Portland to clear homeless encampment at Harbor View Memorial Park

Dozens of tents are scattered around Harbor View Park on Friday. Portland plans to clear the homeless encampment on Tuesday. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

The people living at Portland’s Harbor View Memorial Park say they are frustrated.

The state started putting up a fence under the Casco Bay Bridge this week, forcing at least half of the people in the large homeless encampment to move their shelters and belongings away from the bridge.

“We were told that we’d be fine here,” said Bobby, 30, who declined to give his last name. “And now we’re getting told we have to move anyways? No way.”

The city announced that it will clear the rest of the encampment on Tuesday. It’s the largest remaining cluster of tents in the city.

“It’s going to be even harder now,” Bobby said. “Is this just like a big Merry Christmas to everyone?”

City Manager Danielle West said they had hoped to get everyone out of Harbor View without a sweep, and instead use outreach to bring people into shelter. However, in recent days she said it became obvious that they would need to clear the camp.

The city has long expressed its hope to get everyone living outside into shelter, especially before winter. While outreach workers have had more success moving people into the shelter in recent weeks than they did over the summer, it wasn’t enough to completely empty the encampment.

About 100 people still lived there as of Friday, and just as many beds were available at the Homeless Service’s Center.

“We’ve reached a plateau where we just were not able to connect as many people with those open beds, so we knew we’d need to make a shift,” West said in a phone interview. “In order to get people inside and get them moving, we ultimately decided we did need to have a resolution date. Not an easy decision, but one that was made after talking to a significant number of groups that are working on this issue with us.”

Encampment sweeps have been extremely controversial, with multiple protests at City Hall and advocates speaking about the harm they can cause. Those who oppose the sweeps say they are traumatizing for homeless people and impede their access to regular services. However, many say they it’s the only way to get people out of unsafe living conditions, especially as temperatures drop.

BARRIERS TO SHELTER

According to the city, 43 people from the encampment – and 111 people in total who were sleeping outside – have been brought into shelter since Nov. 30 when 120 people were transferred to the new Riverside Shelter for asylum seekers.

The city said there are still more than 100 beds available, that number has grown in part because of the City Council’s decision last month to expand capacity at the city shelter by 50 beds.

“It’s been fluctuating, but its about 110 (open beds) pretty regularly, that’s a significant number. … And we’ve been holding those beds open for people at the encampments,” West said.

The city’s tracker reported 184 tents throughout the city as of Friday morning. However, West said that outreach workers are reporting that some are not occupied and are only being used for storage. City officials believe there are enough shelter beds for everyone currently living at the encampment.

Todd, 45, who declined to give his last name, said he would go to the city shelter if they allowed dogs. “My dog helped me through my rough times, he hasn’t given up on me yet, so I’m not going to give up on him,” he said.

Bobby and his girlfriend have been living at Harbor View for about four months with their two dogs, Reaper and Angel. Bobby considers them family.

“I’m not leaving these dogs behind,” he said.

It’s one of the many reasons people have said they won’t go to the shelter. Others have said they don’t like that drug and alcohol use are forbidden, couples cannot sleep together and that shelter residents are woken up early most days. The distance of the shelter from many city services downtown also has been a barrier.

City spokesperson Jessica Grondin said on Friday that the city has partnered with a local animal shelter to offer boarding for pets in the encampments whose owners choose to go into shelter. However, Bobby said he is worried his dogs might act out and bite someone without him there.

City leaders say they have made other efforts to market the shelter as a better option and announced Friday that they would be extending the curfew to 11 p.m.

WITHOUT WARNING

Since the inception of the Encampment Crisis Response Team in the spring, the city has promised to give significant advanced notice before sweeping encampments. Before those along Marginal Way were cleared, signs were posted at least three weeks in advance. As of Friday afternoon, four days before the planned sweep, none had been posted at Harbor View.

Todd said he has been living at the park since he was forced to leave Marginal Way about six weeks ago.

“Every other time they’ve given us a while to get our stuff, like at least two weeks. I don’t understand it,” he said.

Mayor Mark Dion said the news shouldn’t have caught anyone off guard.

“The idea that we were going to clear that campsite shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. They’ve been approached and actively solicited to begin transferring from that space into the shelter,” Dion said.

The city could have put out notices a few weeks ago, he said, but instead “tried to keep a lower profile in order to approach the individuals in the encampment and get them to move out.”

Todd said it wasn’t obvious to him.

Emotions were running high Friday as news of the coming sweep spread. A woman wandered through the rows of makeshift shelters, ducking under tent flaps to tell friends that they all had to be out by Tuesday.

The area was in disarray after the state Department of Transportation cleared a portion of the encampment beneath the Casco Bay Bridge, saying it worries about safety once snowplows start clearing the road above the encampment.

Workers from C.A. Newcomb and Sons erect a fence below an on-ramp for the Casco Bay Bridge on Wednesday near Harbor View Park, the site of a large homeless encampment. The business was hired by MaineDOT to install about 1,300 feet of fencing to create a safety perimeter around the bridge to prevent people from being injured by snow being pushed over the bridge rails by plows. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Belongings that had been left behind were being scraped from the sidewalk with an excavator. The camp was covered in mud, much of the ground appeared to have been torn up by the activity.

Dion said that the timing of the state’s and the city’s work are unrelated, but both were acting with the weather in mind.

“It’s an independent decision,” Dion said. “We hadn’t firmed up a day for when the resolution of the campsite would begin, and they just decided, ‘Oh we’re going to do it.’ ”

“Snow could come as suddenly as next week. Resolving a camp in the snow where syringes and other hazardous waste may be present is dangerous,” he said.

Todd said he just finished building his “abode,” where he planned to live with his girlfriend for the winter. It’s a significant structure with wooden beams cut to support pallets and walls on three sides. He built a small insulated doghouse for his 9-month-old puppy and he purchased a few different types of heaters to warm the space.

“I’m actually proud of this, it’s structurally sound. It took me more than two weeks to build and now I have to take it all down,” he said.

Todd plans to rent a truck and load up all of his stuff as soon as he can. He hopes he can find a place to live in the next few days, but the more likely scenario, he thinks, is that he’ll trek into the woods and set up camp there.