SHAFTER, Calif. (KERO) — Shafter's City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday making it illegal to sleep or camp in public spaces, joining Bakersfield and Kern County in adopting similar laws.
The ordinance passed following a public hearing with no input from the public or council members. It makes it illegal to camp or sleep in tents, motorhomes, campers, shelters, or unsheltered on city property, including parks, sidewalks, and city-owned parking lots or structures. Measures like this are often designed to target unhoused individuals.
Shafter Chief Building Official Dennis Fidler said the new law empowers the city to take swift action and proactively address problems before they escalate.
"Being that we don't have a large homeless population right now, if it changes, we want to be able to address it and make sure our community is safe and accessible and remains sanitary for our public. So, some of the things we see at other encampments. You know, there's trash, there's litter, there's human waste, there's needles, and we don't want that stuff there. So, this is some framework that we put in place that we can make sure that doesn't happen." Fidler said.
According to Bakersfield-Kern Regional Homeless Collaborative's Point-In-Time Count, Shafter had 3 unhoused individuals counted in 2024 and 5 in 2025.
Jim Wheeler, executive director of Flood Ministries, a non-profit that works with unhoused individuals, said he hopes the ordinance is used as a tool to offer services rather than criminalize homelessness.
"If you don't have resources for people or you don't have places for people to go, then even if you're not arresting people, all you're doing is just moving them around from location to location, and then you end up just playing whack-a-mole," said Wheeler. "You move people from this location, and they got to go somewhere else. Where are they gonna go? They're gonna go somewhere else, and then you have to move them to, and so that seems pretty self-defeating."
Kern County adopted a similar ordinance in 2021, and the city of Bakersfield updated its law as recently as 2024. Shafter's ordinance goes into effect on Oct. 1.
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