Dozens of homeless adults were forced to scatter this week to far-flung parks and slivers of turf around the District after the National Park Service and D.C. officials cleared out several sites in the Foggy Bottom area that collectively had become the last large-scale homeless encampment in the city.
When the more than 60 homeless campers in Foggy Bottom saw notices two weeks ago announcing that the area would be closed to tents, many already knew the drill. Several had been forcibly removed last year from McPherson Square, D.C.’s largest homeless encampment in recent history, and from numerous other sites since then.
Anticipating this week’s eviction, unhoused residents gathered shopping carts and old luggage to carry their belongings. They obtained new tents and staked them elsewhere. By the time officials rolled earth movers and trash compactors through the Foggy Bottom encampment Thursday, most of its residents had already departed — to sloped highway shoulders, weedy stretches of Rock Creek Park and other places farther from the District’s resource-rich downtown core.
Elected officials in D.C. and around the country have struggled since 2020 to limit the number of homeless residents opting to sleep on streets rather than seek shelter in congregate living facilities as housing costs have skyrocketed and pandemic-era federal resources meant to help people stay in their homes have dried up.
Thursday’s forced exodus was the latest effort by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s administration and the federal government to clear homeless encampments big and small around the nation’s capital. Opponents said the undertaking will erode trust among homeless residents and make it harder for Bowser (D) to achieve her goal of reducing chronic homelessness.
“All encampment closures do is make homelessness less visible, less safe and harder for us to connect folks to housing,” said Adam Rocap, deputy director of the homeless services provider Miriam’s Kitchen, as he looked out over the encampment Thursday morning. “The trauma of this is very visceral. … There could have been a more targeted approach.”
Shelley Byars, 46, has lived in the Foggy Bottom encampment since last summer and was previously pushed out from half a dozen sites despite having been approved for a housing subsidy in 2022. As the morning sun shone through the blue-and-green tent in which she has lived for the past several months, Byars unzipped the nylon flap and stepped outside, wiping sleep from her eyes. She was already packed.
Byars piled her belongings, neatly loaded into laundry baskets and rolling suitcases, along the sidewalk and waited for advocates to help her move. After having lived in and been removed from sites in three of the District’s four quadrants, she was no longer sure where to go — or how she might get there.
“They don’t care about us,” Byars said, gesturing to D.C. and Park Service workers.
As the 10 a.m. eviction deadline approached, Byars decided she would relocate across the street to a small stretch of grass that had not been marked for clearing.
“I’ll stay here until I can find my way somewhere else or they tell me I have to leave again, I guess,” she said, shrugging. “At least they’ll have to give me another two weeks notice.”
Around 10 a.m., crews in white coveralls began to close off the site. Officials loaded unclaimed items into trash compactors and unfurled a long line of black fencing to block access to grassy areas. They stretched yellow caution tape around a tent that had been sitting open, attracting rodents.
Kirk D. Johnsen, 38, lived in the Foggy Bottom encampment for nearly a year and had never been through a park eviction before. He paced anxiously around the park, chain-smoking and swigging coffee as the commotion around him grew.
Johnsen said he tried staying in a shelter, but the environment triggered his post-traumatic stress disorder and brought on panic attacks. He decided to camp outside instead and was made to feel welcome by several people in the Foggy Bottom encampment. He felt safe, he said, with other people around to watch his stuff — and his back.
“I’m not okay right now, to be honest with you,” he said. “This whole thing gives me so much anxiety. … To them, we’re just a sore thumb that won’t go away.”
In 2023, the number of people experiencing homelessness in the District rose by 14 percent, to nearly 5,700, according to data released this week from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
Although homelessness in the District has declined since 2020 by nearly 12 percent, homelessness in the region has continued to grow. Visible homelessness, including those who sleep in tents or unsheltered, has vexed city officials, who have struggled to staff critical social work positions and failed to provide timely access to housing subsidies.
On Thursday, as polo-shirted officials wound through the rows of tents in Foggy Bottom and offered shelter beds to anyone who remained at the encampment, the District’s shelter occupancy rate hovered at around 99 percent. Vacancies range from two to seven beds per night, officials said.
Had more people agreed to seek shelter than facilities have room for this week, the District would have to create overflow space — similar to how shelters operate in cold-weather months to make room for those at risk of hypothermia, according to Wayne Turnage, the deputy mayor for heath and human services. This often means setting up more cots than shelters are built to hold or providing living space in areas not built for that purpose.
It was not immediately clear if any residents agreed to enter a shelter Thursday.
Turnage said this week that encampment closures are distinct from the city’s strategy to end chronic homelessness. He said they are a way for the District to address growing health and safety concerns and restore areas to public use. In Foggy Bottom, he cited growing rat infestations and complaints from pedestrians in the area who felt unsafe walking through the maze of tents.
“We don’t close [encampments] as a solution to homelessness,” Turnage said “That’s insane. That’s why the mayor spends hundreds of millions of dollars to try to put people in situations where they don’t need to live on the street.”
But nonprofit leaders in recent weeks have questioned the District’s commitment to its vision of ending chronic homelessness, pointing to cuts in the mayor’s proposed 2025 budget that would limit funding for new housing vouchers — the city’s main vehicle for moving unhoused residents into more permanent homes.
The budget proposal also would cut funding to some of the city’s emergency housing programs, including rental assistance, rapid rehousing vouchers and the District’s homeless street outreach. The Bowser administration has pointed to a $700 million shortfall this year as the reason behind many of the mayor’s cuts. Voters, too, have grown skeptical of the city’s approach to homelessness.
In a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll, 76 percent of residents said Bowser was doing a poor or not-so-good job addressing homelessness in the city.
Some residents who gave follow-up interviews said they took issue with the encampment clearings. If the unhoused aren’t bothering anyone, then “leave them be,” said Cilista Johnson, 37. “They’re living their lives. … They can’t afford to have their own home.”
By the time most of the tents had been removed Thursday, only scraps of life remained: a fine-toothed comb on the pavement, a discarded bar of soap, snack wrappers and a unopened case of Narcan nasal spray used to treat narcotics overdoses.
David Beatty, 65, who had lived in the encampment for the last nine months, lingered after the earth movers rolled past. He moved methodically up and down the grassy knolls with a broom and pail, sweeping away what remained of his campsite.
“The earth is my home,” he said as he swept. “And I like to keep my home clean.”
Meagan Flynn and Scott Clement contributed to this report.
