UPDATE: Senate dissents, sends public camping ban bill to conference committee

Update, 9:30 p.m. Tuesday: The authors of Senate Bill 197, Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, and Sen. Blake Doriot, R-Goshen, filed Tuesday to dissent to changes made by the House. Because the Senate lawmakers disagree with the House amendments, which include the public camping ban, the bill will go to a conference committee.

IBJ has reached out to Freeman and Doriot for comment.

As of Tuesday afternoon, a committee meeting had not yet been scheduled, nor had Indiana General Assembly leaders selected the lawmakers who will sit on the committee. Both Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, and House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, will pick two members from their respective caucuses to serve on the committee.

Typically, the process begins with one Democrat and one Republican from each chamber, but these conferees can be replaced if the committee cannot reach an agreement. If they don’t reach a compromise by the end of the legislative session, which is April 29, the bill dies.

Original story, 1 p.m.: Indiana House lawmakers advanced legislation Monday to make camping on public property a Class C misdemeanor despite testimony from homeless service providers and law enforcement against a similar measure.

Senate Bill 197 initially focused on civil penalties related to unsafe buildings. However, House lawmakers inserted an amendment authored by Rep. Jennifer Meltzer, R-Shelbyville, that contained language similar to a measure that failed earlier in the session.

House Bill 1662, authored by Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland, would have made camping on public property a misdemeanor offense, but Davis chose not to call the bill down by the House’s mid-February deadline, essentially killing the legislation. At the time, House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, said the measure required more work to generate the kind of bipartisan support needed for it to pass. 

Representatives voted 52-40 to advance the amended SB 197 on Monday, with more than a dozen Republicans joining Democrats in voting against it. State senators will accept or dissent from the changes before the final bill heads to Gov. Mike Braun’s desk.

The timing of the amendment prevented much public notice and did not allow for public testimony. Advocates who believed they had defeated the legislation in February were disappointed by the ban’s resurgence late in the legislative session.

Rabbi Aaron Spiegel, executive director of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance, was among that group.

“Besides still making homelessness a crime, the way the [camping ban] language was dropped into an unrelated Senate bill with no warning and no allowance for public comment was blatantly untransparent,” Spiegel told IBJ in an email.

Rep. Andrew Ireland, R-Indianapolis, said the potential criminal penalty is necessary to incentivize those who are unsheltered to relocate or accept transportation to services.

The legislation requires police to determine if an individual needs emergency detention. That is a process in which officers may transport a person whom they believe has a mental illness, is either dangerous or gravely disabled, and is in immediate need of hospitalization and treatment to a nearby facility.

If the officer decides the individual does not need emergency detention, transportation must be provided to a local shelter or intervention facility. Officers are only required to do so if these services exist within five miles and can provide services or shelter. Finally, the amendment requires that officers call a local crisis intervention team, if one exists.

The individual commits a Class C misdemeanor after refusing these services and remaining in either the public right-of-way for 24 hours or on public land for 72 hours. The legislation also specifies that those individuals should be sent to a problem-solving court.

At the April 10 reading of the bill, Republican legislators took the rare step of accepting a Democrat-authored amendment to SB 197 after voting down other Democrat-authored amendments that removed the camping ban from the legislation altogether.

State Rep. Justin Moed, D-Indianapolis, authored an amendment that delayed the effective date to July 1, 2026, and added details for where police must offer to transport an individual. 

Moed, who previously served on a two-year summer study committee related to establishing a low-barrier shelter in Indianapolis, told his colleagues he did not think SB 197 was the right approach. However, he said his amendment was “a way to add more safeguards to limit the instances in which the criminal penalty will be applied.”

“I want to be clear that I didn’t ask for this bill to exist,” Moed said. “I didn’t ask to have to do this amendment, but I was asked to provide some suggested changes.”

Moed’s amendment specifies that police shall offer to transport the individual to a place that provides temporary accommodations and offer access to services and permanent housing options. It also specifies that the emergency detention clause does not prevent law enforcement from transporting people to Indianapolis’ Assessment and Intervention Center , or AIC, at the Community Justice Campus or a similar facility. The AIC is a free, 24-hour mental health and addiction center in Twin Aire.

Housing and homelessness advocates had mobilized in opposition to HB 1662, which was tied to a Texas-based think tank. They argued that the measure would criminalize homelessness and create additional barriers for those living unsheltered. Law enforcement joined the faith and nonprofit leaders in asking lawmakers to vote against the legislation, with a lobbyist from the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association testifying that it would put a burden on county jails and is contrary to recent steps by the Legislature to divert homeless people from entering the criminal justice system.

The Cicero Institute is an Austin, Texas-based think tank that has lobbied several states to ban street camping and direct funds away from “housing first” programs. Housing first is an increasingly popular strategy nationwide that prioritizes finding permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness and offering support services, but not requiring their use as a condition of an individual’s housing.

Several other states, including Kentucky and Oklahoma, have passed similar model legislation from Cicero into law.