Like many of the unhoused Iowans who camp beside the Des Moines River, Stephanie Roth has a long list of health challenges: fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, chronic pain and mental illness. She sometimes uses a walker or a cane to get around.
Her pain and limited mobility make packing up and moving difficult. But that’s something she has done frequently in the past year.
Des Moines is among the more than 350 U.S. cities and some states where camping outside designated recreational campgrounds is a crime. The city said the ban, passed in 2024, hasn’t made a big difference in how aggressively it removes homeless encampments. But Roth and others experiencing homelessness told The Midwest Newsroom they perceive more frequent pressure.
“They tell you to move or we’ll impound, move or we’ll impound. That’s what we got threatened with,” said Roth, 50, who was adopted by her grandparents as a child and graduated from Des Moines North High School.
Unhoused Americans who were interviewed by The Midwest Newsroom for this story said they believe cities have become more aggressive with bulldozing and other tactics in recent years. They reported being pushed from location to location and dodging the bulldozer alongside other challenges that threaten their lives — heat, cold, hunger, thirst, crime, storms.
The rush to clean up homeless encampments is also occurring in locations without camping bans on the books, as the number of people experiencing homelessness in the United States increases in states like Iowa and Missouri, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A group that provides states and cities with model language for camping bans has argued that these ordinances are a necessary first step toward more effective strategies to reduce homelessness. Leaving people and encampments alone has not worked, said Devon Kurtz, public safety policy director with the Cicero Institute.
Cities and states can approach encampments and the people inhabiting them differently after the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson decision by the U.S. Supreme Court from June 2024. The court ruled that ordinances criminalizing unauthorized “camping” in public spaces were allowed under the Constitution, even if people have no other place to sleep.
This is the second full summer after the landmark decision. Some complaints about enforcement at campsites are about tactics that were legal and common long before the Grants Pass decision. But the threat of being ticketed just for camping has changed the climate, increasing stigma, unhoused people told The Midwest Newsroom.
The most recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data showed a 14% increase in the number of unhoused people in Missouri from 2024 to 2025, to over 8,300 people. Nationwide, according to HUD, the homeless population decreased 3.3%. That figure had spiked in the early 2020s. Estimates in other Midwestern states showed varying trends. Iowa’s unhoused population increased 7%, to over 2,800. Kansas and Nebraska both reported decreases: down 5% in Kansas to about 2,650, and down 2% in Nebraska to about 2,650.
Bulldozing encampments
Melissa Rardin, 43, of Des Moines, said the city bulldozed an encampment where she and her husband were living in May 2026, a few miles north of where Roth is living.
Rardin was not at the encampment when it was bulldozed, she told The Midwest Newsroom. She said her medication, Suboxone, which she takes daily, was left behind in the tent. Rardin said it took two weeks to get it replaced.
Rardin said she lost all her clothes. The couple estimated they lost $2,000 to $3,000 worth of property, which included solar panels, four car batteries, two full propane tanks, a portable heater, a bed, blankets and food, Rardin said.
“We had both just got our food stamps back and went grocery shopping. We had a cooler full,” Rardin said in a text message exchange with The Midwest Newsroom. City of Des Moines officials said that notices are posted before encampments are cleared.
In July, Rardin was still unhoused. She told The Midwest Newsroom on July 25 that she had not eaten anything in three days.
Increased anxiety, more moving
Roth said the threat of bulldozing caused increased anxiety among the unhoused people she knows. She said moving frequently — and sometimes, farther — from their workplaces makes holding a job more difficult.
In addition to making public campsites illegal, the ordinances Des Moines passed in 2024 ban sleeping in public areas such as sidewalks.
Angie Arthur, executive director of Homeward Iowa, a regional homeless planning organization in Polk County, said that initially, she and others had concerns that the city would be issuing citations and fines to unhoused people. Those legal consequences haven’t been occurring, Arthur said.
“I think what has happened is that there is more movement within the camp system,” Arthur said.
In some cases, people have been pushed farther from resources, especially as Des Moines develops more green spaces, Arthur said.
Arthur said there is a need for more resources in the community.
“I can safely say that we need more resources across the state, and more investment from the state, particularly as we have that volatility on the federal level,” she said. Homeward has published research about what investment would be required to meet the county’s housing needs. As of 2024, that came out to almost $20 million annually for Polk County.
