North Carolina Senate lawmakers revived a bill Wednesday that would ban homeless encampments outside of official, city-maintained sites.
The Senate Judiciary committee voted to adopt an amendment that’s a version of a controversial bill from last year, which passed the House and stalled in the Senate. It was tacked onto House Bill 437, requiring homeless shelters to be drug-free zones.
Under the amendment, originally sponsored by Rep. Brian Biggs (R-Randolph), local governments can’t allow individuals to participate in “unauthorized public camping or sleeping.”
Instead, municipalities would need to approve a location for homeless camps on the municipal property for less than a year at a time, and only when indoor shelters don’t have enough space. Local governments would have to provide restroom facilities, water and public safety personnel.
“It does allow local governments to choose to designate an area that’s certified as safe, that’s drug-free, that has access to sanitation and the use of restroom facilities,” Sen. Brad Overcash (R-Gaston) said. “It allows for the humane treatment of these homeless persons among us.”
“They have to have security measures put in place, sanitation services, they have to have access to restrooms, running water, connections to mental health services, connections to substance abuse treatment centers,” Biggs said.
Democrats on the committee disagreed with the addition of the amendment, but the GOP majority ignored their complaints.
Sen. Mutjaba Mohammed (D-Mecklenburg) said the General Assembly needs to collaborate with local governments to get their input and hear their needs. He said the official zones don’t make sense, because it removes a homeless individual’s ability to choose their location.
“If you have a designated area and you work 10, 15, 20 miles away, how are you going to work now without transportation?” he told NC Newsline.
Mohammed also questioned what the zones would look like across the state, with urban centers as well as rural farmland.
“How many designated areas are we going to have in a place like Charlotte? It’s going to look very different in Raleigh than Salisbury. Those are questions that I don’t think the General Assembly has fully considered,” he continued.
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Sen. Lisa Grafstein (D-Wake) said the root of the issue is with housing and affordability.
She said typically, people associate homelessness with drug use and mental illness. When there’s sufficient housing, she said, those individuals have places to go, but they’re the first to lose housing when supplies get short.
“My concern about the amendment is that it might do the opposite of what you intend, which it seems to me that it’s setting the signal that we give up trying to figure out how we’re going to develop more housing,” she said.
Overcash countered that the status quo is giving up, while the amendment aims to make a positive change.
“Giving up is allowing these abhorrent conditions to continue, where it’s unsafe for all citizens,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the homelessness question.”
Republicans attached the amendment to H437, which would outlaw drugs in homeless shelters and service zones and increase criminal penalties for possessing, using or selling illegal substances in those areas.
“Our homeless population is under regular threat of crime from those seeking to sell them controlled substances, and this bill would reduce the opportunity for these criminals to victimize our homeless,” Rep. Heather Rhyne (R-Lincoln) told the committee.
Under the measure, traditional homeless shelters would require signs marking their status as drug-free zones, like schools do.
But some shelters — such as those serving survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking — need anonymity, so those facilities would have signage inside the front entrance, Rhyne said.
“It’s time to stop the drug deals in the homeless shelters and really try to protect this vulnerable population. That’s the heart behind this bill,” she said.
The legislation heads to the Senate Health Care committee.
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