The city of Summit, New Jersey is the latest Garden State municipality to introduce an ordinance that bans sleeping and camping in public spaces – a maneuver that many homeless service providers and advocates have criticized as effectively criminalizing homelessness.
A wave of similar measures have been adopted in the state following a 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a law in Oregon banning homeless people from using blankets, pillows and cardboard boxes for shelter and protection.
Summit — among the wealthiest communities in one of the country’s wealthiest states — introduced the provision with significant support from council members, despite having only a handful of homeless residents, according to one advocacy group.
Councilmember Jamel Boyer, a Republican, introduced the ordinance during a Tuesday night council meeting. It says any person found to be camping, sleeping or storing belongings in public spaces could potentially be fined up to $2,000 or imprisoned for up to 90 days.
“This ordinance addresses the growing concerns about obstructions and public nuisances caused by encampments while ensuring our shared spaces remain clean, safe and welcoming for the community,” Boyer told the council .
Councilmember Claire Toth, a Democrat, opposed the introduction of the ordinance.
”This moves us in the wrong direction,” Toth said. A number of organizations working to solve homelessness were in attendance to show their disapproval.
The vote to introduce the ordinance passed 5-1, with only Toth voting against it.
Boyer said the ordinance is about “upholding law and justice.”
“ It’s not about criminalizing homelessness, but it’s about doing the right thing. We want to prevent homelessness, not maintain it,” he said.
The Common Council is scheduled to vote on whether to adopt the ordinance at its next meeting in three weeks. If passed, Summit would join Millville, Keyport, Howell and Hammonton — NJ towns that have enacted similar measures in the past year. Officials in other municipalities such as Newark, Paterson and Morristown have recently rejected similar actions following public outcry.
Boyer’s introduction of the ordinance in Summit comes just two weeks after he spoke at a council meeting about a “panhandler” who Boyer said pulled a knife on his 11-year-old daughter and a friend outside a store in downtown Summit because they declined to give the man a dollar.
“Our system is failing us,” Boyer said. “We have to get these people off the street.”
But the ordinance is also at odds with Summit’s reputation. In February, city leaders received national recognition at the National Alliance to End Homelessness conference in Los Angeles.
Councilmember Delia Hamlet, a Republican, spoke on a conference panel titled “Suburban Solutions – Bridging Policy & Practice in Unsheltered Homelessness.” She highlighted a city task force that partners local elected officials with first responders and state and local organizations to get homeless people in the community off the street and back on track.
“This isn’t just about charity — it’s about making a real, measurable impact,” Hamlet told the audience, adding that the task force had gotten many homeless people off the streets in Summit, into housing or rehabilitation centers and placed in jobs over roughly a year.
Richard Uniacke, the president of Bridges Outreach, a homeless services organization based in Summit that works with the task force, told Gothamist that when the partnership started in 2024 the group had a list of 35 people experiencing homelessness in Summit.
”We’re down to five people,” he said.
Uniacke said he’s frustrated by the introduction of the ordinance by the council on Tuesday.
”What [these ordinances] do is they make it illegal for you to be homeless,” he said. “Suddenly the biological imperative to sleep is illegal.”
Despite his close collaboration with Summit Mayor Elizabeth Fagan, Hamlet and other council members who serve on the city’s homelessness task force, Uniacke called their actions “duplicitous.”
“It really taints the work that we’ve been a part of,” he said. “ I believe it completely undermines any credibility they have to this point.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
