On back-to-back days in June, the Rev. Steve Brigham was arrest­ed at the tent city he runs in Lake­wood, N.J. Charged with crim­i­nal mis­chief and wit­ness tam­per­ing by Lake­wood Town­ship police, Brigham says the arrests are the lat­est inci­dent in a ​“pat­tern of harass­ment” aimed at evict­ing the home­less encamp­ment. As an esti­mat­ed 640,000 Amer­i­cans go with­out shel­ter each night, many cities are pur­su­ing poli­cies to push them fur­ther into the mar­gins. But Brigham and oth­er res­i­dents are fight­ing to stay where they are.

Last year the town­ship sued in state court to close down the camp, but a judge ruled in Feb­ru­ary that, because its res­i­dents had no oth­er options for hous­ing (the clos­est shel­ter is more than an hour away), the tent city had to remain open. Brigham and sev­er­al camp res­i­dents then filed a class action suit against Lake­wood Town­ship and Ocean Coun­ty, accus­ing them of vio­lat­ing the state constitution’s guar­an­tee of a ​“right to safe­ty and to life.” Both suits remain active, and an effort to reach a nego­ti­at­ed solu­tion is underway.

Mean­while, the rela­tion­ship between the town­ship and the home­less camp has dete­ri­o­rat­ed. Brigham claims town­ship offi­cials have towed res­i­dents’ cars and dumped wood chips at the end of an emer­gency exit path. Town­ship offi­cials dis­pute this, say­ing they are only respond­ing to prob­lems at the camp.

The tent city, estab­lished by Brigham six years ago, is cur­rent­ly home to near­ly 100 peo­ple, most of whom have already tried shel­ters, liv­ing with rel­a­tives and friends, or sleep­ing in cars. The camp is locat­ed a mile from the city’s small downtown.

The harass­ment fac­ing the camp is con­sis­tent with a spate of munic­i­pal laws passed in recent years that crim­i­nal­ize what home­less advo­cates call ​“acts of liv­ing” — sleep­ing, eat­ing or even sit­ting in pub­lic places. In May, Den­ver banned camp­ing on pub­lic prop­er­ty. Philadel­phia banned the feed­ing of the home­less in June. In San Fran­cis­co, accord­ing to the San Fran­cis­co Pub­lic Press, the city issued near­ly 40,000 tick­ets to home­less indi­vid­u­als between 2007 and 2011, for offens­es includ­ing sleep­ing in parks, tres­pass­ing and obstruc­tion of sidewalks.

Accord­ing to the Nation­al Law Cen­ter on Home­less­ness and Pover­ty (NLCHP), more than 50 cities have adopt­ed anti-camp­ing or anti-feed­ing laws. Eric Tars, direc­tor of human rights and children’s rights pro­grams for NLCHP, said these laws do lit­tle more than sweep the prob­lem of home­less­ness under the rug. ​“It is a clear vio­la­tion [of human rights] to pun­ish some­body for basic human activ­i­ties — eat­ing, sleep­ing, going to the bath­room even — if they don’t have any oth­er place to do it,” Tars says.

A joint report from the U.S. Inter­a­gency Coun­cil on Home­less­ness and the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice, released in April, called on local gov­ern­ments to redi­rect fund­ing for polic­ing non-vio­lent offens­es toward col­lab­o­ra­tion between law enforce­ment and social ser­vice providers.

Some com­mu­ni­ties have begun fight­ing back. In June, a coali­tion of the home­less and their advo­cates in Rhode Island suc­cess­ful­ly pushed for pas­sage of the nation’s first Home­less Bill of Rights, which des­ig­nates an individual’s hous­ing sta­tus as ille­gal grounds for dis­crim­i­na­tion and there­by guar­an­tees the home­less the same rights and access to pub­lic spaces as every­one else.

The Seat­tle Hous­ing and Resource Effort, a grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion of the home­less, runs a net­work of self-man­aged shel­ters and tent cities across the greater Seat­tle area. By build­ing bridges with sup­port­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty and pres­sur­ing pub­lic offi­cials to remove legal bar­ri­ers to tent cities, the group has estab­lished two encamp­ments that each sleep up to 100 peo­ple every night and pro­vide bus tick­ets for res­i­dents to get to and from work.

Heather Maria John­son, civ­il rights pro­gram direc­tor for the NLCHP, notes that ​“tent cities are not a long-term solu­tion,” but she says they remain a place where ​“peo­ple can get back on their feet with­out fear of arrest.” And in a tough eco­nom­ic cli­mate, tent cities have con­tin­ued to pro­lif­er­ate. In June, Rev. Lar­ry Rice filed suit against the city of St. Louis for pre­vent­ing him from estab­lish­ing a home­less encampment.

The Lake­wood tent city, mean­while, is a rare place of sta­bil­i­ty for its res­i­dents, and keep­ing it open is their first pri­or­i­ty. ​“There is an unde­ni­able … push to dis­place the exist­ing pop­u­lous,” says Brigham’s son Steve, who is try­ing to forge links between the encamp­ment and pub­lic hous­ing res­i­dents. ​“While every­one has the right to live in this town, there is a com­mu­ni­ty being ripped up by its roots.”

