Just like that, the tent city on Third Street in downtown Cincinnati is gone. The encampment that had been home to a few dozen people on a busy stretch overlooking Fort Washington Way was empty by 7:30 a.m. this morning as city crews geared up for clean up.
Late last night the camp dispersed to a location near JACK Casino after Hamilton County Judge Robert Ruehlman Aug. 6 ruled in favor of county prosecutor Joe Deters, who filed a petition seeking a temporary restraining order against inhabitants there ahead of an Aug. 20 hearing on the matter. After another ruling by Ruehlman today, the inhabitants of the camp will likely face removal again soon.
Deters said yesterday he would pursue public nuisance charges against residents of the camp who did not leave, citing what he says are felony drug crimes occurring at the camp and another near the Lytle Tunnel downtown.
Some residents remained at a portion of the latter camp at about 8 a.m., but Leon “Bison” Evans, the camp’s leader, said its inhabitants were gearing up to leave and were prepared for city crews to show up in the coming hours. By 9 a.m, those crews had arrived. Evans said that most inhabitants at his camp had a plan for where they would go, but that he himself did not yet. No inhabitants were arrested as the camp was cleared. Mattresses, boxes, chairs, a few needles and personal items remained as the inhabitants moved on.
As residents at the Lytle Tunnel camp packed up to leave, nonprofit homelessness outreach group Maslow’s Army gave a news conference with volunteers and representatives from the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office.
“We stand against any efforts by organizations that would seek to perpetuate conditions of homelessness in our city,” Maslow’s founder Sam Landis said, signaling a step away from groups struggling to stall or stop camp removals. The change in position led to some heated words from Evans, who had worked closely with Landis when the city was trying to clear out a camp under Fort Washington Way.
“It was me, you and everybody, but you fall for that?” Evans shouted.
Bennett Allen, the attorney for the residents at the Third Street camp, said that group voted to move ahead of the camp clearing and are now staying on public land on Reading Road near the Casino.
“The people who have moved to this location along a well-traveled roadway are showing compliance with the court order and displaying that public land is currently the only place for all involved to seek some respite,” the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition wrote in a statement this morning. “It is also a statement that the Mayor and City will not be able to hide homelessness whether it be through pushing people around or ignoring the masses more without homes throughout our city.”
Desmond Brown, an inhabitant of the Third Street tent city and now at the 14-tent camp set up in a small park in Pendleton, said he would stay if the city tried to move them again. Brown and another resident estimated roughly 30 people are camped there.
“We’re tired of being shuffled around,” Brown said. “All we’re asking for is help. You need to engage in peoples’ lives. This is a mental health issue.”
It’s the latest chapter in an ongoing game of cat and mouse between the city and residents of various camps. Following Deters’ petition, Judge Ruehlman Aug. 6 ordered the camps south of a line roughly at the casino in an area that encompassed downtown, Mount Adams and portions of Queensgate to be cleared “by any legal means necessary.”
Ruehlman today expanded that boundary to encompass all areas between I-71 and I-75 from the river up to the Norwood Lateral — an area that includes the new camp in Pendleton. Inhabitants who resist efforts to clear the camps could be arrested, and those aiding the residents in staying there could face obstruction of justice charges.
“While I am sympathetic to the plight of the homeless, it is simply not healthy or desirable to have people living on the streets of Cincinnati,” Deters said today in a statement. “We are fortunate to have many resources in our area to help the homeless so that no one has to live this way and, in fact, social service providers in our area stand ready to help all of these people.”
Originally, the camp on Third Street was slated to be removed last Friday after the city issued a 72-hour eviction notice earlier in the week. But residents and the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition filed a federal lawsuit seeking to keep the city from clearing the camps on 1st and 14th Amendment grounds.
The coalition argued that setting up the tent city in the public space amounts to free speech. Advocates and residents of the camp say that the city needs to address issues around affordable housing, access to mental health services and other deeper drivers of homelessness.
“People have a human right to speak and to be seen,” Homeless Coalition Director Josh Spring says. “You can’t get any more seen than right here on Third Street. People are here because they have no other place to be and they have chosen this location because other people can see. It provides safety and an opportunity to tell the public what the problem is.”
Despite the lawsuit, a federal judge allowed the city to clear the camp temporarily to clean the area, but inhabitants returned soon afterward.
Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, who asked Deters to intervene last Friday, has cited public health concerns, including hepatitis, for the camp removals. The Downtown Residents Council and businesses in the area have also complained about the camps.
“It is unacceptable that individuals and activists continue to illegally camp with tents in the right-of-way,” Cranley said in a statement last week. “This presents a clear and present health and safety hazard to homeless individuals and the general public. The city is working hard to end this.”
Third Street, which residents call “The Colony,” was the second camp cleared by the city in the past two weeks. City crews removed an earlier camp under Fort Washington Way and set up barriers to prevent former inhabitants from returning. Another camp a few blocks to the east is also slated for removal.
The city says the camp and another one nearby pose public health and safety risks, the same reasons it gave for clearing the camp further down Third Street under an overpass carrying Fort Washington Way. Mayor Cranley has specifically cited what he says have been recent hepatitis outbreaks in the area. He acknowledges the city can’t prove the rise in cases came from the camp, but says conditions there often cause such outbreaks.
“As in the previous camp, there were syringes and public urination and defecation, and this is an unacceptable living environment for the people down there,” Cranley said.
Those living in the camps and their advocates dispute that characterization and say there isn’t adequate shelter space and affordable housing for those living there. City officials, however, say they and social service agencies have been working with those living in the camps to find other options.
Social service nonprofits have provided some services, including a jobs van provided by the GeneroCity 513 program that pays workers experiencing homelessness $45 a day to clean up litter. There is also work to find more space for camp inhabitants in area shelters. But many shelters are over capacity, advocates say — the men’s shelter on Gest Street in Queensgate is 130 percent full and a women’s shelter in Mount Auburn has 78 people staying in its 60-bed facility.
Strategies to End Homelessness, the nonprofit that coordinates many shelter options, says there were roughly 7,100 people experiencing homelessness in Hamilton County in 2016.
Brown at the Pendleton Camp says those living there need each other, and that options that split the camp inhabitants up could be harmful.
“We’re a family,” he said. “We’re together. There’s the story about the old woman and the cat. She had the cat for many years. After it died, she died. You break this family up, you hurt their lives.”
This article appears in Aug 1-8, 2018.
