Tompkins County authorities deem the trash in Ithaca homeless camps a public health violation

The city of Ithaca has been ordered by Tompkins County to clean land surrounding homeless encampments in the city, known as “The Jungle,” after the county declared widespread refuse a public health hazard.

The garbage includes hypodermic needles, bicycles, and shopping carts.

Tompkins County’s Environmental Health Division sent a dual-violation notice to the city earlier this month, demanding officials to create a plan to clean the triangular strip of land by May 10 and recommended a “coordinated response” by relevant city agencies and multiple property owners affected by the refuse.

Ithaca adopted a sanctioned encampment policy late last year, marking said area as a no-camping zone, despite the ramshackle shelters already present in the area. The triangular strip of city-owned land lies between Six Mile Creek and flood control measures for Cayuga Lake on the western side of the city, bordering a railroad track.

The county environmental health division also ordered the city to develop a plan to ensure the prevention of future public health hazards in the area.

At the Ithaca Common Council meeting April 10, Mike Thorne, the city’s superintendent of public works, said that the area may not be fully cleaned until the end of 2024 despite the city working on a plan.

He estimated that the cost of cleaning the area would range from $125,000 to $150,000.

What is Ithaca working on to remedy the situation?

“What council passed in December of ’23 directed at that time an unknown city manager, now I’m sitting in the seat, to develop an operational plan and incorporate a response protocol into the policy, so that’s what we’ve been working on internally.” City manager Deb Molehoff said at the April 10 council meeting.

The draft includes specific protocols around two different types of encampments; phase 1 of the plan encompasses “actively managed property”, and emergency or hazardous conditions. Phase 2 would dictate a response to encampments on “lightly managed” city property.

“What we’re calling actively managed, is something that has an obvious alternate use, a walkway, city park, a sidewalk, or the commons, something like that,” Molenhoff said. “It has staff that actively manage that space all the time.”

Molenhoff said the city is also working toward a better means of reporting for residents to identify and alert city officials about illegal camping on city property, as well as widespread plans for future cleanup at hazardous encampments throughout the city.

“We just know that there is not a way for (the city) to do everything we want to do, nor can we comply with the desires expressed by council in December without an office coordinator to help connect to,” she said. “The city has pretty limited resources in terms of what we’re able to do for supportive services, but we have a lot of really wonderful and willing community partners that want to help the city with this piece.”

“Our recommendation would be to take the funds set aside by council last year and create what we’re calling an encampment response coordinator,” Molenhoff continued. “That would be the person who would be responsible for managing the different moving parts as to how an encampment is reported.”

How did the encampments get to this point?

Several social media pages including Unspoken Ithaca / Tompkins, which has over 5,000 followers, have documented the growing piles of refuse in the no-camping area.

Zachary Winn, who ran for common council last year and operates Ithacacrime.com – an independent crime reporting site which has documented several crimes stemming from Ithaca’s homeless encampments – explored the area during his Jungle Walkthrough in 2022, documented here.

Refuse in the area has only become more widespread since.