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The National Park Service emptied out two homeless encampments in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, restarting efforts to clear public lands after a two-year hiatus that allowed people to stay put during the pandemic.
About a half-dozen park service employees arrived at an encampment just outside Union Station early Wednesday morning to begin the clearing, throwing everything from blankets and tarps to tent poles and trash into a large garbage truck. The federal agency announced in March it would clear the camp, along with another at the intersection of New York Avenue and I Street Northwest, due to public safety and health concerns.
“I don’t get mad at the district for moving people, because all they do is trash it, honestly,” Toni Irons, who had been living at the camp outside Union Station for a month and a half, told the Washington Post. “But I don’t think they should move us when we don’t have nowhere to go.”
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE TO CLEAR TWO DC HOMELESS CAMPS
The park service decided to clear the encampments after receiving multiple reports of criminal activity and violence, leaving the city government scrambling to find a new place for their inhabitants. The park service made a request to the city’s Office for Health and Human Services to provide housing for the people but stopped short of directly providing services to relocate camp residents.
The National Park Service Clears Out Homeless Encampment at Union Station
Clearing homeless encampments is not an unusual practice for the city government. Under Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Encampment Pilot initiative, the district aims to find housing for homeless people as they work to clear out different encampments.
However, the two clearings on Wednesday were spearheaded by the park service because the camps were located on federal land, meaning the agency did not have to guarantee housing before removal. The park service told the Washington Examiner in March it would close the encampments even if the local government hadn’t found temporary solutions for the camp residents, noting it must “adhere to the closure schedule due to the imminent threats posed to public health and safety.”
Camping is prohibited on federal land in the district, but park service officials had been lax about enforcement over the last two years unless there were public safety threats that demanded action. The population at the Union Station encampment had significantly grown during this time as the federal government advised allowing people to stay put during the COVID-19 pandemic, citing concerns about moving people to crowded indoor shelters.
With the camps now cleared, crews will work to clean the park area and address rodent infestation.
Several homelessness advocates tried to help people find places to go in the weeks leading up to the clearing, noting it can be traumatic for people to have their things abruptly thrown away.
“Our staff is literally with each person talking through questions, like, have you found another spot? Have you considered shelter? Do you want to reconsider shelter? Do you need storage?” Christy Respress, a homelessness services provider in D.C., told the outlet. “We don’t want people to be rushed. We don’t want them to pack up their things in a rush. We don’t want them to put things in storage if they don’t want them there.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Approximately 4,440 people were unhoused in the district as of January, roughly a 14% decline from the year before and the lowest number on record since 2005, according to the mayor’s annual “point-in-time” count released in April. Family homelessness also saw a 14% decline over the last year, as well as a 12% decline among single adults, data show.
