Sitting in a folding chair under the steady hum of semi trucks and sedans speeding across Fort Washington Way, a man who calls himself Wow Wow explains how he came to live with 40 or more other people who have taken to staying in the underpass between Paul Brown Stadium and the looming glass office towers of Third Street.
“I’ve been here since the winter time,” he says, motioning back to a tent he has set up a few feet away. “I commute back and forth from the camp to work nearby — I get jobs at a temp agency.”
Wow Wow grew up on Elm Street, but ran into some bad situations, he says, “some struggles,” and found himself couch surfing with friends and relatives. Then, this past winter, he ran out of places to stay and started living here under the overpass.
Originally, residents of the camp faced removal by July 20 under order of city officials. But in a special session of Cincinnati City Council July 19, five of the body’s Democrats voted to approve a compromise with Acting Cincinnati City Manager Patrick Duhaney that will push the removal until Wednesday, July 26. That compromise was negotiated between several city council members, the city manager, residents at the camp and nonprofit groups.
In a July 16 memo, Duhaney cited “public health and safety concerns” with the camp that he said necessitated its immediate removal. The city is legally required to provide 72 hours’ notice before removing a camp, so the same day the memo was released, Cincinnati Police officers were under the overpass handing them out, accompanied by social service organizations there to direct residents to aid.
“I think it’s a bad idea,” Wow Wow said of the camp removal. “People here have nowhere else to go.”
Duhaney’s move to get rid of the camp came after complaints by residents of nearby apartment and condo complexes, as well as members of Cincinnati’s business community. A few of them showed up at council’s July 19 meeting, where they again lodged complaints about the camp.
Gary Bryson, a seven-year resident of downtown, said that he felt ignored by the city.
“You haven’t engaged all parties,” he said. “The Downtown Residents Association wasn’t engaged… you wouldn’t like people camping on the sidewalk in your neighborhood. The laws have to be enforced.”
A few other apartment and condo residents also spoke, recalling times they say they’ve seen people near the camps using the restroom outdoors, fighting or using drugs.
Nonprofit Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated says it has worked to address the existence of the camp for a number of months. DCI employs two social workers who do outreach, CEO Mindy Rosen says, and in recent weeks, they’ve spent 48 hours a week at the camp.
Along with Duhaney, Mayor John Cranley has also pushed for the removal of the camp as soon as possible, echoing concerns from business groups and other downtown residents who live in more traditional housing.
“Acting City Manager Duhaney’s decision to remediate the homeless encampment is made with the utmost consideration for the safety of the homeless individuals who are staying there, as well as people who live, work and visit downtown. Health department officials have confirmed an outbreak of Hepatitis, instances of HIV, and needle sharing,” he said in a statement July 18. “Police are conducting investigations into human and drug trafficking. This is a public health emergency and we are required to respond in a way that ensures safety.”
At least a couple former camp inhabitants have moved up onto a stretch of Third Street west of Race Street, saying they were concerned about drug activity at the camp months ago.
But some have pushed back at the characterization of the camp as a place full of drugs and illegal activity.
“We’re just a peaceful community,” Wow Wow says. “It’s calm here. We don’t bother anybody. We break bread with anybody.”
Jeff McDowell, a senior communications manager at Procter & Gamble, sits on the board of nonprofit Maslow’s Army, which has been working with camp residents. He says he finds the camp safe and doesn’t have any qualms being there or bringing his 16-year-old daughter there.
“I have spent more than 30 hours in the camp in the past three days alone,” McDowell says. “I’ve been there at all hours of the day and night and I have never observed any dangerous, unhealthy or illegal activity. I’m not denying that we need to address the issues that downtown residents have expressed. They’re real. But I’m here to tell you that (camp residents) are part of the solution.”
Samuel Landis, the founder of Maslow’s, has been at the camp with volunteers daily, working to organize residents, provide support and advocacy and help move those who want it toward permanent housing. Other groups, including the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition, have also provided support.
It’s familiar turf for Landis, who says he spent two decades living on Cincinnati streets, including five years at a camp in the same location on Third Street as the one currently at the center of the removal debate. He eventually found housing, attended college, and founded Maslow’s.
