Bethlehem, PA Homelessness & Encampment Rules: Encampment Sanitation (2026)

06(e) states flatly that no person shall camp in any park without written permission from the Director. It is one line in the Behavior section of Article 941, alongside rules on drunkenness, noise, generators and horseback riding, and it applies across all Bethlehem parks: Monocacy, Saucon, South Mountain, Sand Island and the rest of the system. There is no separate encampment-clearance procedure written into the article; instead, enforcement runs through the same officials who police the rest of Article 941. 09(b) to eject from a park anyone acting in violation of the article, camping included.

99, with a tiered fine schedule: $200 or thirty days for a first offense, $500 or sixty days for a second, and $1,000 or ninety days for a third and every offense after that, at the discretion of the court. Because the camping ban is folded into the general park-behavior article rather than a standalone homeless-encampment ordinance, the city's tool for clearing an unauthorized campsite is the same ejection power it uses for any other park-rules violation, not a specialized sweep protocol.