“In the city’s path” — Homeless move for Greenway
image credit: News-Record.com/Nelson Kepley
In the city’s path
Saturday, March 6, 2010
By Lorraine AhearnGREENSBORO – Two paths converged in a not-so-distant wood this week: the $26 million Downtown Greenway, and a longtime homeless “tent city” in its way.
Served notice that heavy equipment will soon be brought in for soil sampling, five homeless men and a woman retreated to an adjoining section of woods near the Freeman Mill Road overpass at Spring Garden Street, according to police and Action Greensboro, the nonprofit project manager.
“They told us we had to go — tents and everything,†said Keith Owens, 45, an unemployed equipment operator who has lived at the camp for a year. “They did give us a little bit of warning. Anybody dreads moving. It’s just a little harder out here.”
Good article by Lorraine Ahearn in the News & Record, about our friends at the Freeman Mill homeless camps moving the largest camp to make way for the next section of the downtown Greenway.
There’s been good cooperation between the homeless camp residents, property owner Elliott Mitchell, StreetWatch, the Greensboro Police Department, the City of Greensboro, and Action Greensboro in strategizing solutions for the homeless people who’ve been displaced by the Greenway. The Greensboro Housing Coalition is helping some of them move into permanent housing using HUD vouchers. I look forward to eventually walking the Greenway with my friends who’ve lived in its path. And hopefully, going to visit them in their homes, not their tents.