“Whether they go is not an option; how and when they go is up to them.”

Audrie, Travis and I, headed into the Freeman Mill camps. Image credit: Mark Horvath

A source tells me that construction on the next phase of the Downtown Greenway could begin as soon as mid-November.  Installation of traffic lights on Lee Street could be completed by the end of this month, with construction on the Mitchell property — location of the “Freeman Mill” homeless camps — possibly beginning as early as mid-November.

More than a dozen homeless people currently reside in the Freeman Mill camps. Most live in tents or other shelters they’ve constructed in several camps located in the woods around the edges of the property. They are white, black, Asian and Hispanic. At least two of the current camp residents are women, one of whom is in a wheelchair.

A number of the residents fit the federal definition of chronic homelessness: “An unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition, who has either been continuously homeless for a year or more, or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.” A disabling condition is defined as “a diagnosable substance abuse disorder, a serious mental illness, developmental disability, or chronic physical illness or disability, including the co-occurrence of two or more of these conditions,” and the disabling condition “limits an individual’s ability to work or perform one or more activities of daily living.”

Our community has a housing program for the chronically homeless that has housed more than 100 people, but because of funding limitations, the program is full and not accepting new applicants. There are few substance abuse treatment programs for indigent people and they often have waiting lists, and even when space opens up, treatment is voluntary. Our community mental health system is suffering from a lack of funds and from the disastrous effects of mental health “reform.” In other words, finding housing and supportive services to meet the needs of the chronically homeless folks in the Freeman Mill camps is quite a challenge. If there were easy answers, they probably wouldn’t be living in the woods now.

I am not anti-Greenway.  The Greenway didn’t cause our friends’ homelessness — but it is exposing it.  It has long troubled me that dozens of homeless people have camped all over downtown and the public has remained largely unaware.  Living in the woods downtown is not ideal.  I am concerned about what will happen when our homeless friends have to leave, with no place to go, but I’m hoping that the mainstream media will pick up the story and our community can be creative and find solutions for them.  No one should live in the woods.