About 20 people living among the trees behind the Amtrak station in East Lawrence are moving to other camps with assistance from the city as the Amtrak camp’s closure looms.
No one who remained at the camp Thursday afternoon shared plans to move from the camp into permanent housing or shelter, but many shared the camp where they plan to go by Tuesday, when they can no longer stay at the Amtrak camp.
Assistant City Manager Brandon McGuire said moving people from one camp to another does not help achieve the city’s goal of ending chronic homelessness.
But “The Homeless Response Team has invested in relationships with individuals at the Amtrak camp to help them reach a point that they can choose shelter and/or housing,” McGuire said. “While many individuals have decided to move to shelter or housing, some individuals are not ready to make that decision for themselves at this moment. The HRT’s investment in relationships with individuals who decide to relocate to a different camp will continue, and the goal will remain the same.”
In the meantime, “HRT is supporting about 20 individuals who are in the process of moving to other areas,” said Cicely Thornton, homeless projects specialist. “We’re coordinating transportation, managing the logistics of moving personal items, and providing storage solutions.”
Several camp residents and advocates have pleaded with the Lawrence City Commission over the past two months, since the city announced plans to close the Amtrak camp, to reverse course. Commissioners never took a formal vote specifically to close the camp, but they could have requested a discussion or taken action to instruct staff not to move forward with the closure.
Why Amtrak?
There are numerous camps big and small throughout the city. Amtrak has become one of the most populated areas, and some people have lived there for years.
Others are newer to the camp. The city closed the sanctioned camp in North Lawrence in March and required everyone living in the area behind Johnny’s Tavern to leave by mid-April. Many people moved to the Amtrak camp from North Lawrence, meaning they’ll be displaced again for at least the second time in about six months. (Many also moved into the Pallet shelter village on North Michigan Street, but as of last month, 40 people had exited Pallet to situations other than permanent housing.)
“Did some individuals return to homelessness following the closure of the North Lawrence camp? Of course. That is the nature of this work — success isn’t always linear, and progress takes time,” said Misty Bosch-Hastings, director of the city’s homeless solutions division.
“Not everyone does everything perfectly on their first attempt, but every step forward counts. Our goal is to continue supporting people through these challenges, helping them work toward long-term stability, even if it takes multiple attempts.”
McGuire said Thursday there were about 25 people still living at the camp.
“This is roughly the same number of individuals as when the camp closure was announced nearly two months ago,” he said. “In the past two months as individuals were connected to services and left the camp, other individuals moved into vacated spots in the camp.”
In announcing the closure plans in August, the city announced in a news release that “The goal of this effort is to help each person living at the camp exit unsheltered homelessness by October 15. Investments in the multi-disciplinary Homeless Response Team, which allowed team members to begin forming relationships and understanding the needs of these individuals, and expanded shelter capacity make this effort possible.”
Thornton said that “So far, 31 individuals have been permanently housed, reconnected to resources, admitted to emergency sheltering options, or are receiving in-patient substance use treatment.”
But with 20-some people now moving to different camps, the goal of helping everyone exit unsheltered homelessness has not been met. So why close Amtrak, and why now?
“Amtrak was chosen for a few reasons, including public safety concerns with a large volume of calls for emergency services at the location, its proximity to residential and commercial neighborhoods, its impact on public park land that all community members desire to access, and its location in a flood hazard area,” McGuire said.
(The land is owned by the city and zoned as open space as city parks are, according to property records, but it has no signage that one might expect to find at a park, nor is it listed on the city’s website as a park. Asked to clarify, McGuire said that “Yes, it is a city park that was used for hiking trails, fishing, accessing the river, and environmental conservation.”)
“The HRT has worked extremely hard and will continue to do so over the next several days to support people to move out and get connected to services,” McGuire said in response to questions on Friday. “Tuesday is the final day for individuals to vacate the park. A law enforcement presence will not be necessary Tuesday. After next Tuesday, camping will no longer be allowed in the park and the City is prepared to enforce standing policies and ordinances related to the appropriate use of public parks.”
Residents of Amtrak and advocates have argued that winter is just around the corner, making Tuesday a bad time to uproot people. Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service announced a freeze warning in effect for Douglas County Wednesday morning, with temperatures as low as 27° expected.
Bosch-Hastings said the city has been working with the county to develop an emergency winter sheltering plan “that will help us accommodate all unhoused individuals who need a warm place to stay during extreme winter weather.” That plan entails working with the Lawrence Community Shelter and local churches and community organizations to ensure that there’s a warm space so everyone in need will have a place to sleep.
