Cobb County Wants to Punish People for Having Nowhere to Sleep

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Cobb County is considering amendments to Chapter 86 of the county code that would make it illegal to camp, sleep, live, store belongings, or lie down on private property without the owner's written permission, which a person would have to carry and show police on request. A second section would ban the same activities on county streets, parks, and other public property unless the county issues written permission through an application process.

This is the second try. The county withdrew the same proposal before a vote last November, and now it's back in the 2026 code amendment package.

When police requested this language last year, they told commissioners officers can't enter camps on private property without the owner's permission, and county officials said the proposal mirrors rules the City of Marietta already adopted. Chairwoman Lisa Cupid questioned how subjective it would be to decide who has permission and who doesn't.

We learned about this from mutual aid partners who work directly with unhoused neighbors in Cobb, and we're all in on the coalition they're building.

Public Hearing #1: Tuesday, October 13 at 9am

Public Hearing #2 and Vote: Tuesday, October 27 at 7pm

Board of Commissioners meeting room, 2nd floor, 100 Cherokee Street, Marietta

Who This Affects

Cobb's largest concentration of street homelessness is along the Bells Ferry Road corridor in north Marietta, home to MUST Ministries' Hope House and Shady Grove Baptist Church, which feeds unhoused neighbors every day. Volunteers counted 283 people living outside in January 2024. The January 2026 count found 157, though it was taken on a freezing night when more people were in emergency shelters, and the Cobb Homeless Alliance estimates the true number of people living outside is 300 to 350. Many people in camps have been without housing for a year or more, and many live with physical disabilities, mental illness, or addiction.

A written permission requirement does nothing to change any of that. It moves people from one patch of woods to the next, adds citations and court dates to lives that are already unstable, and makes it harder for outreach workers to find the people they serve.

Punishing Poverty in the Middle of a Housing Crisis

Pushing this amendment now is unconscionable. Housing costs keep climbing, paychecks haven't kept up, and more of our neighbors are one rent increase, layoff, or medical bill away from losing their homes. Here's what the numbers show:

The Cobb Homeless Alliance reports that 51% of Cobb renters are cost burdened, meaning they spend 30% or more of their income on housing, and more than 2,500 Cobb students experience homelessness.
Nationally, Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies found a record 22.7 million renter households were cost burdened in 2024, nearly half of all renters. Of those, 12.1 million paid half or more of their income for housing.
Among renters earning less than $30,000 a year, 83% are cost burdened and 67% are severely cost burdened, while the supply of lower cost rentals keeps shrinking.
The income needed to qualify for a median priced home jumped from $79,600 in 2021 to $126,700 in 2024.
Chronic homelessness reached 155,750 people in January 2025, the highest number ever recorded and roughly double the 2016 low.

When half a paycheck goes to rent, there's nothing left to absorb a crisis. People get pushed outside, and then the county tells them they need paperwork to sleep.

The Federal Push Behind Camping Bans

Cobb isn't acting alone. Here's what the federal record shows:

In an April 2023 campaign video, Donald Trump promised to work with states to ban urban camping wherever possible, arrest people who violate those bans while offering treatment as an option, and relocate homeless people to government run "tent cities" built on large parcels of inexpensive land. The National Homelessness Law Center has described that plan as rounding people up into government run detention camps.
In March 2025, he signed an executive order directing the National Park Service to clear homeless encampments from federal land in Washington, DC.
On July 24, 2025, he signed Executive Order 14321, "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets." It directs federal agencies to prioritize grants for states and cities that enforce bans on urban camping, loitering, and squatting. It tells the Attorney General to seek reversal of court precedents that limit involuntary civil commitment, calls for shifting homeless people into long term institutional settings, and directs agencies to stop funding Housing First programs.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's policy blueprint from some of Trump's closest advisers, explicitly calls for ending Housing First. Its housing chapter, written by former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, labels Housing First a "Far Left" idea and proposes requiring mental health and substance abuse treatment before people get permanent housing.
HUD then moved to cap the share of its roughly $3.9 billion Continuum of Care homelessness grants that could go to permanent housing at 30%, down from about 90%. Advocates said that put housing for about 170,000 people at risk. A federal judge blocked the change in December 2025 and ruled it unlawful in June 2026, and providers are now challenging a new HUD funding notice that again shifts money away from permanent housing.

