Some of the people living at the campsite behind the Amtrak station said Friday that they knew the City of Lawrence would likely soon close the camp.
Karlin, who asked to be called by his first name only, said he’s lived at the Amtrak camp for about four years. He said he woke up to find Homeless Response Team members handing out flyers to the people living there on Friday, alerting them that they must vacate the camp by 8 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 15. The city later announced the plans in a news release.
The flyer residents received says the Homeless Response Team will be at the camp on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and team members can offer help finding emergency sheltering options, getting bus tickets to people’s home communities, applying for housing and obtaining needed documents.
The camp was fairly quiet early Friday evening. Some people appeared upset and declined to speak for this article. Some residents, like Karlin, have been living in the woods near the Amtrak station for years.
Others moved there after the city required people living in the area behind Johnny’s Tavern in North Lawrence to vacate that area. An Amtrak resident known as Boom said it was clear after the city closed the North Lawrence camp that others would also be closed.
The city in fall 2022 opened its sanctioned camp in North Lawrence. The city closed the sanctioned portion of the camp in March and required that everyone living in the area move out effective in April.
Boom was also displaced when the North Lawrence camp had closed and said at the time that he’d probably move to Amtrak. Asked how he felt knowing that soon Amtrak would be closed, too, he said “Obviously, there’s a better life ahead.”
Karlin said he knew the closure was coming, and he felt that gossip and rumors to that effect were spread and helped manifest the plans moving forward.
“Nothing lasts forever,” he said. “All communities come to an end.”
Homeless Response Team plans
Misty Bosch-Hastings, director of the city’s Homeless Solutions Division, said on Facebook Friday evening that there are about 25 people currently living at Amtrak.
For comparison, a spokesperson for the City of Lawrence said in April that there were about 65 people in the North Lawrence camp when the city started preparing to close it.
The city’s goal is to support Amtrak residents with wraparound services “to aid in their recovery from homelessness and get connected to shelter or housing,” according to the news release Friday.
Members of the multidisciplinary team listed on the flyer given to Amtrak residents include employees of the City of Lawrence, Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, Artists Helping the Homeless, Lawrence Community Shelter, Homeless Resource Center, Lawrence Police Department and Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical.
The HRT has begun forming relationships with people and understanding their needs, and the city hopes to help each person living at the Amtrak camp exit unsheltered homelessness by Oct. 15, according to the city’s news release.
Many of the North Lawrence camp residents initially moved into the Pallet shelter village, a community of 50 cabin-like shelters on North Michigan Street that aims to provide people space that is safe and dignified to help aid in recovery from homelessness. Since people started moving into the village, it’s remained fairly full and there has generally been a waiting list. As of Saturday, a staff member said five units were in the process of having someone move in.
The Lawrence Community Shelter also generally has beds available, and it offers longer-term programs to help people find housing.
Some Lawrence residents have raised questions about emergency responses to campsites. According to a social media post from the Homeless Resource Center (formerly DARE Center), LDCFM’s Mobile Integrated Health team reports to dispatch medical emergencies for people the HRT members encounter while doing outreach.
“This unit meets patients where they are and helps divert care from hospitals and emergency rooms,” according to the post.
The teams are intentionally looking for people who need help at camps on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, according to the post, so there will likely be multiple dispatch reports from camps on those days, according to the post.
On Friday, the team assisted someone with a severe infection and someone else who was having multiple seizures, and “Because the MIH team, assisted by LPD, could provide medical care on-site in these instances, our community saved the cost of medical transportation and hospital visits,” according to the post.
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There could be room in the near future for folks who want to get involved and make a difference to do so.
“If anyone is interested in helping, understanding what’s going on, receiving education and being able to speak truthfully about the situation, and being part of the community working to help our unsheltered neighbors, we’re working on a community volunteer outreach program,” Bosch-Hastings said on Facebook Friday. “You can email homelessprograms@lawrenceks.org.”
