Public Statement on the Urban Camping Ordinance Amendment

Adopted: 5/8/2025

Our Position

Savannah DSA recognizes the human right to safe, quality, and affordable housing. The Urban Camping Ordinance Amendment creates a convoluted pipeline to otherwise exclusive shelters, offering not a necessary service but another excuse to denigrate the unhoused for their suffering.

Why We Oppose the Amendment

Our chapter would support an avenue of providing shelter that does not allow police to determine what is a fair warning, does not allow police to determine if you may keep your personal belongings or if they are worthless, and does not require an individual to violate an ordinance in order to have the opportunity to be allowed into the shelters that don’t want them. Because this ordinance empowers police to clear the homes and communities of our most vulnerable neighbors, we oppose it.

Our Demand

We call on the county to implement Housing First policies that are proven to severely reduce chronic homelessness. The best known solutions are ones which provide unconditional, permanent, and affordable housing. To ignore this while proposing lesser alternatives is a mismanagement of resources.

Approved by the Membership of the Savannah Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, Inc.

Ratified by member vote on 5/8/2025

Contact: savgadsa@gmail.com | www.savgadsa.org