Between fielding phone calls, coordinating with camp residents and speaking with TV news reporters, Landis sits in a truck next to the camp and talks about supporting camp residents in terms borrowed from pioneering psychologist Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. Provision of basics like shelter can help a person on a path toward their own self-actualization, he says — a place of purpose and healthy self-esteem. That starts with getting off the streets, if a person wants that.
But that path is tenuous and different for everyone. Landis says he believes about one in 10 people experiencing homelessness don’t want to go to shelters for various reasons — social anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental conditions.
Many at the camp, including Wow Wow, say they’d like to have some kind of permanent housing eventually. But in the meantime, losing the camp could be destabilizing, Landis says.
“This is a very traumatizing event,” he says of the camp removal process. “I remember several camps I’ve been removed from… when they put the gate up, I remember the anxiety of those 72 hours. Where was I going to move? My security was threatened. I was scared. We want to alleviate that, in case that was a final possibility. We were ready put signs up. To chain ourselves to walls. We want to make sure these people are treated with dignity and respect.”
Under the compromise reached by council, residents of the camp and others, including Landis, the tent city will receive temporary restroom facilities and medical attention over the next week before final removal happens.
It’s unclear what will happen next. About half of the camp’s residents were slated to go to another temporary camp east of downtown Landis said, but that deal fell through at the last moment. The camp is slated to be removed at 8 a.m. on July 25. Six residents have received housing certificates, and others will go to shelters, Landis says. Two will also join a jobs program through the Freestore Foodbank and will be moving into apartments next month.
“We’re excited about the organizations who are coming out here,” Landis says. “They’re stepping up to the plate. This is a very peaceful resolution, and these people need that now. ”
Beyond the coming days and weeks, however, there are bigger questions. Camps like the one in downtown and elsewhere in many corners of the city are simply inflection points for a larger set of dynamics that have long gone unaddressed, advocates say, including lack of affordable housing, lagging wages for available jobs, limited access to mental health and addiction treatment options and other issues.
At the council meeting July 19, many of those advocates — and several council members — commented on those dynamics, but few immediate answers presented themselves.
Federal counts in recent years have tallied more than 9,000 people living on Cincinnati streets — well more than the shelter space available. But shelters are temporary solutions anyway, advocates with organizations like the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition say.
They point out that Hamilton County needs thousands more units of affordable housing available to low-income residents. A study from LISC of Greater Cincinnati released last year suggests that gap could be as high as 40,000 units. Solutions to bridge that deficit — an affordable housing trust fund recently established by the city, for example — could take years to bear serious fruit. In the meantime, finding and keeping affordable housing in the city can be fiendishly difficult.
Councilwoman Tamaya Dennard, who helped engineer the delayed camp removal, acknowledges the thorny problem.
“The tent city on Third Street is the chickens coming home to roost for years of policies that don’t include affordable housing,” Dennard said, before promising the city would get innovative with solutions. “The long-term goal is for the city to get serious about affordable housing in a way we haven’t before… we’re going to do things the city hasn’t done before.”
Dennard says that practices like the city’s abatement policies, which give tax breaks to developers who build commercial spaces and market rate housing in the city, have exacerbated the shortage of affordable housing in the community. Supporters of those tax breaks, however, say they bring jobs and needed residential development to Cincinnati.
As the city wrestles with long-term solutions, there will also be more discussion on mid-term and short-term actions ahead of next week’s camp removal, including meetings Monday, council members say.
Residents of the camp say they don’t want to cause trouble, but also want to be seen as human.
Leon Evans, a resident of the camp who often goes by the name Bison, helped negotiate the compromise plan.
“I never wanted to cause any problems,” he said at council’s July 19 meeting. “I just live down there… a lot of what is going on down there is positive.”
He asked those living in the camp who attended the council meeting to stand. Several rose, including one woman wiping tears from her eyes.
“This is my family,” he said. “I felt we were being treated like trash.”
This article appears in Jul 18-25, 2018.