The city of Rochester swept a homeless encampment at one end of Marshall Street off Monroe Avenue on Friday morning — five days before Christmas and as the city prepares for a bitter cold weekend.
The homeless encampment beneath the bridge over South Clinton Avenue had been there for a few months and was home to a handful of people. Eight were staying there when police arrived, according to the city. But with little notice, Mayor Malik Evans ordered the camp to be swept. Where all of its residents will go is unclear. All refused shelter placement from outreach workers, and the city’s only sanctioned homeless encampment, Peace Village, remains vacant as it awaits construction of new shelters.
Rachel Bailey is the outreach program manager with Person-Centered Housing Options (PCHO), an organization which specializes in homeless outreach that regularly partners with the city. She said the sweep was imminent, but its timing still came as a surprise to the organization.
“It’s horrible, and to do this right before the holidays,” Bailey said. “It’s just really cruel.”
The underpass sits directly to the south of Wadsworth Square Park, and its parking lot between Marshall and Howell streets.
Frigid air whipped beneath it Friday morning.
In the alcoves under the bridge, city environmental services workers packed up piles of tarps, tents, clothes, and other ephemera into a flatbed dump truck. Rochester police officers stood guard around the site, and assorted outreach workers made phone calls to try to negotiate where the makeshift village’s residents would go.
Bailey said that PCHO had been aware the state Department of Transportation intended to clear the property. But it delayed that sweep to ensure there were plans and placements for the residents.
But Barbara Pierce, spokesperson for the city of Rochester, said it was compassion, not cruelty, that fueled the need to sweep the camp. Temperatures this weekend are expected to drop to dangerous levels, with a high of 18 degrees forecasted for Sunday. Pierce also said the property is city owned, and the city's responsibility to manage.
The city offered transportation to so-called Code Blue shelters for residents of the camp Friday morning. Code Blue shelters are specifically designed to keep people out of the cold and generally have a lower entry barrier and more lax rules than other shelters.
“We have a choice,” Pierce said. “People die in temperatures like that, that’s why we did it.”
None of the eight people accepted the offer of transportation to a Code Blue shelter. One was being picked up by their father, two said they were on a waiting list for housing through PCHO, and five others refused all assistance outright, according to the city.
Pierce acknowledged that not all residents of the encampment were able to be placed in a shelter, but stood by the city’s effort as an imperfect, but necessary situation.
“This is a situation where there are few easy solutions, and no perfect ones,” Pierce said.
Bailey said PCHO was not notified by the city about the sweep prior to it taking place. Rather, a member of the county’s Forensic Intervention Team (FIT) had contacted PCHO senior outreach and engagement specialist Stephen Rosa, because Rosa knew one of the residents of the encampment who was being argumentative.
Rosa said by the time he reached the encampment, the city had already begun the sweep.
“I told them, ‘Look, I work with these clients, and I told them you guys weren’t coming. Let me go down to the library, and get them before you mess with any of their things,’” Rosa said.
“They were pushing back and saying, ‘Well, what would you do if the mayor told you to?’” Rosa said. “And I said, ‘I would tell him this is people’s property.’”
On that morning, Rosa was working with two brothers who lived at the site, trying to place them in emergency housing. The pair had no plans for housing or shelter and did not take the city’s transport to a Code Blue shelter. Both brothers declined to comment.
The city took some of the encampment residents' belongings and put the items in storage. Those individuals will be able to access their stored property by calling 311. Pierce said the city would deliver their belongings to them.
PCHO has spent months working at the encampment, in tandem with the city. Pierce argued that the time for outreach at the camp had passed, and that it wasn't humane to leave people at the encampment with potentially fatal temperatures imminent.
“We know how it looks to go down there and do this,” Pierce said. “But how would it look if we were going down there with a body bag?”
Amy D’Amico, a homeless outreach volunteer and lawyer, offered to hold onto some of the residents' property herself. She lamented that putting what little the residents had into storage created a barrier for the homeless to access their own property.
“The mayor had no reason to do this five days before Christmas,” D’Amico said. “And why he unilaterally made a decision to do this without contacting outreach staff, without giving them a chance to put their things where they want to do those things, let’s give them a chance to stabilize.”
