One month in, a dozen Louisvillians cited, arrested for ‘unlawful camping’

About a dozen people in Louisville have been arrested or cited under a new state law that bans street camping.

The broad ban on sleeping on the streets was part of an omnibus tough-on-crime bill approved by the state legislature earlier this year, known as the Safer Kentucky Act. In addition to taking aim at people experiencing homelessness, it also increased penalties and fines for a number of crimes and created a three-strike rule for people who commit violent felonies .

In Louisville, police have arrested four people and cited 10 others for unlawful street camping since the law took effect on July 15.

In a statement to LPM News, Mayor Craig Greenberg’s spokesperson, Kevin Trager, said the city is focusing enforcement on people who “block access to sidewalks, bus stops, and other public spaces,” or attempt to run from police.

“Metro’s Homeless Services team continues to provide outreach to people experiencing homelessness every day, offering referrals to treatment and transportation to emergency shelters,” Trager said.

Some advocates for people experiencing homelessness, however, argue arresting and citing people for sleeping on the streets is “cruel and unnecessary.” They say there currently aren’t enough shelter beds for everyone in Louisville, and the city’s enforcement of the camping ban is actually making it harder for people to access stable housing.

What is ‘unlawful camping’?

While the term unlawful camping may evoke a picture of a person or group of people pitching tents, the definition under Kentucky law is broader than that.

Anyone caught sleeping on “a public or private street, sidewalk, area under a bridge or underpass, path, park, cemetery” would be running afoul of the new law.

A review of the arrest reports and citations issued by the Louisville Metro Police Department over the past month shows some of the people accused of violating the camping ban were sleeping in tents. Many times the tents were erected within feet of a “No Camping” sign.

But others were cited while sleeping on the ground or on public benches.

One man, who was lying on a piece of cardboard, told the responding officer “he wasn’t camping, he was sleeping,” according to the citation.

In another citation, issued July 27, the responding officer said a man was using a luggage bag as a pillow, which the officer characterized as “camping paraphernalia.”

All the arrests and citations under the new statute have been issued by the same LMPD officer: Lt. Caleb Stewart. Stewart heads LMPD’s Downtown Area Patrol. In January, he received a commendation from the department for responding to “issues related to the houseless population” with “compassion and professionalism toward everyone.”

City officials have noted that the four people arrested recently for unlawful camping were also accused of other crimes related to the same interaction.

Two of the people arrested were accused of “fleeing and evading” for attempting to walk away from Stewart while he was issuing them a citation for unlawful camping. The other two refused to provide their names in order to be cited.

Although most of the penalties given for violating the Safer Kentucky Act in Louisville so far are citations, advocates say at least some of those are likely to lead to future arrests.

That’s because the citations aren’t like a parking ticket, with the person having to pay a fine online or over the phone. People who are cited for unlawful camping must show up to court on a certain date. If they don’t, they risk receiving a bench warrant for failure to appear. Then, the next time they interact with an LMPD officer, that officer would have to arrest them.

Jennifer Twyman, an organizer with VOCAL Kentucky, runs the organization’s drop-in shelter, which provides a daytime space for people experiencing homelessness to access food, water, air conditioning and a bathroom.

Twyman said people living on the streets are concerned day-to-day about their survival. They may not have the capacity, or the money, to attend a court date a week or two after they’re cited by an officer.

“We don’t need more people in our jail, our jail where multiple people have died in the past several years ,” she said. “That’s not the solution.”

Twyman said she’s also skeptical of the alternatives the city says it’s providing to people on the street. She said getting someone experiencing homelessness to accept a referral to a treatment program or a ride to a shelter requires developing trust and relationships.

“We can have all kinds of services, but if peopl e don’t feel welcome and safe to make the decision to access services, then those services don’t matter,” Twyman said.

She said Louisville Metro will have trouble building that trust while it continues to cite and arrest people, and routinely clear encampments.

‘A short-term solution to a PR problem’

Asked last month about the unlawful camping ban going into effect, Mayor Craig Greenberg said the city’s primary goal remains connecting people with the resources they need “to move in a new direction.”

Catherine McGeeney with the Coalition for the Homeless said citing and arresting people for sleeping outdoors doesn’t get Louisville closer to that goal. In fact, she said, it puts people further away from housing.

“It’s cruel and unnecessary to jail and fine people,” McGeeney said. “It’s not as if people are then getting more connected to services. They are moving elsewhere in our city, moving to more invisible places and, rather than being connected to the outreach folks who knew where they were, the outreach people are having to work harder to figure out where they’re being displaced to .”

McGeeney called the city’s enforcement of the camping ban “a short-term solution to a PR problem, not a long-term solution for the people who have nowhere to go.”

The Coalition conducted a point-in-time count in January of everyone experiencing homelessness in Louisville. With all shelters at or near capacity, there were still nearly 600 people unsheltered.

That means the city is citing and arresting people when there aren’t enough shelter beds to give them an alternative to sleeping outdoors, McGeeney said.

“The question we have to ask ourselves is what is the problem we are trying to solve,” she said. “If the entirety of the problem is a business owner wants a person not to exist out front on their sidewalk, maybe jail works to solve that. But if we’re actually trying to solve the problem of homelessness, jail and fines do not solve that at all.”

Sponsors of the Safer Kentucky Act have said the threat of arrest or being cited can be one part of a carrot-and-stick approach to get someone into a shelter, or substance abuse or mental health treatment. Importantly, though, the law does not provide additional state funding for any of those alternatives.

Republican state Rep. Jason Nemes of Middletown told LPM News last month he thinks this approach is “affectionate towards the homeless population.”

“If we continue down the path in Louisville, then we're going to become San Francisco,” Nemes said. “The Republican majority is not going to let that happen.”

Under the new law, Kentucky’s attorney general can sue any city that refuses to enforce the camping ban.