The Cicero Institute and other supporters of camping bans argue they’re necessary for the safety and health of everyone in the community. Texas-based Cicero’s advocacy has figured prominently in state and local debates about homelessness policy.
If people become homeless because of addiction or poor mental health, providing free housing or other benefits will not resolve that underlying problem, Kurtz said. Other concerns include environmental and safety consequences of large homeless encampments.
Even when shelters have sufficient beds, residents often turn them down because they don’t allow pets or human companions, or because of strict behavioral rules. Another frequent complaint is that residents will lose the belongings they leave behind, a problem officials in Des Moines and other cities say they have tried to address.
Deaths in homeless communities
Several unhoused people living in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska have died while living outdoors recently, including these recent deaths:
- The body of a 56-year-old man was found July 24, 2026, by a Des Moines police officer at a homeless encampment under an interstate overpass, according to police. Police said the body showed no obvious signs of an injury.
- A 54-year-old man died June 11, 2026, in a riverside neighborhood of Des Moines during a strong, early-morning thunderstorm. A tree broke apart and fell on him. Although first responders reached the man quickly, he died at the encampment.
- The body of Krysta “Krissy” Gallagher-McMillan, 40, was found in a tent at a homeless encampment in east Omaha on Feb. 23, 2025, according to the Omaha World-Herald. She died of hypothermia during a time when temperatures dipped below zero. She was an activist who frequently spoke at public meetings about the homeless.
Some Americans have been killed when cities bulldozed homeless encampments. The New York Times identified at least three people who were fatally crushed by bulldozers, undetected in their tents until it was too late.
KB Doman, an attorney for ArchCity Defenders in St. Louis, who works directly with people experiencing homelessness, said there have been some near misses in St. Louis.
“We’ve gotten really close,” Doman said. “There’s been times where community members have literally had to block bulldozers because the city is like, ‘We want this camp cleared. We’re coming in with bulldozers,’ and there have been community members screaming, like, ‘There’s someone in that tent! Do not move!’”
Hard times, basic needs
People who live in encampments typically sleep in a mix of tents, vehicles and makeshift shelters. Some sleep directly under the sky.
“I actually am blessed enough to have a trailer camper. I’m one of the lucky ones,” Roth said.
In May, she was living with her boyfriend, five cats and a dog at an encampment on the east side of Des Moines near the river. The city of Des Moines told The Midwest Newsroom this is a low-priority camp in terms of removal.
Roth said she fell on hard times after a relationship ended, and then lost a job. The bills piled up. She couldn’t make rent.
For a while, Roth lived on a side street outside an apartment complex where her new boyfriend and his family lived. The tenants there knew Roth and her boyfriend, and the arrangement seemed to work. But then a landlord and a maintenance worker moved onto the site and started calling the police on them regularly, Roth said.
They were told they had to move. Roth’s vehicle was not running. A Des Moines group, Direct Empowerment Iowa Alliance, helped Roth and her boyfriend move from the side street to the parking lot of a nearby Walmart. The group then helped them move to the encampment by the river where they were living in May.
Volunteers who help unhoused people in central Iowa told The Midwest Newsroom that the need is incredibly great, and that government programs are not keeping up with the suffering they see firsthand.
Hot dogs, green bell peppers and onions hissed on a griddle May 2 as Direct Empowerment Iowa Alliance volunteers prepared Mexican hot dogs for Roth and the other people living at the encampment on the east side of Des Moines. They also handed out bananas, oranges, kiwis, potato chips and cookies.
Volunteers started the Direct Empowerment Iowa Alliance in November 2025, responding to the fear and panic they saw among unhoused people in central Iowa. The group is in the process of becoming a nonprofit.
Latosha Peters of Des Moines, one of the founding members, said there was a Navy veteran living in a tent at the encampment who had throat cancer and used a feeding tube to eat.
“He couldn’t get access to food. He relies on liquids and baby formula and Ensure and baby food. We managed to put a video out to our community and ask for donations for him, and we brought him out some food, but he was starving,” Peters said.
Peters said there is a sense of community at the encampment.
“They may live in tents and RVs and campers, but they really do try their best to make it a community and a home, and we see that a lot out here,” Peters said.
