Oregon city at heart of Supreme Court homelessness ruling votes to ban camping except in some areas

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The small Oregon city at the heart of a recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows cities to enforce outdoor sleeping bans has voted to prohibit camping but establish certain areas where homeless people can go.

The Grants Pass City Council voted 7-0 Wednesday to ban camping on public property such as parks and create four sites across the city where homeless people can set up their tents.

The move marks the city's first change to its anti-camping laws since the high court's June decision paved the way for outdoor sleeping bans across the country. Local officials in the mountain town have struggled for years to address a homelessness crisis that has divided residents and sparked a fierce fight over park space.

Grants Pass Mayor Sara Bristol said the new laws are meant to move people out of the parks while still giving them places to sleep.

“I'm glad that we’re taking this step forward," Bristol told The Associated Press. “I am looking forward to us having more control over our parks.”

The Supreme Court found that outdoor sleeping bans don’t violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The decision overturned a lower court ruling that said enforcing such bans when shelter space was lacking was unconstitutional and had prevented Grants Pass from enforcing local anti-camping ordinances.

The city’s new rules are set to take effect once the federal injunction that previously prevented the city from enforcing its ordinances officially lifts.

The new laws create four so-called “allowable locations” where homeless people can set up their tents. Camping on public property anywhere else in the city may subject people to a fine of up to $50.

Grants Pass has just one overnight shelter for adults, the Gospel Rescue Mission. It has 138 beds, but rules including attendance at daily Christian services, no alcohol, drugs or smoking and no pets mean many won’t stay there.

One designated camping site will allow people to stay up to four days, while the other three allow people to stay for one day. However, because state law requires officials to give 72-hour notice before removing people's belongings, people will effectively be able to stay up to a week at the site allowing the longest stays and roughly four days at the others, Bristol said.

Once their time at an individual site is up, people can move to another designated camping area. They can cycle through the “allowable locations” with no limit on how often they move between them, Bristol said.

The sites, which are on city-owned property, are not meant to be permanent homeless shelters or campgrounds, Bristol said. The city intends to provide toilets, hand-washing stations and dumpsters at the sites, which will not be staffed.

“This plan isn’t the best in terms of providing great services, or fixing homelessness, or really helping people get out of poverty or deal with addiction or mental health issues or anything like that,” she said. “They’re very much a temporary, stopgap solution. But I would say it’s the beginning, but it’s not the end, of our actions.”

The city will continue looking for other properties that could be used as camping areas, Bristol said.

Bristol hopes that plans for two more homeless shelters, including one specifically for people who are on a waitlist for a residential drug treatment program, will provide other places for homeless people to go. In the long term, the city is also looking at ways to incentivize the development of multifamily and affordable housing, she said.

The rise in homelessness in Grants Pass has become emblematic of a national crisis gripping cities large and small.

Homelessness in the United States grew a dramatic 12% last year to its highest reported level, as soaring rents and a decline in COVID-19 pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more people.

More than 650,000 people are estimated to be homeless, the most since the country began using a yearly point-in-time survey in 2007. A lack of access to mental health and addiction resources can contribute to the crisis. Older adults, LGBTQ+ people and people of color are disproportionately affected by homelessness, advocates said.

Nearly half of people without housing sleep outside, federal data shows.