On a warm September afternoon, the railside strip of Industrial Street is quiet, save for the rustling of wind through weeds and the rumble of trucks from the nearby paving business.
Along the street, a makeshift shanty village composed of a tent and a camper is surrounded by litter: cans, wrappers, and piled trays, some with partially eaten food scraps that attract droves of insects.
A woman pulls her vehicle over and places a fresh tray of sandwiches outside the tent — leftover lunches procured from a school cafeteria. It’s a practice she’s done for the past two years. A man stops his pickup and gets out, hoping to check in on his brother, who has been living here.
A vacant lot across the street once served as Rochester's only sanctioned homeless encampment. In years past, this site known as Peace Village — on the northwest edge of downtown — boasted a collection of sheds, homes to the homeless who were served by nonprofit outreach workers.
Today, it is strewn with trash and overgrown weeds, its only notable infrastructure being a single naloxone box affixed to a wooden pole.
Peace Village is gone.
The nonprofits managing the site razed it recently, at a time when Rochester is experiencing an increase in the homeless population. The annual Point-in-Time Count, a metric for measuring the number of homeless in the area, was performed by Partners Ending Homelessness in January. Its report on the count, issued in June, found nearly every category of homelessness was at its highest since 2007, the oldest available figures.
A push to bring the camp back is at an impasse. The associated nonprofits are in disarray. The construction budget is short an estimated $70,000. And nobody is capable or willing to take charge.
“I’m trying to be patient,” said City Council President Miguel Meléndez, who spearheaded the push for developing Peace Village’s infrastructure. “But it’s also something I’ve expressed to the administration that I don’t want to go another winter without this site being figured out.”
The camp
Peace Village was designated in 2018, after the razing of a former encampment of the same name on South Avenue. The city sold the land to the nonprofit City Roots Community Land Trust for $1, and a separate nonprofit formed the next year to manage the site.
Graham Hughes had formerly served as president of the City Roots Community Land Trust and left three months ago. He said the organization has laid off its staff due to financial issues and was entering a “planning phase.”
The camp’s population fluctuated, but it typically housed about a dozen people in small sheds. Conditions were squalid, with some shelters partially burned and rats nesting in a berm around the property.
Peace Village was a place for those who struggled in the shelter system, whether due to active addiction, mental illness, or sanctions.
When the city tore down other, unauthorized encampments, officials would direct those residents who could not be placed in shelters to Peace Village. That was the case in 2022, after the city cleared a homeless encampment on Loomis Street.
In September of that year, City Council approved a $250,000 contract with Person-Centered Housing Options, or PCHO, to provide outreach services at Peace Village. That contract was funded by federal pandemic relief dollars.
Then, in February 2023, the city took a further step to improve the site, dedicating $750,000 to improve living conditions there. Of that, $460,000 was spent on 15 Pallet shelters — self-contained units with electricity, heating, and air conditioning. The remainder went to PCHO for site development.
The funding was sourced from unspent portions of the Rochester Police Accountability Board’s 2022-23 budget.
A spokesperson for Pallet, the Everett, Washington-based manufacturer of the shelters, confirmed the city received the shelters in April 2024. None have been constructed.
City spokesperson Barbara Pierce said PCHO advised the city that it needed more money to build out the site’s infrastructure, including electrical lines and water piping. She said the city was exploring other financial options to support the development.
The issues at Peace Village have been compounded by its own nonprofit entity losing that status in August 2023, IRS records show. The group didn’t file financial reports for three years and didn’t discover its nonprofit status had lapsed until nine months later, through its insurance provider as construction was set to begin. While the city bought the Pallet shelters, Peace Village Inc. was responsible for insuring them.
Pierce said Peace Village Inc. is currently seeking a fiduciary. The group’s treasurer is John Oster, who also serves as the city’s senior community housing planner. It’s an unusual arrangement for a high-ranking city employee to also serve as the principal for a nonprofit receiving support from the city.
Pierce said the city has worked to create “a lot of checks and balances” for Oster’s position both in municipal government and in the organization. His position with the city precedes his role with the group.
“I think the better way is to have a person who is a third party in that role,” Pierce said.
In May, as the organization discovered its loss of nonprofit status, board discussions turned to whether it should attempt to regain its status or pass off the plot’s stewardship to PCHO.
Nick Coulter is co-founder and chief development officer of PCHO and serves on the board of Peace Village Inc. He described PCHO currently as a “service provider” to Peace Village.
“It may seem like it’s our project, but I’m doing this as a support because I believe in the mission,” Coulter said in a text message. “We just want to make sure we do things correctly for the people.”
Charles Albanese, chief executive officer of PCHO, said the organization is still sending outreach workers to assist the few people left camping near the site. He stressed the project is not abandoned but is in a “holding pattern” as organizers work to cover additional construction costs.
“It was much more complicated than I think anyone originally thought,” Albanese said. “It’s going to be done, but it’s going to be done right.”
Albanese said the best-case scenario would see the project moving forward this year—meeting Meléndez’s demand. But it is more likely to make strides in 2025, if its nonprofit and funding issues are cleared.
Meléndez said a part of the issue is who exactly will take the reins of Peace Village: the city, PCHO, Peace Village Inc, or a new third party.
“The city is not interested in managing the site ourselves, per se,” Meléndez said. “So that’s where the conversations have been, with identifying another partner to do this work.”
‘In limbo’
Meléndez suggested several options, including restoring the nonprofit status of Peace Village Inc. and Council legislation to fill in the funding gaps. But until those happen, little progress stands to be made at the camp.
“Currently, there’s some things in limbo,” Meléndez said.
For advocates working with the street population, time is of the essence. And the lack of a stable environment like Peace Village puts vulnerable people at further risk.
Amy D’Amico, an attorney and former unhoused person, has long advocated for the right of people to live in encampments.
She saw promise in the development of Peace Village. But now she feels disappointment, as the site sits vacant, and the city continues sweeps of unsanctioned encampments.
“There’s been conversations about getting electric in or getting the water authority in because the pipes need to be replaced. But none of that has happened,” D’Amico said. “At one point the rats were killed but weren’t removed. So, under the berms, the dead rats still exist and the new rats that were born persist.”
D’Amico, along with a cohort of homeless people and advocates, are planning a news conference at the site on Sept. 28. They hope to bring attention to the situation at Peace Village and solicit some type of solution.
What that looks like remains unclear.
“The demands we have, basically, as advocates and unhoused people, is don’t criminalize homelessness, don’t de facto penalize homelessness,” D’Amico said. “And build more housing.”
The lack of a group encampment, be it from inaction or sweeps, removes a crucial, safe way to reach people living on the street, said Stephanie Forrester, president of Recovery All Ways, an addiction and homeless outreach organization.
“At least if they’re together,” Forrester said, “we have a shot on working with them and helping them, and them living longer.”