More people have been moving to the encampment near the river since the group started in November, said Martin Suarez, another volunteer with the alliance.
The barriers to housing for people camping by the Des Moines River include prior evictions and criminal backgrounds. Some have felony convictions. Suarez said the people don’t fit any one profile, and about half of them have jobs.
“I don’t think that poverty really chooses a class. There’s disabled people out here, there’s veterans out here,” Suarez said.
'Soft' approaches
Chris Johansen, director of neighborhood services for the city of Des Moines, told The Midwest Newsroom that the city has not fundamentally changed its approach to the homeless since the city council passed the camping ban in September 2024.
The biggest difference is that the city now has an agreement with Primary Health Care, which offers services to people before encampments are bulldozed, Johansen said.
Shelby Ridley, the director of programs for Primary Health Care, said in an email that 500 people received services in the first 18 months of the project.
Ridley said the city prepares a report daily and sends it to Homeward Iowa, the planning organization that helps allocate federal funds and more.
“Once information is received, outreach workers go into the community to contact the camper. We attempt to make contact twice in the first 48 hours of an identified encroachment and document the attempts. The number of encroachments varies greatly as they are typically reported to the city of Des Moines by residents of Des Moines,” Ridley said in the email to The Midwest Newsroom.
Last spring, the city of Des Moines’ first homelessness policy administrator, Amber Lewis, left her job. It is not clear if the job, which is currently vacant, will be filled. Des Moines has said it needs to cut its budget $17 million over the next two years.
In Des Moines, the community services nonprofit Joppa plans to open a village with 50 low-cost tiny homes in 2027. The development is modeled after a similar initiative in Austin, Texas, that some city leaders have visited.
Proponents of state and city camping bans said that assistance-based approaches have largely failed, and that some populations of unhoused people present real safety risks to themselves and to the larger community.
The Cicero Institute’s draft legislation pops up on government agendas nationwide, although the group pushes for state camping bans instead of city ones.
Opponents of those measures routinely savage the organization as seeking to criminalize poverty and having ulterior motives, such as increasing the demand for private prisons.
Devon Kurtz is Cicero’s director of public safety policy. He said in an interview with The Midwest Newsroom that Cicero’s work is focused on discouraging governments from policy errors that entrench homelessness.
He said that leaving people alone is not, in the long run, a compassionate strategy. Officials need to be allowed to do more than shrug when a person is a danger to themselves or others.
“It’s a moral question, and there are a lot of individuals who are not comfortable with structured involuntary intervention for individuals. Full stop,” Kurtz said. “They just don’t see that as something that the state should be able to do. I do see that as something they should be able to do in extreme situations.”
The policies he supports and the goals of the “housing first” movement — the idea that enforcement is inappropriate when the supply of shelter is inadequate — are often painted as irreconcilable, he said. But Kurtz said he sees more nuanced differences, chiefly about distinguishing among the various reasons people might not have shelter.
People with the most severe and chronic mental health and substance abuse problems require a different approach than other homeless people, Kurtz said. And governments and service groups who try to tackle both groups’ problems together without the proper tools are likely to fail, he said.
Those tools include bans on outdoor camping like those enabled by the Grants Pass decision. Cicero also argues that it should be easier to institutionalize people who are a danger to themselves and others without their consent.
“I’m not saying camping bans are going to solve homelessness,” Kurtz said. “I expect to see that there is maybe a change in the percentage that’s unsheltered. That there’s more people going into the shelter system, more engagement with outreach.”
That’s what Kurtz said he is seeing in Kentucky, which has some of the most robust data about its encounters with people experiencing homelessness.
A primary goal of any camping ban is pushing more people to take advantage of shelter services and avoid the sanitation, fire and crime risks that come with outdoor camps, Kurtz said. In some cases, he said, that can be the more compassionate approach: He noted a case that Douglas County, Nebraska, Sheriff Aaron Hanson has shared with state lawmakers about Gallagher-McMillan, the woman who died in freezing temperatures at an Omaha encampment in 2025.
“If that woman had been jailed that night — which, again, not a great outcome — but if she had been, she would have survived. And that’s the stakes,” Kurtz said.
