Page 25 - 200908 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - August 2009

25 Cities Tolerate Homeless Camps 25 Cities Tolerate Homeless Camps Cities Tolerate Homeless Camps By JENNIFER LEVITZ NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Last summer, police responding to complaints about campfires under a highway overpass found dozens of homeless people living on public land along the Cumberland River. Eviction notices went up -- and then were suspended by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, a Democrat, who said housing for the homeless should be found first. A year later, little has been found -- and Nashville, with help from local nonprofits, is now servicing a tent city, arranging for portable toilets, trash pickup, a mobile medical van and visits from social workers. Volunteers bring in firewood for the camp's 60 or so dwellers. Nashville is one of several U.S. cities that these days are accommodating the homeless proposal in Tampa, hundreds of While no one is suggesting that the tent homeless and their encampments, instead of neighbors in a nearby 325-house subdivision city that popped up on police radar last summer dispersing them. With local shelters at capacity, have formed the "Stop Tent City" coalition. is a permanent solution, local churches and "there is no place to put them," said Clifton They are gathering petitions, passing out lawn synagogues are trying to give residents there a Harris, director of Nashville's Metropolitan signs and threatening lawsuits. Hal Hart, a sense of order. The Otter Creek Church of Homeless Commission, says of tent-city paralegal and a neighbor who is part of the Christ built residents a shower, with a fiberglass dwellers. coalition, testified at the county meeting that a stall, plywood door and garden hose, and on In Florida, Hillsborough County plans to tent city would "devalue my home" and Friday, associate minister Doug Sanders went to consider a proposal Tuesday by Catholic "devalue my community." He lives 300 feet the tent city in what is the start of a church Charities to run an emergency tent city in from the proposed park. project to help residents institute some type of Tampa for more than 200 people. Dave Rogoff, Some homeless are battling mental formal rules -- for everything from cleaning the the county health and services director, said he illness or addictions, or both. Municipal shower to determining the progress residents preferred to see a "hard roof over people's officials in the U.S. acknowledge the tent cities should have to show toward finding housing. heads." But that takes real money, he said: can breed crime and unsanitary conditions, but The city and local nonprofits have found "We're trying to cut $110 million out of next with public shelter scarce, they say they have to permanent housing for about 25 people from the year's budget." weigh whether to spend police time to break up tent city. Ontario, a city of 175,000 residents encampments that are likely to resurface Many haven't been so lucky. David about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, provides elsewhere. Olson, 47 years old, said last week he and his guards and basic city services for a tent city on Pastors in Champaign, Ill., last week wife wound up under the Nashville overpass public land. asked the City Council to allow people to live in after he lost a job making cement pipes in Iowa A church in Lacey, Wash., near the state organized tent communities of as many as 50 four months ago. The couple came to Nashville capital of Olympia, recently started a homeless people. Legalizing the camps is more for a remodeling job that turned out to be a camp in its parking lot after the city changed compassionate and cost-effective than forcing scam. "I've got five years' experience in local ordinances to permit it. The City Council "poor people who are camping because they carpentry and 10 years' roofing and I can't find in Ventura, Calif., last month revised its laws to have a lack of better choices to constantly have a job," he said. permit sleeping in cars overnight in some areas. to fear being rousted and cited by police," says Mr. Olson, his arms and shirt caked with City Manager Rick Cole said most of the car Joan Burke, advocacy director for Sacramento dirt, said life is hard in the swampy woods. The campers are temporarily unemployed, "and in Loaves & Fishes, a homeless-assistance agency. couple woke up to mud after a night of rain. His this economy, temporary can go on a long time." In Nashville, Mr. Harris, director of the wife said she is frightened by the dogs that roam After years of enforcing a tough city's homeless commission, said tent cities around the encampment. anticamping law to break up homeless clusters, have existed for years, but he has seen the As mosquitoes buzzed, they tried to set Sacramento recently formed a task force to look numbers surge. He now knows of 30 up camp on higher ground. They struggled to into designating homeless tracts because encampments. While some people are secure a tarpaulin over their tent to keep out the shelters are overflowing. One refuge in the chronically homeless, he said, foreclosures have rain. Mr. Olson's wife, holding onto a pole to California capital, St. John's Shelter for Women forced others into the streets, as has Tennessee's prop up the tarp, cried. "I'm not used to living and Children, is turning away about 350 people 10.8% unemployment rate, the highest in 25 like this." [] a night, compared with 25 two years ago, said years. executive director Michele Steeb. Nashville estimates that on any given Some communities may be "less day, the city has 4,000 homeless people and 765 inclined to crack down quite as hard on people" shelter beds. About 25% of the homeless have because of the recession, said Barry Lee, a jobs, Mr. Harris said, but can't afford housing. A professor of sociology and demography at nonprofit coalition of 160 churches called Pennsylvania State University. Room in the Inn said it received 816 requests Municipal leniency isn't universal. New for financial assistance to ward off evictions or York City officials last month shut down a tent electricity shutoffs in July, up from 499 in July city on a vacant lot in East Harlem. It was 2008. erected partly as shelter and partly to campaign More housing could be available soon. for more-affordable housing. Seattle authorities Tennessee will receive $53 million in federal have repeatedly booted off public land a tent stimulus money to help pay for the development city that popped up last year. of affordable rental housing across the state, the Anticipating Tuesday's vote on the federal government announced last month.