City leaders continue to evaluate ways to address homelessness in Greenville, including a proposed ordinance that would prohibit public camping within the city limits. The item was originally presented during Greenville City Council’s June 9 meeting.
Council voted to postpone the first reading of the ordinance in order to collect additional input after more than a dozen people spoke against the item. Greenville City Councilmember John DeWorken, who proposed the ordinance, provided an update on this effort during council’s Aug. 11 meeting.
Since June, the city has researched how other municipalities are addressing homelessness and held roundtable discussions with local homeless service providers. Feedback from residents and business owners was also collected.
DeWorken said they are trying to navigate how to create an ordinance that won’t allow people to camp on public property, but that also emphasizes service providers and helpful resources.
“We’ve spent hours, and hours, and hours, and hours looking at this issue,” he said.
The city’s original ordinance, presented in June, would have prohibited camping on city-owned and public properties. This includes parks, sidewalks, streets, public plazas, public parking garages and underneath bridges.
Public camping was defined under the ordinance as using a property for “living accommodation purposes,” such as sleeping, preparing to sleep, making a fire, cooking meals or setting up a tent.
People who sleep or lay down on public property for more than two hours would violate the proposed ordinance. It would have also prohibited storing personal items on public property unattended for more than two hours.
Those who violated the ordinance wouldn’t face a penalty on the first offense. However, a second and subsequent offense would result in greater penalties, such as monetary fines or incarceration.
In 2024, the United States Supreme Court ruled that cities can enforce anti-camping ordinances in the case of Grants Pass v. Johnson. Cody Carver, director of Greenville Together: A Home for All, said 260 municipalities have passed ordinances similar to the one being considered by the city of Greenville since the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“There is no evidence that these ordinances on their own have decreased homelessness,” Carver said. “They are expensive to enforce and, quite simply, just don’t work. Incarceration and fines don’t solve the problem.”
Greenville Together: A Home for All launched in March as a community-driven effort that provides immediate aid to unsheltered individuals and works toward long-term prevention of homelessness in Greenville. The initiative recently started a housing surge to rapidly rehouse unsheltered individuals within the city. Nine people have been placed into permanent supportive housing so far, and five more are in the pipeline.
Read more about Greenville Together: A Home for All
A cross-section of nonprofits, businesses, faith-based organizations and civic groups are involved in Greenville Together. Carver said the city of Greenville continues to be a key partner in the initiative. Greenville City Council recently approved $500,000 in the fiscal year 2026 capital improvement program budget to support Greenville Together.
A new public camping ordinance was not presented during Monday night’s meeting, and no action was taken by council. The city plans to continue its discussions with stakeholders like Greenville Together.
DeWorken said they want to get it right, not necessarily get it fast.
“I certainly don’t want to spend another year and a half working on this,” DeWorken said. “When the time comes to present it to council, we’ll know when that time is right.”
