LONGVIEW, Wash. — The homeless residents of a large campsite in Longview, Wash. raced to clear out their belongings and animals Monday morning. It was 11 a.m., and they were hastening to complete the move after the city declared the camp, located off Alabama Street, the source of a public health emergency.
The city says it does not consider homelessness a crime, so officials facilitated a way for the campers to move onto an adjacent city-owned parking lot where they must each keep their tents within a 12 foot by 12 foot square marked out with spray paint.
“Well, it’s crunch time for everybody,” said JD, who has been living in the Alabama Street camp. The city had just told them to remove their tent sites or else they’d be given trespassing warnings. “I was pissed. I mean, I don’t want to be here, but things are the way they are.”
JD rented out a storage unit and had until the end of the day to move his things. “Deadline is either get your stuff out or it’s going to get scooped up by a dozer,” he said while trying to move his five dogs.
“They want to move us out of where we were into this temporary place so they can clean out,” added Julie. She finished moving her tent into the new lot early Monday morning. “I was frustrated because tents don’t travel well. They aren’t supposed to be lived in anyways, they take a lot of wear and tear.”
The city said that it is cleaning the previous campsite for health and safety reasons.
“You had to get enrolled in programming, meaning that you can have community services and stuff, and they have to know who you are and they’re counting us,” Julie said. She believes it’s just a matter of time before the new site becomes as dirty and overcrowded as the last one. “Nothing has changed. It’s already starting to become a sh*** show.”
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“I’m camping up here 'til the end of it,” added Charles, who is also experiencing homelessness.
“The people that are homeless here have to go somewhere,” said Curtis Jackson. He moved into the camp almost two months ago. “Everyone here is on drugs. Every single person in there is on drugs, so what can you do about that?”
“It’s just sad ... all I can say is 'sad,'” said Vern Gilbert, who has lived in Longview for 15 years and watched the camp grow. “We’ve been talking about this issue for 20 years — and here we are in 2022 and somebody hasn’t stepped up to do more to take care of the problem.”
Many like Gilbert believe that moving the homeless into a new, temporary site isn’t the answer.
“It’s going to stop violence for a little bit. It’s going to get things orderly but what are they going to do with us after that? They’re going to have to have us move back or kick us out into other people’s back yards again,” said Jackson.
During this cleanup, the city said it will try and prevent the homeless from dispersing throughout the community. As to how they’ll do that, KGW asked the city for comment but had not heard back by the time of this story's publishing.