What’s next for camp residents
As noted above, some Amtrak residents did not wish to speak for this article on Friday after learning that the camp would be closed. We hope to speak with more people and find out about their plans over the next two months and share more perspectives.
Although some people living outside are looking to get into housing, some aren’t. Karlin is not.
“A lot of people wouldn’t understand or know because they haven’t been there — or wouldn’t consider living like that — but how beautiful it is at times, how much is learned out here, spiritually, mentally and physically,” Karlin said.
Karlin said he doesn’t believe you have to have four walls to be successful.
“Tomorrow, I don’t know where I could be, you know, but I have the opportunity to be anywhere,” he said.
Karlin said he can go live in the Ozarks with his mother anytime, and he plans to. The only thing keeping him in Lawrence is finishing up a Community Corrections sentence, he said. That’s connected to a case in which he was charged with interference with law enforcement, a level-9 (very low-severity), nonviolent felony. He said he’s not sure how much time he’s supposed to have left, but he’s hoping to complete it early, within the next couple of months.
Boom had gone to stay at the Pallet village for a while, but he said he started feeling like he was in jail. He left, leaving his belongings behind. That was scary to him — “I wasn’t going back there,” he said.
Pallet has some rules and restrictions — for instance, there’s a curfew of 10 p.m. except for guests who work nights, and no pets are allowed except for service animals. People are subject to searches at any time, and smoking is only allowed in designated areas.
Boom didn’t cite specifically what made him feel like he was in jail, but he said Pallet staff members are working at a place that’s meant to help him.
“That don’t make them boss of my life,” Boom said. “That don’t make them make rules and rearrange my life.”
The city does not allow media inside Pallet village to interview people, but another former resident of Amtrak who stopped by the camp Friday offered a different perspective. He said he had been living at the Pallet village for about a month. He said it’s been a nice transition and that it’s gotten him into a healthier thinking space.
Out at the camp, people have each other’s backs, look out for each other and come together as a community, Karlin and Boom agreed, and others nearby concurred.
“Why do we do that? Because it’s the right thing to do,” Boom said.
Karlin said many of the people living outside don’t fit into the standards that others hold. He said he’d love to see the creation of an open resources committee, and he thought it would be cool if there was some sort of primitive campsite set up where people who want to be out in nature can just exist, but be close enough to resources in town.
“Where do people like us go? Something like this, until it ceases to exist,” he said, referring to the Amtrak campsite. “Wherever else we can temporarily set up, until we’re told to leave.”
Longer-term local plans
Bosch-Hastings said during a recent Lawrence Community Shelter board of directors meeting that the city is working on policies about what to do when people are coming to Lawrence from out of the area.
“That’s basically just giving them three days’ respite, if they need it, and working with their community of origin and getting them back to where they’re going,” Bosch-Hastings said during that meeting of what LCS is offering people. “We’re not servicing individuals long term that cannot prove that they’re residents, and that’s going to start going into our contracts, because we just don’t have the bandwidth to do that already, so we definitely don’t want to encourage that.”
The city and Douglas County commissions in May approved a five-year strategic plan, called “A Place for Everyone,” aiming to bring homelessness to functional zero.
“Functional zero” is not zero homelessness, but it is bringing homelessness toward zero, and ensuring that the number of people experiencing homelessness at any given time does not exceed the community’s capacity to ensure positive exits from homelessness.
As the Built for Zero initiative explains it, “Imagine if the homeless system operated like a well-functioning hospital. That hospital will not necessarily prevent people from ever becoming sick. But it will ensure people are triaged appropriately, promptly receive the services they need, and address the illness, preventing further harm.”
Part of the strategic plan includes adding more affordable housing. The city has a dashboard of affordable housing projects that have been completed and some that are underway at this link.
The plan put a price tag of $109 million on everything it aims to accomplish. The plan did not allot specific funding toward the efforts but is intended to guide the local governments’ approach going forward.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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