Florida HB 437: Camping Bans, Enforcement, and Designated Sites

Florida’s public camping law, House Bill 1365, prohibits every county and city in the state from allowing people to regularly camp or sleep on public property. Codified as Section 125.0231 of the Florida Statutes, it took effect on October 1, 2024, and gives residents, business owners, and the Attorney General the power to sue local governments that fail to enforce it.¹ Counties can authorize temporary, regulated camping sites, but only after state certification and only within tight limits.

What the Law Prohibits

The core rule is short. No county or municipality may authorize or otherwise allow any person to regularly camp or sleep on public property, which includes sidewalks, streets, rights-of-way, the grounds around public buildings, and any other land under local government control.¹

The word “regularly” matters. Someone napping on a park bench once isn’t the target. The prohibition is aimed at ongoing or repeated overnight use of public land as living space. The statute defines public camping or sleeping as lodging or residing overnight outdoors, whether in a tent, under a makeshift shelter, or in the open with no cover at all. Bedding, pillows, and stored personal belongings can serve as evidence of overnight habitation.

Two activities are carved out of the ban:

Lodging overnight in a motor vehicle that is registered, insured, and parked where it may lawfully be.¹
Camping on property specifically designated for recreational camping purposes.

The vehicle exemption matters for anyone living in a car or RV. As long as the vehicle is registered, insured, and parked legally, Section 125.0231 is not violated. Local parking ordinances still apply, so overnight parking restrictions on a particular street or lot can still create problems.

Enforcement Against People Who Are Camping

Before taking any enforcement action against an individual, including issuing a citation or imposing a fine, a local government must offer available shelter or a temporary accommodation.² This offer-first requirement is the statute’s main concession to due process for people experiencing homelessness.

Someone who refuses the offered shelter can then face whatever penalties the local government has set by ordinance. Those penalties vary between jurisdictions because HB 1365 leaves the specific consequences to local discretion.

The statute does not address what happens to personal property during an encampment clearing. It says nothing about storage, holding periods, or notice before disposal. Federal law fills that silence. Courts have held under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments that belongings left at a campsite are not legally abandoned simply because the owner stepped away, and that destroying property without reasonable notice violates due process. Local governments that conduct sweeps without a storage-and-notice protocol face federal civil rights exposure under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.³

Lawsuits Against Cities and Counties

The most aggressive feature of HB 1365 is not aimed at homeless individuals. It targets local governments themselves.

Since January 1, 2025, any resident, local business owner, or the Florida Attorney General can file a civil action to force a non-compliant county or municipality to stop allowing unlawful camping on public property.⁴ Before suing, the plaintiff must give the local government written notice documenting the violation. The government then has five business days to fix the problem. If it does not, the plaintiff can proceed with the lawsuit and must submit an affidavit confirming both the notice and the failure to act.

A plaintiff who wins can recover reasonable expenses, including court costs and attorney fees.⁴ That fee-shifting provision lowers the financial risk for residents and business owners who want to force a city council’s hand, and it raises the cost of looking the other way.

Designated Camping Sites

The law gives counties a narrow path to create temporary, sanctioned sites where camping can legally occur. The requirements are deliberately demanding.

Approval and Certification

A county’s governing body must approve a camping site by majority vote. If the proposed site sits within a municipality’s boundaries, the municipality’s governing body must also concur by majority vote.¹ No site may be used until the Department of Children and Families certifies it, and certification requires the county to prove four things:

Existing homeless shelters do not have enough open beds for the county’s homeless population.
The property is not next to land designated for residential use in the county’s comprehensive plan and future land use map.
The site will not materially hurt the property values or safety of nearby residential or commercial properties, and will not endanger the safety of children.
The county has a plan to meet the ongoing operational standards.

Operational Standards

Once a site is certified and open, the county must maintain minimum standards in four areas: physical safety of the property and the people on it; access to clean, working restrooms and running water;² coordination with the regional managing entity to connect residents with substance abuse and mental health services; and an active ban on illegal drug use and alcohol use on the property.¹

Within 30 days of certification, the county must publish those standards on its public website, and any municipality hosting the site must do the same. The policies have to stay posted for as long as the designated property is in use.

One-Year Limit

A designated site cannot operate for a continuous period longer than one year.¹ The statute treats these sites as transitional, not permanent. Whether a county can close a site, wait, and redesignate the same property is not addressed in the text.

The Constitutional Backdrop

HB 1365 exists in its current form largely because of a 2024 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, decided June 28, 2024, the Court held 6-3 that enforcing public camping bans does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.⁵

Before that decision, the Ninth Circuit’s 2019 ruling in Martin v. City of Boise had held that punishing someone for sleeping outside was unconstitutional if a city lacked enough shelter beds for its homeless population. The Supreme Court rejected that approach, finding that camping ordinances punish the conduct of camping on public land, not the status of being homeless.⁶ With that barrier removed, Florida and other states gained wider room to pass laws like HB 1365.

The ruling does not make every enforcement action bulletproof. Fourth Amendment challenges to property seizures during sweeps and Fourteenth Amendment due process claims where enforcement occurs without adequate notice remain available.

Effective Dates

Most provisions took effect on October 1, 2024, including the statewide ban, the designated-site rules, and the obligation of local governments to enforce the law. The civil lawsuit provision began on January 1, 2025, giving counties and cities a three-month compliance window before residents and business owners could sue.⁴ Both dates have passed. Every provision of HB 1365 is now fully in effect.

1
Florida Senate. Florida Code 125.0231 – Public Camping and Public Sleeping
2
Florida Senate. CS/CS/HB 1365 – Unauthorized Public Camping and Public Sleeping
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1983 – Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights
4
Florida Senate. CS/CS/HB 1365 – Unauthorized Public Camping and Public Sleeping
5
Justia. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, 603 U.S. ___ (2024)
6
U.S. Supreme Court. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, 603 U.S. ___ (2024)