Will Reid still spends Saturday afternoons in downtown D.C., where for nine years he and fellow volunteers at the mutual aid group Food Not Bombs have served free vegan meals to unhoused people living in the area. 

But after the Feb. 15 clearing of what was once the city’s largest tent encampment at McPherson Square, he’s seen fewer and fewer familiar faces there.  

“We can’t just singularly provide those resources right next to McPherson,” Reid says. “We’re having to run around the city and reach different folks who’ve been disconnected from their community and from resources.”

Six weeks after the National Park Service cleared a tent encampment once home to more than 70 people in McPherson Square – a decision urged on and hastened by Mayor Muriel Bowser and her administration – the network of people who serve that community lament the outcome of its mass eviction. As former residents move away, it is becoming harder to keep in touch with them, and to provide resources once relatively accessible, workers say.

Just 19 people who used to live in McPherson Square have moved into temporary housing or shelter of some kind, according to an official count provided to DCist/WAMU by the Department of Human Services, and only three more have actually signed leases for new apartments. The rest have moved to different encampments, are couch surfing, or have lost touch with the homeless services system entirely. That count undermines officials’ assurances that eligible unhoused people living in McPherson Square would receive transitional or permanent housing before they were evicted. And it also indicates that a smaller number of McPherson Square residents are in temporary housing now than there were one month ago.

As a result, service providers for the unhoused say that the mass eviction and its aftermath chipped away at the fragile bonds that link their community to public services. Even as some residents moved into short term shelter, countless others have developed a fundamental distrust of D.C. agencies – believing that the city won’t keep its promises.

“This is exactly what we said would happen: that people are getting displaced without housing, without services that meet their needs, and without a plan,” says Jesse Rabinowitz, an organizer with the nonprofit Miriam’s Kitchen, which provides case management services and support to the unhoused living in tent encampments around Foggy Bottom. 

DCist/WAMU spoke with five service providers – from members of self-described anarchist collectives to a case manager who receives local funding to perform street outreach – who have kept in touch with and provided resources to more than 40 former McPherson Square residents. 

Their insights into the aftermath of the clearing paint a picture of a scattershot system ill-equipped to meaningfully engage the unhoused living outside, and cast new light on D.C. officials’ gripes that unhoused people don’t have shelter because they won’t engage with the homeless services system. They also illustrate the ripple effects of an encampment clearing. Residents might go to other sites – a move that can complicate their case managers’ efforts to help them apply for housing, as well as disrupt social dynamics at the new site, prompting other residents to move out – or leave the District entirely. 

Because nonprofits that receive funding from the D.C. government to serve encampments are each responsible for distinct geographic regions, the former McPherson Square residents lost their case managers when NPS cleared the encampment. (Employees of Pathways to Housing, the organization that oversaw McPherson residents’ case management, did not return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment.) Those case managers help residents apply for housing assistance, health services, and professional development resources, among others.

The success of transferring over to new case managers at different encampment sites “has been challenging,” says Keelyn Robey, a case manager with Miriam’s Kitchen who serves the unhoused in encampments on Virginia Ave. NW and 24th St. NW. Robey has counted at least nine people who used to live in the McPherson Square encampment and have since moved to Foggy Bottom sites.

“People are not as receptive to working with us when they’ve just gone through a clearing. And it’s not like a seamless transfer of services when that happens,” she says. “When you’re trying to focus on these bigger picture case management goals, it’s really hard because being moved from place to place to place is kind of interrupting that. And building trust and rapport with clients takes time.” 

DCist/WAMU’s attempts to speak with former residents of McPherson Square were unsuccessful; many of those people, according to service providers who represent them, are worried that sharing personal information will lead to city agencies clearing their current encampment sites. Others are concerned about their personal safety. “The eviction displaced us all over D.C.,” a collective of former McPherson Square residents wrote to DCist/WAMU in a Twitter message. 

“The city [says], ‘we have all these proper channels for you to go through. You get your housing voucher, then you get housing,’ and those proper channels are broken. And then when these communities decide to try to take care of themselves, to work together to take care of each other because the city is failing to do it, the city’s response is to destroy that. And then they wonder why people don’t trust them,” Reid says. “I think it’s madness.”

In response to a request for comment about concerns that encampment clearings would disrupt outreach efforts, DHS spokesperson Kevin Valentine emailed DCist/WAMU a statement saying that 54 former McPherson Square residents “were working with service providers, at various levels” by the time NPS cleared the camp. Forty-seven of those people were deemed eligible for varying kinds of housing resources. The D.C. government piloted a program in 2021 that would connect unhoused people living in encampments to housing vouchers, but the incredible backlog of existing residents awaiting vouchers meant that not everyone who was matched with a voucher actually moved into an apartment.

Wayne Turnage, the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, has previously called the encampment clearings “humane,” arguing that tent sites are public safety hazards.

“We work very hard to ensure that encampments remain safe while efforts are made to connect as many residents to housing as possible,” Turnage told DCist/WAMU last month. “But, when encampments exponentially increase in size and are partially inhabited by persons who engage in illegal activity, those sites must be closed.”

But mutual aid workers, like Reid, say that encampments are often where unhoused people feel safest. Encampment residents develop strong social bonds, norms, and rules, and the thought of abandoning those to live with strangers makes many people uncomfortable – particularly given the tattered history of D.C.’s shelters, like the now-shuttered DC General, where residents reported being leveraged for sex acts by staff in a dilapidated building.

Many of those who were offered short-term “bridge” housing at a site in Southeast D.C. – which usually lasts for just 90 days and forces recipients to live in close quarters with strangers – declined it, service providers say. (One former McPherson Square resident moved out of their bridge housing after just two weeks.) 

Having experienced traumatic events at city shelters, many unhoused people cannot stomach the idea of living in a group setting. Others no longer trust the D.C. government to provide safe shelter sites. And some can’t fathom life away from those who helped them survive in the encampment.

“Some of them were saying, like, you know, I can’t accept housing when I know that this other person who I have these strong connections with is going to be out on the street,” Reid says. “They don’t want to abandon their community. And a lot of these people have seen people they love die out on the street.”

Since Feb. 2, D.C. agencies have “engaged” eight other tent encampments, forcing residents to pack up and move temporarily while workers clean the site. The contentious procedures have only increased in frequency over time, outreach workers say, unsettling residents who often live in fear that their tents and other belongings will be destroyed.

Those engagements are on top of the more than 22 encampment clearings that have occurred across the city since Oct. 2021.

“There is this constant undercurrent of people getting displaced both from NPS land and D.C. land,” Rabinowitz says. “We just see a focus of displacement, not on housing. And it’s happening every day.”