Worcester’s City Council takes up a proposed ordinance Tuesday night that would make it a civil violation to camp, sleep or lie on public property anywhere in the city, and to live in a car, camper or RV on a public way or in a public lot for more than 24 hours. The ordinance is the enforcement piece of a homelessness framework City Manager Eric Batista calls “Disrupting the Cycle.” It carries a $25 daily fine, a 72-hour notice requirement before an encampment is cleared, and a promise, in the manager’s words, that “being unhoused is not a crime and will not be treated as such.”
Two years ago an ordinance like this would have faced a serious constitutional challenge in a Massachusetts federal court. Today it does not, because of a Supreme Court decision that most people outside the housing field have not read. This piece explains what the Worcester ordinance would do, what the law now permits, what it still does not, and the questions a councilor or a resident should ask before Tuesday’s vote.
What the ordinance says
According to the memo from Health and Human Services Commissioner Seema Dixit that accompanies the proposal, and as reported by MassLive, the Worcester Guardian and This Week in Worcester, the ordinance would:
Prohibit camping, sitting, sleeping, lying or storing personal belongings on streets, sidewalks, bike paths and other public property. Prohibit using a vehicle, camper or recreational vehicle as a living space on a public way or in a public parking lot for more than 24 consecutive hours. Require the city to conduct outreach and offer shelter, treatment and supportive services before clearing a campsite. Require a notice to vacate, posted at least 72 hours in advance, except in emergencies. Impose a $25 fine for each day a person remains after the notice period. Assign enforcement to Health and Human Services, with police, fire, public works, parks and inspectional services also authorized to act.
Worcester has four permanent year-round shelters with 197 beds. It added 136 temporary beds last winter when those filled. The city’s 2026 point-in-time count found 1,187 homeless people, down sharply from the 2025 count; Batista has called the number “a single, isolated data point.” From 2022 to 2025, 70 percent of roughly 7,000 service requests to the city’s 311 line concerned encampments. Worcester says it reached what housing agencies call functional zero in 2011 and “failed to maintain that status.”
What the Supreme Court changed
From 2018 until 2024, cities in the western United States operated under Martin v. City of Boise, 920 F.3d 584 (9th Cir. 2019), which held that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits a city from punishing a person for sleeping outside when there is no shelter bed available to them. The reasoning was that sleeping is unavoidable, and punishing an unavoidable act because of a person’s status, homelessness, is punishing the status. Martin was never binding in Massachusetts, which is in the First Circuit, but it was the leading authority and advocates cited it here.
In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, 603 U.S. 520 (2024), the Supreme Court overruled that approach. A six-justice majority held that generally applicable public camping ordinances regulate conduct, not status, and that enforcing them against people who have nowhere else to sleep does not violate the Eighth Amendment, even when no shelter is available. The Court said the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause limits what punishments a government may impose, not what conduct it may criminalize, and that the fines and short jail terms at issue in Grants Pass, Oregon were not cruel or unusual. The dissent argued that the ordinances punished the biologically necessary act of sleeping and that the decision would leave cities free to fine and jail people for existing in public. The majority’s answer was that the policy question belongs to legislatures and city councils.
Worcester’s memo cites Grants Pass by name. That is deliberate. It is the legal permission slip for every camping ordinance drafted in the last two years.
What Grants Pass does not do
It settles the Eighth Amendment question. It does not settle anything else, and several other bodies of law still apply to how a camping ordinance is written and enforced.
Property. The Fourth Amendment and article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights protect a person’s possessions from unreasonable seizure, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause requires notice and some process before the government destroys them. Courts in several circuits have held that a city may not simply throw away a homeless person’s tent, medication, identification and belongings during a sweep without notice and a reasonable opportunity to retrieve them. Worcester’s 72-hour notice is aimed at this. What the ordinance says about storage of seized property, and for how long, is the detail to read.
