In The News - 6/26/2025

The Spokesman Review

Boise forced to change stance as new law bans encampments

City defied last year’s Supreme Court ruling, but state reacted

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 homeless-ness, 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 therewas 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.