What the record shows is a coordinated push to ban camping, arrest people who won't move, expand involuntary commitment, and steer federal money away from housing. Whether or not Cobb's commissioners have federal grants in mind, Sections 86-12 and 86-13 are exactly the kind of local law this executive order rewards.

What's Working in Other Cities

Cobb's proposal leans on citations and permission slips. The communities that have shrunk homelessness in recent years went a different direction: they got every agency working from one plan and moved people into housing.

Houston adopted Housing First in 2011, moving people from the street straight into apartments without requiring sobriety or a job first. The region has moved more than 25,000 people into housing and cut its homeless population by more than half. Its 2025 count found 3,325 people, holding steady while national homelessness sat near record highs, and local leaders say keeping that progress will take more shelter and housing capacity.

Dallas and Collin counties built the All Neighbors Coalition, more than 150 organizations working from one strategy. Between 2021 and 2025 they housed nearly 16,000 individuals and families and cut overall homelessness 23% and unsheltered homelessness 28%. Their Street to Home initiative moved 257 people off the streets of downtown Dallas and into housing with behavioral health care in under a year.

Bakersfield and Kern County, California joined the Built for Zero campaign, which keeps a by name list of every person experiencing homelessness and coordinates local agencies the way communities respond to a natural disaster. Their list of chronically homeless people dropped from more than 200 in 2017 to what the campaign calls functional zero by March 2020. Rockford, Illinois, was the first community in the campaign to reach functional zero and has since reached it for both veterans and chronic homelessness.

The common thread is one shared plan, every agency at the table, every person known by name, and housing as the goal.

Our Proposals

Step one is stopping the camping provisions, Sections 86-12 and 86-13. Step two is proposing solutions. These ideas came out of our partners' conversations. We believe in them, and good ideas get stronger when we're clear about the challenges.

1. No penalty for sleeping on private land, and fines for corporate owners who don't give back

Why it helps: It stops criminalizing survival and puts responsibility on the people and companies with the most resources.

What to watch: "Giving back" needs a legal definition, and some owners may fence or clear land faster to avoid fines.

Where it's been tried: We couldn't find any community that has tried fines like this, which makes Cobb a chance to lead.

2. Volunteer outreach teams instead of law enforcement

Why it helps: Familiar faces build trust, lower the temperature, and connect people to care in ways a patrol car can't.

What to watch: Volunteers aren't clinicians, and any group holding power over vulnerable people can drift into acting like the enforcement it replaced. We cover safeguards below.

Where it's been tried: Denver's STAR program sends mental health clinicians and paramedics, instead of police, to nonviolent 911 calls like trespassing. A Stanford study published in Science Advances found reports of lower level crimes in the pilot area fell 34% with no detectable rise in more serious crimes, and the program saved money. During the six month pilot, teams responded to 748 calls and never once needed to call police. STAR uses trained professionals, which strengthens the case for asking the county to fund outreach work instead of leaning only on volunteers.

3. Trash bins near camps with regular pickup

Why it helps: It's cheap, it's sanitary, and it answers one of the biggest complaints about encampments. Our partners see unhoused folks piling their trash for a pickup that never comes.

What to watch: The county has to commit to a pickup schedule and keep it, and bins can't become a pretext for sweeps.

Where it's been tried: San Jose, Seattle, Portland, and Denver have all run trash collection programs at encampments. San Jose's program, launched in 2020, provided weekly or biweekly pickup at more than 100 encampments, and Portland's GLITTER program pays people who are or were homeless to collect trash from camps. Published results mostly measure how much trash was collected.

4. Portable toilets, cleaned regularly

Why it helps: Public health, dignity, and cleaner creeks and woods for everyone.

What to watch: Ongoing cost, placement fights with neighbors, and upkeep.

Where it's been tried: San Francisco's Pit Stop program placed public restrooms, many staffed with attendants, in neighborhoods with large unhoused populations. A UC Berkeley study found reports of human waste fell by about 12 per week after 13 restrooms were installed, and adding attendants appeared to reduce reports further in some neighborhoods.

5. A sanctioned campground supported by volunteer groups

Why it helps: Stability, safety, and a consistent place where case workers and services can find people.

What to watch: It must stay voluntary and low barrier, and it can't become an excuse to ban camping everywhere else.

