On Monday night, Troy City Council’s Safety and Health Committee met for more than two hours to discuss a proposed ordinance regulating sleeping and camping in public rights-of-way.
The discussion was not simple. It brought together public safety, police enforcement, homelessness, health care, housing, property rights, and human dignity. It also brought out more than 20 people who wanted council members to slow down and listen before moving forward.
At the committee’s prior meeting, the discussion focused more narrowly on people sleeping in vehicles. Then, last Friday, the city administration released a broader ordinance. The new draft would prohibit sleeping on sidewalks, streets, alleys, rights-of-way, and in doorways. It would also ban campsites in parks, on benches, under bridges, and on other city-owned property.
The proposal does not make homelessness itself illegal. But it does make violations a fourth-degree misdemeanor, with a minimum $25 fine. It also allows the city to pursue other charges under state law or other local laws when applicable.
That is where the public concern began.
An amendment added safeguards
Councilmember Todd Severt stepped in with a written amendment intended to place more protections into the ordinance itself, as he presented his amendement during the meeting.
His proposal added a new section titled “Outreach and services before enforcement.” Before issuing a citation or starting criminal enforcement, police officers would be required to make a “reasonable effort” to see whether shelter or support services could be offered or arranged. When practical, officers would need to determine whether a person is homeless, provide information about shelter or emergency housing, offer transportation information, and share available housing, medical, mental-health, substance-use, and other support options. The person would also be given a reasonable chance to accept or decline help.
That is an important improvement. It moves the city’s stated practice of offering help from informal policy into the ordinance itself.
Severt also added language about alternative lodging. If police identify an appropriate shelter bed or another reasonably accessible place to stay, and a person refuses it or cannot be placed, an officer could issue a citation.
The amendment also added exceptions for immediate enforcement in serious situations. Those include violence, a fire hazard, an immediate public health or safety threat, blocking emergency services, another criminal offense, major interference with public property, or a serious risk of harm to people or property.
The penalty remained
Still, the amendment did not remove the most controversial part of the ordinance: the fourth-degree misdemeanor and the minimum $25 fine.
Several residents argued that a fine may sound small to someone with a home and steady income, but it is not small to a person living in a vehicle or trying to get through a difficult week. A fine can become a court date, an unpaid balance, a warrant, or another barrier to finding work and housing.
The committee said it does not want to “criminalize” homelessness. Police Chief Shawn McKinney said officers already try to connect people with local services and that the ordinance is meant to give police another tool for difficult cases. He said the department needs a way to deal with situations involving sanitation, fire risks, blocked entrances, unsafe conditions, or people who refuse all available help.
That is a fair public safety concern. Sidewalks, doorways, parks, and streets must remain safe and usable for everyone.
But the public also raised a fair question: What happens when a person does not refuse help, but there is no safe and workable place for that person to go?
The ordinance uses terms such as “reasonable effort,” “when practicable,” “appropriate shelter,” and “reasonably accessible alternative lodging.” Those words are important, but they are not clearly defined in the draft.
The real emergency
The clearest emergency raised during the meeting was not a police issue. It was the loss of Miami County’s cold-weather shelter.
Dick Steineman, a longtime local advocate and soup kitchen leader, told the committee that the winter shelter in Piqua will not operate this year. The shelter had housed about 10 to 12 people each night from November through March. He said about half of those individuals came from Troy.
Steineman estimated that operating a winter shelter for four months had cost about $35,000. He urged the community to find a church or other location where people could get a warm place to sleep, a sandwich, a shower, and help from caseworkers.
That is the conversation Troy needs next.
The committee voted to send Severt’s amended ordinance to the full council. It is still expected to be considered as emergency legislation, meaning it could take effect immediately after council approval and the mayor’s signature rather than waiting the usual 30 days.
Troy needs a tool for real safety risks. But it also needs a clear plan for what happens after police tell someone to move. A citation may move a problem. Housing, shelter, case management, and real support are what begin to solve it.
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In evaluating Troy's proposal, I looked not simply whether Troy has the legal authority to do this, but whether comparable policies have actually accomplished what communities hoped they would accomplish, and at what cost.
First, Troy is definitely not breaking new ground. It is a widespread policy model. Troy has a substantial universe of communities from which it could learn.
Do these ordinances reduce homelessness? A 2025 Policy Studies Journal study result was essentially no. If the objective is to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness the empirical evidence presently provides little support for camping/sleeping prohibitions as an effective intervention by themselves.
Do they improve public spaces? Local, not universally. Bottom line, they move and disburse and show up elsewhere in new ways.
What about crime and public safety? A Denver study examined crime surrounding involuntary encampment displacement from 2019 through 2023. Their conclusion was that displacement was not consistently associated with overall crime reduction.
And there are tertiary effects. Studies of displacement have identified several potential consequences: loss of medications, identification, phones and belongings; disruption of social networks; increased distance from health and social services; and reduced continuity of treatment. A new 2026 longitudinal study following 731 unhoused people in Los Angeles County found that police encounters and encampment sweeps were associated with worse physical health and greater psychological distress. Repeated exposure was associated with poorer outcomes over time, and displacement appeared to explain part of the relationship.
I think the questions surrounding this ordinance break into four separate questions, and they produce different answers:
Does prohibiting public camping reduce homelessness? Little evidence that it does. Comparative research finds no statistically significant long-term reduction attributable to criminalization ordinances.
Can it remove particular encampments/public-space problems? Yes. Enforcement can clear specific locations, although repeated clearing and relocation are common.
Does it improve public safety? Possibly very locally and temporarily for some offenses, but evidence of broader crime reduction is weak/mixed.
Can enforcement create secondary costs? Yes. Research identifies displacement, service disruption, health consequences and potential barriers to eventually obtaining housing.
And that leads to a somewhat different question and perhaps the most useful question for Troy City Council, What outcome does Troy expect this ordinance to produce, and how will the city determine afterward whether it actually produced that outcome?
That could be measured. Before adopting the ordinance, Troy could establish a baseline and then track, for example, police contacts, warnings, shelter offers, shelter acceptances, citations, repeat contacts with the same individuals, complaints, encampment recurrence, calls for service, arrests, EMS encounters, shelter availability, and the number of people actually transitioning to temporary or permanent housing.
Without those measures, six months from now one side can say "the ordinance is working because we don't see people sleeping downtown" while the other says "it accomplished nothing because they're still homeless."