Preparing for the move
Thursday afternoon, some camp residents were busy filling trash bags; others were loading items onto wheeled platforms hitched to bikes to start moving to their next spot.
Phillip Rodriquez has been staying at Amtrak since he said he was exited from Pallet village for cooking. He said Thursday that some members of the Homeless Response Team were trying to get people to move late last week rather than waiting until Tuesday, the deadline.
“None of us are ready,” he said. “There’s still a lot of people that gotta pack their stuff up and still gotta find a spot.”
McGuire said the HRT has been encouraging people not to wait until the last day or two to move for the past two months.
“There are more people at the camp than we would like at this point due to vacated spots being filled by new people to the camp,” he said. “It will be challenging for the HRT to support each individual’s move if everyone waits until the last day or two.”
Rodriquez said he’s met a lot of good people in situations similar to his own at the camp. He and his neighbors had filled four big dumpsters in their efforts to clean up ahead of the move. He said he and other younger camp residents have been trying to help older people prepare for the move.
Boom, a former resident of the North Lawrence camp who moved to Amtrak, said, “It ain’t the end of life, and it sure ain’t the beginning.”
Guy Drum said he never anticipated he’d be at the Amtrak camp as long as he has, and he’d made a lot of mistakes to get there. But it’s been the best four years of his life.
“I’m sad and pissed off about having to leave here. I’m not homeless right now, but come Tuesday I’ll be homeless,” he said. “… But I’ve gotta stay positive.”
He’d lost his faith for a while, too, but he’s found it again, he said, holding the cross he wore around his neck.
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‘It was gonna happen’
Although the closure is not ideal for many of the folks living at Amtrak, some people said they could see the reasons for the move, or they were relieved it wasn’t on shorter notice.
Karlin, an Amtrak resident, said he had seen the camp take a toll on the land around it. Four years ago, there was some trash out there, “but nothing like this at all.”
“It was gonna happen at some point or another,” Karlin said of the camp’s closure.
Rodriquez said he and other camp residents appreciated the help they’ve gotten with the move. He said the HRT members have been offering people tents.
“Individuals who have trauma related to shelters or other personal concerns and are unwilling to stay at the Lawrence Community Shelter are being provided with the necessities to sustain life with the impending season change,” Thornton said in response to a question asking whether the city is paying for tents for people moving out of Amtrak.
Dustin Boldt, who previously lived at Amtrak and still spends a lot of time there, said he’s been homeless in multiple cities across the country.
In contrast to the help the outreach team offers here, Boldt said officials in other cities will walk through an encampment spraying pepper spray and telling people to get out.
That would be a “sweep.” Advocates have called for the city to “stop the sweep” of Amtrak.
Bosch-Hastings said the city does not do sweeps but rather conducts encampment closures, “which are done with compassion, carefully planned and focused on connecting individuals to services and providing support as they transition out of homelessness,” she said. “Our goal is to ensure that individuals are offered meaningful assistance, whether that be shelter, housing, or other resources, rather than simply displacing them without support. This approach takes time.”
Sweeps can cause unnecessary trauma, Bosch-Hastings said.
“An encampment resolution is different. It’s about engagement, support, and compassion,” she said. “Using a ‘Housing First’ approach, focusing on providing stable housing and connecting individuals to needed services.”
Karlin said some people do need to move around or do something different. “It’s about time for me, too.” Ultimately, he plans to move to the Ozarks with his mother, but he’ll be at a new camp until that time comes.
Karlin believes it’s not going to be easy for a lot of people to get back into housing.
“People out here have a lot of trauma, a lot of abuse, a lot of things that’s happened that they’ve buried under the surface, and they cope with drugs and things to avoid what they need to deal with,” Karlin said. “Getting them into a program — a reintegration program, as I call them — to move back to societal norms doesn’t work if these issues aren’t addressed and solved somehow. A lot of the time, healing the emotional body can be extremely difficult. They’re still going to be screaming at their neighbors at 3 a.m. in the morning, and getting kicked out of their stable housing environment ‘cause that’s how they feel at that time.”
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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.
Molly Adams (she/her), photojournalist and news operations coordinator for The Lawrence Times, can be reached at molly@lawrencekstimes.com. Check out more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
More coverage of housing and homelessness:
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
August Rudisell/Lawrence Times