Enforcement. The ordinance is written as a civil fine, not a crime, which avoids the criminal process entirely. A $25 daily fine against a person with no income is a debt that will not be paid, and unpaid municipal fines in Massachusetts can end in a civil judgment but not jail. The practical enforcement tool is the sweep itself, not the fine. How the city handles a person who declines the offered shelter bed, and whether there is a bed to offer on the day of the sweep, is where the ordinance’s promise of outreach first will be tested.
Vehicles. The 24-hour vehicle provision reaches a different population: people living in cars, often employed, often with children, who are not in encampments. A towed car is a lost job and lost shelter at once. Whether the ordinance provides for notice before a tow, and where a person living in a vehicle is supposed to move it after 24 hours, is a question the memo as reported does not answer.
Disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires reasonable modification of municipal policies for people with disabilities, and a large share of the unsheltered population has a physical, psychiatric or substance use disability. An ordinance enforced uniformly against people who cannot use congregate shelter because of a disability invites an ADA claim that Grants Pass does not foreclose.
Where Massachusetts stands
Massachusetts has no statewide law on public camping and no reported appellate decision applying article 26 of the Declaration of Rights, the state’s cruel or unusual punishment clause, to a camping ordinance. The Supreme Judicial Court has at times read the state constitution more protectively than its federal counterpart, and a challenge to a Massachusetts ordinance under article 26 is a possibility the Grants Pass majority did not address and could not. No such case has been brought that we can find. Until one is, Grants Pass is the operative rule here as elsewhere.
Boston is the comparison Worcester councilors will hear about. In 2023 the Boston City Council, after delay and debate, adopted an ordinance targeting tents in the Mass. and Cass area that paired removal with a shelter offer. Worcester’s proposal is citywide rather than confined to one district, which is the more common form nationally since 2024 and the one that raises the vehicle and disability questions most directly.
Questions for Tuesday
What happens when the shelter offer is declined. Whether a bed must actually be available that day for the notice to issue. What the city does with belongings it removes, where they are stored, for how long, and how a person retrieves them. Whether the 24-hour vehicle rule requires notice before a tow and where the city expects those vehicles to go. Whether the fine is meant to be collected or is a formality. And what the real-time shelter dashboard the framework promises will show on a January night when 197 permanent beds are full and the 136 temporary ones are not yet open.
The ordinance says the city will act. Whether it can act without simply moving the same people from one block to another is a question 311 data from the last four years already answers for Worcester, and it is the question Grants Pass left to the council.
Common questions
Is it legal for a city to ban sleeping in public?
Under City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, 603 U.S. 520 (2024), yes as a matter of the Eighth Amendment, even when no shelter is available. Other constitutional and statutory limits, on seizure of property, due process and disability accommodation, still apply to how the ban is enforced.
What does the Worcester ordinance prohibit?
Camping, sitting, sleeping, lying or storing belongings on public property, and living in a vehicle on a public way or lot for more than 24 consecutive hours. Enforcement requires outreach and a shelter offer first and a 72-hour posted notice, with a $25 daily fine after that.
Can Worcester jail someone under this ordinance?
No. It is a civil ordinance with a fine, not a criminal offense. The enforcement mechanism in practice is removal of the encampment.
Does Massachusetts have its own rule?
No statute and no appellate decision. A challenge under article 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights has not been brought. Grants Pass is the governing law for now.
When does the council vote?
The ordinance is on the City Council agenda for Tuesday, September 15, 2026. Councils commonly refer new ordinances to committee before a final vote.
Ordinance terms and city figures from Commissioner Dixit’s memo and City Manager Batista’s letter as reported by MassLive (Adam Bass), the Worcester Guardian and This Week in Worcester, September 13 and 14, 2026; the memo itself was not retrieved. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, 603 U.S. 520 (2024), and Martin v. City of Boise, 920 F.3d 584 (9th Cir. 2019), verified against CourtListener. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.