Where it's been tried: Denver's Safe Outdoor Spaces, run by a nonprofit, offered tents, food, and services to people coming straight off the street. By 2023, the sites and companion safe parking areas had sheltered more than 515 people and helped over 180 move into permanent housing. A Colorado Sun analysis found crime reports fell in host neighborhoods even as reported crime rose across Denver, and the first two sites won over many of their housed neighbors. There were setbacks: a fire at one site displaced 37 people, and neighbors worried about crime each time a new site was proposed. The difference between these sites and the federal "tent cities" plan matters: Denver's were voluntary, and nobody was arrested for refusing to go.

6. Regular showers

Local groups could partner with MUST to provide a regular space for mobile showers, or the city or county could build permanent outdoor showers.

Why it helps: Hygiene affects health, job interviews, and how people are treated by everyone they meet.

What to watch: Water access, maintenance, and a consistent schedule.

Where it's been tried: LavaMae began running showers out of converted San Francisco buses in 2014 and now trains grassroots groups across the country to run their own. One group it supports, Streetside Showers in Texas and Florida, has provided more than 13,000 showers. A Los Angeles County pilot found that while not everyone used the showers, they drew people to other services on site, including hot meals, substance use counseling, and help clearing criminal records.

7. A broader coalition that decides by consensus

MUST, Shady Grove, and smaller organizations working together.

Why it helps: Shared knowledge, less duplication, and a louder voice in front of the county.

What to watch: Consensus takes time, larger organizations can dominate the room, and unhoused people need voting seats at the table.

Where it's been tried: This is the model behind Houston, Dallas, and Bakersfield's results above.

8. Dollar for dollar matching for grassroots groups

For every dollar the city or county gives MUST, an equal amount would go to a smaller organization.

Why it helps: Small groups stretch money further. Emmanuel's Village, a 15 home tiny home community for families of homeless students that MUST is helping develop, is budgeted at $3 million or more, around $200,000 per home. Our partners believe volunteer builders could put up two or three homes for what one costs there.

What to watch: Smaller groups need transparent reporting, and volunteer builds still need land, permits, and code approval.

Where it's been tried: Community First! Village outside Austin houses people who were chronically homeless in tiny homes and RVs, mostly with private funding. Volunteers help build the homes, including a crew of more than 50 employees from a construction company who built a house in about two and a half weeks, and supporters live on site as neighbors. Residents pay rent and can earn income through jobs in the village, and about 88% stay housed. One village can't fix a citywide shortage on its own, though, and Austin's homeless count still rose in at least one year after it opened.

Keeping Volunteer Groups Accountable

Whoever does this work holds power over people who have very little. If volunteers take on roles police play now, every group in this coalition should commit to these basics:

A written, signed code of conduct for every volunteer
Training in de-escalation, trauma informed care, Narcan, and residents' rights
No enforcement of any kind: no detaining people, no searching or tossing belongings, no weapons, and no calling police or code enforcement except in an emergency
Volunteers work in pairs and rotate assignments
Camp residents help set the rules and can ask any volunteer to stop coming
A complaint process handled by someone outside the group, with removal for anyone who crosses the line
Public reporting on money and activities
Regular check ins so burnout gets caught before it turns into resentment

Care without accountability can turn into control. Building these commitments in from the start protects our unhoused neighbors and the integrity of every group doing this work.

How You Can Help

Come to the hearings on Tuesday, October 13 at 9am and Tuesday, October 27 at 7pm at 100 Cherokee Street in Marietta
Contact your Cobb County commissioner before the October 27 vote and ask them to strike Sections 86-12 and 86-13 from the Chapter 86 amendments
Share your ideas with us, or reach out if your organization wants to join the coalition

A Note on the Data

We're skeptical of federal homelessness numbers right now, and you should be too. HUD's count covers a single night in January, 29 of the roughly 400 local programs that run it skipped the unsheltered count in 2025, and HUD's own press release used the data to attack "Housing First" policies and credited the recent decline to drops in "sanctuary cities." Local counts have limits too: Cobb's 2026 count fell on a freezing night, and the Cobb Homeless Alliance believes the official numbers miss people. That's why we lean on independent researchers like Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies and on what our mutual aid partners see firsthand. Every source points the same direction: housing is slipping out of reach for more people every year.