Advocates for the homeless are decrying the city's plan to revive Rochester's only sanctioned encampment.
Rochester City Council is expected to vote on the plan to bring back Peace Village during its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday. But the proposed plan for the site on Industrial Street would be a far cry from the rag tag series of sheds and other shelters that once populated the site.
Residents would have to apply to stay at the site, which would be secured and gated, and there would be set rules for living there. Person-Centered Housing Options would offer support services to residents, with the goal of getting them into stable housing.
It's expected to cost just under $2 million per year to operate. An initial investment of $1.2 million would carry the project through June 2027. That money would come from funds the city received from state settlements with opioid manufacturers.
Angela Meins is a transgender homeless woman and one of the first people to call Peace Village home. She said the encampment was a place where people who did not feel safe in the traditional shelter system could find a community.
"We were like a band of brothers and sisters," Meins said. "...They took our dream and turned it into something totally different for our own community and the homeless community. We looked out for one another. We helped out one another."
Meins said gating Peace Village and transitioning it away from the open-air encampment it was before would just set up new barriers for people seeking shelter. She said the traditional shelter system would typically bar people who would live at Peace Village, whether it was due to substance use, mental health issues, or a feeling of safety.
"We're not little kids," Meins said. "...Stop telling us how to live our lives and actually give us solutions."
The city established Peace Village in 2018, after it cleared a homeless encampment of the same name on South Avenue. The conditions of the new site just a few blocks north of downtown Rochester were squalid. Trash was strewn around the site, several shelters were dilapidated or burned, and rat nests had filled the berm surrounding the site.
City Council President Miguel Meléndez pushed to transform the site in 2023 using $750,000 in Council funds to purchase a series of small, heated and cooled shelters to be placed on the site. Issues with the non-profits surrounding the site had left Peace Village as a vacant lot until earlier this month, when construction on the shelters began.
About 18 people are expected to be housed at the site. In an interview earlier this month, CEO of Person-Centered Housing Options Chuck Albanese said Peace Village would now serve as a "transitional" site more so than an encampment.
Mickey DiPerna is a homeless advocate. He believes more people experiencing homelessness should have been included in the planning for the site.
"I think the best choice that you can make to really make Peace Village successful is pack their advisory board with people with lived experience," DiPerna said. "...If that advisory board was truly made up with people with lived experiences of homelessness, they could tell you why or why not they would go into that outdoor shelter."
