NC lawmakers renew push to regulate where homeless people can sleep

State lawmakers are moving forward with efforts to regulate homeless camps across North Carolina and crack down on drugs in homeless shelters.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday gave a favorable report to House Bill 437, which would impose harsher restrictions on people who attempt to sell drugs in homeless shelters. The committee voted to add to the legislation parts of House Bill 781, which seeks to ban unauthorized sleeping in public spaces and empower local governments to direct homeless people to a designated space. 

The proposal goes next to the Senate Rules Committee for approval. 

Rep. Brian Biggs, a Randolph County Republican who led the push for House Bill 781, told lawmakers Wednesday that the bill will benefit cities and their homeless populations. Shelters in North Carolina’s cities are often full, Biggs said, leaving homeless people with little choice but to sleep outside where they’re vulnerable to crime and illness. 

Biggs’ legislation proposes to give local governments authority to designate a publicly owned outdoor space to be used for camping and sleeping for up to a year — so long as the space isn’t near residential areas, commercial properties or schools. Local governments would also have to provide security and supply toilets and running water for sanitation purposes. 

“We’re allowing people to be on the streets without any kind of sanitation and without any kind of dignity,” Biggs said.

Critics of the bill said state leaders should be focusing on efforts to address the causes of homelessness, such as mental illness, substance abuse and an insufficient amount of housing.

“It’s sending the signal: We sort of give up. We sort of give up trying to figure out how we’re going to develop more housing, and we give up on the kinds of outreach that are happening in Charlotte and Raleigh and Garner and all parts of all of our districts,” said Sen. Lisa Grafstein, D-Wake.

Sen. Brad Overcash, R-Gaston, took exception with Grafstein’s suggestion that lawmakers have given up on trying to help the homeless.

“Giving up is what is going on right now. Giving up is allowing these abhorrent conditions to continue, where it’s unsafe for all citizens and it’s unsafe for our homeless citizens,” Overcash said. “Giving up is allowing these encampments to continue.”

Biggs said that his proposal would help North Carolina municipalities qualify for grants of up to $25 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program, which funds housing and homelessness prevention programs. 

Minority leader Sydney Batch, D-Wake, said she doubts the federal government would fund the types of homeless sites that Biggs’ bill would create. 

“It’s not as if they’re going to get this boon of money that’s going to come in from the feds … to have running water at some acre of land that they’re going to randomly put somewhere,” Batch said.