Despite Hanson’s testimony, Nebraska’s Legislature did not advance the bill to implement a statewide camping ban this year. Iowa and Kansas also do not have statewide rules about encampments. Missouri instituted a law in 2023, but the state Supreme Court struck it down because of the process lawmakers used to pass it. Those provisions have not returned in subsequent sessions.
A handful of governments in the region do have bans on the books, including Lawrence, Wichita and Kansas City and Wyandotte County in Kansas. They’re part of the over 350 localities and states that the National Homelessness Law Center said have approved measures to make being homeless a crime.
Kurtz said that Cicero’s vision for other steps to combat homelessness include states investing more money in services that do not duplicate federal efforts.
“We would like to see state dollars go toward things that have more flexibility around behavioral health and can offer a different segment of the continuum of care in terms of addiction and mental health treatment,” he said. For that to be meaningful will mean a lot of money, he said.
“We hear it all the time from Republican lawmakers: They want to make those investments,” Kurtz said. “They just don’t trust that they know they’re going to spend it in the right places.”
The Omaha approach
Together, a food and housing advocacy organization, was formed after an F4 tornado ripped through Omaha in May 1975, killing three people and injuring more than 130 others. According to the National Weather Service, 287 homes were destroyed, and another 1,400 homes were damaged.
Together became a safety net for the community after the tornado. Today, the nonprofit helps people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity in Omaha and in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Rather than pass a camping ban, the city of Omaha launched an encampment pilot program that lasted six months, from Nov. 1, 2025, to May 1, 2026. Community partners from across the city participated. Employees at Together said they worked “Monday to Monday” during that time.
“Every day, we were out, going to these camps, and making sure that everybody had some sort of case management,” said Andrew Mitchell, a street outreach specialist with Together. “And instead of the city coming in and just bulldozing right away and people losing their everything, all their belongings — their IDs, their Social Security cards, their birth certificates, which is really rough — they allowed us the time to get in and to make sure that these people had case management going on before they had to move.”
The pilot program came with some drawbacks: Unhoused people began seeing the nonprofit workers and volunteers, rather than the city, as the ones forcing them to move, which compromised some relationships.
“Instead of showing up as the people with food and services and compassion, we were becoming the hatchet men,” said Michael Fletcher, a street outreach specialist with Together who experienced homelessness in the past.
Some unhoused people began to hide from the workers, Fletcher said.
Gerry Ford, the housing services program manager at Together Omaha, noticed an alarming trend following the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the people struggling with housing were older Americans — people ages 55 and older who are on the streets for the first time and are on a fixed, limited income. Arthur said she’s seen similar demographic shifts in Des Moines.
“Maybe it was something like a spouse died — ‘We owned our house forever; I can’t afford the property tax on it.’ So now, here I am,” Ford said. “I mean, there’s never a good time. But one of the worst possible times is later in life where you’re trying to figure it out with less money and less ways to increase it.”
Mitchell said he has also seen more homeless older Americans. He’s also seeing more homeless people ages 16 to 24.
“I want to say that kids would always have a home somewhere in their family, but they just don’t sometimes, and these kids are out there. So both ends of the spectrum, young and old,” Mitchell said.
Fletcher said the end of COVID-19-era programs has been particularly brutal on the homeless community.
“As that money has dried up, it’s left a big gap in services that are now kind of being stripped down to the bare bones,” Fletcher said.
'When there's nowhere to go'
KB Doman and Lee Camp are attorneys with the advocacy group ArchCity Defenders in St. Louis. ArchCity’s legal goals shifted after the Grants Pass ruling, they said in an interview, away from seeking to enjoin aggressive government action and toward encouraging local protections for unhoused persons.
“Grants Pass changed what’s considered unconstitutional, but cities and states can and should still legislate protections in for their unhoused neighbors,” Doman said. “We should still be making policies saying we’re not going to sweep anyone when there’s nowhere to go.”
Many factors are combining to heighten the crisis in St. Louis. A damaging tornado in 2025 wiped out both occupied and unoccupied housing. Evictions ebbed during the COVID-19 pandemic but they’re now approaching pre-2020 numbers, Camp said. And, Camp said, the absence of useful services for homeless people in rural parts of Missouri means many of those people end up in the St. Louis area, where at least some organizations provide assistance.
