2 years after Grants Pass, 14 states, 350 cities have tougher laws on street homelessness

Two years after the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling—which allowed governments to enforce public camping bans without violating the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment—more than 350 cities and 14 states have adopted laws or measures to crack down on street homelessness. States’ approaches vary, but include imposing camping bans on public lands, requiring or pushing local governments to enforce those bans, and in some cases allowing property owners to sue local governments if they don’t enforce statewide camping restrictions. The measures are based on details compiled by the National Homelessness Law Center.

Examples highlighted include Louisiana, which made unauthorized public camping a crime and created a “Homelessness Court” program offering treatment as an alternative to jail time, and Indiana, where a new law banning unauthorized camping, sleeping, and sheltering on state or local public land takes effect in July.

Other states enacted “Safe Neighborhood” laws in which property owners can seek compensation from local governments if they fail to enforce laws tied to public camping, loitering, and panhandling; some of these efforts are modeled after legislation drafted by conservative think tanks including the Cicero Institute and the Goldwater Institute.

The article also notes that while there were fewer homeless people in the U.S. on a single night in January 2025 than in January 2024, homelessness increased in 28 states, citing the latest federal count.