New Idaho law bans homeless encampments. What happens now in Boise?

BOISE – When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2024 that cities could enforce bans on homeless encampments, Boise’s mayor pushed back. The city continued to focus on increasing access to affordable housing, rather than on ticketing or fining people experiencing homelessness, she said.

“Criminalizing homelessness has never, and will never, solve the problems associated with homelessness,” Mayor Lauren McLean said in a statement at the time. “We must address the root causes with proven strategies, like permanent supportive housing, that empower our residents to stay housed and thrive in their community.”

But a year later, that Supreme Court decision – in combination with a new Idaho law – is forcing the city’s hand.

Starting in July, the city will double down on enforcing its existing ban on public camping. Changes to the city’s ordinance, passed unanimously at a City Council meeting Tuesday, will treat camping as an infraction, a civil offense. Violators will face $10 tickets, Police Chief Chris Dennison told City Council members.

Idaho law banning public camping takes effect

The city has historically provided greater latitude to its camping ban, an approach that was supported by legal precedent. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities couldn’t ticket people for camping in public when there was no shelter space available that could meet their needs.

But a 2024 ruling overturned that Supreme Court decision, and a new state law, which takes effect Tuesday, bars cities with populations of 100,000 or more from allowing people to camp on public property or along public roads. The law allows the state’s attorney general to sue cities that allow such camping to continue.

“We will have to take some form of action when we become aware of public camping,” Dennison told the City Council. “Officers will have discretion to a point, but we will have to do something. We can’t just allow the camping to continue.”

That discretion, which he told the Statesman was one of the “key components” of the change, could mean providing “education” to people camping about where they could find shelter space, or asking them to relocate before they issue fines, he told the Statesman.

He and officials repeatedly said the state had left them with no choice but to enforce the ban.

“While the Galloway law will go into effect with this ordinance that’s being passed, I am without doubt that our residents understand that this is not the solution,” McLean told City Council members, as she referred to Sen. Codi Galloway, a Boise Republican who sponsored the bill. “The solution is to continue to invest in long-term solutions, to look at housing and to look at all the other pieces of investing in a city and in neighborhoods.”

Boise officials strongly opposed the change in state law in public hearings about the bill earlier this year. Focusing on enforcing the ban would draw police resources away from other needs, harm officers’ relationships with people experiencing homelessness and shelter providers, and lead to heavier policing of a problem better served through expanding affordable housing and offering mental health services, they said.

“We risk becoming the hammer for social issues that require a broader, more thoughtful approach,” Dennison told lawmakers.

Idaho lawmakers: Allowing homeless encampments ‘is not kind’

Lawmakers in March accused Boise of failing to enforce its camping ban, allowing homelessness to run rampant in some parts of the city.

Galloway highlighted the poor conditions in these encampments. An early version of her bill would have allowed business owners to sue the city over a failure to enforce its ban. Galloway’s husband owns a business along Shoreline Drive, where homeless encampments have been concentrated in recent years.

“Dirty, dangerous and deadly public camping is a public safety issue of the utmost importance to homeowners, businesses owners and Greenbelt recreators,” she previously told the Statesman.

And “it is not kind” to allow the community’s most vulnerable to camp outside, where robbery, assault, injuries and illnesses “are common,” Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, said on the House floor.

But Boise officials, shelter operators and housing advocates have argued that enforcing the ban by ticketing people will only exacerbate the problems faced by homeless residents of the city.

Jodi Peterson-Stigers, the director of Boise’s Interfaith Sanctuary, a homeless shelter located near downtown, previously told the Statesman that “criminalization means it’s harder to get housed, harder to get employed.”

“You go to get a job to try and get out of your homelessness, and they do a background check, and there’s a warrant because you haven’t paid five tickets from being outside, because you don’t have the funding or the transportation to get to court,” she said.