D.C. crews largely cleared a homeless encampment on M Street NE on Monday morning, moving tents and power-washing the sidewalks as residents packed up their belongings.

Martin Austermuhle / DCist/WAMU

D.C. crews largely cleared out a longstanding homeless encampment along M Street NE in NoMa on Monday morning, but suspended work in the afternoon on a neighboring encampment after an unhoused person in a tent was hit by a skid-steer loader driven by a city worker.

The incident took place just after 1 p.m., as city crews — which included garbage trucks, heavy equipment, and pressure washers — were starting to clear an encampment on L Street NE. After the skid-steer loader — a small bulldozer — hit the tent and lifted the person inside it, activists on hand to assist unhoused residents rushed in to help, but were quickly cleared out by D.C. police officers.

“Unfortunately, despite outreach staff’s multiple checks, there was an incident during the engagement where a Bobcat temporarily lifted a tent that, unbeknown to us, a resident was still inside,” said D.C. Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage in a statement issued Monday evening. “While there were no visible injuries sustained, as a safeguard, the resident received additional medical attention. Due to that incident, we decided to suspend further activity for the day.”

The planned clearing came as part of a new D.C. pilot program to close down encampments by first working with residents to offer them housing and services. After that, the encampments will be closed and anyone will be prohibited from pitching a tent in the future. (D.C. initially placed large orange barrels on the cleared portions of sidewalks, but is also going to use concrete barriers.)

City officials say they had been successful in finding housing for almost two-dozen of the residents of the NoMa encampments ahead of the planned Monday clearing, with eight more placements in the works. Still, activists say that may represent less than half of the people who regularly lived on M and L streets. Some of the people who remained at the encampments as crews arrived said they either hadn’t been offered housing, had received a voucher but were waiting to jump through last hoops before moving, or simply weren’t going to take the city up on its offers.

“I’ve been going to work every day so I’ve been missing [outreach workers],” said Troy, 54, as he packed up his belongings on the north side of M Street, his home of four months, which was cleared and power-washed first. “I’m not worried about tomorrow. I’m taking every moment at a time.”

Across the street, Charles Willie, 46, said he had a voucher in hand but was waiting for final inspections to clear before he could move to an apartment. But for the time being, he said he wouldn’t be moving.

“I’ve been out here for 14 years. I don’t need this. I don’t need the harassment either,” he said. “This isn’t a science project. This is my life. I live here. I put a bin outside, I’ve cleaned outside. They can take their bin and go. It’s clean.”

D.C. officials said that while they were urging people to leave and were clearing out tents and other possessions they said had already been abandoned, they would not force Willie and a group of hold-outs on the south side of M Street to pack up — and police wouldn’t arrest them for staying. They did offer them hotel rooms while final housing accommodations were arranged, but Willie was undeterred.

“I think it’s sad because they’re going to go to other places and this is where their fight is for housing and they’re being tricked,” said Willie of some of his neighbors who agreed to leave.

While homeless advocates have said they generally support the city’s push to offer housing to anyone in an encampment who wants it, they have been cooler to other elements of the pilot program — notably how the first encampment sites were chosen and the future ban on camping in those areas. (Encampments at New Jersey Avenue and O Street NW and at E and 20th streets NW are also slated to be closed under the program.)

“The forced dispersal of encampments will destroy communities, criminalize homelessness, and push people into different encampments or other hard to locate places, making it difficult to connect them with services,” said The Way Home Campaign, a coalition of groups fighting homelessness, in a statement.

That was a similar sentiment echoed by Reginald Black, director of the People for Fairness Coalition, which has worked with residents of the NoMa encampments during the pandemic to offer them protective equipment and other services.

“That’s the dilemma right now: trying to figure out where we’re going to relocate people and then making sure we’re able to give the same types of support we’ve given every week so that they’re safe from COVID and have regular check-ins with the system and are on the path to housing,” said Black.

In a Twitter thread on Monday evening, Councilmember Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1), who chairs the council’s human services committee, expressed her concerns with the clearings.

“One of the reasons that we do not disassemble encampments is because there are risks involved. There are risks involved in asking people to move all of their belongings and risks involved in forcibly removing people from their home,” she wrote.

Nadeau also said she had spoken to Turnage and “suggested we immediately revisit the protocols for the pilot.”

The varied opinions and experiences of those living in the NoMa encampments were evident on L Street on Monday, where Mike, a 51-year-old who first spoke to DCist/WAMU last month about his decade living in a tent, said he had a voucher but was still waiting for final logistics to be ironed out before he could move to his own apartment. “I don’t know what the hold up is,” he said as he started piling belongings into a shopping cart.

Standing next to him was his neighbor Robin, 67, himself a five-year resident of L Street. He declared it a travesty that Mike’s government-offered housing hadn’t yet been secured, and then said that was the very reason he wouldn’t be taking D.C. up on its offers. “I’d rather go ahead any pay for my own and I won’t have to go through this,” he said.

Both Mike and Robin said they were resigned to having to leave the encampment, but also seemed undeterred by the prospects of having to find a new place to sleep.

“When you’re out on the streets you’re used to something like this,” said Robin. “This is nothing once you get used to it. People who are not living on the streets, they don’t know how it is. But once you’re living on the street, you adapt. Nothing to get a heart attack about.”

Still, residents and activists say they do not know when crews might return to continue clearing the L Street encampment. D.C. officials did not immediately respond to questions about timing.

“People are very confused,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, a policy and advocacy manager with Miriam’s Kitchen, a homeless services organization.

Previously:

After Years Of Community And Controversy, D.C. Makes Final Push To Close Down NoMa Encampments

D.C. Is Making A Push To House Residents At Three Encampments Before Closing Them Down

This story was updated to include comments from Councilmember Brianne Nadeau and Deputy Mayor Wayne Turnage.

Filed Under: homeless encampment, homelessness, NoMa,