Brian Vaughan read the signs that leaned against a barricade of bike parts, scrap metal, furniture and old shopping carts.
“And then the one we made up last night, ‘Coming to a neighborhood near you,’” he said, laughing.
Vaughan was standing on Mountain View Drive on Tuesday morning, next to the snow dump encampment. It’s a place he’d called home for three years. He didn’t want to leave, but the city said he had to — and now. It was abatement day.
“Well, they don't have no place for us to go. They want us out of here, we got to go somewhere. So it might be your neighborhood,” he said, laughing again.
The mayor’s team said it’s been planning the abatement, or clearing, of the camp for about six months and the people living here have known about it for weeks. It’s taken longer than most abatements because the two camps — one at the snow dump, and the other across the street at Davis Park — are the largest in the city. The mayor’s office estimates that until recently about 100 people lived in the area.
By the start of the abatement, around 10 a.m. Tuesday, a few dozen remained.
Some parts of the day went as city officials planned: Officers walked through the tents. They told people they had 20 minutes to leave. Outreach workers encouraged them to go into a shelter or offered services like rehab. But other parts of the day did not go as planned: Five fires were ignited during the clearing — black plumes of smoke filled the sky, propane tanks popped and the smell of burned plastic settled over the area.
Firefighters responded quickly. According to fire chief Doug Schrage, no one was injured. He said his department prepared for something like this.
“I think it would be an expected act of rebellion. These people are being forced away from their encampments, and appropriately so,” he said. “And it's not surprising that somebody would act out this way.”
Farina Brown, with the mayor’s office, called the fires unacceptable.
“I'm very disappointed that this was the exclamation point for some folks, which was to set fires,” she said. “But that reinforces why this was incredibly necessary to do — that mentality that if we can't be here, then we're going to burn it down, and it's a public space.”
As firefighters worked to contain the flames in various parts of the park, the city’s Health Spaces team was already at work hauling trash into dumpsters. Outreach workers with the city and other agencies checked in with campers as they slowly trickled out of the area. Half a dozen protesters with a bullhorn handed them energy bars and other food. City officials, including Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, stood observing the scene.
Despite the fires, Brown said the abatement was going well.
“When you’ve had an encampment that has been here for so long I don't think we could have had a better outcome,” she said, “where there's no one that's been injured, there have not been any arrests and we've connected really vulnerable people to services.”
All around, people were slowly preparing to leave — a woman neatly folded her clothes on the sidewalk, another sorted possession on a tarp. Someone on a bicycle piled high with belongings wobbled under the weight as he rode away.
One couple, Jordan and his girlfriend Myra, who declined to give their last names, decided to take two of the 20 shelter beds the city said were open for campers. The decision was last minute. But Jordan was on crutches with an infection in his back that he said was making it hard for him to walk.
“I mean, I don't have no choice,” he said. “I don't have nowhere else to go right now, so I'm kind of being forced to do it now.”
Others, though, didn’t know where they were going. Angie Carter was sitting with a couple dozen people at a playground just outside of the park. She said none of them had plans. And said she hadn’t heard from any outreach teams about shelter beds — she’d love one.
“Where, is the question. Where? We don't even know where,” she said. “They move us, but don't tell us where we can go.”
As the smoke cleared and the camp emptied, Vaughan was still there. He lingered by the edge of the snow dump. He still hadn’t packed up. He didn’t know where he’s going, but he didn’t want to talk about that. He was too mad about the fires.
“I'm just upset that they lit everything on fire,” he said. “I just can't believe these guys. It makes us look so stupid.”
He watched as some of his friends hauled their belongings across the street, away from the camp.
“I'm not sure what I'm doing,” he said. “Larry's daughter's picking him up, taking him home. Lu's daughter's taking her home, and they gave her five minutes to go back in and take what she really wanted out of the tent.”
The mayor’s office said it’s guessing it’ll take about three weeks to clean up the camp. The area will be closed during cleanup. Then, they hope, community members will start to use the park again.
