Thomas Circle will be closed to homeless encampments until further notice after a man was fatally shot inside his tent near the area Monday morning. The news comes as unhoused residents face increased hostility and violence.

The man, whose identity is being withheld until a relative is notified, was shot around 9:30 a.m. at Thomas Circle and Massachusetts Avenue NW and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to D.C. police. A homicide investigation is currently underway. At the scene on Monday, Assistant D.C. Police Chief Andre Wright said his team recovered a firearm but released no further details on possible motives or suspects.

Shortly after the shooting, the city cleared the small homeless encampment at Thomas Circle, according to Alexandra Bailey, a commissioner of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2F08. She says that some of the people landed there after the National Park Service cleared encampments at nearby Burke Park and Samuel Gompers Memorial Park last summer.

“I was just devastated,” says Bailey of how she felt after learning of the shooting. “Everybody should have been housed last summer. This shouldn’t have even been something that could possibly have happened.”

Bailey says she and other members of the Ward 2 Mutual Aid group sought to support Thomas Circle residents when the city announced they were clearing the area. Clearings are often traumatic, especially because most people have nowhere else to store their personal belongings. Some neighbors offered to help, including Bailey who says she is currently storing a generator for an evicted resident in her basement.

“We’re just dispersing people. We disconnect them from each other. We disconnect them from resources,” she continues. “We end up with situations like this one.”

Monday evening, mutual aid organizers also raised money to shelter people affected by the clearings. The D.C. government provided hotel rooms for some, says Bailey, through D.C.’s Pandemic Emergency Program for Medically Vulnerable Individuals (PEP-V) program — but not everyone, Bailey adds. By her count, there were at least four younger people, including one couple, who were not offered housing. Mutual aid organizers raised enough to provide hotel rooms for three-to-four days.

“I’m going to continue to push and fundraise and we are also going to be pushing to get them into PEP-V and then into a permanent supportive house as soon as possible,” says Bailey.

Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, meanwhile, says the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services told her everyone living outside at Thomas Circle was offered housing through the PEP-V program, but two refused. (Bailey disputes this.) The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.

While overall homelessness has decreased over the last decade, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage tells the Post the number of encampments has increased more than 40%. Both government officials and neighbors are at odds on how to respond.

Some people have connected increased crime with the homeless encampments. Bailey says that is untrue and, worse, dehumanizing. “They’re very kind, decent people. And not only did they not deserve the terrible murder that happened yesterday, they definitely didn’t deserve the way we responded,” she says in reference to the clearing.

The Bowser administration has permanently shut down several of the city’s encampment sites, with the goal of moving people from tents into stable housing. According to an April budget report to the Committee on Health, the pilot program has a 64% success rate. The pilot program has come under scrutiny, however. “I worry this rush to remove and bar neighbors from the streets comes at a cost of rupturing trust in government further and signals the wrong priorities of erasing and harming our unhoused neighbors versus caring for them,” said Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George during an oversight hearing on the program.

In a statement to DCist/WAMU, DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID) Acting President Gerren Price says Thomas Circle is closed to homeless encampments until further notice, based on conversations with the deputy mayor. He also says the BID requested a police briefing, which will take place Wednesday afternoon. “We look forward to working closely with MPD and the city to ensure that the entire community — residents, workers, visitors, and the unhoused — is safe during this difficult time,” says Price via email. “We are saddened by Monday’s horrific act of violence, which led to the loss of a life of one of our unhoused neighbors.”

Homeless advocates say threats and violence against unhoused people have increased in recent years, which they note correlates with the growing presence of visible homelessness. Just two months ago, multiple people experiencing homelessness were attacked — five shootings over nine days, two resulting in deaths. Police quickly made an arrest. Residents who are or formerly homeless were not surprised by the attacks targeting unhoused people.

“This is what we go through. The police, the government, they don’t give a damn about us. They look at us as if we’re the problem,” Donté Turner, a Street Sense Media writer and vendor, told DCist/WAMU.