Hempstead, NY Homelessness & Encampment Rules: Encampment Sanitation (2026)

Section 78-8, part of Chapter 78's Article I general park regulations, is the Town's operative rule against camping and unauthorized overnight shelters on park property. It does not single out homelessness or unsheltered individuals by status; it applies to any person who tents, camps, erects or maintains a tent, shelter or camp anywhere in a Town park. The default rule is prohibition: camping is permitted only within areas the Town Board or Director has affirmatively designated for that purpose, and Subsection A requires written permission from the Town Board or Director even inside those designated areas, so an undesignated corner of a park cannot be used for camping under any circumstance.

The section sits alongside other park-use rules that reinforce the same no-overnight-encampment posture: § 78-15 lets the Director close a park entirely for emergency, health or safety reasons and bars use of the park outside posted opening hours, § 78-20 bars damaging or tampering with park structures and property, and § 78-21 requires refuse to go in provided receptacles rather than being left on park grounds. Read together, these sections give Town park personnel and the Department of Parks and Recreation the tools to require that any tent, shelter or encampment on park land be removed and to close the park to enforce it, but the chapter itself does not set out a separate notice-and-cleanup protocol beyond the general opening, closing and property-protection sections.