LIBERTY, NY — The Village Board of Liberty approved a local law on August 21 to prohibit camping or sleeping in village parks, sidewalks, streets and other public areas.

Inside the Liberty Municipal Building on Main Street, more than 40 community members attended the Thursday  public hearing, drawing mixed support for and opposition to the local law.

“We’re not trying to punish homeless people, but we are concerned about their safety and the safety of the people who choose to walk on the sidewalk,” said Village of Liberty Mayor Joan Stoddard.

Sullivan County resident JoAnne Omar urged Stoddard to reconsider the law, saying she was “perplexed” at the board’s decision to relocate people given the county’s housing crisis.

“What I’m asking is, shouldn’t you be more concerned about services other than just clearing them out?” said Omar. 

The village board says the law is needed because it believes sitting, sleeping, or camping on village property poses a “public health and safety hazard and interferes with the rights of others to use the areas for which they were intended.” The local law defines a campsite as any place where chairs, blankets, or other items to sit on are placed for the purpose of sitting or lying.

Sullivan County resident Jen Duncan has been in the county for more than 15 years and is currently homeless. At the public hearing, Duncan criticized the board’s plans to connect unhoused residents with social services, saying she has yet to receive the help she needs.

“I have not received services from [the Department of Social Services], even though it’s been stipulated in court that I am disabled with this disability that is permanent in total and that I will receive accessible services and accommodations. That has not happened,” she said.

A study from the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that encampment sweeps and forcibly relocating unhoused people could lead to significant jumps in overdose deaths, hospitalizations and mortality. Duncan tried to speak longer than the village’s three-minute public comment limit, urging that her life would be most at risk by the law, but Stoddard and Village of Liberty Attorney Gary Silver proceeded with closing the meeting.

The local law comes one month after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that seeks to make it easier for states and cities to remove outdoor encampments. However, Stoddard said the village board had been deliberating the local ordinance for six months, long before the executive order was announced.

Stoddard said she hopes the law will help the village to connect residents to services like Sullivan County’s Department of Social Services (DSS), but noted that social services are a county issue, not one “the village has any control over.”

Several community members in favor of the local law said it was necessary to keep residents safe and called for tighter public safety measures. “What about the older people and people who are afraid to come into the building?” said Anna Barbindi. “There’s two sides of this coin.”

Liberty resident Thelma McIver, who was born and raised in Liberty, said this is the first time she’s seen homeless people on the village’s sidewalks and streets. But she’s not so sure the new law will address the county’s broader systemic issues of unaffordability and shrinking services.

“DSS [is] only gonna be able to do so much because you know as well as I know there is limited housing available,” said McIver. “All we’re doing is putting [on] a Band-Aid, because we haven’t solved the issue.”

Sullivan County provided emergency housing to 260 individuals as of August 2025. For more than 15 years, the county has relied on a patchwork system of placing unhoused people in hotels and motels across Liberty and Monticello. In 2024, the emergency housing model cost Sullivan County $3.4 million. Those costs are likely to jump as hotels raise their room rates, according to Sullivan County Health and Human Services Commissioner John Liddle.

Past legislative bodies have been unsuccessful in building a temporary housing shelter or facility, referred to as gateway housing, since 2009. The village board’s decision to ban outdoor sleeping or camping in public areas comes when the Sullivan County Legislature has been grappling with where to build the county’s gateway housing facility for months. Following the legislature’s failure to approve a site location in April, legislators have gone back to the drawing board to find a new location.

District 5 Legislator Catherine Scott and District 6 Legislator Luis Alvarez both attended the August 21 public hearing and pushed Liberty’s village board to endorse the gateway housing facility.

“We need votes from legislators and that has to come from public pressure,” said Scott.

The Village of Liberty filed the local law with New York State on Monday, August 25 and it is now in effect.