morning through late evening. Camping bans prohibit using bedding, erecting tents or tarps, or storing personal belongings in public spaces in a way that suggests someone is living there. Together they cover almost any form of rest a person without a home might attempt.
The line between sleeping and camping determines how much discretion the officer has. Dozing on a bench may not violate a sleeping ban, but placing a backpack alongside or spreading a sleeping bag can convert the same act into camping. Cities use phrases like “indicia of camping” to describe the tripwires: cooking equipment, stored clothing, tarps used as cover. Some codes specify that mere possession of bedding is not enough; others reach nearly any personal item.
Fines typically run from around $50 to $500. Repeat violations can escalate to misdemeanor charges with the possibility of jail time. A person who cannot pay $200 does not become able to pay it after three more citations. Fines compound, bench warrants issue for missed court dates, and an offense that began with sleeping outdoors becomes an arrest record.
When the Charge Is Sidewalk Obstruction
Many cities frame enforcement as accessibility compliance rather than anti-homelessness policy. ADA standards require an accessible walking surface with a minimum clear width of 36 inches, expanding to 48 inches at turns.3U.S. Access Board. Americans with Disabilities Act Chapter 4 – Accessible Routes Obstruction ordinances require sidewalks to remain passable and let officers cite anyone whose belongings narrow the path. A ticket labeled “obstructing the right-of-way” is often harder to challenge than a naked anti-camping citation because the stated purpose is disability access.
Living in a Vehicle
For people who still have a car, van, or RV, vehicle habitation is regulated through overlapping rules: bans on overnight parking during certain hours, restrictions on oversized vehicles in residential areas, and prohibitions on cooking or sleeping inside a parked vehicle on a public street. “Oversized” is commonly defined as exceeding roughly eight feet in height or 22 feet in length, which reaches RVs and converted vans used as shelter.
Overnight parking bans often run from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. Police may ticket a vehicle suspected of habitation based on circumstantial signs like window coverings or interior condensation. Penalties escalate quickly. A ticket becomes a boot, a boot becomes a tow, and towing plus storage fees can exceed $500 within days. If the owner cannot pay within the required timeframe, the vehicle may be auctioned, along with whatever personal property was inside. The cycle from vehicle habitation to unsheltered homelessness can take less than a month.
Panhandling and the First Amendment
Panhandling restrictions are the most legally vulnerable of criminalization measures, because asking strangers for money is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Reed v. Town of Gilbert held that any law regulating speech based on its content is presumptively unconstitutional and must survive strict scrutiny.4Justia Law. Reed v Town of Gilbert, 576 US 155 (2015) A law that singles out requests for money while allowing other conversations in the same spot is content-based by definition.
Cities try to work around this through “aggressive panhandling” ordinances that focus on the manner of the request rather than the request itself. These laws typically prohibit following someone, blocking a path, using threatening language, or approaching within a buffer zone around ATMs, bus stops, or building entrances, with buffer distances ranging from 10 to 30 feet. Ordinances genuinely tied to intimidating behavior are more likely to be upheld. Many still fall to First Amendment challenges when the real purpose, controlling who speaks in commercial districts, is visible in the drafting.
Restrictions on Sharing Food Outdoors
Criminalization reaches the people trying to help, too. Many cities require permits for outdoor meal distribution and apply commercial food-safety standards to charitable groups handing out sandwiches in a park. Permit costs can run several hundred dollars. Requirements may include use of a certified commercial kitchen, proof of liability insurance, and compliance with waste-management regulations. Some rules kick in when food is provided to as few as five or ten people.
Health inspectors can shut down an unpermitted distribution on the spot. Zoning rules add another layer by restricting where charitable feeding can occur, often pushing it away from downtown areas into industrial zones where the people who need the food are less likely to be. Compliance costs designed for commercial caterers are difficult for volunteer groups working out of a church kitchen to absorb.
Encampment Sweeps: Notice, Storage, and Property
When cities clear encampments, they run into the Fourth Amendment. The Ninth Circuit held in Lavan v. City of Los Angeles that seizing and immediately destroying the personal property of homeless individuals is an unreasonable seizure, even when the property is temporarily unattended.5United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Lavan v City of Los Angeles, No 11-56253 A tent, medication, or ID document found on a sidewalk is not trash.
Notice
Most jurisdictions require advance written notice before clearing an encampment, though timelines vary widely. Some cities post notice 72 hours in advance; others provide as little as 24 hours or, in practice, less. Notice must generally be posted at the site and must state when the clearing will happen and what residents need to do with their belongings. Courts have found extremely short notice periods, such as ten minutes, constitutionally inadequate. In emergency situations involving immediate public safety threats, some cities claim authority to clear sites without any advance notice, though that authority remains legally contested.
Storage and Retrieval
After a sweep, cities are constitutionally required to store seized personal property rather than destroy it, and they must tell displaced individuals where and how to retrieve it.5United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Lavan v City of Los Angeles, No 11-56253 Storage durations range from 45 to 120 days depending on the jurisdiction. Officers must distinguish between garbage and personal property, and courts look unfavorably on blanket claims that everything at a site was abandoned. Destruction of items like government-issued identification, prescription medications, and legal documents is particularly difficult to defend.
Retrieval is harder than it sounds. Storage facilities may sit far from the cleared site, be open only during limited business hours, and require identification the person may no longer have. The right to have your property stored means little if you cannot actually get to it.
Federal Direction After Grants Pass
In July 2025, the White House issued an executive order directing the Attorney General, along with the Secretaries of HUD, HHS, and Transportation, to assess whether discretionary federal grants can prioritize cities and states that actively enforce prohibitions on camping, loitering, and open drug use. The same order directed the Attorney General to ensure funding is available under the Emergency Federal Law Enforcement Assistance program to support encampment removal where public safety is at risk, and directed HUD to end support for “Housing First” policies and to require that recipients of federal homelessness assistance make treatment a condition of participation.6The White House. Ending Crime and Disorder on Americas Streets Federal money now pushes in the direction of enforcement, not toward the shelter-availability standard Martin once required.
Rights That Still Apply
The Eighth Amendment is largely closed as a challenge to anti-camping laws. Other protections remain, and the Grants Pass majority explicitly acknowledged as much.
- First Amendment. Panhandling bans that target the content of speech, rather than genuinely threatening conduct, remain vulnerable. Laws that treat requests for money differently from other sidewalk conversations are content-based and must survive strict scrutiny.4Justia Law. Reed v Town of Gilbert, 576 US 155 (2015)
- Fourth Amendment. Cities cannot seize and destroy personal property without due process. Property must be stored and retrievable, and inadequate notice before a sweep can render the entire seizure unconstitutional.5United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Lavan v City of Los Angeles, No 11-56253
- Fourteenth Amendment. Equal protection claims may apply where enforcement disproportionately targets people based on race, disability, or other protected characteristics. Selective enforcement, where police cite unhoused people but ignore housed people doing the same thing in the same park, can form the basis of a challenge.
- Americans with Disabilities Act. Title II requires that public entities, including city governments and police departments, provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. During sweeps, this may include additional time to relocate, assistance moving belongings, or alternative arrangements for people whose disabilities make compliance with standard timelines impossible.
Whether these avenues prove effective depends on the resources available to bring individual challenges. Unhoused people are not, as a rule, positioned to hire attorneys, and legal aid organizations carry most of this work. If you are facing enforcement, a local legal aid office or public defender is the practical starting point for asserting any of these rights.