Even without a formal camping ban, the situation in St. Louis gives unhoused people few choices, Doman said. “Our shelters have been full for about three months now, so anytime we’re sweeping a camp, it’s with the knowledge that people are going to stay outside, and they’re going to move to a different location outside,” she said.
Each clearing of a camp and each move for the residents damages the social network that helps the population manage, Camp said. But he said he still finds hope in the community’s resilience.
“We aren’t as broken of a society as we think,” he said. “It’s just that individuals in power can put an outsized focus on this issue, and really, we know how to fix it: It’s providing more housing.”
Back in Des Moines, Roth said she believes the city’s camping ban is mostly about aesthetics.
“I think they want us out of sight, out of mind, because of what they’re trying to do with this beautification that they’re doing with the river,” said Roth, referring to a recreational water trails project.
She said she expects the pressure on unhoused people to persist.
“Everything bases on your stability, to be very honest, and it’s also mental because you’re so stressed all the time: ‘Oh no, they’re going to come knocking and tell me I need to move again,’ you know,” Roth said. “‘Is it that time again? Oh, here they come knocking again.’”
— Kavahn Mansouri of St. Louis Public Radio contributed to this story.
The Midwest Newsroom is an enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here. The Midwest Newsroom is a partner of The Trust Project. We invite you to review our ethics and practices here.
METHODOLOGY
Journalist Nicole Grundmeier visited an encampment along the Des Moines River on May 2, 2026, and spoke to people there experiencing homelessness. She requested records from the city of Des Moines about citations and homeless encampment removals. Grundmeier also interviewed Direct Empowerment Iowa Alliance volunteers, who were distributing food and other necessities. Grundmeier visited Omaha, Nebraska, and met with employees of Together, including an employee who experienced homelessness in the past. Grundmeier also interviewed people representing the city of Des Moines, Homeward of Des Moines, the Cicero Institute of Austin, Texas, and ArchCity Defenders of St. Louis. She exchanged emails with people representing Primary Health Care and the ACLU. Grundmeier also consulted other media reports about homelessness nationwide, particularly in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.
REFERENCES
Two years since the Grants Pass ruling, 350+ cities, 14 states, and the Trump administration have criminalized homelessness (National Homelessness Law Center | June 26, 2026)
Death investigation underway after tree falls on man during severe storm (Des Moines Police Department news release | June 11, 2026)
New report connects anti-homeless Cicero Institute to prisons, surveillance, and defense contractors (Housing Not Handcuffs | June 3, 2026)
The 2025 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress (U.S. Housing and Urban Development | May 2026)
Bill would withhold state money from municipalities that do not enforce public camping bans (Nebraska Public Media | Feb. 19, 2026)
Omaha woman who died in the cold fought for homeless people — in the streets, in the Capitol (Omaha World-Herald | Dec 26, 2025; updated March 29, 2026)
Many homeless encampments have been cleared, but advocates say that’s not a solution (NPR, All Things Considered | Jan. 19, 2026)
Des Moines tightens city camping ban, removing some protections for people experiencing homelessness (Iowa Public Radio | Oct. 21, 2026)
‘A new approach’: Omaha launches pilot program to address homeless encampments (Nebraska Public Media | Oct. 31, 2025)
In cities’ rush to clear homeless camps, people have been crushed to death (The New York Times | March 29, 2025)
100-plus cities in the U.S. banned homeless camping this year. But will it work? (All Things Considered, NPR | Dec. 26, 2024)
‘A heartless disgrace’: Des Moines passes homeless camping ban amid public uproar (The Des Moines Register | Sept. 16, 2024)
City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson (U.S. Supreme Court | June 28, 2024)
Missouri camping ban could give cities opportunity to direct homeless people to support (The Columbia Missourian, guest commentary | April 15, 2024)
Missouri Supreme Court strikes down law banning sleeping on public land (KCUR/Missouri Independent | Dec. 19, 2023)
Q&A: Des Moines' first homeless policy administrator shares vision, challenges (The Des Moines Register | June 20, 2023)
Advocates push back against new Missouri law that criminalizes sleeping outdoors (PBS News | April 20, 2023)
May 1975 Omaha Tornado (National Weather Service)
TYPE OF ARTICLE
Enterprise — An in-depth examination of a single subject requiring extensive research and resources.
