A hot July sun beats down on the worn grass of a vacant lot on Burbank Street, a single block strip off North Clinton Avenue.
Bent steel tent posts jut from the dirt, where tents were anchored earlier in the day. Condom wrappers and fluorescent orange needle caps litter the site.
The city cleared the encampment Friday, days after razing another on nearby Morrill Street — tossing tents and other belongings into garbage trucks. In statements to the press, officials referred to the camps as “open-air drug markets,” with a supply of fentanyl and cocaine flowing from nearby drug houses, and the crackdown as putting “an end to this incredible blight on the neighborhood.”
North Clinton Avenue has, for decades, been a hotbed for drug activity, violent crime, and homelessness.
The timing of the clearings comes in the aftermath of a high-profile police shooting at a local drug house, amid a federal crackdown on homeless encampments, and days ahead of a festival weekend that ends with a neighborhood street party along the avenue.
Advocates estimate around 30 people were uprooted from the sites over the past week, although the transiency of the population makes it difficult to pinpoint an exact number. And while virtually everyone involved is an addict, they said, the camps also point to a larger need, and to the dearth of resources and alternative housing for this population.
Carlos Canales had been living at the site for about three-and-a-half months.
“If they don’t want us living out here like that, why don’t they put us some place better? Like a shelter or something like that?” Canales said. “Then, they wouldn’t have these problems every time.”
Some will move on to abandoned houses. Others will make their way into the abandoned caverns of the Rochester subway system.
For the advocates providing outreach to the sites, all are seen as worse off than before.
“At least two were pregnant, and we’ve been looking yesterday and today trying to find them to bring them pre-natal vitamins and other supplies, Ensure, that sort of thing,” said Amy D’Amico, a volunteer homeless outreach worker. “No one knows where she is.”
A police shooting and crackdown
The camp on Burbank Street has been there for well over a year. While the city has taken some action to clean up trash at the site, last month’s shooting helped set in motion the latest string of city actions.
David Vazquez was shot to death the morning of June 22 in the back of a North Clinton Avenue drug house on nearby Oscar Street. Later that day, police spotted the alleged shooter, Edison Estremera-Cohen, riding a bike on North Clinton Avenue and gave chase.
Body-worn camera footage shows Estremera-Cohen pull out a 9mm handgun during the chase and shoot at the officers. None were hit, but officers returned fire, striking Estremera-Cohen three times.
He survived, was arrested and is facing charges of second-degree murder, robbery, and aggravated attempted murder of a police officer.
Last week, officers raided the drug house, which is adjacent to the encampment on Burbank. Two men, one from Webster and one from Rochester, were arrested for possession of cocaine and fentanyl.
“We have a responsibility to bring public safety to neighborhoods, and this was done in the interest of public safety,” police Capt. Greg Bello said, adding that officers also were responding to a long spate of community concerns and complaints expressed to the department.
The department is continuing heightened enforcement on encampments and drug activity on North Clinton.
On Friday, a group of officers convened on a vacant lot on Oscar Street—nearby the site of Vazquez’s killing and a block away from the Burbank Street encampment. A small group of people sat in the lot, holding large orange garbage bags filled with belongings. Capt. Samuel Lucyshyn said the group wasn’t staying at the site, but the officers were keeping an eye on the lot after hearing it was also being used as an encampment.
“Sum and substance, if you look around, there’s a lot of blight, and the blight is gradually becoming an increase in violent incidents,” Lucyshyn said. “Some of the violence is related to drugs, not always, but some of it is. So, because of that, the community has gotten louder and louder.”
“I know there’s a lot of varying opinions on that, but at the end of the day, the community has said, ‘You know what, we just really want this to stop.’”
Beatriz LeBron is executive director of the Father Tracy Advocacy Center. The nonprofit, located on North Clinton nearby the encampment sites, has worked to provide direct aid to the neighborhood, including food, clothing, housing assistance, and employment assistance.
“From my perspective, I get both sides of this argument,” she said. “I have residents that come to the center for some services that are not on drugs, and they're like, ‘You know, I don't want to see these things.’ And I get that, you have kids, I get that. But the reality is that these are our community members too. ...I wish that we wouldn't pin one group of community members in a struggle with another group that's in the struggle, too.”
Where to go
Since the encampments’ removal, some of the former inhabitants now wander the grassy overgrowth between the side streets along North Clinton.
Few have any plans of where to go next.
Sarah, a former resident of the Burbank encampment, has been on the streets for a little over two years. Most of that time has been spent in various encampments around the North Clinton area. She said the best option for her might be public parks.
“They’re taking down everything that might have, I don’t want to say hiding spots, but any kind of cover where we can set up a tent and putting up a no-trespassing sign,” she said.
WXXI News is, by request, using only Sarah’s first due to concerns about privacy and safety.
Most shelters won’t take them. People in active addiction are often unwelcome at traditional homeless shelters or are expected to join a recovery program. The city’s last low-barrier shelter, a large facility on Barberry Terrace, closed in March. Its operator, REACH Advocacy, is in the process of dissolving.
Meanwhile, the city’s only sanctioned homeless encampment, Peace Village, is under construction to become a community of “Pallet shelters,” self-contained units fit with electricity, heating and cooling. That project, which was approved by the Rochester City Council in February 2023, has yet to be completed. Further development in the site began shortly after the city moved to clear a homeless encampment on Loomis Street. Some of the residents of that camp were relocated to Peace Village.
That leaves few options.
Hours after the tents were cleared last week, three advocates—D’Amico, Mickey DiPerna, and Kelly Cheatle — came back to the site to offer new tents. All three said they were willing to be arrested for aiding the encampment residents.
“I’m going to spend the next two, three weeks, maybe even months, looking for the people who were staying in these two encampments, and hoping I can find them and connect them with services they need,” Di Perna said. “But in the meantime, some of them might fall ill, some of might have their children on the street, and some of them might die.”
Di Perna said that if the people move into abandoned houses, outreach work becomes more difficult and more dangerous. Having a single, easily accessible location to reach people makes the work significantly easier.
“Trust’s the most important thing, when people are out on the street, especially if they’re using drugs, they have a very hard time trusting people,” he said. “...Those relationships that they build are vital, and when you do a sweep, it destroys that trust with service providers.”
Some planned on staying to rebuild. Others sought different options.
Just around the corner from the Burbank Street site is the headquarters of Recovery All Ways (RAW), a nonprofit focused on providing addiction treatment to people based on their specific needs.
Stephanie Forrester is the head of RAW and knew one of the people staying at the Burbank Street site. It took Forrester several days to learn where she ended up.
“When you're sweeping these encampments, you're disrupting not only them and their lives, but their connection to people who are trying to help them,” Forrester said. “And it's just a nightmare.”
Forrester noted that while the city does bring outreach workers to the clearings of encampments, the resources are often left unused. For example, during a December clearing of an encampment on South Clinton Avenue ahead of a particularly cold spate of weather, the city offered shelter transportation to the eight people staying at the site. None took them up on the offer.
The city argued the encampments were less homeless communities and more criminal dens fed by drug houses. By that measure, officials maintained, these are not sweeps of homeless encampments – which Evans has maintained his administration does not do -- but removal of "open air drug markets.”
Forrester offered a different perspective.
“It's close to the Father Tracy Advocacy Center and Baden Street Settlement, there's so many resources down there that people need to get to,” Forrester said. “And if you're dope sick, but still starving, you're going to walk to these places to get food and sometimes go in and ask for help and be like, ‘Okay, this is it. I'm done living like this.’”
“But we just keep pushing people further away from resources and safe spaces, and it's awful, so it's only going to get worse,” she continued.
