Best views, weather, etc. How to test them 👓 SC, Ala. sites look back Betty Ford honored
NEWS
Nation Now

Homeless camp's closure may offer model for other cities

Mark Curnutte
The Cincinnati Enquirer
homeless camp 09 22 September 16, 2014 A homeless camp in Queensgate, which is no longer habited, photographed on Tuesday, September 16, 2014. About 17 people were staying there, including heroin addicts, who slept in a segregated area of the camp. Cincinnati Police worked with social workers from Lighthouse Youth Services to provide services and new places for homeless camp residents to stay. A community cleanup is planned for the area on September 23. The Enquirer/Leigh Taylor

QUEENSGATE, Ohio — Off in a corner of the camp, two women — both survivors of domestic violence — shared a shanty with their three German shepherds.

A prostitute found protection from her abusive pimp among homeless men.

Heroin addicts shot up and dropped dirty needles beside the railroad tracks, not far from where social workers say a military veteran lost and left his prosthetic foot.

Seven years in the making, this was the region's largest and most established homeless camp. Several dozen people once lived there at any time, under tarps and in shanties fashioned from scrap lumber, plywood and rusting corrugated metal sheets, under a U.S. 50 overpass just west of downtown.

Now, the people are gone — and the camp has become the latest test case for how police and advocates can work together to move the homeless to better places.

No longer do Cincinnati police raid such camps, giving people just hours to clear out before destroying shelters and throwing away their possessions. Officers no longer set a deadline for vacating, arrest homeless people or slap them with trespassing citations that they won't be able to pay.

Officers in this case worked with social workers over four to six months to gain trust of camp residents and convince them that it was in their best interests to move as fall and winter approached. People were helped according to individual needs.

Experts call it the wave of the future.

"We're starting to see that police officers are being police officers and allowing social workers to do what they do," said Michael Stoops, community organizer for the advocacy group the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C. "Throwing a guy in jail does not solve the issue."

On Tuesday, police officers, social workers and volunteers will descend for a final cleanup of the camp, tucked behind a flood wall on private property. A half-dozen free-standing shanties will be removed, along with piles of garbage and furniture left outdoors and now soggy and musty from rain.

"Police now understand that (helping homeless people) is a process and not something that's going to happen in a week," said Antione Spriggs, street outreach coordinator for Lighthouse Youth Services.

In 2013, the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County experienced a 38 percent increase in the number of homeless people living on the streets or in other places not meant for human habitation, such as a car or abandoned building, according to the annual report released in August by watchdog Strategies to End Homelessness.

The 1,531 people counted last year stands as the most since such data became available in 2006. Those numbers rose from 1,108 in 2012 and 922 in 2011.

People on the street are the chronically homeless, said Kevin Finn, executive director of Strategies, the non-profit that applies for and manages homeless prevention money for the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

Agency data show that 51 percent of street people identify as having a mental illness; 52 percent are addicted to drugs or alcohol; and 68 percent report suffering from one or more disabling conditions. Some residents of the abandoned homeless camp said they had phobias about walls and enclosed spaces, Spriggs said.

People living in homeless shelters are more likely to have a job or be working a rehab program and preparing to move into some type of supportive, subsidized housing.

Of the Queensgate camp's residents, four women said they were domestic violence survivors and owned six dogs between them. If they'd been forced to give up their dogs, the women would not have left the camp voluntarily.

A homeless man gets a lick from his dog as they sit under an underpass at Clifton and Spring Grove Avenues.

Instead, they received help from the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, including residence at its battered women's shelter, while social workers arranged for a veterinarian to shelter the dogs.

"There's a movement in homelessness to have animals for protection," Spriggs said.

The camp had no children.

"That concerned us. We had to make sure no children were living here," said Cincinnati officer Lisa Johnson, a member of the department's Quality of Life Enhancement Team, which answers directly to Chief Jeffrey Blackwell.

Blackwell, she said, "is adamant about us helping people."

The camp's population ranged from 15 to 25 people.

The elaborate shanties illustrate the longevity of the homeless camp and the permanence residents attached to their homes.

People elevated the houses to avoid dirt and water by using pallets or paving stone or rocks as the foundation.

Built from a combination of scrap lumber, blue tarps and corrugated metal sheets, most homes contained one or two beds, including sheets and comforters. One house had a used six-drawer dresser.

Residents split the camp into two halves. The first mini-neighborhood, built beneath a canopy of mature trees, had three large houses. The remaining houses were scattered over a larger area — police called it "the suburbs" — beneath the overpass.

Such shanty towns as the one under the U.S. 50 bridge are not uncommon.

The National Coalition for the Homeless released a report in 2010 titled "Tent Cities in America: A Pacific Coast Report." It showed how authorized and unauthorized tent cities – created for and by homeless people and families – are found across the country. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, shanty towns were known as "Hoovervilles," cementing popular blame for the severe economic downturn on President Herbert Hoover.

Featured Weekly Ad