FROM THE STORY: Local and national legal experts are questioning whether Governor Dan McKee has the authority to evict homeless people sleeping on the grounds of the Rhode Island State House, which is public property.

On Dec. 7 the people, who have been sleeping outside in tents, were given 48 hours to vacate the State House grounds or face fines or arrest. According to notices handed out at the time, the state promised to provide them with a bed in an emergency shelter and transportation from the State House.

But Rhode Island currently has a severe shortage of shelter beds for people who are homeless. And as the 9 a.m. deadline for eviction came and went on Dec. 9, it was still unclear where, exactly, the state was proposing to place those who had been camping on State House grounds. By noon on Dec. 9, McKee spokesman Matthew Sheaff that there were “less than 10″ remaining members of the encampment, though there were still about 25 tents set up outside the State House

“If there aren’t enough available shelter beds, then you can’t criminally punish someone from taking care of their basic rights like sleeping and sheltering,” Eric Tars, the legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center in Washington D.C., said in an interview with the Globe. “There doesn’t seem like there are beds available, let alone accessible.”

On Monday, when questioned by members of the press at an unrelated event, McKee said the state was short “close to 200 shelter beds.” But according to data provided by the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness, as of Nov. 30 there were approximately 615 people, including children, living in places not meant for habitation while they waited for spaces in shelters.

Tars noted that in Martin v. Boise, a case the center took on in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the court decided that unhoused individuals could not be punished for sleeping on public property if there were a lack of alternatives. Criminal and civil penalties used to punish those who are unhoused for existing in public spaces with nowhere else to go can be a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which refers to cruel and unusual punishment.

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