The local ordinance currently prohibiting law enforcement from removing a camp when shelter beds are not available may soon be changed.
WICHITA, Kan. (The Journal) — The Wichita City Council is scheduled to vote Dec. 17 on whether to change a city ordinance to allow for stricter illegal camping enforcement. The move comes months after a Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outside and encampments, even if no shelter space is available.
Right now, city ordinance restricts Wichita police officers from charging people with illegal camping or forcibly removing them when there are no shelter beds available. Police are also supposed to post a 72 hour notice to vacate prior to clean up.
If the Council approves a draft ordinance, police will be able to immediately remove the encampment. Public Works, Parks and the Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department will also be given the power to enforce.
Another proposed change would also reduce illegal camping violations from a $500 fine to a maximum $200 fine and/or thirty days in custody, while also giving courts the ability to require community service hours instead of paying the fine.
These changes come amidst a statewide pressure to crack down on crimes committed by homeless people, which mostly comes from infractions with camping or trespassing. Rural lawmakers have questioned whether the state should fund efforts to reduce homelessness if urban areas seemingly lag when it comes to enforcing encampments.
Wichita’s city ordinance already made it unlawful and a public nuisance for people to camp on public property or in public right-of-way without a permit. But the section used to have an exception for homeless individuals who don’t have access to “appropriate shelters,” which restricts local law enforcement from disbanding encampments unless a homeless person has a shelter bed to go to.
The proposed ordinance changes that. One call to 911 and an encampment could be immediately cleared.
District 1 Councilmember Brandon Johnson expressed concern about enforcement, saying that he’s unsure how stricter encampment cleanups will ultimately benefit homeless people or convince them to seek resources.
“We have to also find ways to build trust to get folks into the MAC. So my question again is whether if somebody is unwilling to come in because they don’t trust it or maybe they’ve been in before and some bad things have happened, and they don’t come in… where are they going to go? What’s going to happen?”
Councilmember Dalton Glasscock said homelessness is the number one issue he hears from his constituents in District 4.
“As the emergency shelter opens, I think we should implement this as soon as possible in January with the increased capacity of 230 beds. If we don’t, we’re also going to lose trust of the public and, I think, support for the MAC and emergency shelter,” he said. “If we’re providing millions of dollars of resources for individuals and they don’t see a change on the streets we’re going to lose the trust of the public regarding enforcement and accountability.”
8,000 homeless camps removed in four years
The ordinance change would allow quicker clean ups at more “publicly visible locations,” such as sidewalks, bus shelters and the eventual multiagency center in Midtown, where no waiting period is required prior to cleanup.
There is an allowance for locations considered “less visible,” such as wooded trails, where a reported encampment in such a spot will be given 48 hours to leave or clean up the property if the person is present when an officer shows up.
The clean-up timeline today is roughly this: an encampment is reported, an officer visits the camp and leaves a sticker warning that people living there have 48 hours to vacate. If belongings are left behind, it could take up to seven business days for a private contractor to remove the camp.
That would change, too, if Council votes in favor of ordinance changes. Clean-up responsibility will “deemphasize the use of contractors,” according to City Manager Robert Layton, and the city parks department will be utilizing its own four-person team designated for clean-ups.
“We’re using contractors on a month-to-month basis right now in the interim until we get all of the equipment necessary for city staff clean ups,” he said at the Council workshop.
Interim city parks director Reggie Davidson said that he plans to post the positions for the clean-up team this week, with them being on board in January. New equipment should be in within the first quarter of 2026.
The cost of removal is a pricey one, as the city was paying a private contractor $835 to $5,585 per site, leading to annual costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Wichita Eagle reported that camp removals cost the city $352,252 in 2023.
Layton said that the private contractor will be used for the first quarter of 2025, with $50,000 designated for roughly three months.
Encampment cleanup costs for the next fiscal year will be part of the already-approved Parks budget.
The city parks department itself has cleaned up 1,735 campsites so far this year, costing the department $140,157 dollars with 233 hours of labor, far outpacing the costs of other clean-up related orders, such as graffiti or illegal dumping. According to the city, Parks has cleaned up 8,000 campsites since 2020.
Stefania Lugli is a reporter for The Journal, published by the Kansas Leadership Center. She focuses on covering issues related to homelessness in Wichita and across Kansas. Her stories are shared widely through the Wichita Journalism Collaborative. She can be reached via email [email protected].
This article was produced as part of the Wichita Journalism Collaborative, which includes The Journal and 10 other organizations and community groups, including KSN-TV.