On Tuesday I learned
of a plan to build the low barrier shelter in the Sears Lane
campground. Later in the day, Jay Diaz of the ACLU sent a photo of a
poster announcing the meeting in the Lakeside Commons on Wednesday
evening.On Friday we learned just how far the planning had advanced, behind City Hall doors.
The original poster
for the meeting announced that it would be a “Discussion about what
is happening on Sears Lane and a vision for the future that is both
compassionate for people in need of help and for neighbors who expect
civil order and laws to be respected.”Demagogic language if ever there was.
If you are familiar
with the Sears Lane Camp Parking lot, you will know there are several
residents with trailers, campers and lots of stuff. The project calls
for about 26 steel storage containers, which have been converted into
housing and other facilities, to be placed in the lot. I have not
seen a plan to show where those units would be, or whether they would
displace the residents who are there now. But on Friday, July 17,
engineers from a construction company visited the site and told
residents that the plan was to bulldoze the entire site, wooded
portion and parking lot. End of Sears Lane Camp.
Whatever the word
“discussion” might have implied, there wasn’t any. Joan Shannon
introduced the topic, and introduced Kevin Pounds, director of ANEW
Place, who described for the audience the Low Barrier Shelter that
has been proposed for the Sears Lane camp parking lot. Apparently the
solution was in hand even before hearing the concerns of the area residents. Members of the
audience shouted out their complaints as the presentation went on,
and it became evident that the purpose of the meeting was to
introduce a development project as a solution to the issues the
community was experiencing, not to listen or discuss. When the Mayor showed up, Councilor Shannon yielded the
mike to him and he also pitched the project. When he was ready for
questions, I raised my hand.
I rose to speak and
took the mike. I observed that Councilor Shannon and the Mayor had
conflated the solutions the community needed with the development
project the Mayor has in mind, entirely bypassing more obvious
solutions. Instead of talking with the community about creating
policies to address their issues (security, trash, xenophobia), the
mayor took advantage of community distress to build support to
bulldoze the homeless camp. (Though he never said as much, we learned
yesterday that this is exactly their plan.) Thus instead of a
conversation that might have allowed the citizens to vent their
frustrations and concerns, and instead of creating an opportunity for
healing, the development project was used to obviate any conversation
and cause a festering of the worries of the neighborhood. The
development project allows the mayor to say “We have addressed the
needs of the neighborhood” without actually giving the members of
the neighborhood a chance to express themselves. This emotional
stuff might be a little stressful for him. Or just inconvenient.
The Mayor needs a
location for the Low Barrier Shelter, since the South Winooski site
is no longer viable. But why here? Kevin tells me that there are
sewer and water lines under the lot and that zoning and permitting
are low barriers. But apparently the Mayor wants to bulldoze the
existing camp. He wants to end once and forever the use of the camp
by homeless folks, further forcing those who have no place to live
into the shadows. He hasn’t sent anyone to negotiate with the
campers, or offered the campers any services, and he hasn’t even
threatened to close the camp if they don’t clean up. This group of
homeless folks isn’t even on his radar. They are a blight and an
obstacle. They figure nicely into his calculations, for how to move
this project, by letting the community demonize them.
This of course is
interesting because in effect the mayor is proposing to bring thirty
to forty homeless folks into the camp where now there are 4 or 5.
Kevin Pounds tells me that none of the neighbors of the North Beach
Campground have complained about that low barrier camping project,
implying that we can expect equal docility toward this project, but
there is a significant distinction that alters the chemistry. This is
a neighborhood that has to be pitched, and promises made to. What if
it all goes bad?
But obviously the
Mayor wants the community to support the project, because if there is
opposition, this is where it would come from. Here, in the Lakeside
neighborhood, he can sell the project as a solution to their
perceived problems.
He wants residents
of the city to believe that he cares about homeless folks, but he
funnels the whole question into whether there is enough housing and
shelter. He wants to move them off the street and out of the
abandoned lots. His “caring” does not include communication,
negotiation, trash pickup, porta-johns, or other services. Better to
cast the homeless as a problem to be removed, not people with
problems to be addressed.
When I discussed the
project with Kevin Pounds, he didn’t seem to need to evict the
campers, but, from Miro's POV, that's the whole point. And right now
he's feeling lucky because he gets to use a development project that
serves the homeless to evict the homeless. Playing us against
ourselves.
We need to
disaggregate the solution from the problem. The humane solution to
the problems presented by the Lakeside neighborhood is to recognize
independent homeless camps and to provide services. Not everyone
wants to be housed and not everyone can be. So just make sure their
living conditions are healthy!
If ANEW Place were
to operate the Sears Lane camp as a camping shelter, my vision for
the camp would be fulfilled. The Mayor's plan calls for the entire
lot to get shut down. This might make the Mayor and his business
constituency happy, but it does not respond to the needs of either
the campers or the Lakeside neighborhood.
The Mayor knows
there is a fuse on this plan. He is acting quickly. It is imperative for us to decide whether and what we will do.
