Clearing D.C. tent city is right choice

On a February morning, a 54-year-old resident of McPherson Square homeless encampment in Washington, D.C., shuffles around her tent, grabbing wrappers and dropping them in a nearby trash receptacle. She doesn’t feel comfortable coming out at night, when people “do circles around my tent” and make noise. “Right now, I’m just surviving,” says the woman, who asked not to be named.

Surviving now entails moving: The National Park Service (NPS), which manages the park, will clear out the encampment’s estimated 65 residents on Wednesday and erect a perimeter fence. (Earlier counts placed the population at around 70 occupants.) It’s the right call.

The action follows much deliberation between NPS and the D.C. government. Last fall, NPS told the city that it would clear out McPherson as part of an initiative to return federal sites to their intended uses. The District in January requested that the removal date be moved up from April 12 because of management difficulties and problems at the encampment, including an incident in which a woman was doused with a bucket of urine as she walked alongside the square. Three homeless people have died at McPherson over the past six months, according to NPS, due to exposure or drug overdoses.

The imminent sweep has raised apprehension among the tent occupants about what comes next. Will the city make good on its pledge to help them transition to stable housing? Or will they have no option but to move their belongings to the next downtown encampment? “I might wind up on a sidewalk again,” says the 54-year-old woman, who vows to avoid homeless shelters because she once was assaulted at one of them.

That’s the very scenario that worries D.C. advocates for the homeless. Christy Respress, CEO of city contractor Pathways to Housing DC, says of the encampments, “It’s not a good policy to close them just to close them. … What we are really focused on is housing people, and I think when you close an encampment, it makes it harder” to engage with the people in need. Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, says that “forced removals are not the way to be accountable to the people who are living in McPherson Square.”

Those are valid concerns, though NPS and D.C. are justified in seeking to restore the 1.66 acres as a green urban refuge. There is no optimal time, it turns out, to eradicate a tent encampment where residents are exposed to the elements and where NPS has received complaints regarding “trash and debris blocking public access, prostitution, open air drug and alcohol use, and public harassment of residents and visitors to the area,” according to a Jan. 27 letter from Jeffrey P. Reinbold, NPS’ superintendent of the National Mall and memorial parks. Though camping at McPherson Square is prohibited, NPS relaxed enforcement efforts during the pandemic — a smart and humane decision. As life around the park returns to normal, however, the encampment has become a hazard unto itself.

“We weren’t designed as humans to live in a damn park,” says Tyler, a tent-city dweller who spoke as he swept the 15th Street NW sidewalk on Sunday afternoon.

The McPherson clear-out has a serial feel to it. NPS has carried out similar operations in Franklin Square (February 2020), Union Station (June 2022) and Scott Circle (December 2022). City officials have swept away other encampments, including a cluster of tents near Union Station in 2016. “This game has been going on for seven years now — this game of whack-a-mole” says Eric Sheptock, a 53-year-old former homeless man who stopped by McPherson Square on Tuesday afternoon.

Set against the backdrop of a somnolent downtown, says Respress, the McPherson Square encampment feeds the impression that homelessness is exploding in D.C. But she notes that point-in-time homeless counts in the city have shown a steady decrease in recent years. “We hear things in the community — that homelessness is on the rise, and it’s actually not. It feels that way because it’s very visible,” says Respress.

It will surely be less visible after Feb. 15, when the residents will be forced to seek new accommodations. Wayne Turnage, deputy mayor for health and human services, has said that the city and its contractors are seeking to pair residents with housing vouchers — as of last week, 15 of the occupants had been approved for housing assistance, according to The Post’s Kyle Swenson and Marissa J. Lang. “Bridge” housing, such as hotel rooms, will be provided for those who are eligible for assistance but must wait for the keys to a unit. As of Thursday, Turnage noted in an email to interested parties, 16 of the 65 park residents are either refusing services or not present or responsive when staff arrives at their tents — a drop from 50 such refusals earlier in the clear-out process.

There are several reasons that tent residents might resist engaging with officialdom, according to D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2): They might not trust outreach workers; they might believe they’re already on a list for housing services; they might be engaged in criminal activity and hesitant to deal with authorities; and they might be experiencing mental health challenges. Gregory Hammett, a McPherson Square tent occupant, has his own, more blunt, assessment: “These people cannot be housed. A lot of these people have bipolar or schizophrenia. You can’t put these people in housing.”

Not so fast. Homeless people who might appear at first glance to be ill-suited to living in an apartment can often succeed in such a setting under the right circumstances, says Respress, whose organization follows D.C.’s “housing first” policy. That means addressing the problems of the homeless should start with placing them in stable residences — and simultaneously providing the necessary support services. “If someone needs to be seen every day, you see them every day,” says Respress, noting that people are more likely to undergo voluntary mental health treatment once they’re in housing. The District, however, is suffering through a shortage of case managers and social workers who can convert municipal resources into on-the-ground assistance to people transitioning from homelessness to housing. Jamal Weldon, deputy chief of staff for Turnage’s office, says, “It is not just enough to say, ‘Hey, these are vouchers that can assist our vulnerable residents. Here are some apartments.’ … There has to be continuous support for these residents as well.”

Respress says licensed supervisory social workers are a personnel bottleneck for her organization: Landing a single recruit would enable Pathways to bring on enough case managers to serve an additional 125 people.

Whatever the workforce constraints, some encampment residents are unimpressed with the city’s performance. “They said we were going to have intensive social services engagement since end of October,” says Umi, an encampment resident who formerly lived at Franklin Square. “They’re not starting it until February, two weeks before the eviction. How is that acceptable?” Turnage, however, says his people have been “working this site as long as it’s been there.”

Pressure on city officials from encampment residents and activists for the homeless is a healthy dynamic. The District, after all, has an obligation to deliver for its most vulnerable residents and capitalize on its investments in affordable housing and mental health services. Yet it also carries a concurrent obligation to protect scarce park space downtown for the benefit of all. There’s a symbolic imperative, too, to stand against the perpetuation of a tent city just up the street from the White House.