Wilmington, NC Homelessness & Encampment Rules: Sit-Lie Rules (2026)

Section 11-13 is Wilmington's general sidewalk and street obstruction ordinance, and it is the closest thing the city code has to a sit-lie rule. The first paragraph makes it unlawful for any person to obstruct traffic on a street, sidewalk, or crossing, or to interfere with other people lawfully using those streets, sidewalks, or crossings; the code does not define "obstruct" further or set a minimum blocked width, leaving that judgment to the officer on the scene. The second paragraph targets seating specifically: it is unlawful to use a bench or other seating area the city owns or operates in a way that interferes with its use by other people, and the ordinance expressly calls out storing materials on a bench as one form of that interference, which reaches situations such as piling belongings across a public bench so no one else can sit.

Both prohibitions carry the same enforcement weight: a violation of Section 11-13 is a misdemeanor, not merely a civil infraction, which sets it apart from most of chapter 11's other street and sidewalk provisions that default to the twenty-five dollar civil penalty in Section 11-1. The section derives from the 1962 Code and was amended in 2015 to add the bench-interference language, then again in 2021 to update its penalty cross-references.