Mark Council, a longtime advocate on behalf of homeless folks in Baltimore, confirmed up early at Wyman Park yesterday, the day when indicators posted by the metropolis mentioned an encampment there could be cleared.
Council knew nothing was seemingly to occur.
On Monday, or two days earlier than the deadline on these indicators, metropolis crews had plowed down the tents and hauled away clothes, tents and different possessions in vehicles.
But an offended Council, who has skilled homelessness himself, got here anyway.
He and different members of Housing Our Neighbors (HON) had met with Ernestina Simmons, director of the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services (MOHS), forward of the encampment closure, urging her to delay it.
Instead, she had sped it up.
“She by no means mentioned a phrase about how this was going to occur,” Council mentioned, gesturing at the torn-up grass and the mud-embedded sneakers, garments and different gadgets left behind at the encampment website.
“She might have informed us, and we might have helped these folks save their issues,” he lamented. “This was simply cruelty.”
Standing in protest at the place the place the metropolis razed an homeless encampment forward of schedule: Kyle Long, Carolyn Johnson, Mark Council, Amanda DeStefano and Belinda Rodriguez. (Fern Shen)
Described as a “clean-up”
The encampment clearing was one of the first beneath a brand new “Encampment Resolution Protocol” instituted by Simmons, who Mayor Brandon Scott appointed to head MOHS final fall.
Through a spokeswoman, Simmons has mentioned that what occurred on Monday was not a razing, however “a clean-up” of gadgets “recognized by encampment residents as gadgets they need to discard.”
Not so, in accordance to individuals who had been dwelling at the park.
They informed The Brew they went to the encampment on Monday to retrieve some possessions and have been horrified to see frontloaders carting off their issues.
Council and others members of HON gathered at the website on Wednesday to “put MOHS on blast,” as one put it, and object to what befell.
Adding their phrases of protest in a letter to Simmons are two veteran homeless service suppliers, Lauren Siegel and Jeff Singer.
“No marvel so many individuals don’t belief the metropolis,” wrote Siegel, who teaches at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, and Singer, former president and CEO of Health Care for the Homeless.
“Trust is important to work successfully with people, and now belief has been destroyed together with the possessions.”
These donation bins with water, sandwiches and different gadgets at Wyman Park have been nowhere to be seen after Baltimore officers razed the encampment. (Fern Shen)
Opaque Policy
Advocates have been vital of the metropolis’s new push for encampment closures, saying they have been by no means consulted about it and that many components stay unknown or opaque – together with the so-called “rubric” MOHS makes use of to decide what camps to shut and an “Encampment Workgroup” whose members haven’t been introduced.
• No rationalization given as Baltimore units date for Wyman Park encampment clearing (2/21/24)
One individual The Brew requested about the coverage was Jeffrey Garrett, who acknowledged getting an early have a look at it.
Garrett mentioned he was knowledgeable of the coverage final December when he was chair of the board of the mayoral-appointed Continuum of Care (CoC) that has a job in selling insurance policies to cut back homelessness.
Although it was introduced to him as a performed deal, Garrett mentioned he believed it was a good suggestion to have particular pointers and procedures concerning camp closures.
“The first time I heard it, it made sense to me,” he mentioned, describing the way it requires engagement with the group as properly as police, fireplace, public works and different companies.
“They’re all supposed to get collectively to assess every encampment, get suggestions from the group, and work out which one is deemed worthy of being cleared,” he mentioned.
Asked if the metropolis has developed a precedence record of encampments to be “resolved” (to use the coverage’s terminology), he mentioned they’ve: “they’re going to work by it one after the other.”
Describing himself as a previously homeless one who nonetheless acknowledges “the grey areas” round homelessness points, Garrett mentioned he determined to assist the MOHS plan beneath one situation:
“I informed them, ‘If you’re going to make guidelines, you simply want to comply with them constantly.’”
“I informed you you’d have my assist if you adopted the process” – Jeffrey Garrett, former CoC chair.
He mentioned he knew that Wyman Park Dell was designated as one of the first camps to be cleared, and believed it had “self-resolved,” that means folks had left voluntarily.
But when Garrett learn that metropolis crews had come in early and hauled away valued possessions, he mentioned, he “was stunned.”
“You had promised me,” he exclaimed, talking of Simmons. ”I informed you you’d have my assist if you adopted the process.”
“This is a slap in the face,” he continued, nonetheless a CoC board member, vowing to name Simmons to protest.
The difficulty is probably going to generate controversy at the CoC, the place some members have chafed at Garrett’s reluctance in current weeks to put the new encampment clearing initiative on the agenda for dialogue.
The Brew reached out to the interim co-chair of the CoC, Daniel McCarthy, to ask at what level he had been briefed on the coverage and if the group would now take up the difficulty.
McCarthy, who’s the government director of the Episcopal Housing Corporation, has not but responded.
Housing Our Neighbors members Jeff Garrett, Mark Council, Anthony Williams and Kyle Long outdoors of City Hall in 2022, delivering a letter to Mayor Scott about utilizing ARPA funds to deal with homelessness. (Fern Shen)
Siegel, Singer and the HON members who gathered at Wyman Park yesterday have been strongly vital of encampment clearing in common, and the metropolis’s use of it in explicit at Wyman Park and earlier than that at an encampment at Guilford and Mt. Royal.
• With one other encampment clearing looming, a plea to Mayor Scott (2/8/24)
In their letter to MOHS, Siegel and Singer mentioned the method has been broadly discredited and that the dealing with of the Wyman Park encampment belies “the flowery language” discovered in the Encampment Resolution Protocol.
More reflective of what truly occurred, they wrote, was what was posted on the Wyman Park Dell lightposts: “indicators asserting punishment for ‘trespassing.’”
Sign erected at Wyman Park Dell warning that the homeless encampment could be cleared on March 6. (Fern Shen)
